Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Is This Reality?

or

People Who Live in Glass Onions Shouldn't Throw Parties

When last we left renowned detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), he was solving the suspiciously unsuspicious death at the head of the Thrombey clan. In that mystery, one of the biggest puzzles was why he was there in the first place. Oh, he'd been hired, alright, he just didn't know by whom. It was just one of the intricate mysteries at the center of Catherine Wheel of Cutlery that defined that family and was—unofficially and unadmittably—its family crest.

Now, in Glass Onion (unnecessarily sub-titled "A Knives Out Mystery"*), he's inserted into a similar situation; he finds himself an uninvited guest to an improbable clique-gathering of rich-niks on an exclusive Greek island, at the behest of tech-billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who has sent mystery boxes to his clutching clutch of friends (whom he dubs "The Disruptors") that, when solved, offers an invitation to his Greek hideaway/headquarters for a weekend that promises a murder mystery and a prize to whoever solves his murder.

The guests are all old friends/associates with Miles: there's Lionel Toissant (Leslie Odom Jr.), a scientist working from Bron's company "Alpha"; there's Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), former model, "influencer" and CEO of "Sweetypants" loungewear and her assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick)—charged with protecting the Birdie Jay "brand" due to her client's frequent faux pas; there's Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a men's rights internet "influencer" and his girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline); there's Connecticut governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), who has been helped to office by Miles; and finally, there's Cassandra Brand (Janelle Monáe), who co-founded Alpha with Miles and who had been cut out of the company after clashing with him over a new energy fuel, "Klear."

As it's set in 2020 and there's a pandemic on, everyone is required to wear masks until spritzed with an oral COVID remedy. Once everybody's in place, everybody's happy to see each other, surprised to see Blanc, and shocked that Cassandra had "the balls" to attend. Bron is surprised to see Blanc, as well, but for a different reason—he never invited him. Who did? Along with the game that's about to be played, it is one more mystery. Everyone gets settled and gets acquainted, re- or otherwise. It becomes apparent that people are keeping secrets, and most are in some sort of debt to Bron. So, why these folks, why a murder mystery, and...why Blanc?

Why, indeed? But, to mention any more of the details will be to give away 70% of the movie. Why so much? Because you see events played out at least 2½ times. At one point, there is a cameo by Yo-Yo Ma (there are a ton of them**) where he explains what a fugue is, only to have writer-director Rian Johnson do a story version of the same concept in the very movie. Johnson is clearly having fun with the form (just as he did with the "Star Wars" universe, frustrating as it was for Orthodox Fans) and employs some of the hardest tropes in the genre in new and inventive ways. In fact, it rather reminded me of the way Robert Zemeckis capered within his Back to the Future movie in the Part II of the series (which was the one I enjoyed the most). Things are not always what they seem the first time around.

Johnson's co-conspirators in the thing are clearly enjoying themselves: Hudson has rarely been better, clearly enjoying going "all-out" in her performance, and the two actors who have the least screen-cred—Henwick and Cline—are given meaty roles to play, rather than after-thoughts. Norton is his subtly slick self. But, the stand-out (besides Craig's enjoying re-toying with the Blanc character) is Monáe, who has the toughest role, but pulls it off with what would appear to be the least amount of effort. It's part of the charm of the movie.

The other lovely thing about what Johnson is doing with the Blanc series is the sociological perspective. Just as Billy Wilder made movies that played with—and passed a sort of judgment on—the mores of their times, Johnson is making sly comments on worth and celebrity these days.

One doesn't have to make a large leap to figure out who the inspiration for Miles Bron is, but one could also make a case for a few other venture-capitalists who have a great idea but a better way to make other people pay for it. Once the money has rolled in, they can "exert influence" to buy secure the talent needed to make it work. If it doesn't work, you end up in court for fraud. If it does work, well, that was the intention, and if it works a little bit, you can spin it to say it was a complete success. This would be called "public relations."

As such, Blanc sticks out like a sore thumb in the crowd. He's not a "disrupter" (although he's better at it than anybody else on the island), but looks for truth within the bounds of "the System" among all the spinners, shakers, hangers-on, and wannabe's that surround him. Everybody talks a good game, but for Blanc it's no game. Lying is easy, but hard truths are...hard. Even when no one will admit to it. But, then, they have their reasons, and their reasons are that fame is fleeting if not buttressed with hard cash. Truth lasts.

