Rewatch of Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ Reveals Some Depth

I tend to give many praised films that I was underwhelmed with a rewatch. I’ve done it many times this year and if there is a sudden change of sentiment on my part then I’ll write about my changed opinion.

I did just that with Jordan Peele’s “Nope” over the past weekend. I had originally given it a B- grade back in July, but I might just bump it up after this latest viewing.

Peele is working on a much bigger canvas with this film. The result is his most ambitious movie, but also his most peculiarly structured. There are shades of early-day Spielberg here, but I don’t really think he’s ever really told a story the way Peele does here. It’s quite unique.

You can’t help but stick with “Nope” for most of its 135-minute runtime, curious where Peele is going to eventually lead you. It’s an impressionist statement; Peele keeps experimenting with his wonderful visuals, and there’s a real sense of big bold filmmaking.

Daniel Kaluuya’s brooding cowboy, a man of few words, is a horse wrangler who starts to notice strange things falling from an immovable cloud in the sky; in fact, a coin gets shot down from it and kills his horse-riding father. Kaluuya is excellent in a very restrained performance on his part, he’s a bonafide great actor.

Steven Yeun — an underrated actor — has a small role as Ricky, a former child star turned cowboy. Ricky is subconsciously traumatized by a tragedy that occurred when he was a child on the set of a sitcom, when a chimp actor just snapped and violently attacked his co-stars. The chimp didn’t touch Ricky, instead fist bumping him during the tragedy. Peele terrifyingly replays the incident for us,.

What to make of this scene?

Primate vs Human. It’s the centerpiece of the film and the most nerve-wracking display of tension Peele presents to us. What is Peele trying to say exactly? He seems to be comparing chimp and UFO and the assumption that man cannot control a beast. No matter how tame we may think the predator might be, there is always the possibility that the beast will go wild.

Peele uses a lot of cut to blacks in “Nope,” but especially in this scene. I’m still bewildered by his decision, as it only makes the whole film even stranger, but it works with the rest of Peele’s madcap avant-garde decision making in “Nope.”

The fact remains that ”Nope” is incoherently told, but purposefully so. It’s a fascinating mess of a movie, almost never predictable in its messy nature, but Peele’s framing keeps luring you in. I like this line from the Cahiers du Cinema review:

“The film stands between primitive mystery and avant-garde stupor, where all its overwhelming strangeness resides.”

There’s also a few unforgettable shots stitched into my memory: the insides of the UFO where we can see the digestion of its victims, Hoyt Van Hoytema’s beautiful day-for-night photography, and the image of a sinister dormant cloud.

It all amounts to very atypical mainstream filmmaking, almost Machiavellian in nature. Cunningly political in its dissection of man and beast, fiction vs reality.