The Interesting Structure of "Knives Out"

So I bought “Knives Out” and decided to watch it right on the next day. If you know me and my tendency to let my DVDs ‘rest’ a little after buying (to the point where I maintain a ‘to watch’ list for my impulse buys), you know how rare that is for me. However, I’m a sucker for good mystery stories and I had heard good things about the movie. Deserved good things.

I’m not even going into the A-list of actors in this movie, although they’d deserve it. I’m also not going to point out that they got a wonderful script to work with. I’m going after the unusual structure of the story.

Essentially, crime stories fall into two categories: mystery stories and stories about whether or not the criminal is caught. On one side, you have the whodunit, the story where the audience along with the detective is trying to find out what happened and who did the crime (usually the murder). On the other side, you have crime stories where the audience knows who did it very much from the beginning and the tension comes from the question of whether or not the detective will catch the criminal (usually the murderer). The two different types have different structures and keep the tension up in different ways.

In the first case, the audience is seeing the results of the crime (often with someone finding the body after the act). In some cases, the audience is given a little prelude first and we see all the possible suspects, so we later on know who has what reason to off the victim. The “Midsomer Murders” do this very well (although should you, gentle reader, take a vacation to Midsomer county and meet a guy who introduces him as ‘Inspector Barnaby’, run as fast as you can, because your life is in danger). The main body of the story is taken up by the detective, no matter whether they’re professional, semi-professional, or amateur, finding clues, following wrong leads (the beloved red herring which makes for a good meal), and striking the suspects from the list one by one. In the last act, then, there will be the reveal of the culprit, be it by simply arresting them, by making a big announcement, or by tricking them into a confession, because none of the proof will stick well enough in court. In any case, the detective will explain how the crime was committed.

In the second case, the audience usually sees the culprit commit the crime, so there’s little doubt to what they did or who did it. The only thing which might be unclear is the reason, which is, of course, what the detective will need to know. The second act, the main body of the story, then is devoted to a chess game between the culprit and the detective, where the detective is looking for clues and trying to find out who did it and the culprit does everything in their power to prevent that, to send the detective off on a false lead, even one which might lead to a false conviction of an innocent party. In the final act, the chess game is decided, either for the detective or for the culprit.

The interesting thing about “Knives Out” is that it mashes the two different varieties up and gives us a mixture where the first and the last act are whodunit and the middle part plays out like a crime story where the culprit acts against being found.

I don’t really want to spoil the story for you, so here is your spoiler warning. In order to discuss the structure of the story, I need to describe what happened in it and that means you are going to learn about a few main plot points. If you don’t want a spoiler, go and watch the movie and come back afterwards to read on.

There, now you’re warned and I can continue with the blog post. In the beginning of the movie, the body of Harlan Thrombey is found by his housekeeper in his little cubby hole in the attic, where he wrote his books. It looks like a suicide on first glance, but nevertheless, the police comes to look and a private investigator comes in as well. They begin questioning the suspects a week later - Harlan’s family is coming together for a mourning and the reading of his will.

During the questioning is where the story flips its structure. Not only does the questioning show us that the suspects are all lying about their relationship with Harlan (which, of course, was always ‘splendid’ - only, it wasn’t), when Martha is questioned, it seems as if she is the one who killed him, if not willingly. Two bottles got mixed up and she gave him the wrong medicine. Harlan was the one who told her to stop trying to save him - which she could never do - and leave silently, so that she wouldn’t be suspected of anything. He clearly loved her - later on we learn that he left all his money to her. In this case, we sympathise with Martha - she didn’t kill him for base reasons, after all, she made a mistake and doesn’t deserve the repercussions. She didn’t know she would inherit all his money - Harlan clearly did, of course, and wanted her safe. Therefore, the middle of the story is all about Martha trying not to be caught, which wouldn’t only get her in trouble, but also her illegal-immigrant mother and her sister.

The structure flips back to the regular whodunit with Martha finally confessing her ‘deeds’ to the private investigator. By deciding that, with the housekeeper severely sick because of her, as it seems, it’s not worth it and she has to owe up (because Martha is a very decent person), she sets herself free - because she didn’t do it. She gives the P.I. the information he needs to put it all together and that enables him to affect that big ‘I’ll tell you what happened’ scene which is so intrinsic to all whodunit stories.

What is the good thing about mixing those two structures, though? Shouldn’t it be a bad thing to mix up two different types of stories like that? It could have been bad - it could have been disastrous -, but done well, as it was here, it instead created a story where you think one thing is going to happen, but then you get the big plot twist and something completely different happens. At the beginning, the audience thinks ‘this is clearly a whodunit’ and readies itself for guessing along with the detective. Then it suddenly is one of those other stories where you wonder who will win, the culprit or the detective, and, because Martha is a sympathetic character, the audience partially wants her to win. She didn’t plan to do it, she didn’t want to do it, it was an accident, after all. Then, when she proves herself a good person by admitting to the deed, to the accident, she gets her reward for being a good person: she finds out she’s not done it. The detective then goes ahead and gives the audience, based on clues we saw, but didn’t register as clues, the story of what really happened that night and later. The double switch in structure keeps the audience on their toes. Who did it, really? What kind of story are we watching? That makes “Knives Out” so enjoyable - together with the great actors, of course, who are the icing on the cake here.

I really enjoyed myself, watching the movie. I actually watched it again right after I’d finished it. The structure Rian Johnson has created for this movie is very interesting and makes the movie definitely re-watchable for me - looking for the details on the second time through. It’s also going on my list of ‘movies for a rainy day’.