BHM & Halloween film: Nope
Jordan Peele, 2022, Canada, Japan, USA, Colour, 130 mins, Certificate: 15
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? … Nope.
This month, we celebrate both Black History Month and Halloween with the 3rd, extraordinary film of Jordan Peele – the mastermind behind Get Out and Us. Nope is unmistakably his: a visually sharp, remarkably multilayered and ingeniously multi-genre film (sci-fi, horror, thriller, western, satire, comedy!) that subtly studies issues of race, culture and national identity.
Specifically, the American identity – historically, unmistakably, constructed and imagined as white (like any other northwestern national identity) that can feel both intimately familiar and utterly alien to the people of colour in it.
What does it mean then, and how does it feel to look and to be looked at in a racially and otherwise split, constantly filmed world?
This is one of the fascinating questions Peele asks with his most entertaining, fun, and “nerdy” film as it so perfectly demonstrates his deep love and knowledge of cinema – a historically, unmistakably, constructed and imagined as white art-form. Well, nope!
+ Special guest appearance by filmmaker and digital artist Grier Iana
Reviews:
“… beyond the surreal sci-fi spectacles and gorgeously rendered night-time vistas, Nope’s warnings about enraging an opponent – whether it’s a startled chimp or an amorphous sky blob – by looking it in the eye strike a down-to-earth chord in a racially divided world (perhaps OJ’s adversary is a metaphor for white supremacy?)..” Mark Kermode, The Guardian
““Nope” is a phantasmagorical story of Black people in the American West, the unwelcome among the unwelcome, and it’s set in the present-day West, namely, Hollywood and the Hollywood-proximate, the very heart of Wild West mythology. “Nope” is one of the great movies about moviemaking, about the moral and spiritual implications of cinematic representation itself—especially the representation of people at the center of American society who are treated as its outsiders. It is an exploitation film… ”Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“[Nope is] exactly what I’d expect from Jordan Peele, a filmmaker who sees the social condition with such simple clarity that his films always feel like a series of mic drops. Nope is funny. It’s weird as hell. It’s a large-scale, popcorn sci-fi with a razor-sharp intellect.” Clarisse Loughrey, Independent
“Jordan Peele’s creepy, funny, wildly enjoyable sci-fi mystery pic “Nope”… is proof — if we even needed it at this point — that Peele is the real deal; a young filmmaker with a remarkable grasp of his craft, operating on a whole other level.” Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm