Courtesy of Netflix
Rian Johnson is fascinated by stories and how they work. You’d have to be in order to make films like Johnson’s Benoit Blanc mysteries, which are at their core elaborate metaphors for how to tell a story. What are whodunits, after all, but a series of complex decisions regarding what information to give the audience, and when, and how? Like any good story, it’s all about how you compile the right string of details in the right order for maximum impact.
Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film written and directed by Johnson and starring Daniel Craig as Blanc, is especially concerned with this idea of mysteries and detective stories as metaphors for larger storytelling mechanisms. Even more than the previous two films, themselves often deconstructing and commenting on the mystery genre as a whole, this mystery is wrapped in the philosophy of good storytelling, and deeply concerned with how we wield stories at a time when truth comes at a premium, and deception is cheap. That makes it not just a must-see film for mystery fans, but one of the best thrillers of the year.
This time around, Johnson opens the proceedings not just with a murder, but with a prime suspect already in place. So everyone thinks, anyway. At a sleepy Catholic parish in New York, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) ends up dead under what seem to be impossible circumstances. The parishioners immediately cast suspicion on Father Jud Duplenticy, an idealistic priest recently arrived from Albany who objects to some of Wicks’ more unorthodox methods. This church, you see, was founded by Wicks’ ancestors, and so he feels it’s not only his birthright, but his path to maintaining his own devoted cult of personality. When he ends up dead, and Jud is the closest thing anyone has to a suspect, he naturally has a target on his back.
Courtesy of Netflix
But legendary private detective Benoit Blanc is not convinced that Father Jud is the man behind the murder. Keeping the father close as an investigative assistant while the local sheriff (Mila Kunis) is breathing down his neck, Blanc turns his keen eye to a larger list of suspects. They include the church’s devoted secretary and organist (Glenn Close), the groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church), and parishioners ranging from a cellist looking for the power of faith healing (Cailee Spaeny) to a drunken doctor (Jeremy Renner), to a sci-fi writer turned alt-right influencer (Andrew Scott) to Wicks’ loyal lawyer (Kerry Washington) and her would-be politician son (Daryl McCormack). Who killed the Monsignor?
You can, as always with these movies, place your bets at the door, but Johnson’s script does a marvelous job of obscuring the truth in layers of deceptive personalities, long-buried secrets, and unexpected twists. Structurally, Wake Up Dead Man has more in common with Knives Out than Glass Onion, but the character dynamics form a clever throughline with all of these films. A Benoit Blanc mystery is always about power, who has it, and who wants it, and setting up shop at a parish church where everyone wants a piece of what’s in the collection plate is a good way to keep that dynamic going. Like its predecessors, the third Knives Out film is smart, funny, and laced through with a deeper thematic oomph.
This is, of course, helped along by a tremendous ensemble led by O’Connor, who proves once again that he’s one of the best young actors of his generation. His Father Jud is a man wracked with guilt over his past sins and yet also overcome by a hard-driving passion for helping others avoid the dark path he’s walked. He is a believable victim, but also a believable suspect, a man who cares so much about what he’s doing that he just might to too far, which makes him the perfect counterbalance to Brolin, who’s all bluster and charm and showmanship. Then there’s Close, who’s reliably great in anything she does, but who imbues Martha the church secretary with layers of nervous energy and self-righteous huffiness. Throw in scene stealers like Scott and Spaeny, and it’s another deep bench of Knives Out talent, all presided over by Craig.
Courtesy of Netflix
Craig’s gentleman detective is a welcome sight at the movies at this point, but even setting aside the simple comfort of his presence, this is perhaps my favorite Benoit Blanc performance so far. He arrives, clothed in self-assured atheism, ready to set aside talk of miracles and mysteries and get right down to the facts of the case. As the film goes on, though, Blanc finds his faith in the absolute truth tested, and Craig rides that storm out with the character he helped create. It’s a remarkably subtle performance even given Blanc’s capacity for putting on a show.
If Knives Out was about family and Glass Onion about friendships, then Wake Up Dead Man is about faith, not in a preachy way, but in a way that allows Johnson to genuinely grapple with the rituals and belief systems that guide so many of our lives. Faith in the broader, more pulpit-driven sense of the word can refer to a story told to a congregation in order to get a reaction, but it can also refer to our own private belief systems that we’ve built up over time, the quiet ways in which we think, even hope, the world works. Whether that’s religiously watching baseball to make sure our team is supported or hanging on to an outdated idea about your true purpose in life, we all have our own faiths, and every character in Wake Up Dead Man has theirs, including Blanc. The undercurrent of meaning this gives the film is infectious, and leads to a truly fascinating third-act reveal.
This extends to the visuals, where Johnson and cinematographer Steve Yedlin pour on shades of dark and light in a way that often literalizes moments of illumination in the case and in the lives of these characters. The way the sunlight dances over ferns outside, the way it penetrates the windows of the church at key moments, even the way the film plays with the darkness of an old stone church in a storm all point to a film that’s deeply concerned with what we expose to the sun and what we keep in the dark. For my money, it’s the most visually dynamic of the Knives Out films so far. It’s also, and this is important for Dread Central purposes, the most horror-tinged of the trio of films, giving us everything from Exorcist-style drama at the altar to crypts that threaten to crack wide open and expose everyone’s secrets.
Wake Up Dead Man is another triumphant whodunit from Rian Johnson, a beautiful melding of hefty themes and dynamic cinematic storytelling in a pulse-pounding thriller package. Faith is a story we tell, just as mysteries are stories we tell, and they’re both all about giving the right information at the right time. When it comes to combining those things on film, I put my faith in Rian Johnson, and he didn’t let me down.
Wake Up Dead Man is in theaters November 26, and hits Netflix December 12.
Summary
Wake Up Dead Man is another triumphant whodunit from Rian Johnson, a beautiful melding of hefty themes and dynamic cinematic storytelling in a pulse-pounding thriller package.
Categorized: Movie Reviews
