Ultimately, Johnson wanted to push the scenario of how far the good, moral Marta would go to hide “the truth. We see Marta’s ingenuity circumventing the detective, strengthening our bond through suspenseful tension with the character’s predicament. Johnson wanted to make Marta an active character, one who is following the quick-thinking plan of her beloved employer, the famous mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who she believes she’s accidentally killed via a morphine overdose. Blanc starts working in conjunction with Harlan’s nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas), because she cannot tell a lie without throwing up a very convenient characteristic when dealing with a murder. It’s like putting the marble in the mouse trap and holding your breath.” ‘Okay, did this machine I just built work?’ Because if it did, we should be leaning forward in this sequence and hoping she gets away with each of these things. “First of all, almost to test the waters. “I did that sequence next for a few reasons,” said Johnson. Once the film switches into the Hitchcock thriller, Johnson quickly transitions into Marta being forced to cover her tracks from the famed detective. Johnson plays up this inevitable tension with the mythic Blanc character who always find the answers - “This machine arrives at the truth” is even his catchphrase - going up against Marta. “In that, if you are rooting for her to get away with it, the fact that we know how these things work and we know that Blanc (Daniel Craig), the detective, always figures it out at the end, and catches the killer, the very mechanics of the genre that we are all familiar with become the antagonist of the movie, even if the detective himself is a sympathetic character.” “For a genre-wonk like me, that does something really interesting,” said Johnson. The medicine switch-up plot device took a while to find, smooth out, and layer in - part of a constant tweaking and rewriting process for the writer/director. “It’s crucial that we begin with you feeling 100 percent, without any conflict, that the right thing to happen is for her to get away with it,” said Johnson. But Johnson wanted to walk an even more difficult tightrope: Could he show that Marta (Ana de Armas) was responsible for the death, although ultimately she wasn’t (setting up the third act return to the whodunit), and still put the audience in a position of hoping the truth would never come out? Just like in the classic TV show “Columbo,” the trick was showing the audience the murder itself, leading to the suspense of how the killer would be caught. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast 'Armageddon Time' Reception Shifts Best Supporting Actor Race 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' Trailer: The Bodies Pile Up in Benoit Blanc's New Whodunnit 'The Janes' Shows a Path Through the Midterms' Most Devastating Potential Outcome “Can I do something that starts as a whodunit, turns into a Hitchcock thriller, but then turns back into a whodunit at the end?” “This is the idea I had 10 years ago,” said Johnson. When Johnson started conceiving of “Knives Out,” he wondered if he could structure a film that could do both. Hitchcock, who hated the whodunit, defined this problem as the difference between audience surprise versus what he did, which was build suspense.
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