The Glass Onion: Simple Answers to Complex Problems

Yadda yadda this review/analysis of a mystery movie will contain spoilers. If you were going to see it, you'd have seen it already what with it being the crown jewel of the internet at the moment, and this giant holiday break to watch Netflix during.

I am not here to bury or praise KO:GO. It's... fine. It's not a terrible, humorless, woke-fest. It's not the greatest movie of the year. It's a mild invigoration of the old murder mystery genre with rather good comedic actors and a workman-like script. It's about 90% as good as the previous Knives Out, and way less ambitious than Rian Johnson's actual murder mystery "Brick." The setting and camerawork are gorgeous but most of the characters are paper thin. I think everyone knows this and those claiming that KO:GO is at any extreme of the quality spectrum are probably selling something. I'm glad I watched it but unlikely to watch again.

(You could say there is some question about whether Knives Out and Glass Onion are really mysteries, given that "what murder is even mysterious" gets introduced late and "who the murderer is" is revealed with half an hour to go, so it's plotting has the pace more of a thriller... but honestly mystery as a genre is all over the map because of how often they are trying to twist the concept. Myself I've watched "Murder on the Orient Express" a dozen times and that certainly doesn't have a traditional whodunnit plot.)

I'm here to talk about *the* central metaphor of the whole movie: the glass onion.

Benoit Blanc spells it out plainly for us (as he does so many other things) : A glass onion has many layers to peel back, but really you could see through it the whole time.

This is not a subtle metaphor: it's the title of the movie, the shape of the mansion, the ornate sculpture in the opening set piece, the name of the bar in the backstory, and the logic by which Blanc determines who the murderer is.

Unfortunately, as a central theme and moral... it's a really uncomfortable one. "The truth is obvious on first glance. Any seeming complexity is just a ruse." That sure is, uh, some lesson to impress on people.

Now to be fair to Johnson/Blanc, it is textually stated that the glass onion is only the message of this movie. Other mysteries would presumably have other lessons (such as in KO1, when the woman who believes from the beginning that she committed the crime, did not.) It's okay for each movie in a series to have a different, pithy lesson that is confined to one episode. (And sometimes in life "look at what you are actually doing, and not the elaborate justifications around it, is a very good lesson to keep in mind. Always be making sure you aren't in the Milgram Experiment!)

But man, even in just this movie the theme sits awkwardly. As has been noted, the characters are largely empty stereotypes (exempting Ms. Brand), with no inner complexity and some secret counter-intuitive reason they would have committed murder: what you see is all you get.

This is epitomized in the very first set piece: 4 long time friends receive a mysterious box, and have a phone conference to decipher it's puzzles to get to the mystery prize at the center. The one pariah sits alone with the box, and after sulking for a few minutes she rips it apart with a hammer and just grabs the prize. "There are complex ways that distract people who are trying to engage, but the direct way just better and more enlightened." the scene is saying.

... but like, where's the fun in that? The friends were having a genuinely good time with their puzzling. Yes we can just bite the tootsie-pop to get to the center, but what are you missing?

(I could go so far as to call this theme an "anti-mystery" since it is antithetical to what the genre is supposed to be "about", but shrug, mysteries have played with "the answer was in plain sight" for a very long time already.)

This also contributes to the widespread impression that this is a particularly political movie. There's only two actually right-wing coded characters: the manosphere streamer and the celeb who says offensive things (and she's just dumb, not ideological.) Otherwise on team rich, there's a billionaire but he could be SBF as much as Musk, and there's a governor who speaks out loudly for climate justice, and a Black young scientist. And a bunch of rich people fighting another rich person is not exactly class warfare. (The victim is more left coded, but only in terms of characteristics not anything they do or say.) But when you add those politically charged stereotypes to a message of "all you have to do is judge someone on what you first see about them" it sure sounds like "crimes are always committed by your political enemies, never by your allies."

These do lack the nuance of KO1's social-justice-college-teen who spouts the right words but turns in the illegal immigrant when her tuition is at stake, but do not a political tract make.

