Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man just might make you believe in the divine. That’s not to say that the third installment of the Knives Out series proselytizes at you like a street preacher; rather, this murder mystery, steeped in the Gothic and spiritual aesthetics of Edgar Allen Poe and G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, invites us to meditate on the ways the spiritual may be present in the everyday.
Johnson’s film recapitulates some beautifully worn truths: that there’s more to this life than riches, that the pursuit of power at all costs corrodes the soul and that the liberating power of forgiveness is always within our grasp. It doesn’t get more spiritual than that. But the real miracle here is how Johnson finds ways to baptize his genre tropes with these themes. The result is a film not only thrilling in its own right, but a reinvention — or maybe a resurrection — of what the genre can be. It’s the whodunit at its most visceral and graceful.
Fighting Fathers
After three years without Detective Benoit Blanc’s Kentucky-fried drawl, it’s rapturous to hear star Daniel Craig deliver lines like “I don’t see a guilty man in torment but an innocent tormented by guilt.” Curiously, while Johnson opens the film with the camera on Craig, we spend the first half-hour of the film getting to know a whole host of other characters. It’s a big ask to invest in new characters without our familiar guide to poke fun at their most despicable tendencies, but viewers are in safe hands with Josh O’Connor’s Jud Duplenticy, a young priest.
In a letter, Jud tells Benoit about the trouble that has befallen his church, Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude (an all-timer church name). After Jud, a boxer, accidentally killed a man in the ring, he traded gloves for liturgical vestments. His fighting spirit still gets the better of him, however — he’s reassigned to Perpetual Fortitude after he punches a deacon, who, in his Father Superior’s revered words, was “an asshole.”
Thus, Jud finds himself in the pews of a church led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). It’s hell by any other name, but for Wick’s congregants, it might as well be the promised land. Wicks brings a fire-and-brimstone sensibility to his sermons that feels like he’s trying to transubstantiate his services into mosh pits. When questioned why he feels the need to rile up the congregants, he retorts, “anger helps us fight back and take back the ground we’ve lost … and we’ve lost so much ground.” Such rhetoric evokes pastors like Mark Discroll or James McDonald, who often adopt “warfare” language from their pulpits. Wicks is of the same ilk, and it’s a type of shepherding that Jud, who understands that it’s God’s kindness and not wrath that leads to repentance, believes has no place in the church.
A-List Archetypes
The members of Monsignor Wicks’ church are filled out by the all-star cast that has become a staple of the franchise, and as usual, the fun is witnessing them play off their varying energies. Unlike Glass Onion, where the characters rarely spent any time apart due to the film’s isolated setting, Wake Up Dead Man is more similar to the first Knives Out film in that the ensemble is rarely all present in the same place. But it makes their moments of communion that much more riveting. There’s Martha (Glenn Close), the church’s bookkeeper; groundskeeper Samson (Thomas Haden Church); lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington) and her son Cy (Daryl McCormack); the town’s doctor, Nat (Jeremy Renner); author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and cellist Simone (Cailee Spaeny). Most of them feel like archetypes who happen to be embodied by A-listers, and there’s charm in seeing talent play against type. If you ever wanted to see Andrew Scott play a conspiracy-ridden writer who’s used his royalties to build a moat around his home, this is the film for you.
After Wicks and Jud’s ideological differences reach a breaking point, Wicks is mysteriously killed in the middle of the town’s Good Friday service, and Jud is the prime suspect. Blanc, as well as local police chief Geraldine (Mila Kunis), are called in to investigate and find the murderer, though some are already saying that, given the circumstances, it’s possible that Wick’s inexplicable death was an act of God. At first, Wake Up Dead Man seems like it might go the route of Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice, and explore ways faith and science clash with one another: Blanc proudly declares that he “kneels at the altar of the heretic” and that there’s nothing “supernatural” about Wicks’ murder. Yet Johnson’s script gets at something deeper, arguing that we can miss the divinity in the everyday world around us. Religious spaces are often rightfully accused of caring more about the spirit than the body (how many times can “thoughts and prayers” be uttered in the face of tragedy before it becomes hollow?), but Johnson’s theology argues for nothing less than an embodied faith.
Take a moment when Jud, in the throes of finding out an important clue from a member of the congregation, is asked if he might pray for her. The request could not come at a more inconvenient time, and much to Blanc’s chagrin, Jud obliges. It’s not a practical move, given the urgency of the case. But it’s an example of his commitment to holistic care as a “no one left behind attitude priest.” As a priest, Jud has to be all things to all people, reflecting O’Connor’s own chameleon-like abilities as an actor. But undergirding his service is an unshakable and unwavering shepherding spirit. This could be played as naive or out of touch, but O’Connor plays it with earnestness. Of all the characters in the film, O’Connor’s is the most human; he’s vulgar and prone to fits of rage, and yet commits himself to doing better. It’s a far more beautiful picture of sacrifice and service than the seemingly most pious and well-behaved members of his congregation.
What’s most compelling is that Jud’s posture of grace feels nearly impossible without some holy intervention. When we meet the regulars of Wick’s church, it’s evident that their bitterness towards each other, the world and life in general is eating away at them. It may be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, but it’s harder to ask people who have made anger and victimhood their closest friends to consider the atonement that comes with forgiveness. To do so requires undoing a mindset that’s been so normalized that it’s become like breathing, and it’s far easier to keep doing what you’re doing than try something new. Jud feels a duty to solve the murder, but he also feels obliged to nurture his congregation’s souls.
Transcendent Cinematography
The themes are profound, but a film brimming with good ideas means little if not executed thrillingly, and cinematographer Steve Yedlin brings an anointed touch to the framing of this story. The church feels like it contains worlds between the mortars of its brick walls, and it’s arresting to see sunlight flood in and out of the stained-glass windows, bathing its characters in effervescent rays. Johnson and his team have fun with these aesthetics when the church is darkened or lit, and it will be fun to note when the illumination may be offering clues about the murder upon rewatch.
In Benoit and Jud’s first interaction, Jud takes note of Blanc’s surprise at the modern accouterments of his church. The young priest jokes that churches nowadays have “more in common with Disneyland than Notre Dame,” highlighting that the “costumes [and] rituals” are in service of stories that can either “convince us of a lie, or get at something true.” It’s a clever confluence not just of the ways churches have become commercialized, but an acknowledgment that within all of us, there’s a desire for a relationship with something beyond ourselves and to connect our lives to a greater story. Wake Up Dead Man is Johnson turning to the audience for confession, asking if we might consider the ways we can graft ourselves onto stories that challenge us and liberate us to look beyond ourselves and our worries. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find God.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery was reviewed out of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It premieres in select theaters on November 26, and on Netflix on December 5.
