Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

There was a time when being called a ​“dis­rup­tor” was not a nice thing. If you talked too much in class, played your music too loud, or drunk­en­ly tipped over cows while they slept, this was old school dis­rup­tion of the unequiv­o­cal­ly malign vari­ety. Around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, the term evolved into a beloved cor­po­rate buzz­word and its core def­i­n­i­tion changed. Sud­den­ly, it was no longer about sim­ply mak­ing oth­er peo­ple uncom­fort­able, it was about har­ness­ing dis­com­fort as a weapon, and shak­ing peo­ple out of stale habits – whether they liked it or not. Dis­rup­tion became about enforced change, and was not only ben­e­fi­cial, but appar­ent­ly a vital tenet in the appa­ra­tus of capitalism.

Yet, if we look back at the mod­ern ​“dis­rup­tor” per­son­al­i­ties – you all know who they are, the wind­bag polit­i­cal pop­ulists; the tech scions play­ing hacky sack; the say-any­thing-for-a-dol­lar media per­son­al­i­ties – it’s clear that their creed was hol­low, their inten­tions were (still) malign, and the only thing they were sell­ing was home-brewed snake oil (or, in this case, rhi­no horn sex pills) pack­aged up in a fan­cy bot­tle. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mys­tery, the sixth fea­ture film by Rian John­son, offers a clear-eyed and dev­as­tat­ing take-down of vapid mod­ern dis­rup­tor cul­ture, tak­ing dead-aim at the per­pe­tra­tors, but also mak­ing sure that the blind­ly-sub­servient acolytes receive a dress­ing down too.

As an exten­sion of this the­sis, John­son also runs with the idea that every sane per­son on the plan­et is clutch­ing a smok­ing revolver when it comes to the ques­tion of who would mur­der a celebri­ty tech bil­lion­aire… if the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose. It was per­haps David Fincher’s 2008 film chron­i­cling the incep­tion of Face­book, The Social Net­work, which act­ed as the first top­pling domi­no in cinema’s sub­se­quent obses­sion with writ­ing over­con­fi­dent, inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy oiks with this yen for ​“dis­rup­tion” as a mod­ern and relat­able breed of Bond vil­lain. That they tend to sit out­side (or, in most cas­es, open­ly reject) the pre­cepts of the con­ven­tion­al polit­i­cal spec­trum offers a nar­ra­tive­ly handy form of equal oppor­tu­ni­ties loathing.

The film picks up on the con­tin­u­ing adven­tures of the world’s fore­most gen­tle­man sleuth, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a dap­per South­ern dandy first seen in 2019’s deli­cious Knives Out. It is a film which is very much at home with­in the John­son cin­e­mat­ic cor­pus, as it descends from a tem­plate the direc­tor ini­tial­ly wrought for his thun­der­ing, and pos­si­bly still under­rat­ed 2005 debut, Brick. It offers a show­case for the idea that plot is a puz­zle that the writer must solve in order for the director’s work to make sense. Glass Onion adopts the stur­dy struc­tur­al under­pin­nings of the Agatha Christie-like who­dunit, and presents them with an inge­nious mix of post­mod­ern irony and bona fide awe.

One touch­stone here is the 1973 Her­bert Ross film, The Last of Sheila, co-writ­ten by Antho­ny Perkins and Stephen Sond­heim, which intro­duces the Matryosh­ka doll-like idea of the mur­der mys­tery par­ty that itself nests inside a mur­der mys­tery. Glass Onion’s blend of acer­bic wit and death­ly thrills see its blood­line traced back to the WS Van Dyke’s 1934 screw­ball, The Thin Man, and the hor­ren­dous­ly droll Nick and Nora detec­tive cycle.

There are var­i­ous allu­sions to Jacques Tati, from Blanc’s pointy buck­et hat to his var­i­ous stress­ful inter­ac­tions with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. Final­ly, there’s Guy Hamilton’s 1982 adap­ta­tion of Christie’s ​‘Evil Under the Sun’, in which Peter Ustinov’s Her­cule Poirot sports an array of nat­ty fits on an unnamed hol­i­day island in the Adri­at­ic, and there’s even the mech­a­nism of a loud alarm noise (here a can­non shot, in Glass Onion an ear-split­ting ​‘bong!’ com­posed by Philip Glass) to help Blanc set his inves­ti­ga­tions to the clock.

