Cluedo! (or Clue! depending on your region), the movie.
After a long shopping trip in another planet, I came back to watch a film that had caught my girlfriend’s attention this morning. There’s just something so sublime about the whodunnit mould of storytelling, though operating on familiar tropes and blatantly obvious culprits, it’s always a pleasure to see how the privy parties land on their solid accusation and heave the mystery into the light.
I’ll confess, when Knives Out (2019) came out, I wasn’t that all interested in it, I had run out my cache of murder mysteries for the time being and one more was one too much for me. Now that I’ve worked up a thirst for a murder mystery, and also because my girlfriend really wanted us to watch this together, I finally sat down for it. This film has all the mystery and fun of a game of Cluedo, one line of dialogue even tipping its hat to the similarities in settings. Starting off at a rather slow pace, as the story progresses and the plot thickens, I got tangled up in the web of the investigation, eager to know where each little clue is leading and when it all finally fits into place, the donut becomes whole.
Character development carried through conflicting testimonies about one another as the police and an expert private investigator are trying to work out whether there’s any foul play behind the apparent suicide of a rich writer, sets up all the pieces on this celluloid board of Cluedo and as the rhythm of the story quickens and the new clues begin to unearth themselves, the film gave me the same ticklish excitement you get in your stomach when driving down a steep hill. During the first half hour of the investigation, when I was still in the process of becoming immersed up to my chin in this puzzle, what kept my eyes frozen on the screen was the set design married with the camerawork. The vast and luxuriously intellectual mansion allows the camera to move through it with turning pans and slow zooms onto items of significance, though their importance may not be clear at the time. With investigatory eyes, the camera points out things that we should keep in our minds, being alert and switched on about every little detail that may turn the tables on this enigmatic puzzle. Some effortlessly smooth transitions carried me from past to present, and the manner in which the characters are framed, especially during their questioning with the wall of knives behind them – acting as a visual metaphor as clear as day - and how their replies are cut together is some masterful editing that made the slackening pace of the first half hour completely worth it.
Once the chips begin to fall in calculated order, though some of this cinematic prowess begins to lose its frequency and punch to make way for the frenetic story, the depth of the plot and the fantastical webs the private detective, played by a confidently inquisitive and hilarious Daniel Craig, spins via his unique process of investigation makes this a wonderful watch and a rather peculiar yet welcome tonal shift on the murder mystery genre.
Kudos to my girlfriend for solving the mystery less than halfway through the film. She was more switched on than I was, granted I didn’t want to play detective this time, my role was as innocent bystander who just so happens to witness enough for the authorities to hold him in custody.
Comments