Director: Rian Johnson
Stars: Josh O’Connor, Daniel Craig, Kerry Washington
As comfortable as Daniel Craig is portraying dapper southern sleuth Benoit Blanc (slipping him back on here like a cosy pair of loafers), he’s always a foil around which another actor truly shines. In Knives Out it was a career-best Ana de Armas who stole the show. For Glass Onion, Janelle Monáe proved they could master just about any hat they had a mind to don. And, in a very real sense, Wake Up Dead Man sees Craig cede the stage to the already well-proven Josh O’Connor. His best work of the year might have been in Kelly Reichardt’s divine The Mastermind, but his turn here as guilt-ridden priest Jud Duplenticy will prove the more crowd pleasing.
After the spritely summer holiday of Glass Onion, Johnson takes a turn toward the gothic as we switch locales from balmy Greece to the leafy upstate New York township of Chimney Rock. A boxer before he found his faith, Jud is dispatched to the tight-knit rural community after losing his patience and lamping a noted deacon. On arrival he meets the presiding priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), whose aggressive, fire and brimstone approach has calcified the congregation into a select few devotees. Wicks’ Good Friday sermon is interrupted by his sudden and quite inexplicable demise, murdered – it seems – from inside a sturdy stone closet off to the side of the pulpit. Jud finds himself centre spotlight.
This is the briefest summary of Johnson’s lengthy set-up, which also establishes the routine cabal of suspects, here including embittered doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner, he of the hot sauce), prim and pious parish accountant Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), sci-fi writer turned crackpot Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and more besides – all members of Wicks’ inner circle of devotees. Inevitably, Blanc strides onto the scene. But his eloquent pride at being able to solve any crime starts to crumble when faced with Johnson’s convoluted locked box mystery.
Still, it is O’Connor’s increasingly desperate Jud who steers the story, acting as narrator for the entire first act of the film. Johnson here tweaks the focus of his established franchise for a rumination on the schisms of intent in the Catholic church. Jud – having learned from the violent impulses of his past – has committed himself to community development and a vision of Christ’s love that means shepherding those furthest from it. Wicks, meanwhile, represents a more attacking Cult of Personality approach, eyeing power and influence as means to fight back against a perceived tide turning against the church.
Jud’s faith in what he’s trying to achieve is tested by Wicks, and more-so when Wicks’ death puts all the suspicion on him. Digging his heels in and leading Blanc through their pacy investigations together, Jud is combatting not just the gossiping multitudes clamoring to take him down, but his own fracturing commitment to people. So Wake Up Dead Man comes to feel like a reckoning with faith. Faith in humanity typified by weakness and greed (of course there’s a lost fortune…).
As usual, Johnson sprinkles his film with pointed satirical caricatures, and derives good humoured pleasure from taking political sideswipes at the prevailing winds in America. And while this may have become a tad predictable from him, it’s also part and parcel of what sets the Knives Out mysteries apart from the cosier teatime whodunnits of the ITV evening schedule (that and, of course, the bombastic casts and whip-smart filmmaking). And while his rogue’s gallery this time are – mostly – as enjoyably ridiculous as ever, it might be time to change-up the routine if Blanc’s adventures are to perpetuate.
Granted, Wake Up Dead Man is a change of pace. Jud’s soul-searching feels nakedly personal to Johnson, who grew up in a Catholic household. The labyrinthine script takes pains to acknowledge the failings of the institution (and not for nothing this is three-for-three with taking down patriarchal figureheads), but it also finds space for faith and its uses. These pauses in the film are among its most humbling and affecting, particularly a lengthy telephone call sequence which initially plays for laughs before changing the entire tempo of the picture. A timely – if unsubtle – reminder amid the mayhem, that there’s a more pressing crisis of resolve at the heart of Johnson’s tale.
It’s all a ribald pleasure. Slick and populist, generous in its intention to give the masses what they want. Johnson has become rather good at this, and a broad audience will welcome Wake Up Dead Man with open arms, mostly from the comfort of living room armchairs. On the big screen – thanks to another of Netflix’s awards season concessions to theatrical windows – the work is eminently handsome and a tribute to human craftsmanship (stick around at the end for a series of beautiful cast portraits lovingly painted by the very human hand of Isabella Watling).
The craftier aspects and the committed work of the cast (particularly O’Connor and Craig) mean that Johnson’s third outing gets a fairly easy pass on a handful of niggles. While his murder isn’t as in-plain-sight as the one in Glass Onion, guessing the culprit(s?) isn’t all that difficult. The method of explaining the solution is a mite lengthy and over-complicated, however, especially as a more fitting and thematically resonant idea is surprisingly sidestepped.
But there’s an argument to be made, nonetheless, that this is Johnson’s best film yet. It feels like a career summation even though there’s no finality about it (he even gets in a Star Wars joke). More that everything he’s able to achieve is in here somewhere. Is that indulgent, or just unsparing? Either way, the telling is the thing, and Wake Up Dead Man delivers a crafty sermon with a wit and enthusiasm that’s incredibly infectious.
The Lost Highway Hotel 