After the bright, light, summery holiday special that was Glass Onion, the Knives Out franchise returns to its gothic roots with a wintry whodunit that, for some at least, might endure as the the best one yet. Where the first and second used the murder-mystery as a jumping-off point for some very funny contemporary satire, Wake Up Dead Man is much more introspective. In a funny way, it’s a little analogous to Joker 2, not because it unloads on its audience in the same acerbic way but because it poses similarly metaphysical questions about its own popularity. Why do people respond so eagerly to stories of murder and betrayal? To answer that, director Rian Johnson goes back to the greatest story ever told, using a small religious community as the setting for the third instalment.
It begins with a young priest, Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) writing a long letter in freehand, asking for help. A former boxer with a bad reputation, he explains how his bad temper got the better of him, causing him to wallop a fellow priest in the face. At a reckoning with his elders, Jud apologizes for his actions, explaining that he feels that his religion is under threat (“A priest is a shepherd, and the world is a wolf”). The other clerics see his point, but they still need to be seen to punish him. As a result, Jud gets sent to a smalltown church, Our Lady of Perpetual Grace, which the resident priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), has run into the ground with his fiery sermons.
Wicks resents the imposition and begins to undermine Jud at every turn, even making him take his increasing lurid confessionals (“At first I thought it was just weird, but now I realize it was the first punch”). Wicks has assembled quite a loyal congregation around him, starting with the ultra-loyal Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), who has a strange thing going on with the strong, silent groundskeeper Samson (Thomas Haden Church). And in contrast to the first two Knives Out movies, the suspects this time round are a darker, moodier less readily readable group: a lawyer with a secret (Kerry Washington), a doctor with marriage issues (Jeremy Renner), a disabled concert cellist (Cailee Spaeny), and an author running out of readers (Andrew Scott). All of whom flock to Monsignor Wicks, drawn by his sophistry and fearsome bully-pulpit magnetism.
There’s a hell of a lot of backstory in Jud’s written testimony, much involving Monsignor Wicks’s mother, a “harlot whore” who apparently went on a destructive rampage in the church after her father died leaving her penniless. Her biggest crime was to tear down the centerpiece crucifix, and Wicks refuses to replace it, leaving a dusty outline where it used to be. This absence — of God, of love, of plain community spirit — is a metaphor for the whole parish, where everyone is defined by their own lacks and deficiencies, the weaknesses that cause Wicks to despise them and vow to bring down them all.
So, wait, you might be thinking — isn’t this supposedly a Benoit Blanc mystery? And so it is, with Daniel Craig finally making his grand entrance after around the 45-minute mark. We learn pretty soon that Jud is writing this mini memoir at Benoit’s insistence, and so the games begin. The catalyst for Benoit’s interest in the case, it transpires, is that after a long period of enmity with Jud, Wicks was found stabbed in an empty sideroom, the perfect crime and a great example of a locked-room mystery novel, an artform the congregation has been studying in their book club, reading novels by Dorothy L. Sayer, Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, whose 1935 book The Hollow Man is mentioned a lot. (“Who chose these books?” drawls Benoit. “Oprah,” comes the reply.)
There is more to follow, all of which pertains to the film’s title and is rather laborious to discuss in a review without spoilers. Needless to say, it hinges on Monsignor Wicks’ death date and, once more, equates mystery stories with the gospels; Benoit is an atheist, but he understands that people’s need to know is what keeps him in business (it is revealed that he was once on The View). In fact, despite his thoughts on organized religion (“A perfidious bubble of belief”), one gets the impression that Benoit is really rather jealous of Monsignor Wicks.
Though it follows a similar set-up to the first two films — an A-game, A-list cast hiding in plain sight in supporting roles — there aren’t so many in-jokes this time round (Jeremy Renner’s presence has nothing to do with his hot sauce, as glimpsed in Glass Onion), and there’s a little less camp value in the way it leaves us to work out the identity of the guilty party. There’s comedy for sure, but this time round the usually aloof Benoit makes room for a sidekick in the form of Jud — “On the town with Father Brown,” says Benoit, a reference to G.K. Chesterton’s crime-solving cleric of the same name. What’s also new is some of Johnson’s best writing, about modernity and miracles, about faith in the impossible.
Don’t take that to mean that all the fun’s been sucked out, though; far from it. As one character put is, “There’s obviously some Scooby-Doo shit going on round here.” And wouldn’t you just know it, there damn well is.
Title: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery ReviewFestival: Toronto (Orizzonti Competition)Director/screenwriter: Rian JohnsonCast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden ChurchDistributor: NetflixRunning time: 2 hrs 24 mins
The post ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ Review: Rian Johnson’s Third Whodunit With Daniel Craig Is An Intelligent Gothic Delight – Toronto Film Festival appeared first on Deadline.
