Link to the audio version of this post is HERE
Rian Johnson is back with Benoit Blanc and he’s here to ruin your childhood specifically
Going from talking about one hard genre to discuss with comedy a couple of weeks ago, I’m back with another hard one. Mystery. It’s not useful for me to tell you that the butler did it or that I was surprised that the butler did it. For one, I’m rarely surprised at the end of a whodunnit, but that’s mostly my fault. Obviously I pay attention to this sort of movie thing, if you haven’t noticed, so once you read narrative structure, a lot of things become predictable. But growing up, mysteries were all I cared about. I had at least 50 Hardy Boys books as a kid, as well as several of the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew crossover books, which were some of my favorites because they were longer, and I read each of them at least five times. I wanted to be a detective when I was a kid. You got to wear a cool hat and talk like Humphrey Bogart and dames were always coming by your office in need of help before betraying you. Surprise! The kid who grew up to write this blog was a nerd. So I love mysteries and always have and over the years, I’ve developed an eye for how these things play out. And even if I’m surprised at the end, that’s not enough either. A surprise has to be earned and too few mysteries earn their reveals, instead opting for a cheap twist that no one saw coming because it doesn’t make any sense.
But when there’s a good one, oh, I am thrilled. I’ve talked about my love of whodunnits before, so for longtime readers, this isn’t news. And much like Rian Johnson’s modern day Poirot, Benoit Blanc, I’ve given myself a problem to solve. How do I talk about a mystery without talking about a mystery? Let’s get into Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
I’m not as worried about getting older if looking this cool remains an option
In case you haven’t seen Knives Out or Glass Onion, Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig (Logan Lucky, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), is one of those world famous detectives. This is one of the things we accept in fiction, that there are world famous detectives. I’ve been part of the world for a while now and I’ve never heard of even a locally famous detective. But, like I said, he’s in Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mold; a quirky, reclusive detective who is the very best at what he does, trading Poirot’s signature moustache for a charming Foghorn Leghorn southern drawl. For being so blatantly a Poirot archetype, Blanc never manages to feel like a ripoff, even though it seems like Poirot was a huge influence; Craig’s charm and charisma paper over any concerns I could have with the character. Blanc is instantly endearing. But he’s not really in this one for the first 40 minutes or so.
KISS! Although they probably won’t
Instead we get to spend that time with Jud Duplenticy. Father Jud Duplenticy. Father Jud, played by Josh O’Connor (The Crown), is a young Catholic priest, new to the cloth, and after the red mist descended during a heated debate in which the recipient of his right cross was dropping some old school bigoted views, he’s being punished. They’re sending him to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a one priest church in Chimney Rock, New York. Normally I’d say something sarcastic about bigoted views in the Catholic Church, but this new guy from Chicago they have in charge seems pretty alright, so I’m going to let them slide on this one. But just this one. Jud, you see, was a boxer in his previous life, pre-cloth, and sometimes his fighting side comes through. But in his heart, he’s an Anthony Norman-level good guy; all he wants to do is help to heal the world through the word of Christ. Another priest tells him that they need fighters because the Church is under attack. “A priest is a shepherd,” he says, and “the world is a wolf”. The Church against the world. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for the people, whom so often can forget that they’re a part of the world as well, same as the Church. But Jud disagrees and expresses concern that treating those who disagree with them as a wolf would lead them to seeing everyone as a wolf. He seeks unity instead of division, understanding instead of ostracizing. Which to me seems like it’s something that should be pretty standard for someone in his profession, but the idea of helping people can be pretty foreign some of the more fire and brimstone types.