The one nuance that remains, that trace of authenticity, is surprising support for Miles Bron. From Benoit's speech, you would conclude that because Bron is not a brilliant scientist himself, and he hires others to make his puzzles and mysteries and any scientific discovery that isn't dangerously unstable, that he has zero value to base his worth and empire on. It's all just lies and threats and stealing other's work.

Except the talent "find the talent in others and help it grow" is actually a really good talent? The flashback at the bar (which normally I would expect to be subjective and later re-interpreted by others, but I guess not in this movie) mentions how Bron took all these people striving with their dreams, but failing, and launched them into orbits of success. That's awesome! And you think organizing a puzzle game for your friends or hosting a weekend party is easy if you hire other people to write the mysteries? Logistics of party-running is a lot of work! In particular, it's described that both the streamer and the fashion icon were disgraced, and Bron supported them when no one else would, and found them platforms they later rebounded and flourished with.

These are, well, good and admirable skills. His threats and thievery and denial about his own invention definitely are not. But Benoit wasn't saying that Bron is a skilled man who misused his talents to hurt others, he's saying Bron has no talents at all, despite positive depiction of those talents early in the movie.

Double Feature: Hustle, Emily the Criminal.

 

Closing out on all the acclaimed movies from 2022 to make by "best of" list definitive, I watched these two movies near each other and think they make excellent complements you should watch while spending New Year's in your apartment because everyone you'd want to go to a party with has COVID, flu, or RSV.

They're a good match because they have a lot in common:

• Netflix prestige shows
• Featuring a main actor known for their comedy movies, but who are quite good at serious drama
• (If you are like me, you might even watch them anticipating a drama and be surprised at how serious the intro is.)
• An intense "no time to stop and think" flow of action/choices/plot
• Heavy handed display of modern tech and social trends - everyone uses smartphones constantly, there are viral videos and apps, etc.
• Follows characters on the margins of society, who want to reach for the top of the pyramid but due to past mistakes have trouble even getting their foot in the door, and therefore about the winner-takes-all modern economy.
• That "past mistake" in both movies is an "assault conviction 5 years ago."
  

But there they diverge. Hustle is the heart-warming uplifting one, because it's really a sports movie, the kind about being an underdog and having that miraculous win in the final minutes. I don't know the genre, what it lacks in surprise it more than makes up for being effective at evoking the emotions it wants you to feel.

It's interesting the way Hustle overcomes the dystopian marketplace. An idiot billionaire gets his comeuppance and the power of "personal connections to famous people" lets a lot of basketball stars cameo and proves "heart finds heart" or "for the love of the game" or some combination of the two.

As I said, it's about the margins of society - a Spanish construction worker who plays street courts, and is discovered by Adam Sandler (both movies have bearded, charismatic, high-energy men who inducts the neophyte into the demimonde.) In particular, Bo Cruz the basketball rookie labors under an assault conviction that is just at the margin where people can conceivably hire him if they are feeling generous, but have an easy reason to reject them if for any reason the employer wants to. In the emotional center of the movie, Bo admits that he got in an argument with his ex's boyfriend over who gets to keep his daughter that escalated to a fight.

It's a movie about forgiveness. It finds a crime people would actually be viscerally opposed to, but the most sympathetic circumstances for it, for an industry that is frequently plagued by assault-conviction-prone athletes. (Forgiveness when "this man will make me millions of dollars" is tricky ethical territory to try to get into, but that doesn't make "therefore NEVER forgive" the ideal answer.)

It all feels both "gritty" and heart-warming, which matches the showy shots of the scenes all happening in "real Philadelphia."

So then watch and contrast with Emily the Criminal, which watches a driven woman with college loans osmose from the world of temporary gig jobs to gig criminality.

