Here’s Another Clue for Us All: Glass Onion Is a Multifaceted Mystery

A screaming comes across the internet, and it’s me, yelling about how much I love Glass Onion. Rian Johnson’s newest whodunnit, like Knives Out before it, follows gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc as he travels into the world of the ultra-rich in search of truth and, if possible, justice. As is tradition in these types of mysteries, this is a whole new adventure—Blanc is the only character who recurs, and you don’t need to have seen Knives Out to enjoy this one. (But go watch Knives Out, it’s incredible.)

My capsule above-the-cut review is that the movie’s a blast. I laughed out loud more than at any recent film since maybe Eurovision Song Contest, and if I had to describe how it feels to watch, the closest I can come is to say it’s like you’re at a party with dear friends and you’ve  drunk a glass of prosecco too fast, and bubbles have gone up your nose, and you’re laughing and sneezing and everyone’s laughing at how ridiculous it is, and suddenly it hits you how lucky you are to have these friends, to be with people who make you laugh so hard you forget time. Watch it with your family on Netflix! Watch it in the theater, if it comes back to theaters and you have a way to do it safely amid the pandemic.

Instead of the New England mansion of the insular Thrombey family, this time out we’re traveling to a private island with an eclectic group of influencers—or, excuse me, Disruptors. Miles Bron (Edward Norton), the de facto leader, is an eccentric, hippie-ish tech billionaire who owns a company called Alpha… except he didn’t exactly found it himself. Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe) was Miles’ business partner, the co-founder of Alpha, and CFO until about two years before we meet everyone. Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) is the current governor of Connecticut, but her eyes are fixed on a Senate seat, and her campaign is getting hefty contributions from Miles. Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.) is one of Alpha’s top scientists, and exhausted by trying to turn Miles’ high concepts into reality. Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) is a supermodel-turned-designer, prone to social media mishaps and scrambling to stay relevant as her long-suffering, be-bucket-hatted assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick) scrambles to keep her boss’ phone locked away. Rounding out the group is Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a Twitch streamer who ventures further into the MRA cesspool with each new follower, and his girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline) who has big plans for a post-Duke future.

Ostensibly, they’re on Miles’ private island for their annual reunion/murder mystery party. Really, they’re there to get away from pandemic restrictions and bask in the kind of break from reality that only the absurdly rich can afford. As in Knives Out, the story pivots around a central mystery that spawns all sort of smaller questions. Why are these people friends in the first place? And why did Andi accept an invitation, when she’s barely on speaking terms with the rest of them? And why did Benoit Blanc, the world’s greatest detective, accept an invitation to something that is so clearly a waste of his time?

Knives Out called back to Agatha Christie’s cozier mysteries with its tone (rambling mansion, perfect sweaters, autumn vibe) while the upstairs/downstairs class seething nodded to Gosford Park, and Harlan Thrombey’s tchotchkes and literary pedigree were fun riffs on Deathtrap and Sleuth. With Glass Onion, Johnson takes us into the realm of Evil Under the Sun, Death on the Nile, and The Last of Sheila—dazzling Mediterranean sunlight, a tight-knit group of friends who should absolutely break up with each other, a general air of smugness and self-satisfaction just waiting to be punctured, and, best of all, what can only be described as destination murder.

And Glass Onion throws reference after gleeful reference at its audience throughout: Blanc blunders around in an over the top “I’m just happy to be here” manner very much like Poirot in both Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun; Maggie Smith’s iconic turn as Miss Bowers in Nile is homaged both with Peg’s role as a bitchy queer-coded assistant and Janelle Monae’s blindingly perfect white suit; there’s a character who probably shouldn’t be drinking, but very much is, à la Angela Lansbury’s turn as Salome Otterbourne (also from Nile); in Andi Brand we get a person whose very presence is a knife-twist, à la Jacqueline De Bellefort (again, Nile); Miles Bron’s “hourly dong” is a ridiculous update on Evil Under the Sun’s “noonday gun”; there are several different brilliant mystery cameos (including the “voice” of the hourly dong). And I’m sure there’s more stuff that I’m missing, but my point is that Glass Onion, as with all of Johnson’s films, is in love with its genre and wants you to know that.