Beneath it all, it's a fight for Truth—far beyond anything else that might be transitorially valuable. But, it's a hidden message hiding in plain sight among the cameos, trickery, feints, and revelations that Johnson delights in cramming into every frame with the hope of throwing you off the scent. My favorite example is the guy who lives on the island who wanders, drunken or high, into the frame and waves off with a "Just ignore me." But, should you? The character is named Derol, but I have a sneaking suspicion his real name might be "Red." As in the Herrings?

* Is that because no one would associate it without the allusion to Knives Out, or no one (at this point) is familiar enough with the character of Benoit Blanc? It's a mystery, itself. As such, that appendage is as irrelevant (and will be increasingly so) as the titles of the so-called "Thin Man" series.

 

**

Benoit Blanc on a Zoom call.

That would be Stephen Sondheim, Natasha Lyonne, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Angela Lansbury. 

 

This is just a distraction...and a nearly naked attempt to get clicks.
 

Red Tails

Today—June 12th—is "Loving Day." If you don't know what that is, I have posts about it here and here. 

Instead of repeating those, there's this, written at the time of the film's release.

Why We Fight
or
The Brother Gets It First*

Like Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (which he also financed), Red Tails is the movie that George Lucas has waited the longest to make. In development even before the "Star Wars" prequels, the story of the Tuskeegee Airmen has been on Lucas' mainframe for over 20 years. And as with most director "Dream Projects," this one had the potential to soar into great summits of excellence or tail-spin into an exercise of excess and pretentiousness.

Red Tails is neither one of those, but it does do some interesting things along the way. Respectful of the airmen, and "gung-ho" enough to end with "America The Beautiful" playing out over the End Titles, it does remind one, in spirit, of the old war films, that appeared during and immediately after the second world war,** tough, haggard, slightly cranky, and all-too-willing to bring up some risky aspects of the vet's experience that would be tossed under the rug of homilies that later "recruitment" war films would present. 

At the same time, it plays things a bit safe, dramatically, while, in subtle ways, taking chances that modern audiences—thank God—might not be aware of.***  It follows a typically diverse group of air-men with defining cliches—the "hot-shot" (David Oyelowo), the alcoholic (Nate Parker), "the kid" (Tristan Wilds) "the yokel" (Ne-Yo)—through their story-arcs, fighting on two fronts—against the Nazis and their own brass and fellow soldiers, who, if not wanting to shoot the pilots out of the sky, didn't want them in the air in the first place.

One good thing that sets Red Tails apart from the other "yes, they fought too" films is there's no "white-wash" element (as one finds in a good effort like Glory, where a forgotten story about the participation of black soldiers in the Civil War, has to feature Matthew Broderick and Cary Elwes over Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Andre Braugher). These guys in Red Tails are on their own. There's no angelic white-devil's advocate that has to make the condescending "these are men" speech and, if anything, here, the white guys are pushing back, making this film a lot more dramatic than your standard "liberal guilt" trip, where everybody's mind miraculously changes once "they're" "given a chance."****  The pressure never lets up on them and the only time they don't have to be on the defensive is in the air, fighting. Their inclusion in the war effort is a convenience to the military, taking pressure off the "other" guys, and nothing considered noble. That doesn't matter to the pilots, though, as long as they're free of Earthly bonds, fingers on the triggers and Nazi Aryans in their sights.

And the battle scenes—complex, nasty and dangerous as the dog-fights are— is where Red Tails excels. The same visceral energy of the Star Wars Death Star battles (which were pre-visualized with edited WWII dogfight footage) is here, but with a rougher edge, bumpier, and more of a sense of true danger than a battle in space could provide.

Why'd it take so long? Probably because Lucas wanted to do this one right (and also because studios were reluctant to finance a movie this black-centric), so he took the back-seat producer job, wrote the frame-work, hired John Ridley to write it and director Anthony Hemingway to film it, then doing some re-shoots (reportedly written with "Boondocks" creator Aaron McGruder) to do some dramatic streamlining.*****  Usually, it works with Lucas projects, especially when the director is strong, like Spielberg; there's a dramatic frisson that happens when it's not a "one-man/one-vision" project—something that was missing from the "Star Wars" Prequels, which suffered from too many "yes-men"—and Lucasfilms always seem to be better when he has to compromise and think off the top of his head...or someone else's.

