Fascinatingly, this puts her in company with more traditional psychopathic killers who often charmingly lead their own stories, such as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Marta does not hide behind lies-as she physically cannot-but as soon as her safety is threatened, she begins layering half-truths over herself as protection. In order to get away with the original crime, Marta must prove herself smarter than whoever is chasing her. While none of these later twists are her doing, they could still brand her as guilty, if she is unable to remain one step ahead of whoever is sowing further chaos. Emotionally invested in Marta holding onto her life, we forgive her later actions, even when they involve shady blackmail meetings and lying to even the most sympathetic Thrombeys, the ones who had always claimed they would make sure she was taken care of.īut as the investigation becomes more complicated, including the aforementioned blackmail scheme and the medical examiner offices lit ablaze, Marta’s survival instinct comes into sharp focus. After all, she doesn’t deserve to go to prison, to see her undocumented mother deported, and to lose her own future.
Seemingly the worst possible thing has already happened, so her focus shifts to evading the consequences. But with Marta it was never an act she stood to gain nothing from Harlan’s death, so Blanc’s initial interview seems almost a formality simply by dint of her being considered “part of the family” for her years of service.īy having the viewers follow along from Marta’s perspective, even in believing that she is responsible for Harlan’s death, she becomes a strikingly sympathetic figure. In many ways, it’s an inversion of the murder mystery trope where the killer is revealed to be the person who was initially written off as too slow, too clumsy, or too infirm to have actually committed the crime.
She becomes shrewder at covering her tracks, better attuned to the slightest hint that will bring her house of cards tumbling down, more ruthless in dealing with the inheritance-greedy Thrombeys. She’s still the same Marta, but having passed the first test, suddenly the possibility for self-preservation presents itself. But from the moment that she manages to avoid confessing and avoid vomiting, that persona becomes a facade to hide behind.
MARTA KNIVES OUT MOVIE
This changes the entire shape of the murder mystery: If we already know what happened, then what kind of climax could this movie conceivably be building to?Īnd at first, maybe Marta is lacking in those areas. With the dramatic irony of audiences knowing what really happened, the blanks are filled in around Marta’s technically true alibi with which Harlan supplied her in his final moments. While poor Marta comes with her own internal lie detector test, and is prone to projectile vomit if she even tries to obscure the truth, it is shockingly impressive that she manages, through lying by omission, to withhold this explanation from Blanc. Only Marta didn’t mean to: it was an accident, and more a case of manslaughter than murder, brought about by the tragic mistake of swapping the doses of Harlan’s medication, irreversible due to the missing antidote. They come, with knives out indeed, for Harlan’s sweet, unassuming, seemingly innocent caretaker.īut just like Daniel Craig’s Blanc plinking a piano key during each suspect’s interrogation, Johnson strikes a discordant key in his whodunnit by (supposedly) answering the “who” in the first act: The caretaker did it. By contrast, per Kayti Burt’s deft analysis of the film, the nastiness of privilege that drives Harlan’s potential heirs threatens to destroy the future of Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas). Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) dies on his 85th birthday, arguably at the peak of his career, which also coincides with the end of a good, long life. The sparkling, secret truth at the heart of Benoit Blanc’s investigation-and how Johnson brilliantly subverts the entire genre-is the even greater depths to which the Thrombey clan can sink to protect their wealth. Murder is not the worst thing to happen in Rian Johnson’s shrewd, incisive whodunnit Knives Out. This article contains major Knives Out spoilers.
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