GLASS ONION Is A Delight, A Surprise And A Satirical Joy

The KNIVES OUT sequel is fun, funny and very. very current

Netflix gave Rian Johnson $400 million dollars to make two sequels to his murder mystery film Knives Out, and having seen the first of the two, let me say this was an exceptionally good investment. I don’t know how good an investment it is for Netflix - is this a company that has a real business plan? - but it was a great investment for me, for you, for people who love movies and for the culture as a whole. Glass Onion is absolutely fucking great, and it’s a great time at the movies… which is where you definitely should catch this picture in its criminally short release window of one week. 

The modern film world can sometimes be obsessed with movies not being ‘dated,’ as if a film being the product of its time and place is somehow a bad thing. The truth is that a great movie can and should reflect the moment it was created, and that only adds layers and meaning as the film ages. To watch a great movie from decades past is to not only enjoy a terrific work of storytelling but to have the opportunity to time travel into other modes of thought, of other cinematic styles and other contextual understandings. A movie that is of its time has a delicious metatextual layer that gives us understanding of the world in which it was created, and often that only becomes clear as the years pass by. 

Glass Onion is a movie defiantly of its moment. It is specifically set in the early days of the pandemic, and Johnson uses those early days to masterfully sketch his characters - which character is having a big party during quarantine? Which character wears their mask below their nose? Which character wears no mask at all, and which wears a lace mask with huge holes in it? He dispenses of the pandemic of it all fairly quickly, but even the way it is disposed of is revealing of character. 

More than that, though, Glass Onion is very much a movie that reflects the concerns of this exact minute - watching this movie I could have believed it was written a month ago, especially with the way it treats Ed Norton’s tech billionaire, who shares a few similarities with currently in the news Elon Musk. There’s even a giant Kanye mural in the film (which represents what a douchebag Norton’s billionaire is)! If Knives Out was skewering old money, Glass Onion is coming for the nouveau riche and influencers who plague our world, the tech bros who are destroying society, the famous-for-some-reason fashionistas who blithely offend millions with a tossed off tweet. 

The secret, though, is that Johnson does it genially. This is what I’ve always loved about his films - he can tell dark stories, he can be brutally satirical, but he does it all with such a genial charm that it never feels mean. As a person who finds my compass points at mean all too often his ability to be cutting and sharp and wicked without being cruel is absolutely inspiring. And Glass Onion is positively savage, but its jaundiced eye has a brilliant twinkle in it. 

Benoit Blanc is in a slump; the pandemic has robbed him of the ability to solve crimes. But when a box mysteriously shows up at his door, containing an invite to a billionaire’s weekend party on a Grecian island, he realizes something is up. On the island he meets an eclectic group of ‘disruptors’: Norton’s Miles Bron, a tech billionaire, Katherine Hahn’s Governor Claire Debella, who has made a career of raging against the political machine, Leslie Odom Jr’s Lionel Toussaint, a brilliant scientist who works for his buddy Miles, Dave Bautista’s Duke Cody, a men’s rights YouTuber with millions of viewers, and Kate Hudson’s Birdie Jay, a model who has an unfortunate tendency to tweet racial slurs and wear blackface. Also along for the ride are Peg, Birdie Jay’s assistant (played by Jessica Henwick) and Whiskey, Duke’s girlfriend (Madelyn Cline). Oh, and don’t forget Derol, a guy who is just hanging out on the island because he’s going through some stuff (Knives Out’s Noah Segan, playing a different character here). And then there’s Janelle Monae as Andi, once MIles’ business partner - until a brutal court case left her locked out of the company. Nobody is quite sure why she’s there, but she certainly does seem the person who has the most reason to kill Miles. 

That, after all, is the reason they’re all there - it’s a murder mystery weekend, and Miles is going to be the victim. This group of dear friends he’s known for a decade, since before they were rich and famous and just hung out at a local bar called The Glass Onion, are going to be tasked with solving the crime. But Benoit Blanc wasn’t actually invited by Bron, which makes the world’s greatest detective think that perhaps someone on that island is actually planning on killing the billionaire after all. 

There is, of course, a murder. And to say much more would be to ruin the delights of this film, which is itself a glass onion; layer upon layer constructed in such a way that you think you get the whole picture but eventually realize you’ve totally missed the truth that was hiding in plain sight. This one is much less straightforward than Knives Out, and in fact it feels like a totally different kind of mystery - which of course it is. Johnson isn’t just remaking the same film again and again, he’s playing within the vast and diverse world of detective fiction to create Benoit Blanc mysteries that feel fresh and distinctive. 

