Beauty is Onion Deep

Daniel Craig and some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood to-day star in Rian Johnson's past couple films, Knives Out and 2022's Glass Onion*. Knives Out centered on the incomparable Ana de Armas and Glass Onion has the exquisite Janelle Monae. The newer film can also boast the presence of Jessica Henwick and Madelyn Cline (I accidentally typed "presents" and almost kept it!). And Kate Hudson looks gorgeous in a bikini in this movie, too. So there are plenty of good reasons to see this one.

As for the plot, Johnson's intentions seem to have been to start with something very stupid and show how it can seem clever. This leads to the central metaphor of a "glass onion" which, it's explained, can seem like something with intricate layers but the centre is actually visible at all times.

The title is also the name of a Beatles song, of course, and that song is used in the end credits. John Lennon's intention was to mock people who concocted complex theories about Beatles' lyrics ("Here's another clue for you all/The walrus was Paul"). And perhaps Johnson is also asking the audience not to read too much into his films. Maybe he's growing tired of being a poster boy for leftwing zealotry. Several of the rightwing monsters in this film, particularly Kate Hudson's character, are portrayed with a lot more affection.

However, anyone who believes Johnson buys into the "kill the past" line might feel Glass Onion gives them, shall we say, fuel for the fire.

Any attempt to apply logic to any aspect of the story will yield the viewer a senseless answer. Was it the protagonist's plan to survive being at the centre of a massive explosion? Are any of the coincidences that propel the plot meant to be at all plausible? I think Johnson is trying to say, "Nope, I'm not really trying to say anything." He's just trying to give us some campy fun.

At one point, Benoit Blanc, Craig's character, claims not to be Batman. Not the Christian Bale one or the Robert Pattinson one, no. But the Adam West one or the George Clooney one? Just maybe.

Glass Onion is available on Netflix.

*It's billed as Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery but Johnson has said in interviews he prefers simply the title "Glass Onion" and so do I.

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The Disunited Thrombeys of America

2019 was a big year for films about a servant class rebelling against the bourgeoisie. Rian Johnson's Knives Out presents an allegory for U.S. immigration policies and changing racial population in the form of a drawing room murder mystery. Like a Soviet propaganda film, its villains are broad caricatures and its heroine is intensely adorable and earnest. Even so, the screenplay must have seemed exquisitely clever to those who agree with the film's politics. Johnson tidily marries his simplistic political argument to an ensemble mystery that seems to draw on various pulp detective stories. I was most strongly reminded of the excellent 1961 Hammer film Taste of Fear.

For the record, I have nothing against immigrants, even necessarily illegal immigrants. I've personally met illegal immigrants who work very hard at difficult and compassionate jobs. I don't think the issue is as simple as the movie thinks it is but even saying that makes me sound a little like the character played by Don Johnson in the film, one of several strawmen Johnson sets up to make any argument contrary to his own appear foolish or racist.

The film centres on the always charming Ana de Armas playing a nurse named Marta. She works for a famous, very wealthy, mystery author called Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). Marta is alarmed when she accidentally mixes up Thrombey's medication bottles and she tearfully tells him he has only ten minutes to live. Because Thrombey sympathises with her and her illegal immigrant mother, he quickly devises a way for her to escape any blame and thus any undue attention being called to her mother's immigration status. But soon after Thrombey's death it turns out he had even more reason than that for Marta to look innocent; he'd recently changed his will to leave everything to her, cutting out all his children and grandchildren, a series of cartoonish depictions of rich white people played by famous actors.

Marta sets an impossible standard of purity. She's more a demon of Rian Johnson's politically nurtured self-hatred than a genuine depiction of an immigrant worker, or human being of any occupation or background. Marta is so absurdly pure that she becomes physically ill and pukes whenever she attempts to lie, something that Johnson utilises for sight gags as well as for plot mechanics. How can Marta conceal her part in Thrombey's death if she can't lie? It's Thrombey who quickly devises a script for Marta to navigate questioning from a famous detective called Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).

I won't reveal the film's twists or turns but if you remember Johnson's politics you'll easily guess which characters are Marta's true allies and which are only pretending. Chris Evans as one of the disinherited Thrombeys calls his cousin, Meg (Katherine Langford), an SJW so you can pretty easily guess a thing or two about him while Meg, of course, turns out to be the most sympathetic of the Thrombeys, after Thrombey himself. Perhaps it's natural that, among the white characters, the good ones in Johnson's opinion are the writer and the superhero detective.

Sadly, the nature of their roles deprives Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, and Don Johnson, as Harlan Thrombey's offspring, the opportunity to give interesting performances. Ana de Armas has to maintain the impression of complete incorruptibility, the implication seemingly being that if she has a moment of moral weakness or inclination to mischief this would somehow disqualify her from inheriting this country, I mean, the Thrombey estate. Puritanism tends to sound much better when it's only a fantasy.

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