In the film, five friends receive an invi­ta­tion to join Miles Bron (Edward Nor­ton) on his pri­vate island for a week­end of boozy mur­der mys­tery high jinx. Bron is CEO of Alpha, a tech giant which appears to be mod­elled after Elon Musk’s Tes­la, in that no-one’s quite sure exact­ly what it’s famous for and how it makes mon­ey. With his ill-fit­ting tee and five-o-clock shad­ow, he self-con­scious­ly presents him­self as a dishev­elled utopi­an hip­py. In a telling flash­back, we see a young Miles dressed in exact­ly the same threads (red shirt, leather waist­coat, top-knot) as one of mod­ern cinema’s pre-emi­nent snake-oil sales­men, Tom Cruise’s Frank TJ Mack­ey from Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Mag­no­lia, so we know who this guy is.

Par­ty guests include Kathryn Hahn’s Claire Debel­la, a plain-talk­ing and ​“real” west coast sen­a­to­r­i­al can­di­date whose cam­paign is being finan­cial­ly under­writ­ten by Bron. Then there’s Kate Hudson’s on-the-wain model/​influencer Birdie Jay who spe­cialis­es in unforced errors when it comes to mak­ing racial faux pas in public.

Dave Bautista, prov­ing again to be the phys­i­cal answer to the ques­tion, ​“What if The Rock was a real­ly good actor?”, moseys up as Duke Cody, an ex-stream­er who has piv­ot­ed to ser­vic­ing an ador­ing (but dimin­ish­ing) legion of online alt-right fol­low­ers. There’s Leslie Odom Jr’s. Lionel Tou­s­saint, the melan­cholic sci­ence whizz pow­er­ing Bron’s dreams (which drop dai­ly via fax). All of them have accept­ed the uncom­fort­able real­i­ty that they are Bron’s push-around guys, and that his gen­er­ous fund­ing streams are the only thing keep­ing them going.

Final­ly comes the one fly in the oint­ment: Janelle Monáe’s Andi Brand, the brains behind Bron who was oust­ed in a vicious legal manœu­vre by Mr Chill him­self. Where Craig’s Blanc brings home the com­ic inten­si­ty and effort­less­ly whips up the dra­ma (and Craig is just phe­nom­e­nal­ly good), Monáe brings the film its beat­ing heart, and she deliv­ers her most nuanced and com­plex per­for­mance to date.

Her char­ac­ter is the only per­son with the guts to say no to the man who has every­thing, and every­thing includes a sprawl­ing, Esch­er-like island com­plex mod­elled after a shut­tered dive bar called Glass Onion in which the friends first met, which boasts an atri­um fes­tooned with paint­ings by all the great mas­ters of his­to­ry. He has a Degas’ ​‘The Absinthe Drinker’ hang­ing in his lava­to­ry. He has world famous celebri­ties at his beck and call. One waits patient­ly on a video screen with her copy of ​‘Gravity’s Rain­bow’ until she is called upon.

Tak­ing the bait from Blanc in an ear­ly scene, Bron offers his own tawdry def­i­n­i­tion of ​“dis­rup­tion” as end­ing in the total destruc­tion of the sys­tem. Elid­ing the many twists, turns and inver­sions of Johnson’s dev­il­ish­ly inge­nious plot, the film ulti­mate­ly ends on a live demon­stra­tion of Bron’s jum­bled ide­o­log­i­cal gambit.

All this begs the ques­tion, is Rian John­son him­self a dis­rup­tor? Here’s a film­mak­er that fus­es mod­ern ideas to anti­quat­ed nar­ra­tive forms. A film­mak­er who cre­ates huge block­buster films from orig­i­nal IP. A film­mak­er who works with­in beloved exist­ing IP and thrilling­ly makes the mate­r­i­al his own. It’s tempt­ing to see Benoit Blanc as the clos­est thing John­son has giv­en us to an on-screen avatar: an avun­cu­lar braini­ac trapped between worlds and tra­di­tions, but always com­ing out on top. What he and Blanc teach us is that, per­haps, a lit­tle dis­rup­tion when enact­ed for the pub­lic good can go a long way.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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