“The Knife” is a Razor-Sharp Morality Play
The Knife opens with a voiceover. “Life presents choices and choices lead to consequences.” It’s something that we, in theory, are all aware of – that our actions have consequences. What’s harder to grasp is that we’re also affected by the actions of others. That circumstances far beyond our control can fundamentally take hold of our lives. The Knife plays out almost like a psychological experiment. What would you do if you came across an intruder in your home in the middle of the night? What choices would you make and what would their consequences be?
Chris (Nnamdi Asomugha) is up late working on odd jobs around the house. He’s a father of three kids, two pre-teen daughters (Amari Price & Aiden Price) and a baby, who never seems to have enough time in the day. Chris crashes into bed with his wife, Alexandra (Aja Naomi King), trying to catch a few hours’ rest before his shift starts in the early hours of the morning. His sleep is interrupted by a loud noise, so he goes to find the source. A woman (Mary Duvall-Thompson) stands in the kitchen. She doesn’t respond to any of Chris’ questions. Next thing we know, the woman is lying on the ground and the police are on their way.
What happened in the kitchen? asks The Knife. Smartly, the film doesn’t show us. Chris struggles to remember the sequence of events that led to the woman ending up on the floor, so we don’t know what happened either. What is the truth if the person who lived it doesn’t remember? There are plenty of reasons for someone forgetting a moment like this. Plausible explanations could include the fact that Chris just woke up from a seemingly deep sleep or the effects of what he consumed from his medicine cabinet. It’s also not uncommon for someone in a traumatic event to lose details. Yet, in a case like the one presented in The Knife, the facts are essential. Even more so when the woman lying unconscious on the floor is White and the family whose home she entered is Black.
courtesy of Tribeca
The Knife plays out in what feels like real time from when Chris makes the 911 call to the moment it all ends. The audience is placed in this boiling pot of anxiety, trapped with the family as the worst night of their lives unfolds. Melissa Leo plays Detective Carlsen, who arrives on the scene to question the family. She oscillates between warm and inviting toward the children and clinical and cunning toward the adults. The performances at the heart of The Knife are utterly gripping, yanking the viewer into what is ultimately a tragedy of contemporary America. We are at the liberty of Chris’, and our own, imperfect memories. As the film goes on, the viewer starts to wonder what they remember about what they’ve been shown. How reliable is their recall of the events leading up to the 911 call? Reliable enough to swear in legal testimony?
Because of the issues The Knife is tackling, the ending comes a little too quickly. Then again, it’s hard to think of an ending suitable for what we’ve seen. When does the fight for truth end? For some police officers, there probably wasn’t a fight to begin with. They saw a White woman and a Black family and closed the case. If you say the fight for truth ends in the courtroom, you’re ignoring the possibility of a wrongful conviction. That’s what’s so unsettling about The Knife and the idea of set-in-stone-truth: we have no control over it. Even if Chris remembered every single detail of the moments leading up to the phone call, someone would probably make the argument that he remembered too much. That he paid too much attention because he needed to sell his story. The scary thing about truth is that it doesn’t exist. Every choice and every consequence is filtered through perception, but where does that leave us in circumstances like this? The Knife is harrowing in its plausibility, redefining what it means to find the truth.
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