Wicks’s pulpit looks like the bow of a ship, but he never seems as jazzed as Luffy does when he’s at the front of the Going Merry
Those fundamentalists include Dr. Nat Sharp, played by Jeremy Renner (The Avengers, The Town), a doctor left reeling after his wife left him; Lee Ross, played by Andrew Scott (Fleabag, His Dark Materials), a science fiction writer who fled the “liberal hive mind” of New York City to write in small town America for right wing white men; lawyer Vera Draven, played by Kerry Washington (Scandal and the underrated Unprisoned) and her illegitimate brother/adopted son Cy, played by Daryl McCormack (Bad Sisters), a failed right wing politician and aspiring grifter social media star, whom she was forced to raise as her own from a young age by her father; and world class cellist Simone Vivane, played by Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus, Devs), a young woman in the grips of a debilitating, progressive disease that doctors don’t understand and that ruined her career. Rounding out the church is Martha Delacroix, played by Glenn Close (The Shield, 102 Dalmatians), the religious zealot and Wicks-devotee who runs all the church admin; and recovering alcoholic groundskeeper Samson Holt, played by Thomas Haden Church (Wings, Sideways). The cast is completed by Mila Kunis as Police Chief Geraldine Scott. Hopefully she shows better judgment as a police officer than she does in the friends she chooses to support.
You can see why this is the flock. Why these hardened few became Wicks’s army is easy to see. They all have something that he can manipulate, that he can control. Nat wants his wife back and blames everything but his own behavior for her leaving. He’s not good looking enough, doesn’t make enough money, etc; all the excuses men love to make instead of looking internally. Lee Ross wants to find inspiration again and perhaps his respectability, which he lost with his turn to extreme right wing views. Vera wants her life back; it was completely hijacked by her father when he brought Cy home for to take care of. She wanted to be a lawyer who makes a difference and then circumstances beyond her control forced her into this life instead of the one she was working towards (I know that feeling). And now she’s stuck in a perpetual sunk cost fallacy of faith. Cy is power hungry and lacks any level of self awareness or integrity. And poor Simone, a world class talent struck down by a disease medical science can’t figure out. Desperate and hopeless, she’s willing to throw her money and support behind anyone who will promise her a solution to her problem; or at the very least, enough false hope to stay on the line. Easy prey for a wolf.
The most intense book club you’re ever likely to see
If you look at the names in the cast, you’ll know to expect great acting performances all around. Glenn Close is great here, playing up the sort of Helen Lovejoy, pearl-clutching church lady stereotype with a more vindictive edge. Nothing about how she’s written is subtle and that’s intentional. Her last name is Delacroix; French for “of the cross”. Cailee Spaeny adds another feather into the cap of her short and already impressive career with her smaller, but genuinely played role. Josh Brolin leverages everything about his age, appearance, and manner of speech as the Monsignor to make him properly intimidating. Frankly, Brolin is more imposing and threatening and, frankly, scary, than Thanos ever was. Part of it is the source material; I’m not really worried that a giant purple alien will snap his fingers and erase half the world, but I do worry about religious fanaticism doing that (or worse). And if I ever come across a performance by Daniel Craig that I didn’t think was good, I’ll let you know. But it won’t be this one. And yet, for all the notable names in the cast, it’s Josh O’Connor as Father Jud who really impressed me the most. There isn’t a moment where his acting isn’t completely believable, where he isn’t sympathetic, where you don’t want to root for him. His acting is subtle at times, headstrong at others, and impressive at every turn. I’ve never seen him in anything else, but after this, I hope to see him a whole hell of a lot more.
“It’s a 3 hour science lesson that ends in a magical love closet, we need to be honest about it”
We’ve gotten this far into this murder mystery without talking about a murder yet, so this is where I tell you that a murder happens. It’s an impossible murder. Someone dies and someone else made it happen, and on the face of it, it couldn’t have happened. And yet, it did. And that’s why Blanc is there. You don’t call Benoit Blanc for the kind of mystery any old tin star can solve, after all. And that’s all you’re going to get on the murder. Blanc is the detective, I’ll let him solve it. He’s brilliant and unorthodox and funny, and I absolutely cannot get enough of Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. I can watch these movies over and over again. This is a crafted mystery, and it comes together so amazingly, you really have to hop on Netflix and watch it for yourself. Normally I advise to avoid trailers in general, but when it comes to a Rian Johnson mystery, it doesn’t really matter. He’s that good at this.
