Rian Johnson is one of the best American filmmakers working today. His filmography – packed with influences ranging from Dashiell Hammett to Robert Altman, Agatha Christie, Terry Gilliam, and Katsuhiro Otomo – is as eclectic as it is rich in theme and character.
After revitalizing sci-fi with Looper and crafting one of the best Star Wars films in the franchise, Johnson scaled back and returned to his love of murder mysteries with the Benoit Blanc series. The first one, Knives Out, was a roaring success, and practically single-handedly returned the genre into the spotlight. Glass Onion, its follow-up, switched gears again, echoing more The Last of the Sheila than it did Christie.
Now, with Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson has dug even deeper into the plentiful mines of the genre, all the way into the days of Edgar Allan Poe. Along the way, he has picked up some classic Southern Gothic for good measure.
I could wax lyrical about how it's another brilliant deconstruction of stories we tell about ourselves. How it dives into Johnson's fascination with identity and personal history. How language accommodates a lie that, when told with enough conviction, can become reality. How belief in legacy and the past can come at the cost of your own future. Themes that Johnson has explored in every one of his films.
Alternatively, I could ruminate on how Blanc, played beautifully by Daniel Craig, is more than a comic alternative to Hercule Poirot or Columbo, instead serving as a Greek chorus for modern America in all its hypocrisy. And how Craig's brilliant performance changes to match the tone as if Blanc's mood itself sets the course of the world entire.
Which is to say that Wake Up Dead Man is not just overflowing both stylistically and thematically, it's also one of Johnson's finest films in a career that continues to surprise and delight.
In Wake Up Dead Man, we meet Reverend Jud (Josh O'Connor), a gentle man of the cloth with a violent past that he carries like a cross. He's been moved to a small parish somewhere in New England, where the monstrous Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin) rules from his pedestal with an iron fist. His congregation, an increasingly small amount of fervent believers with secrets of their own, gathers weekly to spew hatred at the world.
Then, one day, Wicks falls dead inside a locked room with a knife in his back. There's no way anyone could have got to him, even though all signs point to Jud, who openly hated him. As if by providence, Benoit Blanc (Craig) comes to town, delighted over a new case, even if it's in an environment as distasteful as a church.
After all, Benoit hates lies, especially cheap and easy ones. He sees the church as the ultimate capitulation of a lie agreed upon. Perhaps to such a degree that it could blind him of greater truths.
But Jud needs helps, and help Benoit shall. It is here, almost 45 minutes into the mystery, the film truly kicks in. Yet everything about the first half is important. Again, as with Glass Onion and Knives Out, Johnson never cheats his audience. Oh, he'll trick us aplenty, and there are times that Wake Up Dead Man holds hands with magical realism more than any of his previous works. But Johnson trusts his viewers, and that trust is rewarded on subsequent viewings.
Returning readers will know that I'm autistic. I have a hard time reading people on a good day, let alone in the midst of regular neurotypical shindiggery. That is why language fascinates me. Especially when it is used to disguise meaning. The way we say things is sometimes more important than what is actually said, and it's that wellspring that feeds the latest Blanc mystery.
Here, the church is not The Church, but more of A church. It is located in the depths of a thick forest, itself a visual reminiscent of The Brother's Grimm, but also an indication of how isolated sects of belief can become when they turn inward.
Within, there is the story of a woman scorned, who took great vengeance upon the original occupants. The desecration of the sacred is at first shot like a scene from Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria, then, later, with the romantic tragedy of Franco Zeffirelli. As in Looper or Brother's Bloom, both contain a semblance of truth, but each version is more about the person doing the telling than it is about the act itself. We see ourselves reflected in the way we tell our history, regardless of how far in the past it is.
Once again Johnson has found unexpected delights in his players. He brings together great character actors, who have the geography of drama etches in their faces, with actors of modern sensibilities that match the energy on their own terms. It's no surprise that Josh Brolin is as funny as he is terrifying as the resident asshole, but it is a joy to watch Jeremy Renner deliver dry absurdism that's cut from the same cloth as Gene Hackman's non sequiturs about the trees in Maine that he reminisced about in Birdcage.
The great Glenn Close is as superlative as ever. She brings so much to a part that starts off big and broad, and instead of erupting as the film progresses, instead turns into an internalized battle of wits with Benoit and Jud, who she sees as two sides of the same coin. Jud, who struggles with his faith, and Benoit, who claims he has none.
O'Connor shares the lead with Craig, and he rises to the challenge in the same way as Ana de Armas and Janelle Monáe in the prior films. Jud is the kind of broken hero Johnson loves. He's a person tormented by their past, certain only in the fact that they're defined by their actions that they've built an entire cross of sins, now both real and imagined, that oversahdows everything they accomplish in the present.
For Blanc, it proves a tantalizing addition to the mystery. After all, for Jud a sin is as real a thing as anything concrete in this world. Which is a problem, as Blanc's weakness might just be his inability to distinguish faith from a lie.
Steve Yedlin, who has served as cinematographer to all of Johnson's films, shifts things up again for the third part of the series. Wake Up Dead Man looks nothing like Knives Out or Glass Onion, yet you can easily see where it shares the same DNA as its predecessors. This is a gorgeous film that finds tremendous beauty in deep shadows and brilliant highlights. They serve as biblical elements that reveal and conceal, even in broad daylight.
I'm grateful that I saw Wake Up Dead Man in the cinema. This is a film that deserves the large canvas. It will still play just fine at home thanks to a smart script, great directing, and a stellar cast. But it's the kind of big, comforting, and rewarding filmmaking the theater is made for.
By the time it all wraps up, and the audience is let in on the big play, it feels like a communal event. It is a spiritual excercise that's meant to be received with hundreds of others in attendance. Because that way, once we pour out into the streets and bars and restaurants to dissect what we've seen, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery takes on a second life entirely.
It becomes a part of the greater conversation that, as we peel back motivations and layers and themes, reveals something about those who've watched it in turn.
