The recent years have offered a real big-screen smorgasbord if you’re interested in “eating the affluent.”
Films that parody influencer culture, privileged kids’ false relationships, and fine dining itself have all been released this year alone. Examples include Triangle of Sadness, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and Fine Dining (The Menu).
The affluent individuals portrayed in these movies are terrible in all the ways that have come to be expected of them: they are egotistical, cruel to anybody outside of their social circle, and wreck havoc on everything and everyone around them.
The sequel to Rian Johnson’s 2019 film Knives Out, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, was the other notable entry into this rapidly expanding canon this year. In the first film, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a cunning investigator with a flare for the spectacular, solves the murder of millionaire mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer).
When a murder mystery game on an island suddenly turns fatal in Glass Onion, Blanc is back. Additionally, Johnson gives the satire a fresh perspective by pointing out that many of the wealthy are also abnormally ignorant, with their justification resting solely on the respect of people around them. The end product is a metaphor for everyone who has to coexist with Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Jeff Bezos in our modern world. (There will be spoilers.)
The movie opens with a group of old friends, including a politician (Claire Debella; played by Kathryn Hahn), a model who has been partially cancelled (Birdie Jay; Kate Hudson), her assistant (Peg; Jessica Henwick), a men’s rights internet personality (Duke Cody; Dave Bautista) and his girlfriend (Whiskey; Madelyn Cline), a scientist who works for a tech billionaire (Miles Bron Blanc, who has never met the gang, also receives the package.
They’ve all known Bron for years, and as they work through the challenges within the package and discover an invitation to his private island in Greece for a murder mystery party, many of them soon mention his intelligence. They go to the island presumably to investigate Bron’s (fake) murder. But as soon as Blanc realises the game is a scam, a genuine murder takes place on the island. Due to poisoning, Cody perishes.
Next, a turn: Brand is already dead, and her murder will shortly be publicised, as shown in a flashback. Her twin sister Helen, who has hired Blanc to find the murder’s perpetrator, is the “Andi Brand” on the island. Blanc gathers everyone together and announces his discoveries after some scurrying around the house and an attempt on Helen’s life: Bron was the one who killed Andi and Cody; she did so for the former because she knew a new invention of his was risky and had information that might allow her to regain control of his business; and for the latter because he was the only person to see Bron leave Andi’s house after she had killed her. Sometimes the simplest solution is the right one, as Blanc’s character explains.
While creating the fake murder mystery (for which he hired Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn to write it) and coming up with a scheme to confuse the visitors by turning off the lights, Blanc admits that he started to have doubts that Bron was not all that he seemed when the billionaire immediately started to misuse phrases, pronounce words incorrectly, and farm out any creative or original tasks to someone else. (Blanc himself refers to “turning out the lights” to Bron at another point in the
This lack of creativity and intelligence, in Blanc’s revelation, is evidence of Bron’s determination to hide how much other people—especially Andi—are to blame for his company’s triumphs.
The observer is genuinely surprised by Bron’s lack of brightness. From the beginning, the plot of the movie supports Bron: He is regularly referred to as a genius; not only has he created the puzzles that govern how the pals spend their days, but they are also on his island, in his dominion. He is wealthy and influential. The audience’s more doubtful billionaire members might not like him, but given how confidently he delivers his lines, it’s unlikely that they will notice all of his verbal gaffes on first viewing.
However, when Blanc, a cunning man, examines him closely, all the legends that Bron’s friends and supporters have created about him swiftly dissipate. Despite all the trickery, Bron is not engaging in 4D chess. He doesn’t have a covert strategy. Just stumbling along, he is.
This argument implies that billionaires’ influence on all of us extends beyond just how they manage their finances. It’s not just the way they finance politicians or control how modern work is done. Many of the rest of us believe that because of their wealth and power, the ultra-wealthy must know something we don’t since they are increasingly able to influence politics and culture, at least in part because of this belief.
As a result, Americans frequently develop genuine admiration for affluent individuals, especially ultra-wealthy businesspeople, and voluntarily comply with their standards. This fandom helps to explain why efforts to limit the political influence of wealthy people, for example, have been ineffective and why people like Elon Musk may feel driven to take over companies like Twitter, which only increases their social influence, not just by financial incentives but also by public goodwill.
Rich people aren’t necessarily wiser than the average person; their strategies and their mistakes are straightforward. Because he believes they will influence culture and politics in the direction of his vision of a new right, Peter Thiel is sponsoring lawmakers in Arizona and artists in New York City. For him, neither is going well. Sam Bankman-Fried, the creator of FTX and a significant political donor, eventually fell victim to the fiction of the young genius he had been peddling to everyone else, lost a lot of money, and ended up in court. Due to Musk’s addiction to the platform and his belief that he would benefit from having a larger platform, both his businesses and his personal brand appear to be in freefall right now. Donald Trump campaigned for president in order to get more time to watch himself on cable television. He stumbled into the role, tweeted throughout it, and is now trying to avoid punishment by peddling NFTs. Ye, also known as Kanye West, adopted outrageous behaviour that cost him significant business opportunities and, supposedly, his billionaire status.
All of these men eventually accumulated enough wealth that they were surrounded by others who stoked their egos in the hopes of receiving a kickback. Any inventive spark or commercial acumen that aided them in their ascent to the top is certain to wane as they become accustomed to these meticulously crafted environments that were created to support their alleged talent.
The Glass Onion isn’t really innovative. That wealthy people can be foolish is not very newsworthy. But as Benoit Blanc explains to the audience, there’s no use overanalyzing the situation. It’s frequently truest to give a phenomenon (or a murder) a straightforward explanation.
