**Spoilers herein**
At the climax of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, master detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) makes an unusual complaint. Upon identifying the culprit, a reveal that shocks no one, he exclaims, “This is a stupid mystery!” He’s frustrated with the simplicity of the case, which any layman—or, maybe more importantly, any police officer—would have correctly solved in one guess.
I, for one, think he’s on to something. Just as Blanc implies, mystery movies are supposed to challenge and test us. They should be based on clever crimes committed by clever, unseen foes. Otherwise, why would an expert detective be needed? In fact, Blanc’s presence is the only reason that we don’t guess the villain: we expect that, since Blanc is around, something trickier must be at play. But, as it turns out, there isn’t.
Writer and director Rian Johnson is very pleased with himself for this fakeout. That’s because he has social commentary in mind: he wants to show us that our misguided reverence for tycoons like Miles Bron (Edward Norton) blinds us to crimes and misdeeds going on all around us. That our corporate oligarchy is one big “glass onion,” a collection of labyrinthian layerings that actually needn’t be peeled away, since they can easily be seen through, if only we thought to look. In other words, our emperors have no clothes, and our collective assumption that they do distracts us from society’s true crooks.
That’s a fine sentiment, but, again, it’s not the reason we fall for the misdirections of this particular film. The reason is that we’re watching a movie, and we therefore expect layers, because we expect filmmakers to reward our two hours of engagement with something interesting. We don’t expect a film without layers, because such a film would obviously be a huge letdown. Johnson promises us a great mystery, disappoints us (and Blanc), and then lectures us on why giving him the benefit of the doubt was foolish. He graciously explains that if we took the bait, that proves that we’ve allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by dumb tech bros.
Johnson also wrote and directed Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), and while I’m not one of that film’s many ardent haters, I can see a discouraging pattern forming in his work. He denies us the payoff that we came to the movie expecting, then he dares to use our surprise as a teaching moment. I support defying or even criticizing one’s viewers, but wagging a finger at them for wanting the kind of movie they were promised is priggish. You’ll notice that Johnson opts to direct movies with big budgets and big stars, thereby attracting a blockbuster Hollywood audience. Being so disdainful of Hollywood expectations, perhaps he should just…make a non-Hollywood film. (Less money in that, of course.)
It’s not only at the end of the movie that Benoit Blanc expresses frustration with a lack of intellectual challenge. A pensive sage in Knives Out (2019), he in fact spends much of this film grumpily complaining about the idiocy and banality surrounding him. That makes him the one relatable character in the film, and his awareness almost salvages the experience for us. But in the end, acknowledging that you’ve made a “stupid mystery” doesn’t mean you haven’t.
–Jim Andersen
For more reviews, see my review of Top Gun: Maverick