One point of reference for this film is the Stephen Sondheim/Anthony Perkins-written The Last of Sheila, in which a rich guy invites a bunch of his friends on his yacht in the Mediterranean to play a mystery game; murders soon commence. Johnson reminds me a lot of Quentin Tarantino in that both are filmmakers who wear their influences on their sleeves but who take those influences and synthesize them into something new and fresh. Yes, The Last of Sheila is certainly a touchstone for Glass Onion (and Johnson nods to this in the film itself) but this isn’t a riff or a rip-off or a series of excruciating references. Like QT, Johnson takes his influences, rearranges them and uses them to create something new and unique and absolutely personal. Both directors are voraciously knowledgeable about their artforms and their genres and they are masters at transforming what has come before into something that is absolutely its own thing. 

I think this is Johnson’s particular genius; he’s a deconstructionist in many ways, someone who totally understands the mechanisms and cliches of the genres in which he works. He’s really good at pulling those apart, upending them, surprising us… and then still delivering something that fully and fundamentally fits within that genre. This is the genius of The Last Jedi, a movie that absolutely deconstructs Star Wars before carefully putting it back together and saying “See? That’s why it works.” For some people the deconstruction itself can be disorienting, but for me it’s a joy because he’s deconstructing without contempt; he really loves the things he’s pulling apart and you get the sense that he’s celebrating each piece as he plays with it. This deconstruction works especially well in a movie like Glass Onion, where nothing is at it seems to be, but also where you know nothing is as it seems to be, so it takes extra effort to surprise and delight the audience. 

Another skill Johnson has mastered: working with actors. His cast here is impeccable, and I could go paragraphs on each of them, as they are all so funny and so charming and also tasked with playing versions upon versions of these characters. None of these people are what they seem to be, and their layers get revealed as the mystery unfolds. This is a tough movie to write about because I don’t want to spoil a single thing, but I have to say that Janelle Monae in particular blew me away here, and Kate Hudson shows up to remind us that she should be in more things because she’s just absolutely magnetic. Dave Bautista is just so good at puncturing his own physical presence, and Madelyn Cline is kind of a revelation. Edward Norton is just having the time of his life playing a truly insufferable douchebag, and even Ethan Hawke has a ball in the small cameo he makes in the film.

But it’s all about Daniel Craig, isn’t it? Glass Onion is a movie I’ll have to watch again, because so much of what happens in the first half is recontextualized by what happens in the second half, and that goes doubly for Craig’s Benoit Blanc. Craig really kills it here, and his Blanc has become one of my favorite modern characters. Craig can be silly and icily brilliant, and he can do both things in one scene. There’s terrific flexibility in him, and he looks crushingly wonderful in all the colorful little outfits he wears in this one. 

What does $400 million buy you in two murder mysteries? Well, it buys you a great soundtrack for one thing, but most importantly it buys you a movie that looks like a fucking movie. Glass Onion shot in Greece, and the effort was worth it. What’s more, longtime Johnson collaborator cinematographer Steve Yedlin does wonderful work here, capturing the unique feel of the Mediterranean light, giving even the simplest set-ups richness, depth and texture, and making every single actor in this movie look incredible. Everything in this movie is simply beautiful, and that’s a big part of why this is a film you should try to see in theaters. 

But the real reason to catch this in theaters is that Glass Onion is absolutely a communal experience. It’s a very, very funny movie and getting caught up in the laughter of the crowd adds to the energy of the experience. You can feel everyone else in the theater taking in the twists and turns, and you all react in unison to the great reveals and reversals. But mostly it’s all about the laughs - this one is pretty much a comedy, and you’ll want to enjoy it with the laughter of strangers in your ears. 

The one frustrating thing about Glass Onion is that I can’t talk about more of it; even the smallest details feel like they could be intense spoilers on a first viewing. But this is a movie that is going to reward rewatches, and it’s the kind of fun and funny movie that makes you want to rewatch it again and again. This is the kind of movie that is smart and perfectly crafted but also works as comfort food, which is really how all the great mysteries work. 

I can’t wait to see what the third Benoit Blanc mystery will be, and I am glad to know that it is definitely coming. There cannot be enough of these films, and while I very much want Rian Johnson to make other movies that interest him, I wouldn’t particularly complain if every other film of his was a Knives Out sequel.