And I thought my apartment was small
There are some observations that I made when watching this, though. As much as this is a takedown of a certain kind of religious person who uses religion not as a faith and a guide of how to live their life, but as a means of judging others and forcing them to live by their standards, it’s also a strong defense of good people of faith. This movie isn’t about Benoit Blanc coming in and dismantling religion and taking down the Catholic Church brick by brick, but rather it’s a tug-of-war between the two schools of thought within religious institutions. It shows that some people are willing to look the other way when it comes to heinous acts that harm and harm again as long as the person doing the harm continues to benefit them in some way. That any transgression is forgivable as long as it’s the right person is committing them because the benefit of the hypocrisy outweighs the shame being a hypocrite brings. But it also shows the softer side of Catholicism. It shows people who genuinely want to make the world a better place and to do it through kindness and empathy, albeit faith-based. Dead Man doesn’t judge the religious; it judges harshly those who put on the veil of religiosity to hurt other people and impose their views. And much like Glass Onion dismantled the cult of personality around so-called geniuses and Knives Out before it took on immigration, race, and the ownership of stolen land, Dead Man looks at the two faces of modern religion; taking down those who use it as a weapon and bolstering those whose faith is a sustaining force that isn’t used against others. In an era where I of all people follow the Pope on Twitter, it’s an extremely relevant film for right now.
She takes the church fantasy football draft too seriously
I don’t know how Rian Johnson keeps doing it. Crafting a film that’s both universally true and also right on the pulse of the moment. Perhaps it’s a sad commentary on how little changes. 60 years on from the inciting incident, the original sin of Our Lady of Ceaseless Suffering, women are still being blamed for the ill deeds of men. The original sin isn’t what the “harlot whore” did to the church, it’s what her father the priest did to her. And yet she’s the one who’s been scorned and shamed and spoken ill of for six decades. Women are still judged harshly and constantly while men are given pass after pass. Religion is still being used as a weapon to divide while the heart of its message is drowned out by the volume of those who seek to twist it. The truth still gets buried for a comforting or sensational story. Lies told first are still hard to disprove with truths told later. I love Knives Out and Glass Onion. I think they’re two of the most brilliant mysteries made this century. They showcase Johnson’s fantastic writing, casting, and directing. Wake Up Dead Man might be his most brilliant one yet.
See what I was saying about the hat thing?
He does this thing, this magical thing where he never hides the ball. Johnson can show a murder, put it right in front of your face, and it isn’t until Poirot—I mean Blanc—gathers suspects in the parlor to deliver his sermon on guilt that all the puzzle pieces fall into place and you say to yourself “How did I not see that?” Which is the best feeling at the end of a whodunnit. Being surprised is not enough; throwing a character on it who was barely in the entire thing and then hanging it on them as a shock reveal is cheap and it happens too often. It’s a punchline to different joke. That’s not what Rian Johnson does. I admit to being closer to the mark on this one than the previous Blanc mysteries, but that takes nothing away from it. If anything, it makes it even more engaging that I was so close to getting the whole picture. He has this way of making you forget that the tangerine was never there (now, if you’ve never seen the movie Burning, that won’t make sense to you, but trust me when I say I’ve been wanting to use that reference for years).
I think this cements him in the upper echelons of auteurs right now. Of course, auteur theory is up for debate and no film is one person’s singular work, but I can’t think of a name other than Ryan Coogler that makes me so excited to see as a director credit. Nolan’s disappointed me with both Oppenheimer and Interstellar; I know I’m in the minority about them, but I found them overly long and self indulgent. Villeneuve is on his Dune detour, who knows how long it’ll be before he starts making serious movies again (yeah, I didn’t like Dune either). Even the setup of Dead Man is riveting. It’s told in such an engaging way that the 40 minutes in the first act go by with barely a blink when all it is just talking. There are no car chases, no explosions, but it’s so captivating. And a large part of that is the writing and acting. O’Connor makes you forget for the better part of an hour that this is even a Benoit Blanc movie. Smart, funny, and poignant, Wake Up Dead Man is 2 hours and 24 minutes well spent. It’s rated PG-13 and streams exclusively on Netflix.
"Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”