IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY

 

MOVIE
Nope
Director Jordan Peele
Review Ray Chan

Jordan Peele's most acclaimed productions have a common characteristic: copious amounts of symbolism that just about demand a second or third viewing to enable one to make out all the subtle metaphors and what they could possibly mean.
    His latest offering, labelled as “sci-fi horror”, seems a lot more straightforward than his other films, and begs the question of whether we finally have a Peele screenplay that doesn’t require ambiguous allegorical introspection and confusing conspiracy concepts.
    In Nope, a giant entity resembling a spacecraft but also transforms into tidal tufts of tissue, chooses to harass a small, remote American town. These incidents always occur in the US, of course.
    Peele hides the antagonist, using the age-old trick of concealment to heighten suspense. The aerial predator lurks behind a static cloud in the sky, so we only catch glimpses of it as it terrorises a horse ranch and a small western theme park.
    The farm is run by OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his feisty sister Em (Keke Palmer), while the park is the brainchild of former child star Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun). When debris starts falling from the skies and people and animals mysteriously disappear, OJ, Em and Jupe spot the UFO, and plan to take commercial advantage of it.
    Em and OJ invest in camera equipment to capture the extraterrestrial on video, hoping to cash in on the footage, and are joined by UFO enthusiast Angel Torres and professional cinematographer Antlers Holst. Jupe has more insidious plans, planning to feed horses to the alien while incorporating it as part of his rodeo show.
    How they go about this and what transpires form the gist of the story.
    Both OJ and Jupe are shown to experience personal tragedies: the former watching his father being killed by junk raining down from the blue, and the latter traumatised by a killer chimp on the set of a TV series in which he was a child star.
    Indeed, the sub-plot involving Jupe is perhaps the most horrific of the movie, and the reason for its inclusion is unclear.
    There is an initial lack of connectivity between Jupe’s experience on the sitcom called Gordy’s Home and events around the alien. In flashbacks, Peele shows how the show’s central character, a chimpanzee named Gordy, was startled by a series of popping balloons on set and viciously attacked several of his human co-stars.
    Jupe was unharmed but frozen with fear as the panicked primate maimed and mauled other people in front of him. And just as Gordy calms down and gently approaches the terrified child, the simian is shot, splattering blood everywhere.
    It’s odd how Jupe never expands on this history, indicating there may be deleted scenes left on the director’s cutting room floor. But it’s clear that events on the show left an indelible mark on him.
    In quiet moments, he stares into space and replays that trauma in his mind, while telling everyone he’s fine. He plays the past off lightly, showing visitors his Gordy’s Home memorabilia and complimenting the Saturday Night Live sketch about the chimp attacks, but Peele gives the audience a glimpse of the echoing chaos in his head, and shows how little it matches his serene surface.
    And if one were to look hard enough, maybe that is the underlying theme of the movie: how people cope with trials and tribulations in the face of unseen and unknown threats.
    Trauma is largely an internal process that everyone handles differently. In Nope, the laconic OJ keeps his problems to himself, joining a dangerous quest to document the UFO without discussing how he feels about it. Antlers, in trying to film the alien, charges out alone to seek personal glory that he doesn’t want to share with anyone else.
    But Jupe turns his into a one-sided relationship with an alien creature that doesn’t care about him and sees him only as a source of food. He’s so defined by a past tragedy that he walks right into a bigger one, making himself the film’s greatest victim.
    So back to that second paragraph. A straightforward movie? It’s safe to say that’s hardly the case. Trauma, tragedy and triumph: it’s not Peele’s best effort, but it does make one ponder, in the process doing nothing to lessen his stature as one of Hollywood’s rising stars. 
    As a matter of interest, round shapes seem to abound throughout. Old vinyl records, discarded coins, clocks, ornaments, trophies, horses trotting around on a longe line, a well, masks of aliens that are spherical with round eyes, Stetson hats, slurpee machines with rotating paddles, not to mention the initial appearance of the object up above which also looks like a giant eye. Do they represent the circles of life? It will probably take another four viewings to decipher.

#NOPE #universal