{"id":22,"date":"2022-12-30T17:12:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T17:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joshtest04.wordpress.com\/2022\/12\/30\/a-class-onion-glass-onion\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T20:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T19:21:42","slug":"a-class-onion-glass-onion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/2022\/12\/30\/a-class-onion-glass-onion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Class Onion (Glass Onion)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Spoilers, naturally.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Blanc is meant to be at rock bottom here but damn if that doesn\u2019t look like a good time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whenever someone asks me about Sherlock Holmes, I tell them the same (somewhat exaggerated) factoid: every single one of Doyle\u2019s short stories about the famous detective concerns at least one character who has a dark secret from his or her time in the colonies. You can comically unravel a good number of the stories just by keeping an ear out for which character has been abroad and assuming that any mystery will have taken place therein. Why is Sherlock Holmes, a character who rarely if ever leaves England, so concerned with goings-on in lands far away? It\u2019s because for all their pure-logic puzzle-box mystique, detective stories most often reflect the anxieties of the times and places they are written in. To have a mystery you must have secrets, and to have secrets you need anxieties. Sherlock fears the colonies, Poirot the precarious luxury of high soceity between the wars. Gervase Fen is very concerned about pylons and the electricity board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it is into this tradition that Rian Johnson\u2019s Southern US detective Benoit Blanc steps with his duo of murder mystery films which reflect a modern anxiety: that the rich are going to kill us all. The first film, Knives Out<\/em>, steps lightly as it weaves a (slightly) contrived story about ungrateful children and rightful inheritance. The naked inequality of it all is present but nudged to one side, and by constraining the world of the film to a single house Johnson is able to turn the world upside down at the climax, with struggling nurse Marta on top and the privileged rabble of disinherited children below. It\u2019s neat, if fantastical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The just-released sequel, Glass Onion<\/em>, dives further into the mires of the present: it\u2019s about an unfathomably wealthy tech entrepreneur and his chosen friends, it\u2019s set in the COVID pandemic. It touches on the energy crisis, lingers extensively on social media and PR cycles, and has Dave Bautista playing a manosphere-aping supplement salesman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He\u2019s not quite as horribly tactile as Eisenberg\u2019s Lex Luthor but Edward Norton\u2019s variety of psychopath outfits are fun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Edward Norton\u2019s antagonist Miles Bron is a billionaire in the mold of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, someone with world-changing resources which he devotes to the expression of personal whims (c.f. child submarines or virtual reality headsets) in the face of the cosmic terror of actually changing anything. The story goes thus: six aspirational young adults used to meet in their local bar, sadly closed down by the present for undiscussed economic reasons, and talk about their individual dreams. Positive-vibes hypeman Miles Bron becomes the de-facto leader of the pack, who along with Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s Andi Brand founded a generic tech megacorp the resources of which were siphoned into a level of success for the other four. Andi and Miles came into conflict over a dangerous new fuel research and Miles cruelly gave Andi the boot from the company she made great, by use in court of a crude facsimile of the bar napkin on which the company was conceived. Her friends all turned against her, Andi was set to expose the fraud with the discovery of the original napkin when she was murdered by persons unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already we have a fictional contrivance: the idea that for the creation of a tech company on the level of Facebook for instance there must have been someone <\/em>who was uniquely talented. Andi Brand (a curious choice of surname) is the real talent in the duo, the true owner of the critical napkin that much of the plot revolves around. But the idea is ridiculous. Corporate creation myths are ridiculous. Facebook\u2019s billion-dollar success story was fueled by a tech bubble and merciless exploitation of monopoly status. There are very few great ideas sketched out in margins, and none of them are about founding adtech firms\u200a\u2014\u200anobody ever scrawled \u2018misrepresent video views\u2019 on a snotty tissue. It\u2019s interesting to note that this is the second film of the year with a scene where a money-making deal is noted on a napkin. In Elvis<\/em> however, the napkin is representative of the scurrilous nature of the deal, the betrayal that must be hidden. Here it\u2019s a case of good napkin v bad napkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bad napkin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere in the story Johnson seems to understand this about the fabulously successful: that they write these stories about themselves. Bron\u2019s affectation over the Mona Lisa is discussed in exactly these terms, as an attempt to mythologise himself and his \u2018works\u2019 by attachment to a recognised greatness. But in the case of the napkins, Johnson indulges himself, that fantastical climax from the first film reasserting itself in the suggestion that maybe everything would be fine if we had only elevated the right <\/em>billionaire based on the right <\/em>napkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Glass Onion <\/em>has been lauded in some parts for its integration of COVID restrictions into the story, with some light, humourous character work around which characters are wearing which kinds of masks and how, as well as Blanc\u2019s overall motivation being driven by lockdown-imposed boredom. I do think this is a bold thing to have attempted, although it\u2019s a fool\u2019s endeavour to try and view the events of COVID as if they are settled history: that time we all wore masks and some people continued to throw parties, ho ho. It could just as easily settle, as many do want, into a grand narrative about the unimaginably disgraceful actions of talentless governments, or else a story about wide, mass tragedy. It\u2019s akin to watching early World War II movies which are unaware that the popular history of that war will yet be in large part determined by the events of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course the movie also quickly sweeps the subject of the pandemic aside with some ambiguous super-vaccine technobabble in the opening scene. This isn\u2019t really a story about that. It forms part of a conscious decision in the film to take aim at the stupidity of it all, the personal contemptibility and self-satisfaction of characters like Bron in place of a broader view of what actually makes them bad. It\u2019s a focus on how Tesla\u2019s \u201cfull self-driving\u201d cars might throw themselves at cardboard children in the street while glossing over the more prosaic evil of torpedoing plans for public transport by turning up in the guise of Springfield\u2019s Lyle Lanley and proposing all that money be spent on a ridiculous tunnel instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve sold road tunnels to San Jose, Miami and Fort Lauderdale and by gum it put them on the map.