‘Glass Onion’ Spoils Itself In Its First Scene

The following put up incorporates SPOILERS for Glass Onion.

An excellent homicide thriller may be watched twice: Once to be stunned, and as soon as to see how the film stunned you. There are clues you missed, pink herrings that tricked you, and plot threads you didn’t absolutely perceive till the ultimate answer was revealed. In the case of Glass Onion, it’s solely on second viewing that you simply notice that Rian Johnson primarily spoiled his huge structural twist throughout the film’s first minutes.

The scene in query entails the arrival of a number of elaborate packing containers on the houses or places of work of a bunch of buddies. The packing containers transform invites, despatched to a quartet of longtime friends — Kathryn Hahn’s Claire, Leslie Odom Jr.’s Lionel, Kate Hudson’s Birdie, and Dave Bautista’s Duke — by their mutual buddy Miles Bron (Edward Norton), an eccentric billionaire. To get to the precise invitation inside, the buddies should remedy a collection of puzzles contained within the field; they begin a convention name to decode all of them collectively.

The key second that foreshadows the remainder of the film comes when cellist Yo-Yo Ma (enjoying himself!) seems at Birdie’s home. She’s fixing her field within the midst of a raging celebration; Ma simply occurs to be one of many friends. He wanders over because the field begins enjoying Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor.” While Birdie makes an attempt to Shazam the music, Yo-Yo Ma identifies it from reminiscence, as a result of he’s Yo-Yo Ma.

Ma himself delivers the essential line of dialogue, when he explains a fugue:

A fugue is a phenomenal musical puzzle based mostly on only one tune. And while you layer this tune on prime of itself, it begins to alter and turns into a phenomenal new construction.

When Ma says that, Lionel realizes the clue means they’re purported to elevate a deal with out of the field, which then spins round, revealing a brand new “layer” of puzzles beneath.

The buddies push ahead, remedy the remainder of the clues, unlock their packing containers, and get their invites from Miles to a trip on his personal island. But Ma’s contribution has a a lot bigger and extra meta which means that’s straightforward to overlook on first viewing — as a result of he primarily reveals that Glass Onion is structured like a fugue. Most of the story is informed twice: The narrative progresses in a linear style till a key second, then doubles again to the beginning. After a brand new scene that reveals a significant bit of data we didn’t know the primary time, your entire story performs once more, now with the brand new particulars layered on prime, revealing, as Yo-Yo Ma put it, a “beautiful new structure.”

The important data entails the character of Andi, performed by Janelle Monae. Through most of Glass Onion she looks as if an embittered former buddy of Miles and the remainder. She doesn’t open her invitation field with the remainder of the group; she smashes it with a hammer. It seems that a number of months previous to the occasions of the movie, she had a falling out with Miles over the path of his firm, which she used run with him.

Miles invitations his buddies to his personal island in Greece for a homicide thriller weekend; he will likely be “killed” on the primary night time, and it is going to be as much as the friends to unravel his “death“ for the rest of their vacation. But master sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shows up at Miles’ party as well, and he suspects a real murder is going to take place. Indeed, on the first night of the trip, Duke winds up dead, seemingly poisoned, and Andi goes missing. The lights in Miles’ house go out and in the ensuing chaos, an unseen assailant shoots Andi in the chest with Duke’s gun. The remaining party guests demand Blanc explain what has happened.

That’s the point where the second part of the “fugue” begins. (The soundtrack even reprises Bach’s Little Fugue at this precise second.) Johnson jumps again in time to the scene when Benoit Blanc was “invited” to Miles’ island — by Andi’s twin sister, Helen. It seems that the true Andi was useless earlier than the movie started. The police imagine she dedicated suicide; Helen suspects it was homicide. She and Blanc hatch a scheme to crash Miles’ celebration with Helen disguised as her sister within the hopes that they’ll uncover the proof that proves one of many Miles’ buddies murdered Andi.

Then Glass Onion replays essential moments from its first half once more with further dialogue and extra context. For instance, the primary time via the story we watched Blanc spy on Duke as he spied on Miles in mattress with Duke’s girlfriend Whisky. At that time within the story, it appeared like Duke had caught his girlfriend dishonest on him together with his greatest buddy — a potential motive for homicide. The second time we see the scene, we notice what’s actually taking place: Duke put Whisky as much as sleeping with Miles within the hopes it could assist him get a job at Miles’ information channel. So the particular person with motive for homicide would truly be Whisky, who may need killed Duke as a result of she was sick of being handled like a chunk of meat.

It might be a coincidence, and it is perhaps a stretch, however even the truth that the musical piece that lends Glass Onion its construction is a fugue might be a clue. In psychiatry, a fugue state is one the place an individual discards their true id, assumes a brand new one, and wanders off. When they wake from their fugue, they don’t know how they obtained there, nor keep in mind the occasions that occurred whereas they had been in that state. Helen doesn’t lose her reminiscence, however she does assume a brand new id and travels about as removed from her residence as attainable. To some extent, Glass Onion is a fugue a couple of fugue.

Yo-Yo Ma shouldn’t be the one celeb cameo in Glass Onion; there are additionally appearances from Serena Williams, Jake Tapper, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Natasha Lyonne, and the late Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury. I believe some may chalk them as much as Rian Johnson calling in favors with some well-known buddies for straightforward laughs, however in loads of these circumstances — and undoubtedly within the case of Yo-Yo Ma — their objective is way more necessary than that.

Johnson makes use of these acquainted faces the best way a magician makes use of misdirection: To distract the viewers whereas he drops his plan proper in entrance of their faces. If one of many foremost characters had stated “Oh this is a fugue” after which defined it, viewers may need been extra inclined to pay attention extra attentively, and maybe to catch on to Johnson’s plan. By making it an surprising celeb, the viewers is much less prone to concentrate on the content material of what he’s saying — and notice that Johnson has simply confirmed you his total hand earlier than the poker recreation had even gotten underway.