There is a major emphasis in this movie on the way "playing by the rules" screws over most proletariat, especially ones who for any reason are even more marginal. Emily has an assault conviction on her record, and is tormented by HR managers who ask her about her past swearing they don't do a background check, and then when she doesn't fess up to it they reveal they DID do a background check, and now can reject her for her dishonesty. Her hours are toyed with by the caprice of gig-supervisors who mock her for not having the protections of real employment. She has $70,000 in loans to pay off (for an incomplete art degree) and her current payments don't even keep up with interest. She sees her friends who did get a decent career enjoying perks like a company trip to Portugal while she debates moving back in with her step-dad. And when she is offered a dream job... it turns out to be an internship with no pay. (That scene is particularly trenchant, with the employer saying she had it tough getting started too in order to justify not paying people, in a way that highlights how the problems between different generations are different, even if neither is strictly better.)

So getting screwed when playing by the rules, drives her to the criminal lifestyle, which is flowing so smoothly it's just like being a gig contractor.

(My one objection is that her non-degree is in painting. I know that it's to highlight the impossibility of her finding a stable career, but also it reinforces the idea that people who screwed by college loans and the economy are so because they chose frivolous majors. That's not true! People who got "business" degrees or went to professional school for whatever career was in low-demand that year (lawyers, pharmacists) found themselves just as underemployed when the market decided it didn't need any more of them right now.)

When I worked in campaign fundraising, we would just call random people on our list, tell them about our candidate, ask for a donation, and take their credit card number over the phone. And I was shocked this was how it worked since... once we had their number, we could do anything with it. They didn't even know we were a real campaign, ANYONE could call random people, say they were a good progressive campaign, ask for credit card numbers, and then steal thousands of dollars. I was just surprised to see the world work in such incautious way.

I told a friend this and he said "yeah, crime is actually easy, if you do it once. The risky part is that it's SO easy, and if you do it a lot then you will get caught."

That's Emily's arc through the criminal world. Ripping off a couple hundred dollars is amazingly easy.  But the more she gets into it, the more her aggressive side comes out, and she takes increasing risks both for herself and the people around her.

This is when we see the flip side of "living by the rules is screwing you over" which is that living OUTSIDE the rules introduces many new risks. You can be cheated and violently attacked and there is no System to turn to for defense. Multiple times someone turns on her and says "what are you going to do, call the cops?" It takes a certain sort of personality to survive in this wild with no safety net of social order - and we delight in discovering that Emily has that sort of persevering persona. 

At first as the audience we cheer on this girlboss, committing surprising acts of violence in defense of herself and "not letting anything stop her." But we realize like in Breaking Bad, Emily is not an innocent girl "forced" on this path - it comes very naturally to her and part of her wants it. She even eggs her mentor into going farther to take revenge than he can stomach.

And then near the end we get Emily's version of the scene where "she admits the nature of her assault conviction five years ago." 

It was just a guy I was dating and we fought all the time. One day, I just... you know what my mistake really was though? I didn't go far enough. I didn't really scare him. You know, 'cause if I had, he would've never called the police.

And you know, I was just utterly charmed by the likable character's backstory revelation being "they actually did something pretty bad, and do not have a sympathetic reason or are deeply remorseful for it." It is not just that the gig economy has driven someone to desperation, but that this person was looking for a way to "break bad" themselves.

Unsurprisingly, Emily has a much less heartwarming conclusion than Hustle. See them both.

The Menu

There is just so much to say about "The Menu", the horror movie about avant garde dining starring Ralph Fiennes and Anna Taylor Joy. I can't even really spoiler you, because frankly most of the movie is given away in its trailer if not the premise itself.

And you should definitely go see it. But for the few reveals that you still may not know beforehand, consider this spoiler territory from here on.

Sticks the Landing

I've come to irrationally hate a certain phrase in reviews: "it sticks the landing."

"Sticks the landing" is something said about gymnastics performances where the gymnast lands with perfect poise at the end. It refers to the many shows that FAIL in their endings. When we watch a long series (television, or franchise series) we are wondering if there will be a payoff, or it will end in disappointment: with unresolved plotlines, unearned victories, complete lack of understanding the work's themes, or just something that disagrees with our own interpretation of the series so far.

