REVIEW: Wake Up Dead Man

    Last week when I reviewed WICKED: For Good, I mentioned that I couldn't help but analyze the film specifically from the lens of a lifelong fan of the Broadway phenomenon. 

    I find myself in a similar position here examining the new "Knives Out" movie and its meditation on faith and religion. I can't help but view the film through my own experiences as a practicing believer. 

    But first, some notes on the filmmaking itself.

    The third installment in the Knives Out saga sees Benoit Blanc investigating the murder of a tyrannical priest, Monsignor Wicks, presiding over a smalltown flock. The prime suspect is none other than the young, idealistic Father Jud, the new priest who found Wicks' approach to spirituality repulsive and completely counter to Christ's teachings. Thus, this mystery is a contest between two representations of Christianity, each desperate to define the function of religion in the modern scene.

    And this is a very different scene for Blanc. I do find myself longing a little for the eccentric coziness of Knives Out, or the sun-kissed luxury of Glass Onion, but I also won't be ungrateful for the gothic draping and the haunted quality that affords this outing. 

    Johnson's films have always graced us with an exotic cast of characters brought to life by an all-star cast, and this film was no different. Daniel Craig feels completely at home even when Blanc himself does not. This round we'll give a special shoutout to Mila Kunis as our disenchanted police officer and Jeremy Renner as our listless doctor.

    Almost as important, of course, is the nature of the mystery itself. My valid critique of the "Knives Out" movies is that I'm never terribly surprised at who the killer ends up being. It's actually a small critique given that the movies themselves actually serve repeat viewings more than the first viewing. But I was grateful just the same that this movie does some things that I had wanted from the first two films, that extra flex that ratifies the mystery. It's difficult to describe what exactly that is and still preserve the audience experience, so I'll just say that ... this is maybe the first Knives Out movie to really take advantage of having a full cast of suspects. 

    As a narrative puzzle, the movie is masterful. As a social commentary, this is the first Knives Out movie that's actually felt slightly late to the party. 

    Trying to prove my credentials here would take more time than is reasonable for a film review, which is also an odd space to having this conversation anyways. But speaking as a practicing believer, and someone who has spent much of his life around practicing believers, this representation of a congregation, while not unprecedented, always feels like parody, even when it's trying to honestly capture a stratum of American living. 

    Regular churchgoers have their flaws, absolutely, and they are certainly as ripe a population as any for the madcappery of a murder mystery. We've seen other works, like John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, capture the culture of believers authentically without compromising its internal examination. 

    But people of faith as depicted in this movie are generally gullible and fragile, even dependent on preserving a very contentious representation of spiritualism. The only exception is, of course, Father Jud. Gratefully, the movie is committed to depict him as earnest in his convictions to tend to his flock, and the story frames him as the subject of both sympathy and admiration. But where the first two installments genuinely felt ahead of the curve, Wake Up Dead Man winds up feeling like wish-fulfillment. 

    Parts of the movie's target demographic will still find this movie's conclusions edgy and perspicacious. The movie winds up posing the question, "Wow! Can you just imagine how much different life would be if more men of the cloth were like Father Jud and not Father Wick? Really makes you think, doesn't it ..." And all the while it ignores that ... most of them are. Choosing to subject spiritual leaders to the same scrutiny this series afforded tech billionaires or inheritors of great family fortune cannot produce the same conclusions. 

    That all out of the way ... this movie is not worst-case scenario. By the end of the movie, there were things I had really liked specifically about its depiction of faith and believers. 

    Where I think this movie actually has its finger on the pulse of spiritual life in this world is actually in the interactions between Blanc, a "proud heretic," and Father Jud. The movie gives our celebrity detective multiple opportunities to flash exactly what he thinks of churches and the kind of people that find themselves there, including the clergyman whose name he is trying to clear.

    So our two protagonists are on opposite sides of the divide, and yet that does not stop them from working together, with Blanc even counting Father Jud as an ally every bit as much as he did Marta or Helen. This is something I honestly wish I saw more of within mainstream representations of religion, whether the text is itself faith-affirming or not. Blanc doesn't experience anything we'd normally call a conversion, but this might be the first time we see him experiencing a proper character arc, and there's something beautiful about that. 

    And thus, even though the movie reveals its own blindspots toward the subject it is examining, it ultimately finds itself the graceful recipient of its own treatise on good intentions, revealing something in itself that is uniquely useful.

    Even so, I'd be content to see Johnson and Craig return to their element for the next film.

        --The Professor