Nope, review: will you have the courage to watch too?

Nope, review

The great anticipation for Jordan Peele's new feature film is undeniable, as is the attention that the general public is reserving towards this director, in light of the previous films he has made. Escape - Get Out (buy it on Amazon) and Noi, have outlined a career that seems to promise a lot not only as far as genre cinema is concerned, but the creative possibilities of an artist ready to demonstrate all the value of him. Now everyone's eyes are on Nope, a new effort to be released in Italy on 11 August (in the United States it is already available in theaters). Given the previous results and feedback with the public, will this new film be able to convince and bewitch as in the past, confirming all the emotional investments and not up to now, or will it remain an attempt to affirm itself in vain? Certainly the value of a director is not measured at all with just one of his "creatures", however, the understanding of every piece of his career remains central, so as to understand his motivations step by step.

As previously savored with this director, you will not find yourself in front of a genre film for its own sake. His narrative motivations often, if not always, go hand in hand with some conceptual reflections, even contemporary ones, ready to embellish the material treated. This modus operandi has hit the mark in the past, and all that remains is to ascertain its presence also with this new work.

Nope: building something piece by piece

To embellish the material treated, we find a context, both narrative and formal, which connects to what has been said above, making what will happen with the progress of events credible. Peele does not focus only on the story of his protagonists, or on the events that happen around them, rather he broadens the gaze of the camera by moving it from face to face, from moment to moment, shaping the reading that the viewer could have about the most simple. The commitment to building a credible context is always functional to the plot itself and to the growth of the various protagonists, raising the value of Nope from the very first opening sequence.

At the base of this film there is a reflection that breaks the cinematographic dimension itself and in which the director does not limit himself only to citing old “glories” (Steven Spielberg, for example), but to speak directly with his own audience. The expressive potential is immense, even if in contact with a material that is difficult to manipulate and certainly not easy to metabolize in general.




The mysterious disappearance of their father, due to a metallic rain that finds no logical explanation, however, opens the door. way to new perceptions of their daily life. This is the fuse to ignite all subsequent events. Nope's narrative develops on two timelines apparently unrelated to each other. If on the one hand we find the Haywood boys, on the other we find a terrible television incident, from many years ago, in which a monkey (one of the many who played that role on television) named Gordy lost his head exploding in a murderous fury towards cast and crew (the traumatic charm of the way the scene is rendered, especially in the eyes of one of the survivors, can only remind us of I Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio Operatore di Pirandello. The violence of an animal on a set and the reaction of the human being under the magnifying glass). However, everything remains indefinite and without explanations that are not connected to the figurative dimension. At the same time we find ourselves in front of a story marked by the names of the animals at the center of the various events.

Peele uses all these elements to formulate a plot that unfolds little by little both in front of the spectators and in front of its own protagonists. All the oddities that will gradually witness, will be contextualized by some interesting reflections, albeit not too immediate in terms of understanding. The very curiosity of the human being is the starting material from which Peele himself begins to develop his own reasoning. Taking a very normal attitude like that of "looking at something", to transform it into a central plot element.

Looking at the images, assimilating the contents

Nope is one of those films that speaks a lot both through its protagonists, thus making use of dialogues directly linked to the narrative rhythm, and through the images that compose it and a soundtrack that in some ways pays homage to the maestro Morricone. Peele returns to the very origins of cinema to remind us how fundamental it is to observe a medium that changed the very fate of narration. The cinematographic language returns to the center with this director who makes use of important formal moments, offering the viewer a figurative discourse ready to always keep in mind the importance of his individual details. It is the shots that speak, the way they frame the individual moments, and the conceptual density of some small things. Together with all this we find a wise use of the sets, always ready to communicate something to the spectators and characters, embellishing a resulting narrative that is credible from start to finish.

Going beyond the various quotes that Peele makes throughout the film, Nope convinces all the way through. We are talking about a work with fairly obvious premises and with a not too fast pace, which manages to stand out both for the writing and for some brilliant ideas of the director himself. This makes the difference with previous works and will certainly pave the way for future discussions in the cinema field. The eyes therefore remain focused on this director, confirming his talent, commitment and above all his curiosity about the future.