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, Glass Onion <\/em>is of a piece with The Dark Knight Rises<\/em> in this regard: movies where billionaires have invented free energy but the \u2018correct\u2019 thing presented to do is to not use it to change the world at all. Probably a coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Coming back to the Mona Lisa, <\/em>the painting is critical to where I think the movie fails on its own terms: at the climax. The film reaches a point where Blanc has successfully laid out the entire mystery, warts and all. We know who did what, and when, and why. In a callback to a point made earlier in the film though, Blanc and Helen Brand (the sister of the dead woman) have no recourse, no evidence, no legal route through which to see justice done. Solving the mystery does not provide closure or remedy the wrongdoing. This is a deeply unsatisfying way to end a movie however. So Blanc conspires with Brand to trigger an explosive climax: Using Bron\u2019s new energy source, they cause a hydrogen fire at his Greek island estate, burning his possessions and the Mona Lisa along with it. As the characters painstakingly explain to us, this will permanently tar Bron\u2019s name as the man who inadequately cared for a great work of art, a humiliation he cannot recover from. Seeing the wind change, his underlings abandon him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everyone knows it says \u201cThis is a fake\u201d on the back anyway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s artfully done but that doesn\u2019t seem like much of a punishment to me. The oft-noted propensity for Teslas to catch fire hasn\u2019t done much to blunt the enthusiasm of their owners for their chaotic CEO. Despite desperate attempts by culture war fanatics to make it so, Kim Kardashian damaging Marilyn Monroe\u2019s famous dress hasn\u2019t roused much career-damaging shame. The rotating door of treasured underlings cursing his name and accusing him of all kinds of crimes didn\u2019t bring down the Trump White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an interesting conversation earlier in the film between Blanc and Brand which, in my opinion, hints at an earlier revision to the plot. Blanc emphasises the bloodless nature of the killing of Andi Brand, how there was no force and no violence involved. Any of the presumably-squeemish tech and politics nerds that make up Bron\u2019s circle could have committed it. Helen Brand, by contrast, is not afraid to step into the tiger\u2019s den\u200a\u2014\u200athere\u2019s a running joke about her getting drunk and doing something unwisely confrontational. The movie\u2019s single pistol, which Bron used to try and murder Helen minutes before, is not present in the final scene. Personally, were I making the movie, I would give Helen more to do and say in the final seconds of the film than smashing a series of glass sculptures and accidentally making an incoherent reference to the Just Stop Oil <\/em>protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had totally forgot that Mark Gatiss is piloting a helicopter for some reason in this scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another Sherlock<\/em>, that played by Benedict Cumberbatch in Steven Moffat\u2019s and Mark Gatiss\u2019s modern-day adaptation, had a mystery with an ending not dissimilar to Glass Onion<\/em>. At the end of the third season, Sherlock faces off against a Murdoch-esque newspaper magnate named Charles Augustus Magnussen, who taunts Sherlock at the climax of the episode in a similar way to how Bron taughts Brand and Blanc. Magnussen cannot be shown to have committed any crime, and his privilege and wealth will see him out of any embarrassment caused. Sherlock shoots him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Glass Onion <\/em>wants to be a fantasy, it should provide a properly fantastical ending. Miles Bron should be convicted and go to jail. If you can\u2019t provide that, Bron should be immolated in a fireball of his own hubris. If you can\u2019t provide that, Brand should shoot him. As it stands, Brand lights the touch paper, the grand explosion goes off, and the film cuts back to the lounge, everyone in place. Only property is damaged. To punctuate the point, Bron\u2019s car falls through the ceiling. Like a Marvel movie, the only damage has been to innocent cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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RIP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One last thing I want to turn over in Glass Onion is the most unfair: Miles Bron has no children in the film. The previous film considered entirely children, figuratively speaking, so I can see why Johnson wanted to avoid going over the same ground. But the idea of children is as central to billionaires and their quest for immortality of any kind as anything else. For hundreds of years the desire of those with power to retain it forever was sublimated into inheritance and bloodlines. Rupert Murdoch has six. Elon Musk has ten. Donald Trump has five. Even Mark Zuckerberg has two. For sure, they\u2019re all banking on human brain interfaces and cryogenic preservation first, but as a backup they\u2019re happy to rely on the old ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s odd that Bron has no aspirations in this department, nor any indication that he has considered it beyond his prominently-displayed heterosexuality-affirming affair. The question of immortality is inherently visceral, concerned with decay and rot. Even on fire, Bron\u2019s estate is spotless. The shards from his glass onion form perfect beads on the floor. It\u2019s all so very pristine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The child-free nature of Bron\u2019s crew in Glass Onion allows them an uncanny childishness despite their advanced careers, but you cannot become the most divorced man in the world without children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you like my writing, please subscribe to me here on Medium<\/a> or to my Letterboxd<\/a> reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about \u2018Suicide Squad\u2019<\/a> available on Youtube now. I wrote about Andor <\/em>for Blood Knife<\/a> earlier this year. You can follow me on the billionaire\u2019s folly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spoilers, naturally. Whenever someone asks me about Sherlock Holmes, I tell them the same (somewhat exaggerated) factoid: every single one of Doyle\u2019s short stories about the famous detective concerns at least one character who has a dark secret from his or her time in the colonies. You can comically unravel a good number of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,96],"tags":[56,57,45,18,19],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-media-criticism","tag-glass-onion","tag-knives-out","tag-media-criticism","tag-movie-review","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fevered.earth\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}