Famous recent embarrassing endings include: SW Rise of Skywalker, Game of Thrones, WandaVision, Enterprise, True Detective S1, some say the Wire or Sopranos, Seinfeld, Battlestar Galactica, and the overall fifth season of Babylon 5, Winter Soldier and Falcon. The fandoms live in dread of these ruining their last memories of the shows they love.

StL means a show has avoided that failure and is... fine. There is no sharp turn off a cliff at the 1 yard line. The villain you expected is defeated, possibly at a high cost including some lives of the main cast, the themes and mood carry through, and basically everything you expected would happen does. It can even be some of the most touching moments and best action of the entire series. It's satisfying AND reassuring.

Famous recent landings stuck include: SW Revenge of the Sith, Breaking Bad, West Wing, Farscape, Fargo seasons, Avengers Endgame, HBO Watchmen, the Expanse, Deep Space 9. I'd even say Lord of the Rings and the Wheel of Time books.

They all were fine, and for being fine, they received lavish praise because they avoided disappointment. And it's about these shows that I hear the phrase "stuck the landing."

I don't think the phrase is wrong. It seems to accurately describe endings that satisfy and don't disappoint, in a way a gymnast's final moment should. It demonstrates a minimal level of skill and awareness of your work.

I just also think that level is unambitious for what a true work of art should be trying for.

There is a third type of ending that is the key to interpreting everything that came before. These are endings that re-contextualize all of the series so far, or are vital to understanding the work. This is fairly common in scifi or fantasy where there is some Metaphysical Secret of the Universe that will be revealed, or crime/mysteries where you find out whodunnit at the end, though it's not universal in either genre. It can just be the revelation of the psychological dynamics of a character that shows this was always going to end as a tragedy, or even just enough emotional pathos that you realize the point was the character's journey and not plot. They can sometimes be confusing to the audience, who expected a neat conclusion and didn't get it.

Recent key ending examples include: SW Return of the Jedi (and redeeming Anakin), the OA (both seasons), Utena, Evangelion, Arcane, Twin Peaks, Star Trek TNG maybe, the Boys S1, For All Mankind S3, the Leftovers, A Place Further than the Universe, Outer Range, the Sandman and Watchmen comics, Station Eleven, all the good Mike Flanagan stuff.

The ideal case is, once you've seen a key ending, you immediately want to rewatch the entire series to see all its scenes again now knowing the proper context.

And while the line between "embarrassing and StL endings" may be fuzzy, and the line between "StL and key endings" is also gray... you probably have noticed whether an ending ends up in "embarrassing or key" can be a hard question. Sopranos and Seinfeld were certainly trying to make a re-contextualizing "statement" about the whole of the show in their final episode... but largely just ended up annoying people.

I highly value a good key ending. It's "informationally dense" telling me major things I didn't already know. And it requires intricate buildup in all of the episodes before for the payoff to "make sense." 

By contrast... StL episodes bore me. If I like your characters and moods I'll probably be fine watching, but I don't actually have to "find out" that they defeat the villain and maybe a main character dies. Lately, I've even stopped watching the final parts of a series because I just don't care. I'll stick around to find out a big revelation but "they did in fact save the day, but at a price" isn't it.

There's a lack of ambition to sticking the landing. It's about serving a product. A key ending would be if the gymnast revealed they were upside down the whole time and bungieing from the ceiling.

And Or

In case you were wondering what the "premiere Star Wars Blog of 2014" thought before making your decision, yeah, you should watch Andor. I think most of you know about it already, and hear it was good. If you haven't watched it, go do that thing. It's worth subscribing to Disney+ for a month. The rest of this post is analysis and highlights assuming you've seen it.

Oh, also a 1970's intro sequence for the show.

The Founder (hint: it's class)

  "The Founder" is possibly the movie most about America I have ever seen.

For one, it's about the creation and rise of McDonald's, which is arguably the "most American" institution this country has given the world. Michael Keaton's Ray Kroc even gives a speech saying that the golden arches should rise to join the church steeple cross and the city hall tower as the iconic spires of American towns. (It's also a movie that mostly takes place in suburbs, highways, and small towns - neither big city downtowns nor rural landscapes feature much in the movie.)

