All right, whodunnit?
In only two Benoit Blanc films (Knives Out and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery), writer and director Rian Johnson has created characters so charismatic that we can’t help but come back to them over and over. I joked with him that the casting announcements for his first new mystery created such a frenzy on Twitter and social media that it became its own prologue to our excitement. Johnson loves what characters hide and what they present to the world, and that feverish balance is what makes Glass Onion such an exciting and worthy entry into this canon.
Glass Onion centers on a group of friends who delight themselves in a private getaway as the COVID pandemic shut the world down until a murder amongst them unravels them all. There have been many discussions, YouTube videos, and articles about how 2022 was the year of “eat the rich” commentary, but Johnson’s film has more depth than just that. There is something permeating along the edges of the film about families that we make for ourselves versus the bond made by blood between the characters portrayed by Janelle Monáe. It is Daniel Craig’s Blanc’s job to untangle the lies, double crosses, and affluent bullshit in order to solve the crimes laid out. Does Blanc seek out these people who feel like outsiders? Are they always the key to solving a heinous crime?
We could all watch fifty new entries into this series, because the writing is so sharp and witty. Johnson and I reference the late Stephen Sondheim throughout our conversation, and he was the master of connecting words with the innerworkings of our brains and hearts. If Glass Onion was shallow, we wouldn’t care about the characters, and the mysterious would be frivolous.
What Johnson does again (like with Brick, Looper, and the original Knives outing) is created a script with such vast intelligence and humor that we are allowed to slide between comedy and melodrama without wondering if they shouldn’t coexist so beautifully. The beautiful, rich people are aspirational and we do feel those pangs of jealousy, but we want Blanc to expose the rot within, too. Glass Onion is fiendishly playful, fresh, and cunning.