![]() He probably played with those knives as a child. Lastly, when Ransom grabs a knife off the wall, out of all of them, the dozens if not hundreds of exceptionally sharp daggers, he grabs a false blade? The stage prop? Ransom grew up in that house. Nobody asks why butterflies follow Mauricio Babilonia. In Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, nobody questions the crosses that permanently manifest on the foreheads of the 17 Aurelianos. That’s fine, but this solution is also a key part of magical realism. She can inherently tell the difference between the two liquids. Blanc makes an attempt to rationalize this Marta is a good nurse. ![]() The next day the car is fine, and she and Harlan’s grandson Ransom (Chris Evans) drive it to the medical examiner’s office. Every other incident was foreshadowed, except for this. After the will is read and she is pursued out of the house by the Thrombeys, her car fails to start, impacted by her own fear and confusion. These coincidences aren’t always to Marta’s benefit. These aren’t just coincidental conventions of the murder-mystery genre, but activations of her magic will. She’s once again given what she needs to clear her name, or at least remove herself from suspicion. While the irony is thick, this presents an opportunity for Marta to destroy evidence. When Marta asks what she should be looking for, Blanc says “you’ll know it when you see it,” and then turns away, just as a dog bounds up to Marta with a piece of the trellis. Marta and Blanc continue their tour of the property. It’s also worth noting that in the script, it’s never specified who is running the machine, just that Marta realizes her mistake and then it malfunctions: the act of a magician. What we do know, however, is that when the tape pops up, it’s smoking. The guard says that the tape sometimes overheats, and while we do see her thumb near the eject button, we never know if she presses it. When Marta goes with Blanc to review the security tape, she realizes that she pulled off at the wrong point, and will be exposed. ) From her very introduction, she acts as an agent of magical realism, embodying a power fantasy rooted in inherent justice and powerful good. (This quirk is similar to the natural talents observed in Marquez’s Buendia family and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. While Western audiences might read this as a trope of the murder-mystery, it’s clear that as a Latin-American woman, Marta is afflicted by magical tradition. So, let’s start at the beginning.Īs soon as we meet Marta we’re told that she cannot lie-and she becomes physically ill when she tries. This obviously magical change is the one that encourages us to rewatch the film with fresh eyes. At the end of Knives Out, Portrait Harlan smiles, watching his family forcibly escorted out of Marta’s house. In the script, the portrait changes expression multiple times. He stares at her in paint, utterly austere. We see it in full for the first time as Marta faces him before her introduction to Blanc. The clearest indicator of magic in Knives Out is the portrait of Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). Magical moments are believed wholeheartedly and unquestioned throughout the text. Magic is naturally occurring, precipitated by desire, event or birth. Most importantly, magical realism mixes speculative elements and extraordinary moments of circumstance. No single motif unites magical realism, but common themes include inheritance, family, colonialism and unreliable narrators-all of which play a role in Knives Out. It now encompasses writers globally, but typically magical realism comes out of heavily colonized countries-places like Colombia (Gabriel García Márquez), India (Salman Rushdie), and South Africa (Zakes Mda). Magical realism is a genre that has origins in South American literature. (L to R) Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Noah Segan and Lakeith Stanfield are among the large cast of Knives Out, but Marta alone is the focus of the film’s magical happenstance. Within the film, Marta is an agent of magical realism. ![]() Marta’s magical interference is unquestioned, unavoidable and necessary to the plot. The plot hinges not on coincidence, but on magic. However, in doing so, he crafts a narrative of inconceivable circumstances. Rian Johnson exploits beats of the detective story in order to create an atmosphere of constant irony surrounding Cabrera (played by Ana de Armas) and Blanc (Daniel Craig). Subscribe to Observer’s Keeping Watch Newsletter
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