Nope movie review: This is Jordan Peele’s most assured, esoteric & bonkers film yet

One is always cautious about finding a layer of metaphor in a scene from a Jordan Peele movie. Is there social subtext to the darkness in this scene? Does the stabbing of an animal hint at the subjugation of America’s racial minorities? You’re never fully sure whether to laugh during a scene. Is it genuinely funny, or are we imagining the humour because of Peele’s background in comedy sketches? Only three feature films old, Jordan Peele has rather quickly cemented a reputation of someone with a sharp eye for cultural commentary and smart subversion of genre tropes. While watching the film, one can almost imagine Peele observing us watching the film – diligently taking notes about how we react to a moment, or laughing at our attempt to find a ‘deeper meaning’ to a scene that’s intended to be purely literal. The thing with a Jordan Peele film is that the joke is always on us, even when there’s no joke in sight. The title of his latest venture is proof. It might provoke esoteric interpretations from us, when in all probability, Peele may have simply liked the monosyllabic sound of it. No hidden truths. On the other hand, the simple seeming title could be how Peele lulls us into a theatre, only to catch us off guard.

Nope follows the life of a brother-sister duo living on a ranch in a faraway corner of Los Angeles. The brother is called OJ (Daniel Kaluyya) – something that makes a middle-aged white woman visibly nervous – so it’s promptly clarified that it stands for Otis Jr. The sister called Emerald or Em (Keke Palmer), is someone who nurses ambitions of being recognised by Hollywood. After losing their father to a freak accident (a coin shoots out of the sky, piercing through his skull and eye, killing him) – it’s up to the duo to run the ranch and take care of the horses like their father did. We learn there’s also a massive debt on their shoulders, forcing them to sell some of their horses to a year-long Western Carnival owner – Jupe (Steven Yeun), right next to the ranch.

One can’t help but be reminded of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019), given how the film’s principal characters exist on the margins of the American film industry. And how Peele uses their ghosts from the past to justify their actions in the present. OJ and Em are horse trainers on Western-themed films and ads, which is almost a dying breed by themselves. Jupe was a child actor on a sitcom, where one of the chimpanzees got spooked by the sound of a balloon bursting on set one day, causing him to go on a violent rampage, and eventually being shot dead. Even though he’s traumatised by the incident, Jupe doesn’t mind mining it to salvage whatever is left of his career in showbiz. Even how the protagonist duo are descendants of the first person to ever be captured on motion picture, or how a mechanical camera comes into the picture later in the narrative – there’s almost this deep-rooted reverence towards film history.

It’s almost like Peele is trying to offer a spectacle of Spierlbergian proportions – given the Sci-Fi elements, slowly morphing into a creature movie, evolving into something of a hybrid, thanks to some stark commentary on our tendency of not being able to look away. Peele seems to weigh in on how some of the most darndest things happen in front of our eyes, while we remain mere spectators, trying to capture it for posterity rather than intervening. At one point, a character taking his last few breaths, desperately begs another character to film it on his camera. It might seem like a bit of a stretch, but can’t help but think if the moment is riffing on George Floyd’s slow and excruciating death that was also captured on camera.

But then again, even if Peele’s film doesn’t necessarily satisfy your curiosity with easy answers, it’s still an affecting experience on a sensory level. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s camera repeatedly shifts POVs to accurately represent how humans tend to work out of a place of inflated self- importance, when in fact just how insignificant they are in the larger food chain. Michael Abels’ score mirrors the heaviness of the themes in Peele’s film, while also satisfying us with pure genre thrills. At one point, when a veteran cinematographer character puts himself in a really dangerous spot after saying “we [humans] don’t deserve the impossible shot” – it’s simultaneously parodying self-serious, self-serving ‘artists’ in Hollywood, while also commenting on the vanity and arrogance of the human race.

Nope is director Jordan Peele’s most thematically ambitious work, one where he showcases the assurance of a veteran. Featuring terrific performances by everyone in the principal cast, a persistent intrigue peppered through the narrative and some truly mind-boggling visuals that will find their place in film history. One can’t help but wonder if the film’s title has anything to do with the denial of the human race – one that’s too tired, too exhausted, too judgmental… numbing itself with daily hustle. In an era like ours, when was the last time you were so taken by a film that you were forced to sit quietly after exiting the theatre, collecting your thoughts. Is it likely that you’ll experience something so completely bonkers in the near future? Nope.

Rating: 4 (out of 5 stars)

Tatsam Mukherjee has been working as a film journalist since 2016. He is based out of Delhi NCR.

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