Nope: Jordan Peele’s Exploration Of Exploitation
Nope is a movie that has shown me the power of avoiding trailers. So many images and moments and set pieces were apparently featured in the final trailer. Experiencing them for the first time in the theater helped me immensely in enjoying this film even more.
The third feature film from writer/director Jordan Peele is, in many ways, an homage to movies and directors and genres of old. It features callbacks to Spielberg’s Jaws with the children pretending to be aliens, Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ Haywood being the stoic stand in for Clint Eastwood’s memorable silent western hero’s, and Peeles DP, Hoyte Van Hoytema, framing each shot in a way few contemporary DP’s would do. Holding on shots, ramping up the papable tension until you can literally feel it ready to snap.
If Get Out was a commentary on white bodies taking over and abusing black and brown bodies, and Us was a insight into how luck and circumstance can be the only deciding factor in the difference between someone growing up rich or poor, then Nope is a film that is about the ways in we all view, capture, and commoditize the world around us.
The framing device for Nope is a chimpanzee that is spooked by a popping balloon on the set of television show, and proceeds to maim and kill it’s co-stars. Save for Steven Yuen’s character, Ricky, who survives by hiding under a table. The chimp, after ravaging his cast mates, put his fist out for Ricky to bump him signaling a connection the two have forged. Being the two outcasts of the show? The implication is unclear.
The chimp on the show is an interesting starting place for Nope, if only to be another example of how we commoditize living things we don’t think of as smart or as capable as us. It wasn’t that long ago that minorities were used as display pieces in the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. A director like Peele who has commented on exploitation of black bodies before, it’s not a stretch to think he would do it here.
The supporting cast deserves as much love as Daniel Kaluuya himself, with Keke Palmer bringing much needed joy to counteract Kaluuya’s matter-of-fact performance. Newcomer Brandon Perea has a somewhat unidentifiable aloofness that somehow comes off as charming, to the point that you are actively worried for im in the films third act. Micheal Wincott, who is known to many as Top Dollar in the first Crow film, is cast here as the enigmatic DP Antlers Holst (what a name).
Nope is not a movie to be taken lightly, it’s about a lot, it has a lot to say about the current state of the world and the ways we perceive the world and ourselves. We could use a lot more filmmakers that as smart, and as curious, and as capable as Jordan Peele.
