Going from Marta who literally threw up every time she tried to lie to Helen who was game to go to her sister’s murderer’s private island dressed as her and manages to extract motives and opportunities from everyone basically on her own, to Jud, who keeps running off to confess at basically every opportunity must have given Benoit such incredible amounts of whiplash
best thing about these movies being serialized with one single character as a connecting thread is that with each new production Benoit Blanc becomes by necessity an even older gay man and that’s beautiful
jud duplenticy writes some fantastic lines in his account of the murder like “The darkness of that story was the bedrock of this place” or “Testing tolerances, tapping deep poisoned wells,hardening, binding with complicity” or “Because in the part of my soul that cannot lie to Christ,or myself, or you…” but he did also write “Young, dumb, and full of Christ” which doesn’t necessarily undermine his skill as a storyteller or anything but what an insane thing that is to say to benoit at this point in the story
Just saw the new Beniot Blanc movie, I love that this established that Blanc’s crime solving M.O. is to team up with whatever suspect has the kindest heart and commit minor acts of obstruction of justice to keep them from getting arrested until he can crack the case.
I hope that southern fried fancy boy never stops adopting good people at grisly murder scenes.
my actual favorite scene in wake up dead man is the one where jud is on the phone with the woman from the construction company and she asks him to pray for her, the sudden turn from humor to complete seriousness without it feeling like a tonal whiplash is really really good
PSA: if you’re watching the new Knives Out mystery (Wake Up Dead Man), please be aware that around 1 hr 34 minutes in, there’s a series of flashing/strobing lights. the sequence lasts about a minute.
insane parallels between vera and grace. while grace was a rebel, vera obeyed what her father told her for YEARS because she knew the story of the “harlot whore” and her shame and the disdain the church had for her. but after vera learns of the monsignor’s aop, she’s the first one to extend any sort of sympathy to grace, being the first one truly recognize “that poor girl” (which father jud later echoes in remembrance after the reveal) because vera realizes she’s been trapped between her dead father and her “son” just like grace…incredible. and when the monsignor calls vera “her father’s worst nightmare,” it hits doubly hard bc that’s exactly what the church viewed grace as. oh rian johnson the writer you are…
With three movies to compare between, I really appreciate how each Knives Out movie explores justice from a different thematic angle, not based on the murder that was committed but based on the cruelty that led to that murder.
In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn’t have to be kind and giving to people who’ve proven themselves assholes.
In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who’ve sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.
In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl’s loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.
This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.
This is also why Benoit Blanc is the uniting figure but never the protagonist of these movies. He’s an agent of legal justice in that he’s the detective and it’s his job to figure out whodunnit, but the protagonist – Marta, Helen, and now Jud – is always the character who delivers thematic justice.
“What made you follow your mutual” I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. In my mind we were mutuals at birth. Since the dawn of time. The start of the earth’s spin