But this "biographical drama" is much more layered than that. It's full of ambiguities and nuances that hit closer to our history than cynical speeches.

The movie follows Ray Kroc, and it shows him as a desperate failure, trying to convince drive-in restaurants to embrace automation, and failing badly. We have sympathy for him (especially as we see how long he has to wait for his food when he does order.) But he's not Willie Lowman who has to do this because otherwise his family will starve - we see he has enough money for a comfortable lifestyle already. He's just too ambitious, he wants more and isn't ashamed that he'll never be satisfied with simply any finite ceiling.

We then meet the hapless McDonald's brothers, who have turned their San Bernadino restaurant into a wonder of efficiency. The idea of 15 cent burgers given to you hot and fresh 30 seconds after you ordered them is portrayed as a miracle.

... one view over the course of the film is to see this restaurant design as genius gee-whiz inventiveness, while Kroc's future mass-production franchising of the design as soul-killing mechanization. But they're both part and parcel of the same arrow - the McDonalds turned food into the "legible" nightmare of "Seeing Like a State", and Kroc brought it to its ultimate fruition. The McDonalds were already, even if only in one restaurant, making chefs into employees who do nothing but flip burgers and serving only 3 menu items because that's what 85% of people order anyway, and killing any variety because that would introduce inefficiency.

One of the all-American points that the characters bring up here, is that drive-thru dine-ins had adult employees serving teenagers who loitered around, and how distasteful that was to them. Whereas the fast-food innovation returns us to the "proper" hierarchy of teenagers serving adults.

At the other end of the movie, there's a nice bit of ethnic-cultural commentary too. One of the original brothers asks Kroc why he didn't just copy the idea and mass produce it without them. And Ray going on an elegiac tear about how "McDonalds" is such a wholesome, all-American name whereas who would want to eat at a place called "Kroc's"?

Keaton is fascinating as the uber-ambitious, class-ambivalent, charming-like-a-wolf Ray Kroc. He is early on drawn to the world of the rich because they can buy his franchises and finance his restaurant. But his pure drive for efficient food production is so incorruptible that he turns on his rich golf friends because they sell fried chicken and biscuits at their restaurants, and do not personally sweep up the trash in front of restaurants when it gets out of hand (which Kroc does.) The best scene in the movie is him angrily yelling on the golf course about a badly done burger (in his hand.) We love his demonic singular drive then.

But the point is that the idle rich can not grow American's dream. Ray then goes looking for the rising middle class, to find men-and-wives with ambition to run a restaurant to the exact specifications he demands. He goes to VFW halls (this is in the 50's, when the age there is much younger) instead of country clubs. He hires Jewish Bible salesmen because they must be really driven. He's all about breaking traditional barriers to exalt the virtues of the middle class - conformity, hard-working, cleanliness. (And at the same time he falls out of love with his socialite wife, for a woman who has as much mercenary passion for business and mass production as him.)

But the things that we love him for, become the things that we hate him for in the second half. The initial inspiration for the McDonalds design, and the iron clad contract guaranteeing no deviation from that design, hold him back as the world presents new ideas for how to make restaurants even faster, more efficient, and cheaper. But the perfectionism of the original owners denies the changes he wants.

So Ray graduates to legal and financial chicanery, to steal the business out from under the hapless original founders. It is, indeed, very American that way. And we wouldn't even fault Ray for wanting to launch his brand independent of them, except for him being so egotistical that he can't just buy them off, he has to claim every idea of theirs as his own. He steals their name, he declares himself the Founder and his first franchised copy as "restaurant number one", and drives them out of business by setting up a McD's across the street from them. Can't have a real story of America without a Big Steal.

Enter Sandman

 

Long and short of it:

If you've read the comics, skip the series as it's a bad adaptation that adds very little.

If you haven't read the comics, this is probably the best television all year because you've never seen writing like this. Watch it.

Spoilers and many thoughts below the cut: