In response to the myriad of fan theories about the secret meanings behind the Beatles’ music (backmasking, “Paul is dead”, that kind of shit), John Lennon wrote the song Glass Onion, which would be included on the group’s self-titled White Album. It’s basically a troll set to music, referencing other Beatles songs to give fuel to the people who think that they intentionally put in all these cryptic messages in their art... when in reality, it meant pretty much fuck-all. Many layers, but all of them see-through right down to the core: a glass onion.
Along with giving its name to Rian Johnson’s follow-up to the damn-near perfect Knives Out, as well as playing out over the credits, that same mentality of dressing up simplicity with the veneer of complexity shows through in Johnson's approach to the whodunit here. It is still immaculately constructed, built to withstand repeated viewings and intensive scrutiny in all of its smaller moments and whispers of dialogue fit together. But it also seems designed specifically for people who go into a murder mystery story, not with the intent to just have fun with it, but to try and play detective alongside the lead character. To ‘solve’ the film ahead of time by paying extra-special attention to the details within.
I don’t bring this up as if I am observing this behaviour from the outside-in; I very much approach twisty films like this through that lens, and with how nuanced Knives Out turned out, I did indeed go into this with the mentality that I needed to pay real close attention to everything on-screen. And sure, that did lead to some interesting rewards, as it will for a lot of attentive viewers out there… but that’s not really the point of this. Hell, it wasn’t even the point of the first film. As much as some filmmakers like to get the audience really thinking about their work and its deeper meanings, and aren’t necessarily forthcoming with direct explanations both in and out of the film itself (David Lynch is the embodiment of this in action), there's a certain... arrogance that can (not always, but can) come out of that attitude. An attitude that a viewer figuring out everything about a film means that they are smarter than the person who put it together, rather than just, y'know, because everything is set up properly.
And with a film like this, that potential is worth keeping in mind, since it’s an attitude oozing out of every pore of all the new characters here. Daniel Craig as the returning Benoit Blanc has been invited to a murder mystery party hosted by ‘eccentric’ tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), along with a close-knit group of friends that call themselves ‘Disruptors’. From tech to social media to high fashion to politics, they have each gotten quite far off the back of Bron’s considerable donations, and they each reek of pretence within their given fields.
Much as the first film exposed the American Dream and how much it dressed up good ol’ fashioned greed and opportunism, this takes a look at the many see-through layers of profundity used to dress up… well, people doing dumb shit. Tweeting ethnic slurs and saying you’re just “telling it like it is”, selling penis enlargement pills to rebel against the “breastification” of modern society, campaigning for the people while cozying up to the corporations; it could not be more bullshit if it tried. And they all know it. It’s all about making bank on selling these ideas, and by the time they’ve secured themselves tightly to those ideas, even the clarity that maybe this isn’t such a good idea comes much too late.
It is genuinely exasperating to think about how prevalent this has been over the last few years. The four-year reign of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his increasingly bizarre decisions as owner of Twitter, the lorem ipsom of QAnon, any number of ‘public intellectuals’ and their circlejerk obsession with demonstrating how gosh-darn smart they are; the world seemingly can’t get enough of this nonsense. And as the murder mystery party turns all too real, Benoit Blanc finds himself immersed in the many suffocating layers used to cover up what is shockingly simple to see: That this nonsense is indeed nonsense.
That the people who talk the biggest game about taking down the elites and shaking up the system, are the ones who are most intent on keeping everything just as it is. They don’t want to change anything; that would mean they couldn’t keep benefiting from things as they are. So, under the guise of disruption, they pass off their actions as if they’re all playing 5D chess, or they're on some higher plane of knowledge than us mere plebs could ever comprehend. And because “free thinkers” love thinking they’re on the inside of some grander plan, that kind of sophistry is rewarded. Of course, if anything goes wrong with that ‘plan’ (and it almost-always does), it’s us, not them, who have to deal with the consequences.
I know that I’m doing that thing again where I’m talking around the film in question rather than actually discussing it, but truth be told, everything that made the first film work so freaking well is here in abundance. The cast is fantastic, the quips are plentiful, the film craft is ridiculous, and it manages to subvert classic murder mystery tropes while showing why they’re still used to this day. The bonus here is that it plays around with the role of the audience in these stories, trying to figure out the ultimate why of what’s going on, and points out how freely people give away that benefit of doubt that there even is a why in the actions of the upper crust. Well, aside from making bank, that is. It never direct its ire at the audience in the process, keeping its focus squarely on those who try to pull the rug out from under our feet, not with super-complicated fictional narratives, but with convoluted social narratives. It highlights the importance of seeing people pull shady shit, and calling a spade a spade. Or, in this case, a glass onion.
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