First it rains small change and keys, then there is an encounter of the third kind on the ranch in California. Director Jordan Peele packs all sorts of things into his summer blockbuster: cowboys and aliens, racism and the forefather of cinema.
Cowboy in a hoodie: Daniel Kaluuya plays the alien hunter in “Nope”.
Should someone else say that Hollywood is not diverse. Hollywood already had “diversity” before there were even cinemas. The very first film hero in the world was a black man. Just what his name is, no one knows.
Here’s how it happened: In 1872, the inquisitive entrepreneur Leland Stanford (who later founded Stanford University) commissioned a photographer to find out if a galloping horse had all four hooves in the air at once for a moment. Photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, provided evidence with a series of photographs showing a horse galloping at a fast pace. And the rider was an African American jockey.
While Muybridge, who, thanks to this movement study, is considered by many to be the father of cinema, neatly noted that the horse was a thoroughbred mare named Annie, he apparently did not consider the rider to be nameable. The man was forgotten by posterity. Jordan Peele is now eradicating this omission: Haywood – at least that’s the name of Hollywood’s first film star in Peele’s new film “Nope”. The focus, however, is on his great-great-grandchildren (approximately) named O.J. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer), who train horses for film productions on a ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley in California.
Alone, O.J. doesn’t like it anymore. He’s a sad cowboy since his father died under mysterious circumstances: the old man was about to ride out when a strange rain of debris fell. Fatally, it spilled small change, and then a front door key was stuck in the side of the gray horse. It was as if someone had just emptied their pockets in heaven above.
What about the cloud?
There must be something behind the clouds. O.J. knows that. Everything is becoming increasingly strange: horses galloping away, power outages, strange lights at night in the Valley. Emerald and O.J. set up a surveillance camera, and Angel (Brandon Perea) from the electronics store helps them, and he sees what they don’t see: a cumulus cloud that doesn’t move.
The little cloud sits rigidly in the sky, as if dabbed on it, and then, at some point, a strange flying object actually shows up behind it. Sometimes the flying saucer, which resembles a huge chanterelle from close up, comes out of cover and stabs down at its prey like a grebe. Emerald, O.J. and Angel try to capture the thing. Not physically, but on video. The “fame” waves. But everything electronic fails as soon as the dangerous celestial object that might suck people up approaches. A wildlife filmmaker (Michael Wincott) is needed, who is supposed to be able to take the difficult shot with an Imax camera with a hand crank.
The alien sees everything: scene from «Nope».
The Old Testament UFO
Does the thirst for glory, the hunt for the spectacular picture, lead to ruin? Or is it that the young Haywoods could finally and deservedly secure their place in history with the UFO sighting? The forefather of cinema ignored the black family, they are entitled to the merits. But what about the extraterrestrial being, why is it raging? “I throw dirt on you, dishonor you and put you on display,” says the prophet Nahum, Peele opens with his quote: Old Testament, the Mesopotamian den of sin Nineveh must be cleaned up. In California too – or what does “Nope” mean?
As always, Jordan Peele ponders a lot. The directorial debut “Get Out” was about a young black man (also Daniel Kaluuya) who makes an initial visit to his girlfriend’s white parents: exemplary woke people, but with skeletons in the closet. What did that mean? Film scholars bent over the film and seminars were held. You could also rack your brains for the next one, “Us”, in which a family’s look-alikes spoiled the holidays: Are you your own worst enemy?
Or, more importantly, is Jordan Peele his own enemy? In “Nope” he wants to outdo himself, the many ideas are heavy on the arc of suspense. Peele isn’t a Spielberg who delivers clean diversion, but he’s also not quite as witty as Tarantino. Nevertheless, the film is worthwhile, not least thanks to Hoyte van Hoytema, Hollywood’s hottest cinematographer at the moment (“Interstellar”). He drives “Nope” into a gallop, and in the best moments the film lifts off the ground briefly.
In the cinema.