One still gets a sense, though, of pandering.  The film Tuskeegee's don't need the "hey, these guys are good" comments that drop like leaden bombs throughout the film's second half. As an audience, we can see it, we don't need to have it reinforced by the white pilots they're escorting, especially considering those flight sequences are the best thing in the film. The energy, thrills and derring-do (with their frequent "Yahoo" moments) are far more emotionally satisfying and communicative of the pilots' excellence. Those sequences make Red Tails reach great heights, when everything else is trying to keep it grounded. They didn't play it safe. There's no good reason the film should.

The first wave of Tuskegee pilots

* A variation of the "trope" "Black Dude Dies First," which is a truism in "easy" drama and always struck me as being seminally racist. In a war situation, with an all-black cast, it isn't true, and feels far less manipulative than in most war films.  In this war film, people die because "war is dangerous and people die in war." It's random, unfair, and serves no purpose—not even dramatically. That was an important take-away from this particular war film.

** This was in the 1940's, kids.

*** It's a bit soapish, but there's a romance between "hot-shot" pilot "Lightning" and an Italian girl, where nothing (blissfully) is mentioned about race, making the sequence seem idyllic, but also not cluing modern audiences in to the fact that if the same events happened in the country the pilots were fighting for, he would have stood a good chance of going to prison or being lynched for it. It passes without comment or explanation, which might be dramatically risky, but sure feels good. Real progress is made when the un-usual becomes commonplace and antique words like "miscegenation" disappear like discarded, rusty tools. Racial prejudice is SO "last century."

**** Even so, there's still a little too much of it, done mostly in voice-over behind masks, as if in post-production after-thought. The screen-actions speak louder than any number of patronizing words.

***** Not sure where those sequences are—I'd only be speculating—but at one point "the kid" is shot down and put in a Nazi POW camp—the same camp that was the origination of the events and the film of The Great Escape. Amusingly, there is one sequence that looks shot-for-shot like a sequence from the John Sturges film with "the kid" in the role played by Steve McQueen!  Heh.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

The Laboriousness of Hercule
or
"Not No Much a WhoDunnit as a WhyDoIt?"

Agatha Christie was loathe (and that is the precise word) to have her books adapted by Hollywood. She wasn't crazy about the "Ten Little Indian" versions, and absolutely despised the Margaret Rutherford-starring Miss Marple films (especially when Tony Randall cameoed as Hercule Poirot in one of them). She reconsidered towards the end of her life after a personal appeal by Lord Mounbatten (father-in-law of one of the producers) that resulted in Sidney Lumet's 1974 all-star version of "Murder on the Orient Express", starting a series of fims and a flood of adaptations for British television, featuring Marple and Poirot. CBS broadcast a modern-dress version starring Alfred Molina (which was clueless and terrible and would have produced a train-like shriek from Miss Christie from beyond the grave).

When the "Poirot" series (with the dedicated David Suchet) did its adaptation a few years ago (with Barbara Hershey, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Bonneville, and Jessica Chastain among the suspects), it was head-and-shoulders more satisfying than the multi-million dollar film version. But, on the heels of that was announced a new film version to be directed by (and starring) Kenneth Branagh and one could only wonder what the possible reason might be.

The Detective

Having sat through the new version of Murder on the Orient Express, I can only guess that it was to provide work to a lot of film technicians and actors. It's product, but nothing Earth-shaking, and for that, it isn't even a great adaptation. The script is quite good—thank you, Michael Green, Hollywood's busiest script-writer/doctor—but the presentation leaves much to be desired. Maybe the film-makers were merely trying to attract a young audience to a version where the actors weren't aged or deceased (in which case, we'll always have Dame Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi), but I think the film will mostly appeal to the blue-haired matinee-goers, who have a history with Christie so that, even if the film does become a tent-pole production (they hint at a version of Death on the Nile next), it will probably suffer the same fate as the 70's movie series, which faded after a couple of lackluster productions.

It also might have been an attempt to resuscitate Poirot as they did with Robert Downey jr's steampunk Sherlock Holmes (directed by Guy Ritchie)—there are certain indications of this as this version of Poirot sizes up people with a glance ("You're a prostitute..." "Yes, I am!") and has a habit of anticipating events five steps ahead of his suspects. That's new, and certainly outside of Christie's envisioning. But, aside from purloining some aspects from other Christie stories, there's nothing very new—or original—except for getting the character a bit wrong.* Poirot is described as a mountebank (read "snake-oil salesman") by Christie, so although he might be fastidious to a fault, he is no tall, imposing presence. The mind is what is supposed to impress about Poirot, not his appearance. If anything, he shouldn't be too impressive at all.

