Yup
‘Nope’ makes it a perfect 3-for-3 for ‘Comedy’ writer-director Jordan Peele. Next one has to suck, right?
Nope
Director: Jordan Peele • Writer: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Wrenn Schmidt, Barbie Ferreira, Keith David, Donna Mills
USA • 2hrs 10mins
Opens Hong Kong August 18 • IIB
Grade: A
Jordan Peele’s Nope is, for all intents and purposes, a much simpler film than either his 2017 debut, Get Out, or the follow-up, Us. The stories that anchored those films were complex. The former was about a decades old plot to steal the vigour and vitality of Black people and use their bodies as vessels for creaky old wypipo (©Michael Harriot) who didn’t want to die. It involved the daughter of a prominent white family luring young Black men into a relationship in order to be appropriated. The latter tracked a colony of “others,” clones, living in a parallel world beneath us, put there by some mad scientists, who were getting out and wanting revenge. Nope is about an alien harassing a ranching community and the attempt by three locals to photograph it. The end.
But anyone who’s seen Peele’s work knows damn well his films come layered with all manner of symbol and nuance and hidden history, and there’s no way in hell that’s all there is to Nope. One thing’s for sure: this a moon shot for Peele, who could easily have sat back and mixed up parts of his first two films and called it a day. But instead, he delivered the enigmatic Nope, the kind of film whose fans and detractors will love it and hate for the exact same reasons; it’s unfocused or it’s sprawling. It’s pretentiously boring or its intellectually demanding. Gloriously shot on IMAX, on film, Peele lets his imagination really go, tapping into HP Lovecraft, classic Hollywood Westerns and their myth-making, Neon Genesis Evangelion, UFO conspiracy theories, and that uniquely American reverence for fame and spectacle, violence and cash. And lest we forget: the guy is fuckin’ hilarious. Key & Peele’s “The Substitute Teacher” is never going to not be funny. Pree-zent!
Yeah, just…nope
Daniel Kaluuya plays Otis “OJ” Haywood almost exclusively through tired, weary eyes that should probably be insured as a profession tool. With few words and the barest hint of physicality, he telegraphs Peele’s headiest messages, and he makes it look easy. OJ and his estranged sister Emerald (Keke Palmer, Hustlers) are living on their recently deceased father’s (Keith David) ranch, running Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, the oldest Black-owned business like it in the industry. She’s brash, he’d rather just get to work and get home. Still, they share the kind of shorthand only siblings have, and it comes in handy, first on a commercial set, shot by ornery cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), where a dicky actress and a dickier director must have a horse, to hell with its handler. She’s the least toxic of Nope’s multiple fame whores.
Down the road from the ranch is former child star Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun, in a low-key dense turn that mixes trauma with get-rich-quick scheming), the only survivor of a sitcom bloodbath who’s parlayed that tragedy into a Gold Rush theme park attraction with his wife Amber (Wrenn Schmidt, For All Mankind, which you really should be watching). Finally, when OJ and Emerald see something weird in the sky and the lights on the ranch start flickering, they wind up teaming with anti-The CW big box tech shop staffer Angel (scene stealer Brandon Perea) to get whatever’s in sky on “film.” It’s at this point all these characters’ motivations to get the “Oprah Shot” start to converge in a masterful amalgam of horror, science fiction and comedy, and Peele’s ideas start to ooze over the sides of his narrative tub.
We come in peace?
21st century ranchers
Peele has made it crystal clear he’s a fan of creepy shit, and is well versed it its traditions, but he obviously paid attention during Film History 101, because he effortlessly leans into genre conventions in general, lacing them with pithy barbs about Black erasure from (or exploitation by) American popular culture, among others. When OJ gets on his horse, he’s the historical picture of a “cowboy,” and Hollywood’s first movie star, but few know that (Emerald probably does). Rarely in Westerns do two Black people and their Latinx friend make the plans to save ranch. But Peele is a geeky fanboy too, so his commentary is elegant and understated, and if the “woke stuff” really upsets you, you probably won’t even know it’s there (then again, you’re probably not going to a Jordan Peele movie). He wants to have fun, and ratchet up the tension, and drop a few “Damn!” sequences (the barn!). And he does, with help from Christopher Nolan’s regular shooter Hoyte van Hoytema (Ad Astra, Her), who knows a thing or two about impact images, and more than anyone, supervising sound editor Johnnie Burn. Peele and Burn know exactly when to crank the sound and, more evocatively, when to drop it. Silences speak volumes in Nope, ranking it with Moneyball and The Last Jedi for affecting soundscape moments that illustrate why sound design earns Oscars. What you don’t see and only hear is rattling. Sure, a few more script pages diving into OJ and Emerald’s fragile bond would have been welcome, but with such economical, precise filmmaking rendered with such glee, it’s a minor quibble. I’ll say it now: one of 2022’s top ten. — DEK