Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Director: Rian Johnson
Quick Impressions:
I’ll be honest. I forgot about going to the movies! (This is the strangest excuse. It ties in perfectly with Glass Onion for reasons I can’t explain. It’s the truth! I don’t mean I put off going. I forgot completely.)
We haven’t been to a movie in the theater since August. Usually we go every week, and my urgency for seeking out potential Oscar nominees is off the charts. Not this year!
Unlike the rest of us, my seven-year-old hates sitting through movies. But that’s not the issue. I guess it’s that I’m writing three books. The kids are back in school, in band, chess puzzle, RE. I had a minor mental breakdown. We binge watched all of Twin Peaks. I flew to Culver City to meet friends and watch this year’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. I came home inspired and feverishly wrote an entire novel. I’m also writing a Jeopardy! book with my friend Jennifer Quail, and I’m two chapters away from finishing a six book YA series I began in 2011! Writing keeps me busy.
This is a weird year. Thanksgiving was unusually relaxed. (We already have the tree up!) Not until last night did I realize, “Glass Onion is out.” I’ve been known to drag the whole family to as many as four movies over Thanksgiving break. This year, I did not even realize we hadn’t been to a movie since August. I have no explanation.
We all loved Knives Out. For me its big flaw is that its initial twist is so shocking and well done that the film’s ultimate resolution feels anticlimactic by comparison. Glass Onion places its big twist later in the film, a solid improvement.
Despite my eagerness to see this movie, I was a tad apprehensive to watch a mystery since I’m obsessively revising the one I just wrote.
“I hope this won’t be like my book,” I fretted.
“You have a strange habit of thinking everything is similar to your book,” my seven-year-old complained. “I could be watching a one-hour sleep music video, and you’d be like, ‘OMG! That’s too similar to my book!’”
He’s right. (Fortunately, aside from some minor points, Glass Onion is not too much like my novel, Octopus’s Garden: A Bête Noire Mystery.) (Just kidding, but that is a compelling title. Maybe I should write it.)
The Good:
This film moves briskly and does not feel like 2 hours and 20 minutes, astonishing because usually that’s my number one complaint about movies. (“Yes, I finally understood the meaning of life and touched the face of God, but this dragged a little in the middle, and I could have been using that time to do the laundry.”)
“It felt extremely long to me,” complained my seven-year-old who stayed home with his dad.
“Well listen, the trailers were an hour long,” I told him. “That 80 for Brady one alone lasted forty-five minutes!” (“How many things can happen in this movie?!” my daughter marveled in a whisper as it went on and on until we were both convinced if we do nothing else with our lives, we must see 80 for Brady! We got a very random trailer package, including 80 for Brady, a grumpy Tom Hanks adventure, an M. Night Shyamalan murder cabin. Surprisingly there were two trailers featuring Sally Field. I really like her, but she’s not even in Glass Onion! I swear there were ten trailers!)
Glass Onion is well paced. If anything, it seems too quick until you understand the story’s structure.
Because I’ve been drifting along in a fugue state (apparently), I had no idea who was in this movie (other than Daniel Craig) which meant every new co-star who popped up thrilled me with surprise and delight.
“It’s Kate Hudson!” I whispered to my daughter, like it was astonishing to see an actress in a movie. “She’s Gracie’s dad’s sister.” (She’s probably not often identified this way, but we watched Scream Queens before Twin Peaks.) This film does a good job matching the terrific ensemble cast of Knives Out. Watching, I was trying to decide if this cast matches the star power of the previous movie. That’s hard to determine because these actors are all more recent stars (recent being a relative term). We get Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., and Edward Norton. (I was most surprised to see him. I reacted to Norton the same way his character greets an unexpected guest. My daughter probably felt like she was watching with an annoying commentary track, as I gasped over every actor.) And wait till you see the cameos! There are so many, but one is inspired and quite timely!
I remember Knives Out frustrated me because I usually watch all fall movies through the lens of Oscar obsession. I kept thinking, “If Toni Collette or Jamie Lee Curtis just had a slightly bigger part…” I didn’t feel that frustration here. Every actor seems to have adequate screentime and plenty to say and do.
And a cozy mystery format perfectly showcases Rian’s Johnson’s strengths as a writer. (You could argue this isn’t strictly a cozy. There are flashbacks. But it’s pretty darn cozy compared some of his other films. Nobody goes to a casino planet for fifty minutes or travels back in time trying to kill himself until he ends up in a farmhouse with Emily Blunt.) (That reminds me, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has an off-camera role.) It’s a compact story, and its neatness forces Johnson to stop complicating and resolve. I hope he makes a hundred of these Benoit Blanc mysteries. I’ll watch them all. (I do find it hilarious that a major theme here is simplicity (and obviousness), and he illustrates it through over two hours of convoluted opulence.)
As soon as the end credits rolled my daughter began gushing about the beautiful symmetry of one character’s arc, how the person’s beginning reveals something about their character and simultaneously mirrors (and foreshadows) their behavior at the end of the film. I wish I could share her salient insights, but they’re so spoilery. The English major in me was listening like, “Yes, well done, my apprentice.” (Apparently, she spoke to the Sith Lord in me, too.)
Meanwhile, I was sitting there making dumb whispered observations like, “Did he just say ‘motorcar’? Is he suddenly from another century in this movie? I don’t remember him acting quite so bizarre in the first one.” There was another moment when I got really confused about if a certain celebrity was usually called by a particular nickname because I’d thought the characters were talking about someone else. At the end of the film, I looked back and thought, “Good job, Rian Johnson! Meanwhile, I will never be a detective! I’ll go through a mystery noticing weird thing after weird thing, and then at the end, I’ll observe, ‘Wow, that was all so weird!’ and then I’ll get murdered!”)