And we'll get to "the mustache" in a few minutes.

The Victim

Poirot is in Jerusalem investigating a theft involving a priest, a rabbi, and an imam (like "the joke" he comments). Exposing his dramatic side by doing his presentation of evidence in front of a crowd at The Wailing Wall—seems a bit extreme—Poirot solves the crime. Given the ecumenical divisions of the suspects that's at least all-inclusive, but it's a fairly risky procedure to do this so publicly. Why would he do this in front of strangers who have no clue (literally) of the particulars of the case.

The show over and the exposed non-denominational thief caught, Poirot decides to take a last-minute trip back to London and uses his friendship with Bouc (Tom Bateman), roguish son of the director the Orient Express to gain passage. He takes the place of a "no-show" and in transit, strikes up a casual friendship with governess Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley) and a doctor named Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom, jr.) who seem to be more than familiar with each other. It is enough to cause more than a tickle in his little gray cells, as the two are making pains to not seem familiar.

Once he gets to the Calais Coach, he makes note of the other passengers cutting across all sorts of ages and strata of society, princesses and practical men—the usual disparate suspects. He is approached by a dealer of art named Rathcett (Johnny Depp, channeling Ray Liotta in Goodfellas) who asks for Poirot's protection—he fears for his life, but Poirot, despite sharing a dessert with the gangsterish fellow, refuses for the most basic of reasons—"I do not like your face." In the middle of the night, he will be murdered, stabbed repeatedly and the train will be stopped by an avalanche, keeping the occupants conveniently trapped aboard. It will be up to Poirot to discover who aboard could have committed the crime before the train can be freed and continue on its way to waiting authorities.

There are clues aplenty and the reasonable assumption that the murderer is still on-board, as a couple of random attacks, none fatal, make it suspicious that one of the others could be next. But, who could be the perpetrator of such a vicious murder? As Poirot interviews everybody on the train, he finds threads and suspicions, but most of them seem to be distractions rather than real clues.

There are attempts to make the film less claustrophobic, but they seem a trifle desperate to create some action in a scenario that is mostly talking and thinking. And Branagh (the director) tries to inject some mystery and resonance by making use of the di-optic qualities of the glass partitions in the carriage—a bit too much, actually. Like most of the film it is mere obfuscation to a denouement that answers the questions, but creates an ethical dilemma that is the real center of the story. That dilemma is resolved by a tricky maneuver by Poirot (not in the book, which ends abruptly with the solution of the murder without any sort of hand-wringing about justice) that is a tad simplistic and more than a bit impractical in matters of weight. Versions had resolved it "similarly," but Poirot's deliberate entrapment creates a scene that makes him seem more decisive and conniving, and does so without a lot of talk. Personally, when the subject is justice and right versus wrong, I much prefer talk.

At least, Branagh's is not as perversely celebratory as the 1974 Sidney Lumet version—a murder is committed, after all—but it is not as brave and resolutely moral as the Suchet television version, which has the detective shaken and fighting tears by his own actions (or lack of them) in the service of what might be justice. The detective is trapped by his own catholic history (far beyond the aspirations of Christie) and feels complicit in the whole affair. Now, that is something of some import. "The Murder on the Orient Express" has one more victim; it kills something in Poirot.

Now...the mustache. A review can't seem to go by without a mention of the very large and ferret-like mustache that Branagh's Poirot sports throughout the movie. Such is the sort of thing that dominates internet criticism or what passes for it. The cliche is the dainty little handlebar curl of Albert Finney and David Suchet. Branagh's winding "extreme" Imperial is a distraction—maybe that's why it's there, dramatically. But, there is one other reason it might be a part of this film. Dame Agatha was alive at the time of the 1974 Lumet version and her one criticism of it was thus: "It was well made except for one mistake. It was Albert Finney, as my detective Hercule Poirot. I wrote that he had the finest moustache in England — and he didn't in the film. I thought that a pity — why shouldn't he?"

I guess that is the answer to the ultimate mystery—why do it?  I just wish the answer was something more than "why shouldn't they?"

* ...for instance, in a couple of scenes, Branagh is seen clutching a locket with a portrait of his lost love, Catherine. Who? No such person existed in all of Christie. The closest Poirot came to "the woman" (how Sherlock Holmes referred to the woman he most admired, Irene Adler) was the Countess Vera Rossakoff. Setting something up for another movie. Well, to do that the first one has to be good.