Glass Onion, like Knives Out before it, wholeheartedly embraces its time period. It’s set in May 2020, so there are quarantine pods, status bookshelves, tie-dye projects, sourdough starters, and Zoom meetings. In one scene, COVID infection and death rates tick up the side of a CNN broadcast. As in life, the characters’ masks—or lack of them—tell you a lot about a person. When the characters aren’t drinking Jared Leto’s hard kombucha they’re pounding Coronas.

Then there’s just the sheer fun pop culture riffing, like how Andi has done multiple TED Talks, or how, when Miles first meets Andi’s group, he’s dressed as Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia—several years after that film came out because he’s a huge dweeb. (Between this and Weird’s Boogie Nights-inspired pool scene, Paul Thomas Anderson is having a moment.) Just look at all of Jenny Eagan’s costuming choices, or compare Miles’ art collection with the two paintings we see in Andi’s house, to revel in how much detail went into showing character through stuff.

Before I start spoiling anything, let me try to sum up the aspect of Glass Onion that was the most exciting to me.

One of the most important elements of the film is its commitment to intelligent, thoughtful characters. This is something Johnson has talked about in interviews, how he himself doesn’t really do “mindless” entertainment—things have to have layers for him to dig into. After decades of film characters snapping “Speak ENGLISH” at anyone with any form of expertise, and a couple of generations of people charging into argument and (shudder) Discourse without even the courtesy of a glance at Wikipedia, it feels so fucking good to be able to relax into a world where intelligence is not just begrudgingly tolerated, but celebrated. Where willful ignorance is corrected. Where a lack of empathy is comeuppanced.

From here I think I have to talk in more detail. There will be spoilers for Glass Onion and Knives Out going forward, so get out of here if you haven’t watched yet!

You know how Knives Out was a fun mystery that was really about the aftermath of the 2016 election/various types of privilege/responsibility/what kind of country the United States wants to be? Glass Onion is also that, but more so. More fun, yes, and an even twistier mystery. But even more than Knives Out, Glass Onion explores the way decent people can make so many little tiny compromises that they barely notice when they make big ones. When they lose sight of who they are. When they’ve come to think of themselves as objects to be bought—content to be shared for the most clicks.

Will you forgive a brief dodge into Joe Versus the Volcano? There comes a moment in that film when a capable woman, a person who prides herself on her independence and resilience, admits that she has a price. Someone the woman doesn’t trust offered to pay it, and she betrayed herself by accepting a job that compromised her. The scene where she shares all of this—admits it to herself—is one of the hearts of the film. It acts as a turning point, and shapes everything that comes after.

In Glass Onion everyone has a price, even our beloved Benoit Blanc. Sure, his is a bit more nebulous, but so what? It’s still a price.

I’ve been reading stacks of books about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I’ve been thinking really hard about Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi and John Darnielle’s Devil House, and why each of them affected me so much. I’ve been thinking a lot about how people bake their moral universes into their fictional universes. And Rian Johnson is a fun one for this. Mysteries are already great for analyzing class conflict—watch any Columbo episode and delight in how the Lieutenant plays up his schlubbiness and uses the rich criminals’ prejudices and snobberies against them, the way he takes the side of the have-nots the rich people are hurting. And Rian Johnson already had a pretty specific POV in his earlier films. For all its slickness, Brick was about a heartsick, well-meaning boy trying to help his troubled ex-girlfriend. Brothers Bloom was about the joy of creativity in the face of grief. Looper is about doing whatever is necessary to save a child. The Last Jedi is about living for the revolution instead of dying for it. And Knives Out is about doing the difficult but caring thing—even if it means your own ruin.