What makes this movie fun is that Benoit Blanc keeps saying, “The solution is in plain sight,” and it is! Yet somehow, it’s not as obvious as it should be.
I like the staginess of these films, too, the not-quite reality. It reminds me of Clue. It’s fun to see Benoit Blanc pop out from behind a bush. But uh oh! Was he the only one? Maybe later we’ll see it again from a different angle. (I love stuff like that!)
My daughter had such salient (and spoilery) things to say about the structure, the plot, the characterization, the color scheme. Meanwhile, I was brooding about our doomed society and the evil inherent in all self-advancement. I was like, “Oh no! The world is so corrupt. Unless you give in to the corrupt system, you’ll never succeed in politics, or broadcasting, or a being a washed-up actress who makes sweatpants, or industrial science (?).” Then I realized, “Oh, but I’m not trying to do any of those things, so…oh well.” I do think, though, that people’s own behavior shows their character and defends them against evil accusations if they act with integrity. Then I think, “Oh no, Sarah! Quit doing such crazy idiotic stuff all the time!” I’m so much better at watching other people than at doing anything useful myself. (This movie caused me so much angsty moral reflection.)
Best Element:
Early scenes kept making me think of Death on the Nile. (Part of me wonders, Did Rian Johnson watch Death on the Nile, then go write this movie?)
By far my favorite aspect of Glass Onion is the whole, played up, “Look! Andi’s here!” thing. (It’s like when Jackie shows up everywhere, dramatically stalking Linnet and Simon.)
The score at these moments is just amazing. I love Nathan Johnson’s score. (I didn’t realize he was the director’s cousin.) It’s the best score I’ve heard all fall. (I wish I had been to more movies so this could be a higher compliment because I truly think it’s remarkable.)
Steve Yedlin’s cinematography is conspicuously strong in these moments, too.
It’s just great how stagey all this is, so dramatic! (The costuming is good, too! Jenny Eagan is the costume designer.)
As I’ve said, I’ve seen nothing this fall, but I love Janelle Monáe’s performance. Just standing there, posing, she’s phenomenal. It gets even better the more you learn about the plot. (I also love lines like, “You used to tell me the truth, Cassandra!” Or is it, “You always told me the truth, Cassandra!”? I like the second version better, but I can’t remember.) Monáe’s whole part is just fantastic. Everything surrounding Andi is the best part of the movie.
My daughter and I both loved Monáe in Harriet, so we’re thrilled to see her get such a scene-stealing role in Glass Onion.
Best Scene Visually:
This film is easy on the eyes. Some of Andi’s poses are probably its most arresting visuals. My daughter had some interesting things to say about dinner. Visually, it reminded her of The Last Supper. One thing I like is the way our eye is drawn (rather early on) to an exchange of hard kombucha since that primes us for not one, but two things that will happen later.
Surprisingly, the Glass Onion itself is not very interesting to look at. (Actually, what’s really weird is that they’re on a Greek island in a mansion full of priceless art, and the most interesting visuals are the expressions and poses of the people. But maybe I just have a thing for faces.)
Best Action Sequence:
The ending is clearly the best.
Best Scene:
I liked watching everyone open their puzzle boxes. That Dave Bautista plays a professional, televised men’s rights advocate whose mother (Jackie Hoffman) figures out the whole thing for him is pretty delightful. Rian Johnson is as merciless here as he was to the teen troll in Knives Out. (I thought he was a bit harsh in his mockery of that character, and then I watched an interview with Kelly Marie Tran and decided, no, Johnson was right to highlight the awfulness of that behavior.) Everyone’s approach to opening the boxes reveals so much about them all.
The Negatives:
I lied when I said everyone gets enough screentime and development. Once we see more of Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), I realized I wanted to see even more of her. That character has potential. I’d love to learn more about how she got to this point, where she’ll go in the future. Jessica Henwick’s Peg also interests me. I’d watch a whole sitcom about Peg and Hudson’s Birdie. I also am dying to know more about the person who answers Daniel Craig’s door. Maybe we will learn more in a third film.
I keep wondering, too, if there was more about the guy who’s just hanging out on the island that I should have noticed. Maybe not.
The big finale of the movie bothers me a bit. I realize it’s commentary on hubris and makes for a nice “gotcha” moment. But…it’s hard to cheer for. It’s great to throw a cheesy line back in someone’s face and all, but…I feel like that sort of act shows a bit of maniacal hubris itself. Then again…the world is unfair. So…I don’t know.
In general, Knives Out felt a bit more original, but…this is the sequel, so, of course it did! I do love the irony that the murder mystery game has more complexity than the real murder mystery—and that Blanc needs longer to solve the simpler mystery.
This film feels like an indictment on our whole society. That’s popular lately because everything is awful, so this should do well.
Personally, I was disappointed the film doesn’t include much profanity (those its use of swearing is very clever). The book I just wrote uses so much profanity, and I’m worried it’s too much. I’m trying to cut 10,000 words, and my husband suggested, “Cut the profanity. You’ll cut 20,000 words.” This is rated PG-13. Early on, Kathryn Hahn’s character seems like she’s going to swear a lot, but then she really doesn’t. Good news if you want to take your kids! My thirteen-year-old loved it!
Overall:
Glass Onion does not feel like it lasts for two hours and twenty minutes. It moves at a brisk clip and gives us fun characters, a cleverly staged mystery, and abundant humor. It’s a great follow-up to Knives Out, and I hope we get a continuing series of these films (but none of them had better be like my mystery novel. I’m planning to write a series of those, too!).