Up to this point, I have been talking about the contents of the movie and the themes therein. For this post, I want to do something a bit different. I want to get a bit meta.
The Daniels basically throw everything they want in their project and then winnow it down a bit afterwards. They can do this because they are independent and don’t really have to answer to anyone. They did have a production company (A24), but it seemed like they were mostly hands off.
I see this in games all the time. The Triple A games are impressive from a visual point of view (except on PC for reasons I will not get into here. The ports for PC have been such a hot mess in the past few years). You can tell that millions and millions of of dollars have been put in the game. That doesn’t make the game itself that good, but it does tell you something.
It’s the same with big budget popcorn movies. You can tell that money was poured into them so the production value is pretty decent. That doesn’t mean the movie is good, but that’s not the point.
It also means that the content is probably pretty safe. So many big budget movies seem as if they were QA to death before they ever saw the light of day. Basically, directing by committee. There is always the audience is mind and how the scene would play in Peoria.
It’s one reason I don’t like movies, to be honest. They often feel as if they are made for the masses and more about not offending anyone than speaking to the vision of the director. Or, in the case of movies like Knives Out, it’s an auteur who is too up his own ass and is not able to be reined in.
In the case of the Daniels, they truly believe in everyone having a voice. Which comes with its own issues, obviously, but at least they don’t fall into the auteur mentality. In addition, they’re fearless in their ideas.