Wake Up Dead Man
1. I liked it, as did my boys.
2. I know it’s got some cheesy moments; I enjoyed rather than resented the visual and oratorical hamming.
3. I’m pro–Rian Johnson, both generally and regarding his greatest film, which came out eight years ago this month. If you know you know, caveat lector, etc.
4. That said, I downright hated The Glass Onion. Too clever by half, an empty mystery, and the politics and satire both fell flat.
5. Wake Up Dead Man is thus a return to form. A fantastic mystery, jokes that land, characters that entice, new riffs on old themes, capped and united by a turn to religion. I’m here for it!
6. I have a soft spot for any popular entertainment that doesn’t make a mockery of Christian faith, or reduce it to woo, or project infinite doubt onto all believers, or unmask every pastor as a cynical abuser. Johnson succeeds on all counts.
7. There are two specifically spiritual grace notes that show both Johnson’s commitment to fidelity and his willingness to interrogate his beloved lead. (Spoilers hereon.)
The first is the call to Louise, which begins as a frantic plot point, then becomes a rat-a-tat dialogue played for laughs, then brings the scene to a screeching halt when Louise bears her soul to Fr. Judd—who then transforms from suspect into priest, closing the door, and praying for her and her mother. Blanc is left holding the bag, unable to do anything but wait for this pastor to conclude his work.
The second is the climactic confession of the killer, a scene that immediately brought to mind Brideshead Revisited. The film’s Catholicism is truest here, when even a proud, vain, duplicitous murderer can receive the grace of absolution mere seconds before dying. Every word of the priest is sincere; there’s no irony, no winking, no playacting on Johnson’s part. The guilty can be forgiven, no matter the crimes they’ve committed, should they repent and confess. That the scene happens before the altar, where the original crime was committed, is all the more poignant.
8. Johnson cites Christie, Carr, Poe, and Sayers, among others, but the author and stories that came to me were Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries. Johnson does not let his rationalist atheist detective off easy. Fr. Judd is his equal and in more than scene shows himself Blanc’s superior. It’s a mere game for Blanc, but Fr. Judd would rather let justice be done, and he suffer the consequences, than “solve the mystery.” And it’s Blanc who relents by the end, not Fr. Judd. Both of them change, but the priest never once calls Christ into question; if anything, his faith is confirmed and deepened by the end.
9. Who, then, is the dead man in the title? Sure, it’s a play on words, not to mention a reference both to Christ’s resurrection and to the central event of the film. But more than these, the dead man is Benoit Blanc, and the cry is Christ’s, speaking through Fr. Judd—not to mention Saint Paul. As Ephesians 5:14 puts it: “Wake up, you sleeper! Rise up from the dead! Christ will shine on you!” The whole film’s constant refractions of light and darkness, red and green, and the tempting pink of a secret jewel (=Eve’s apple) all function as visual glosses on this one verse.
10. Yes, it seems all too obvious that the victim, Msgr. Wicks, is a stand-in for Trump, and his flock the ever-winnowing devotees of his cult of personality. Trump the man is famously immune from satire. I’ll just say that Josh Brolin’s portrayal of the character Johnson wrote—not so much a full-blooded character we understand objectively as vignettes of a fractured personality, depending moment by moment on perspective, occasion, and relationship—clicked in a way that surprised me. Your mileage may vary.