There comes a moment in I think all of Johnson’s movies, when the protagonist has to make a choice. (In Glass Onion there are a couple of these moments, but I’ll get there) I won’t go too far with this because I don’t want to spoil his other films, but there’s usually a point where someone has a choice between self-preservation, or risking themselves to help another person. In The Brothers Bloom the choice happens offscreen, and we see the results. In Looper the choice is the culmination of the film, while in The Last Jedi there are two such choices, one made by the obvious hero and one made by someone who, in most SFF stories, would be a side character at best. (It’s one of the many ways that Johnson honored the original spirit of Star Wars, but that’s a conversation for another day.) In Knives Out the big choice comes when Marta finds Fran overdosing in an abandoned room. Marta is already on the run. All she can see in front of her is a ruined career, a criminal record, her mother thrown out of the country. When she sees Fran she knows how to help her, but finding her there at all seems to reveal her as the blackmailer. If she runs, Fran will die, and Marta might be free. If she stays, she might save Fran’s life, but only at the cost of her own freedom and her mom’s home.

She chooses to stay.

And she’s caught. Her life as she knows it is over; she has destroyed her family’s future. A couple of plot machinations later she’s exonerated and the actual murderer is caught—but she doesn’t know that will happen when she makes her choice. She makes her decision knowing that she’s choosing her own negation, but knowing, too, that it’s the only way to restore the moral universe.

In Glass Onion these choices are scattered across the movie like food pellets at a petting zoo. And the thing that I find fascinating is that this time, the most important decisions all happen before the main action of the story. We see Andi’s decision to stop Miles from going ahead with Klear in a flashback, halfway through the movie, and then we watch as Miles and their friends—her friends, originally—unite against her to do the wrong thing. We don’t see the moment of Helen’s resolve to go to Blanc for justice, but we do see Blanc jumping to take the case, only hitting the brakes after Helen asks if it’ll be dangerous.

Of course it’ll be dangerous. But for a moment, Blanc drops his own compass in his eagerness to have real work again. In a way, this is the choice this time. This is the crux of the film, the reason for the film—Blanc’s momentary willingness to use Helen, but also, Helen’s willingness to go through with his ridiculous plan. And to be fair to Blanc, he fixes his moral lapse (if that’s what it is) by the end of the film.

In Glass Onion taking the easy path leads to comfort, wealth, and all the good works you promised yourself you’d do when you were young—but at the cost of other people’s lives. Doing the exciting thing knowing that you’re putting someone else in danger. But also doing the dangerous thing in order to find the truth.

Is there any moment of 2022 more exhilarating than Benoit Blanc yelling “No! It’s just dumb!”? If there is, it’s the moment when he says “It’s a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.”

OK but so here’s the thing. None of that means anything if it isn’t tied to something deeper. Free-floating genius simply leads to “smartest guy in the room” characters, which is what got us in this mess in the first place. (I am, myself, extremely intelligent. But I live in fear of either not being as smart as I need to be, or, worse, being the asshole who thinks I’m smart only to miss some giant obvious point, or, worst yet, being an arrogant prick. I’m smart, great—but what am I going to do with it? Can I use it to make things better, even slightly? And what does better look like?) And I want to reiterate that I don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of the whodunnit genre. I’ve read some Christie books, watched some adaptations, and I think I’ve seen all the classics of the canon. From what I’ve seen, especially in the sun-soaked mysteries (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, Last of Sheila) every character is awful. Every single person is mean and conniving—even the kids. And this is where Johnson sets himself apart. Going back to Knives Out, Marta isn’t a saint, but you could do worse in life than asking yourself “What would Marta do?”—just maybe don’t panic if you think you’ve given someone a lethal dose of medication. Moving on to Glass Onion, to this world of terrible shallow media elites, Johnson gives us two solid, good people.

Among all the grasping and glad-handing and unimaginable money, Andi is willing to draw a line in the sand—and then has to watch as all of her friends step over it. She’s not just fighting Miles over her own reputation or a severance package, but rather to try to stop Klear from endangering people. Helen is a teacher (already a life choice on par with Marta’s nursing) and it’s important to remember that once she gets to the island, Helen has no idea who the murderer is, or where the danger lies. Going to the island is putting herself at terrible risk. And on top of that she’s in a haze of grief. But even in that she responds to Whiskey’s friendliness in kind. On top of the work she’s doing just by being there, she goes out of her way to urge the other woman to free herself from these people.

