Review: All Eyes on Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’
“What’s a bad miracle?”
There’s something strange in the skies of Agua Dulce. To the naked eye, it looks like any other dusty part of Southern California, miles of sun-burnt weeds stretching as far as the eye can see, clouds rolling overhead. But for the Haywoods, who own a decades’ old ranch and train stunt horses there, it has become the site for the inexplicable. Power goes in and out. Horses scare in the middle of the night. Equipment goes missing, only to later fall back down to Earth. These events are relatively new, around the time a tragedy puts ownership of the ranch in the hands of Otis Junior (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Kiki Palmer), who see differently about the future of their family property.
If Emerald had her way, they would sell it and move on. Otis, on the other hand, insists on staying. Taking care of the horses and ensuring the legacy of the Haywood Ranch (the lone Black-owned horse ranch in Hollywood) is part of the equation, but he’s compelled to stay and record the phenomena taking place there, something he believes is the cause of the aforementioned tragedy. “There’s work to do,” he affirms and he’s going to get to the bottom of it.
Jordan Peele’s third feature, Nope, continues the comedian-turned-Hollwood-director’s streak of horror fiction films. Following 2019’s Us and 2016’s breakout hit Get Out, Peele approaches his latest film with greater ambition than both of his previous works, namely in the scale of this out of this world premise. But where ambition may lead to folly in lesser hands, Peele rises to the occasion by not only retaining his keen sense of visual metaphor but also advancing his directorial abilities, this time by looking to the sky for answers to our fixation with and creation of the impossible image.
A qualm I had with Peele’s previous efforts is how he deployed comedy in circumstances that detoothed scenes — recall Us’ Alexa sound off during a murderous home invasion. Peele’s adept sense of humor is still present in Nope, but to a more strategic degree, reserving itself largely for moments of reprieve after thrilling sequences of otherworldly phenomena. The difference is a more coherent sense of tone throughout the picture that better services each scene.
Furthering this development is Peele’s collaboration with Hoyte van Hoytema, cinematographer for Christopher Nolan’s last three films. Visually speaking, Nope is an aesthetic improvement over Peele’s last two films. Peele’s always had strong sense of metaphor, and what Hoytema brings to the table is a visual language that builds on the mystery and scale found in Peele’s script. One such effect is how we’re constantly scanning the frame for hints of extraterrestrial activity. Shot with IMAX cameras, Hoytema emphasizes the wide, earthy landscapes of the Agua Dulce valley where the vast unending skies are featured predominately as if to suggest something is there if you look hard enough. The same is true at night, where deep blues and shadows fall over the range, lit only by the moonlight that creeps through the clouds above. So much of the film’s tension is defined by what we can and cannot see, tying the film’s perspective to either Otis or Emerald. Much like them, we want to believe there is life out there, so we, too, keep looking.
Nope can be interpreted as Peele’s take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not only in extraterrestrial subject matter, but also thematic concerns related to an artist’s creative struggle. Much of the film sees Otis, Emerald, and the supporting crew trying to capture the UFO on video. The ever elusive flying saucer becomes a white whale of sorts as they seek verifiable proof that we are not alone in the universe. Peele characterizes this endeavor as a creative one. If Spielberg’s CEotTC saw Richard Dreyfuss molding a mound of mashed potatoes as a means of visualizing a director’s struggle to create their vision, then Nope shares similar effects with Otis, a stand in for a would-be director, insisting on staying at the Haywood Ranch until he renders the perfect image — a notion further emphasized by Michael Wincott’s character who plays a cinematographer enticed by capturing an “impossible image.”
From here, Nope explores our morbid urge to gaze. The UFO itself resembles a giant retinae roaming and scanning life below, and as we gaze up from the ground, it looks back with sinister intent. The desire to capture something described as “impossible” is an extension of our urge to look at the impossible, something Steven Yuen’s character, Ricky Park, is particularly attuned to in the narrative. The film calls to look away, for such things can corrupt and be all consuming, but with something as engaging as Nope, it’s hard to avert your gaze.
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