Man, what a weird week. As I said on social media, I’m torn between the editing I need to do, and the writing I want to do about recent events and last year’s Last Night in SoHo, which I finally got around to watching late last night. It’s a thought-provoking but challenging watch, partly due to thematic content, partly due to lovable characters I wanted to bundle up and move into a safer film. Haven’t felt that tense since Rosemary was driving John Burgess through Buffalo on The Sandman.
Anyway, this is a post about Glass Onion.
(What?!)
I hadn’t intended to post again before the new year, especially about a movie I’d already given a nod in my year-end wrap up. Until now most discussion has centered on Edward Norton’s character, self-proclaimed disruptor billionaire, Miles Bran. The “disruptor” bit makes me wonder if director Rian Johnson was referencing Norton’s similarly self-aggrandizing alter-ego in Fight Club (a film deeply misunderstood by wannabe Tyler Durdins). Most people saw Bran as Elon Musk, but the movie went into production before Musk completely tumbled over the hill and dragged everyone into his doozy of a mid-life crisis. In one scene, Bran looks just like Steve Jobs. He’s a composite of any number of billionaires and borders on cliché – this can be a bad thing in art, but when you’re satirizing people who seem hell-bent on being clichés, it works.
Had it not been published in 2000, I would have thought Terry Pratchett’s The Truth was about a certain politician circa 2015 to the present. As a saying often misattributed to Mark Twain goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. People in general are predictable creatures of habit – which is why psychics and astrologists remain in business, albeit with varying degrees of success depending on perceptiveness. I still remember the one reading I had as a teen when I didn’t fit whatever mold the psychic expected me to fit, and she was mad at me for her failure.
Rian Johnson isn’t psychic, either, but I doubt he was surprised when alt-right provocateur Andrew Tate was arrested for rape and human trafficking yesterday (except perhaps by the manner in which it happened). Nobody who knew he was under investigation – even before his attempted online sparring match with a teen activist – would be. It also tracks with his internet persona as a misogynistic alpha male, which Johnson likely included in the DNA of Duke Cody, a character played by Dave Bautista in Glass Onion.
Here’s a rundown of events: 36 year old Tate used to be banned on Twitter for verbal abuse and promoting rape culture. Musk reinstated his account. He weirdly came at Greta Thunberg, who is no stranger to being targeted by skeevy men – because nobody is a stranger to being targeted by skeevy men, least of all teenagers. She verbally kicked him where it counts in defense. He and his bros went on to joke and make memes about violating her. Others on and off Twitter defended him and tried to tone police the target or claimed she was just as bad (he promotes rape but she asked corporations to stop raping the planet…”both sides!”). There’s a strange amount of overlap with people who make unfounded claims of grooming and human trafficking against others, and people who support suspected or known predators (no movie trope is anywhere near as tired as real-world tropes). Then he and his brother were arrested by Romanian authorities, who may or may not have located him due to his Twitter activity. Musk did say he’d help reveal traffickers, though I suspect this wasn’t what he had in mind.
Glass Onion, like its predecessor Knives Out, is a mystery that satisfies many viewers because it not only skewers awful people representing any number of lame or phony personas (Johnson isn’t here for faux-liberalism any more than genuine hate), but the kind, good-natured people beat them at their own game. In that way, both feel more like fairytales to me. Right now, many people delight in what appears to be a real world fairytale ending but my own amusement is tempered by the fact I’d rather these horrible crimes never happen in the first place, and we haven’t seen anyone brought to justice, only detained. And there’s still far too many people minimizing or even glorifying abuse for my personal comfort level.
I was already feeling pretty raw before I started watching Last Night in Soho late last night. It, too, is a mystery, but also a ghost story, and it left me feeling a bit haunted myself. The casual cruelty I observed this week (and every other week, let’s be real) was omnipresent in the world inhabited by the protagonist Eloise even before she nearly lost herself in a decades-old tale of sexual abuse and murder. Yet there were moments of beauty as well. The kindness and unconditional love of her classmate John was a soothing balm, but the scenes that most stick with me were the times Eloise reached out to comfort and protect another, even when you’d least begrudge her a different response. Ultimately it’s a story about compassion, but also redemption through accountability and the cleansing power of fire (which weirdly sailed right over the heads of some critics).
Definitely more substance than style (though it’s not lacking for style).
I’m tired.
Maybe 2023 will be the year society en masse decides to break vicious cycles and trend toward compassion, and being honest with ourselves and others. Kindness and honesty are not mutually exclusive – just one of many false dichotomies we need to reject once and for all.
