Only three films old, Jordan Peele has cemented an enviable repute as a filmmaker whose movies are blistering, stinging critiques of the deep fissures that differentiate the centre from margins, the outsiders from the insiders. He focuses his lens on the disturbing chasm that most of us have trained ourselves to ignore or see through, too complacent to be bothered with. Therefore Peele’s films, even when dealing with extra-terrestrial (as in this one) are too real, making it impossible for you to look away anymore.
This is exactly what makes Peele’s films important, urgent, and visceral, even if they don’t always succeed in what they set out to achieve. Though not as tight, gut-wrenching, or magnetic as Get Out (2017) or Us (2019), Nope is his most ambitious film yet. A curious commentary on our obsession with spectacles, it is a spectacle itself — sprawling, glorious, and breathtaking. Set in Los Angeles’ wild west — the magnificent, arid Agua Dulce Desert, it revolves around a pair of Haywood siblings who are finding it difficult to sustain their fabled family ranch after their father gets killed in a strange, freak occurrence.
Peele reunites with Daniel Kaluuya in this one after their terrific breakthrough film Get Out. Kaluuya plays the brother — OJ, Otis Junior Haywood. He is stoic, reticent, and thoughtful, resolute in his ambition to take forward the family’s legacy of providing horses for Hollywood films and ads. Keke Palmer joins him as his sister Emerald Haywood. They are diametrically opposite as siblings most often are. She is saucy, sassy, vivacious, and lights up every frame she is in with her nimble energy. It is their solid relationship that grounds Nope even when little else makes sense.
Nope opens with a verse from the Hebrew Bible: “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.” The film pokes fun at how we humans cannot resist seeing a spectacle even if we knew that it could kill us. True to the Peele genre, it’s very Black Mirror-ish. Its real horror lies in how its idea of dystopia is no imagined fantasy or in some remote future. We are living it. Every day. In fact, we have become so numb to it that we hardly notice any of it anymore. We are the joke, in all its horrific realness.
When the Haywood siblings become sure of the presence of an unidentified flying object menacing around their ranch, their first instinct is to capture it on film before anyone else. They think it will end their monetary woes, help them reclaim their ranch and horses, and make them more famous than their great-great-grandfather who they believe was the man riding the horse in the first motion clip to be ever made.
They know that the pursuit will most likely kill them but they go after it nonetheless. There is a telling scene in which a biker (allegedly from a tabloid) is about to be swallowed by the UFO, but all he is worried about is his camera and that someone should shoot all of it. It isn’t too different from all of us who take selfies while driving or at precarious tourist spots or how most passers-by film an accident or a mishap instead of intervening to help. We are no longer watching Black Mirror. We are inside it.
Kaluuya and Palmer are fantastic as two young marginalised black Americans brave enough to want to fight the invincible but foolish enough to think they can. Angel, an employee of a local tech store (played by a scene-stealing Brandon Perea), joins them in their impossible attempt. They also end up convincing a veteran cinematographer called Antlers (Michael Wincott) to film their chase.
Nope also features Steven Yeun as Jupe, a former child star who was witness to a horrific carnage on the set of a TV show when a chimpanzee went berserk, resulting in an unforgiving, unforgettable rampage. Now the frontrunner of a western-styled theme park adjacent to the Haywood ranch, Jupe still nurses the trauma of the childhood incident but doesn’t mind milking it to the last drop.
The theme of alienation — insiders who are constantly made to feel like outsiders — much like other Peele films, runs throughout this one too. All the principal characters exist on the fringes of Hollywood, yearning to get in. Its majestic presence overshadows their histories, threatens to consume their present (much like the UFO) and they want it to light up their future.
Hoyte Van Hoytema’s jaw-dropping cinematography matches Peele’s mad vision. The film is gorgeously shot, especially the night sequences and the brute barrenness of the open, untamed wild west. It’s exquisite. Add to it Michael Abels’ score. It builds the tension when the film needs it and lets go every time hell breaks loose in a way that’s satisfying, cathartic. Together van Hoytema and Abels make Nope a sensorial feast.
It is Nope’s structure that undoes it. Peele, who has also written and produced it, has divided it into chapters, which cut into scenes and are sloppily done. Sure, the film is a stunning allegory, dense with social subtext and it throws big existential questions at you, but what goes on the ground fails to come together as a cohesive whole. Peele spends too much time on the UFO’s build-up, relegating the actual fight against it to the climax. When it does finally happen, it’s too little too late.
Nope’s execution is a bit muddled, but its scope is limitless. It is a rare, glorious mix of horror, sci-fi, and realism that will make you sit in a corner and think for a long while. It shows you different ways of seeing, consuming, and the want and futility of trying to preserve for posterity. That’s no mean feat, right? But then, Peele is no regular Joe either, is he? You know the answer.
Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here. First Published: Aug 20, 2022 9:50 PM IST
