Cinema Sunday: Glass Onion

Hello there! 

It's New Year's Day, the first day of a new year. 

So today's Cinema Sunday is about a new movie.

Today we turn out attention to Glass Onion, a follow up to Knives Out by writer/director Rian Johnson with Daniel Craig returning as master detective Benoit Blanc.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, a series of puzzle boxes are delivered, each with an invitation to attend a murder mystery party hosted by Miles Bron, the billionaire co-founder of the technology company Alpha.  

Arriving on a private Greek island are the following:   

• Alpha head scientist Lionel Toussaint
• Connecticut governor Claire Debella, 
• Controversial fashion designer Birdie Jay along with her assistant Peg.   
• Men's rights streamer Duke Cody and his girlfriend Whiskey.
• Cassandra Brand, former CEO of Alpha after being forced out by Miles.
• And widely regarded as the world's greatest detective, Benoit Blanc.  

Miles is puzzled by this last guest. He did not send a puzzle box invitation to Benoit Blanc but he says Blanc is welcomed to stay.

Blanc quickly proves his bonafides as the world's greatest detective by solving the 3 day murder mystery event in less than a minute.  

But Blanc thinks Miles has more important stuff to worry about than a pretend murder when every single person he invited has a reason to kill him for real.  

Then shit gets weird and twisty. 

I will not go through a rote recitation of the plot because watching this dysfunctional group unravel is so much fun.

Suffice to say, not everyone is who they say they are.  

More than that, you will not get from me.  

OK, there's the bell that intones the hour across Miles' private island. It's not a bell but an amplified recording of someone saying "DONG!"  

So it's that kind of movie. 

Set in 2020, Glass Onion does not side step the pandemic but immerses itself in that strange mix of confusion of some people trying to their best to stay socially distanced or masked and other people who either do not understand those concepts or do not give a fuck about them.  

The movie has some wickedly sharp commentary about social influencers  and a culture of celebrity built on a rickety edifice of half truths and outright lies. At the core of this film's incisive infective is Miles Bron. Rian Johnson insists there are any number of billionaires who are not as clever as they think they are that this character is making fun off. 

Watching this at the end of 2022, of course we're all thinking Miles Bron is Elon Musk.  

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department

When Duke gets his puzzle box and is trying to dope out how to open the damn thing, his mother who appears to barely be paying attention is able to figure it out. It was driving me nuts because I know this woman from some damn thing. She's played by Jackie Hoffman who was Joan in Kissing Jessica Stein which I wrote about in this post on September 27, 2020.  

The voice behind the hourly "DONG!"? Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

I can't say more without giving away some crucial twists but Glass Onion is less about the construction of the plot and more about the deconstruction of the hapless assholes caught up in their own tangled web of deceit.