Knives Out

Comparative · 2027 & 2028 Leaving Cert

Rian Johnson’s 2019 film is a murder mystery that turns out to be about money, class and who gets to belong. If you study it well, it gives you sharp, modern material for the Comparative.

The plot is simple to summarise and rich to argue about. Famous crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead in his attic study the morning after his lavish 85th birthday party. He is rich, he is surrounded by family, and almost every one of those family members had a reason to want him gone. Enter Benoit Blanc, a courtly Southern detective hired by an unknown party to look past the official verdict of suicide. What follows looks like a classic whodunnit, but Johnson keeps shifting the ground under you, so that the question is never just “who did it” but “who deserves what, and why”.

The person the camera keeps returning to is Marta Cabrera, Harlan’s nurse. She is the daughter of an immigrant, she is kind, and she has a condition that means she physically cannot lie without being sick. That detail is a brilliant piece of design: in a house full of people who lie for a living and for a livelihood, Marta’s body refuses to. The Thrombey family treat her as part of the furniture, can’t agree on where she is even from, and assume the inheritance is theirs by right. When Harlan’s will is read, the film tips everything over, and the comfortable people discover how quickly their warmth disappears once money is at stake. By the closing shot, the story has become a clear, almost cheeky statement about entitlement and worth.

Study Knives Out

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