Helen isn’t out for revenge. She’s not here to blackmail Miles. If she had walked in, told him who she was, and asked for a few million to keep her mouth shut he would’ve written her a check before she finished the sentence. He wouldn’t even blink. But what she wants is intangible. What revenge can she take that would bring her sister back? She wants the truth. She wants Andi’s friends to admit the truth, and she wants to finish her sister’s final act.

Because the other thing here, the true thing that can get lost in all the fun and explosions of the movie, is that Helen saved the fucking world. All the Disruptors were either ignorant of Klear’s dangers, or gave up arguing so Miles could get his way. Klear wasn’t something that could help Birdie and Duke’s brands, so they didn’t see it. Whiskey and Peg were along for the ride and didn’t even clock its significance until the final showdown. Claire and Lionel could have teamed up to blow the whistle, and it might have worked, but it would have destroyed the lives they’d built, and they quailed in the face of Miles’ legal army. And theoretically, Blanc could have tried to get the truth out after they were all safely away from the island—but then he’d certainly lose his status as an unimpeachable, god’s-eye moral figure as he explained all the events of the weekend. As he says himself: “This is where my jurisdiction ends. I have to answer to the police, the courts, the system. There’s nothing I can do.” Only Helen is willing to burn it all to the ground to save her sister’s name and expose Miles as a dangerous fraud.

If you’re willing to follow me to the end of this branch—come on! It’s nice out here, and there’s plenty of soft moss under this tree if we fall—Rian Johnson has repeatedly in interviews teased out the role of the detective in the whodunnit. They’re not the protagonist. As Johnson said in this great Vulture conversation with Nicholas Quah (which also contains a delightful round of F/M/K, check it out):

“I think it can be kind of a trap to start thinking that the detective is your protagonist. That’s actually a mistake. The detective is always at the center of it, but he’s also outside of the realm of the human drama… The detective has to be godlike and sort of outside that realm, which is all to say that the detective always kind of operates according to the needs of the mystery.”

When Helen appeals to Benoit she is, she thinks, at the end of her endurance. She’s just been bested by an idiot, the monster who murdered her sister. A room full of rich shitheads watched it happen. Miles is going to get away with it, the justice that was in her hands has been taken away. And now this rich fuck is smirking at her and telling her that he’s “sorry for her loss”? How can anyone live with that? She goes to Benoit and she tells him “I need you to do something” and he reminds her that he can’t. He’s reached the limit of his authority and without physical evidence he can’t help. As he said he’s not Batman, or for that matter Daredevil, or Punisher, or John Wick. He can’t stalk Miles and murder him in retribution. The law is not his to manipulate—and the entire point here is the idea that truth and justice are beyond being manipulated. So he does what he can. He gives her liquor, and he gives her the piece of Klear that Miles so arrogantly tossed to him earlier in the evening. But it’s up to her to use it. Because, yeah—no one’s coming to save us, right? If we want to live in a better world, if we want to repair our climate, if we want to be led by decent people instead of vapid rich shitheads, we have to be willing to disrupt the system.

And this is very personal but I’m gonna put it here anyway: this movie makes me want to write. All of Rian Johnson’s movies have done that. It’s so fun, so witty, so effervescent that it makes me want to create work. Writing about his stuff, sure, because I want everyone to watch this movie, and talk about it, and love it, and I try to walk this world with the words “What would Ebert do?” on my mind, always. But beyond that—I want to fucking work. I want to write something for the pure joy of it, I want to write something that will make someone else smile as hard as I did watching this movie.

Obviously Leah Schnelbach wants all of Andi Brand’s outfits, but they want Helen’s heart most of all. Now they’ll ironically suggest that you come visit them on the murderous island that is Twitter!