I do have a 3 hour conversation on the matter in my videos waiting to be watched (though it will be one and a half hours as 2x speed is the way things should be listened to).
Yeah, could you link me to the video, please? I can't find it.
My rant on Knives Out:
Knives Out
is not a whodunit, nor is it a "mystery"
in the traditional sense.
The three genres typically lumped together are "mystery", "suspense" and "thriller".
A mystery is a plot wherein the inciting incident happens prior to or early in the events of the story, and the focus is on closing gaps in information. The audience does not know of "the event", but lead characters may be or may not be -- usually the latter.
A suspense narrative is a plot wherein the inciting incident happens continuously throughout the story, during the story, or is expected to happen at the end of the story. The audience is privy to the fact that "the event" is going to happen, but the characters aren't, eliciting dramatic irony.
A thriller narrative is a plot wherein the inciting incident happens continuously throughout the story, during the story, or is expected to happen at the end of the story. Contrary to the suspense narrative, in a thriller this information about "the event" is known by both the audience and the character, and the focus is on preventing it or escaping from it.
These all apply even if the information we thought we had was false, misled, misinformed or otherwise incorrect or incomplete.
The primary focus on "Knives Out", and the bulk of the narrative, is on the parts of the story wherein we believe we know who the culprit is, and the focus is on whether they escape punishment or are caught. This is because Knives Out was not really inspired by Golden Age mystery "whodunits" -- it was inspired primarily by the works of Alfred Hitchcock and his particular brand of
thriller. The movie has a mystery facepaint and a twist ending, but it is at its heart and soul a thriller.
Is this bad? No. Is it why I hated the movie? Yes.
I am a diehard, dedicated, passionate fan of the Golden Age style of mystery writing. It's the school of mystery writing that was predominantly popular in Japan, America, Britain, Spain, China and France from 1920-1970 and which focused on providing the reader with all the clues they need to solve the mystery, not only figuring out whodunit but also deducing the complex methods they used to commit the crime!
At this point in my life I've easily read going on 350-odd Golden Age(-styled) puzzle mystery novels. It is a dead genre in every country in the world but Japan. In Japan, the genre was originally known as "honkaku" -- literally "Orthodox", because the puzzle focus was seen as the default and preferred way to write mysteries -- and was recently revived as "shin-honkaku", a second Golden Age where mystery fiction focuses on allowing the reader to solve the crime. However, as I cannot read Japanese, and there are VERY few of these novels in English translation (really, I can count them on my fingers), the genre hasn't seen very many meaningful contributions in a form that I can read. The modern American mystery is more about character drama, the scientific methods of the detective, and generally feature simpler crimes to make room for more complex character interactions.
So, naturally, when I saw the marketing pushing this movie as a "film in the tradition of Agatha Christie", I was excited to see that the Golden Age of Detective Fiction was getting modern, mainstream, cinematic representation. But the marketing was misinformed. I felt somewhat lied to and cheated, because I was promised a movie in a dead genre that I'm passionate about. People want to defend it as "subverting expectations", but I think it's just frank dishonesty. I felt misled as someone who was hoping to see a grand renaissance of a genre that matters to me, but it wasn't given that.
@
BigOnYa:
@
slaphappygamer:
