loose notes on Wake Up Dead Man
possible minor spoilers ahead:
“young, dumb, and full of Christ”
great to see the universally underutilized Thomas Haden Church outside of Twisted Metal season 1
underutilization of Jeffrey Wright, however, is criminal
Not sure who did actual set design, but I feel like Rian Johnson really knows what a murder mystery movie looks like. The rectory office has dove-blue wall paint, shabby old oak (?) filing cabinets, a cream-colored task lamp on the desk. I especially notice the texture of Jud’s dark blue knit sweater, not solely because so much was written online about Chris Evans’s “fisherman sweater” from the first Knives Out movie. Martha’s outfit is totally indistinct except for something glittering at her throat, a little brooch or other piece of jewelry
If I didn’t know who Andrew Scott was before, I’d be googling him right now.
The narration about the monsignor forcing parishioners to choose a side—his side—by “tapping deep, poisoned wells” really struck me. I think a lot about the Bible and its references to “wormwood” which, in Revelation, is the metaphorical substance poisoning the water: bad actors poison the collective well, sowing division, creating false battles. That’s the type of chaos gremlin I’ve come to really dislike.
Forcing people to take a side they don’t actually believe is how you get massive cognitive dissonance and fractured psyches. It’s a type of brain-breaking psychological warfare.
Hearing Jud call “this whole place” “a whitewashed tomb” made me gasp. Like, Rian Johnson is demonstrating a pretty good grasp of the New Testament here.
In retrospect, I’m almost positive Johnson’s line about “deep, poisoned wells” was a Biblical metaphor about “wormwood” that he went back and scraped out of the script, since it would be a nonobvious reference to a general audience (people might think of absinthe or C.S. Lewis or something instead)
update: a Christian movie reviewer did the legwork and confirmed that Rian Johnson himself is exvangelical. This squares, since the whole mystery is about a supposedly-Christian leader, whose conditions qualifying others for "salvation" have escalated in their rigidity and hostility—which is the opposite of "grace," obviously—making the "in-group" smaller and smaller. Jesus railed against the arbiters of religious law, chastising them for only caring about appearances and gatekeeping the kingdom of God.
I really feel for the main character, the young priest Jud, who is afraid that by feeling anger—by ever protecting and/or defending himself—he’s gonna accidentally kill someone. This is a real thing called harm OCD, which is tightly linked to scrupulosity OCD, and you don’t have to’ve actually killed someone to have lots of anxiety about it
It should be clear by now that the young priest is about to be the police’s prime suspect!! And because accidentally killing someone is already his worst fear, he of course becomes terrified that he did kill the murder victim, somehow: “I didn’t do it. But in my heart maybe I did, and the way it happened was some kind of miracle.” (This is very Dostoevsky, “wishing makes it so,” which has its roots in the Bible’s “he has already sinned in his heart.”) Easiest type of guy to frame up, since he’s basically ready to frame himself
“You’re right, it’s storytelling. And this church, it’s not medieval. We’re in New York. It’s neo-Gothic 19th century: it has more in common with Disneyland than Notre Dame. And the rites and rituals and costumes, all of it, it’s storytelling.”
Sometimes, listening to Benoit Blanc’s outrageous accent, I wonder if Rian Johnson ever played the Gabriel Knight point-and-click adventure games, eventually played Tim Curry’s voiceover performance back to Daniel Craig, and directed Craig to “just do that.”
Daniel Craig wearing a three-piece tweed suit, tortoiseshell readers, and latex gloves, has awakened a feeling in me that I’d previously assumed was dead
“What about […]?” “Go to town, Father Brown!”
“monsignor” rhymed with “jalapeño”
Father Jud DUPLENTICY? (Sorry, I just saw his name on a little placard)
Daniel Craig and Josh Brolin both have wild heads of hair in this movie!! Brolin’s is particularly feral, while Craig has an enviable blowout
The most reactionary male characters—played by Andrew Scott and Jeremy Renner—have hair parts on the left, so that their hair veers to their right. Ordinarily this would have no significance whatsoever, since that’s just how both actors part their hair irl, but Daniel Craig switched up his hair part for this role specifically, so that his hair flows leftward, "against the grain"
“In a small town there are only so many witches to burn and zealots to activate. Your flame lacks fuel. But on the Internet: wildfire. This money, your cult of personality—are you kidding me? Give me four years, you could be president. Together we can build a real empire. As father and son.” “…Like in Star Wars?” “Yeah, exactly, like the Rebels.”
The movie telegraphs where it’s heading, but I was still a little shocked.
“I don’t want any lookie-loos”: I swear Rian Johnson played Gabriel Knight as a young adult.
a silly body-disposal scene worthy of Batman: the Animated Series (highest compliment)
men making women and girls responsible for everything under the sun, beginning with the mythical first woman
“Such a time to be alive”
Great.
A few days ago my best friend’s dad told me he doesn’t care for murder mysteries because they always pull a little stunt at the end. “I get it, they’re unfair,” I agreed. Then I recommended checking out Rian Johnson’s last movie, Glass Onion, since the murder occurs right there onscreen in front of your face, and what you think has happened is exactly what happened: no cheating. Wake Up Dead Man, on the other hand, is a little more classically constructed, so that a bunch of previously-concealed information comes spilling out at the dénouement. Is that fair? Maybe not, but it feels more than earned. My best friend’s dad won’t love it, though.
It’s been several years since I saw the too-precious, too-cutesy Brothers Bloom. I feel like Rian Johnson’s prosey dialogue has never been oblique or particularly graceful, but I do think it’s gotten better and better, and at this point plain, direct speech is refreshing. The characters wear Johnson’s thoughts on their sleeves, and I vibed with that. So I’m gonna fly in the face of my friend’s Letterboxd review and say that, actually, I thought this one was the best of the three.
P.S. The kids on the hEDS subreddit are literally weeping at feeling represented onscreen.
P.P.S. My favorite of my current mom figure's caregivers recently (12/18) told me the Internet consensus is that Mila Kunis was woefully miscast and that the part should've gone to someone older and more tired. At this, I'd raised my eyebrows. I'd just watched the second season of Based on a True Story, which had reminded me what a great cop Melissa Fumero plays. Although I agreed that Kunis was miscast, I'd just mentally face-swapped her with Fumero, and then the movie was fine. "So I don't think the role needed a Frances McDormand-in-Fargo type," I told the caregiver, "I thought it needed an idealistic, by-the-book police detective who looks exhausted but can be funny doing it. So Melissa Fumero, basically." She's, like, 361 days older than Mila Kunis, they're both Leos.