A word of warning: don’t watch Rian Johnson’s new mystery
(now screening on Netflix) if you’re feeling the least bit groggy. I aired this
film, following a long day and a good dinner, at a time when I hadn’t managed
to have a good night’s sleep for quite a while. Sure enough, I got drowsy—which
meant that some of the film’s many twists and turns eluded me completely, and I
was forced to consult Wikipedia for a complete run-down on who did what to
whom.
Rian Johnson’s trademark, as writer and director, is
crafting murder mysteries in which an innocent seems to be responsible for a
brutal murder, until magnolia-scented sleuth Benoit Blanc (an always amusing
Daniel Craig) shows up and unmasks the real killers. There’s a canvas crowded
with famous faces, and we can be sure that most of them are up to no good. (You
just know that Glenn Close—as an apparently sweet but also quite shrill church
lady with her hair in a bun—is not as innocent as she seems . . . and I suspect
that this much-admired thespian is having a ball playing such a prim
role.)
Johnson always features a touch of social commentary, and in
this film (the third and most complex in the Knives Out series) he takes
on formal religion with a vengeance. He himself comes from an evangelical
background, but as a filmmaker he can’t resist the baroque trappings beloved by
the Roman Catholic Church. At the center of this drama are a good priest and a
bad one, though both are certainly flawed individuals. Josh O’Connor (whom I
last saw as a veddy British Prince Charles in The Crown) stars as a former
teen boxer who once killed a man in the ring, and is still desperately trying
(despite his genuine love of Christ’s teachings) to keep a raging temper in
check. For a recent transgression, he’s been sent to an upstate New York town
where a veteran priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, presides over an ever-smaller
congregation. Msgr. Wicks (Josh Brolin) is a fierce defender of his own power
over the souls of the locals: in short, he’s not very nice. But this doesn’t
stop him from being surrounded by a small circle of apparently hyper-loyal
congregants, who all share his anger at the world outside the church’s walls.
Following a sudden and dramatic murder in the cathedral, the
young priest played by O’Connor seems the obvious suspect. But, needless to
say, matters get quite twisty from there, involving all sorts of mistaken
identities, not to mention something of a divine resurrection. (As you might
expect, there WILL be blood.) Thank heavens for Benoit Blanc, whose sleuthing
sorts out the guilty from the innocent, even as he makes quite clear his own
discomfort with organized religion. And thank heavens for the Wikipedia plot
summary that fills in the cracks of my own understanding. I recall having had
something of the same problem with the first two Knives Out mysteries,
even after watching the first one twice. It’s always clear who’s Naughty and
who’s Nice, but the interplay between them is generally so tricky that viewers
need all the help they can get.
So, is this new edition of the Knives Out series
worth seeing? It is if you like celebrity-driven mysteries and the chance to
untangle an elaborate puzzle. No need to look for much depth in the film’s
characterizations. But if you can stay alert—and if blood is your thing—the
film’s many conundrums will give you much to ponder.
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