Why Setting 'Glass Onion' During Covid Makes It a Better Movie

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

With 2019's Knives Out, writer-director Rian Johnson gave whodunnit lovers a timeless ode to the murder mystery genre, complete with a large, labyrinthine house and a squabbling family of suspects. Take out the cellphones, and it could have almost taken place in the so-called "Golden Age" of detective fiction that flourished between the world wars. Fans of that movie expected more of the same in its sequel, Glass Onion, which follows Daniel Craig's private investigator Benoit Blanc on another case, but the setting of this new story was far more specific: May 2020.

For many viewers, the choice to place the intrigue of this new movie smack in the center of the first lockdown was an unwelcome reminder of an all-too-recent experience (especially given that the spread of Covid is still very much a public health concern). "Too soon" has been a common refrain in response to other media that has engaged with the subject of Covid—the lockdown-themed series Love in the Time of Corona was reviewed as "itchy, uncomfortable and deeply unsatisfying" in its attempts to capture such a specific moment in time—and in almost every instance, I have agreed. But I was intrigued by writer-director Rian Johnson's decision to make the pandemic a grounding element in the movie's opening, rather than a part of the actual plot. And as I watched the mystery unfold, I began to realize just how crucial this context was to the story.

Glass Onion is by no means a story about coronavirus, factoring into the plot very little if at all, but that title card establishing that the film takes place in summer 2020 creates a shorthand with the viewer. Because literally anyone watching this will remember exactly where they were and how they felt during that time.

There is awkward, painful familiarity in the way Claire, played by Kathryn Hahn, covers her face with her sleeve while signing for one of the puzzle boxes that kick off the film's action (parents will also recognize the chaos of her home office turned kindergarten). On the other end of the spectrum, former model Birdie Jay, played by Kate Hudson, justifies her enormous house party as consisting entirely of people in her pod—a flagrant lie the likes of which were told by certain individuals all through the lockdowns. And then there is the tech billionaire Miles, played by Edward Norton, who invites his closest friends to a private party on a remote island, the kind of gathering which flouts all public health guidelines and which Kim Kardashian famously faced an online grilling for.

These are pretty easy shots to take at the super-rich, but they're just Johnson's opening volley.

"The great reference in this is how we all wear masks," Kate Hudson told Entertainment Weekly after the film's release. "You got Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.) showing up double-masked. I'm showing up with, like, a lace or mesh mask. Claire (Kathryn Hahn) is showing up with it hanging down like a chin strap. Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has a very chic and tight mask."

Birdie's mask is another skewering of real-life celebs like Lana Del Rey, whose chic-but-useless diamond mask went viral during Covid. And then there are characters like Duke, played by Dave Bautista, who shows up without a mask at all.

Along with other revealing styling choices by costume designer Jenny Eagan, the masks are a deceptively simple way of telling the audience who each of these people are. Of course Lionel the scientist and Claire the NPR tote bag-carrying Democrat are going to be more fastidious about masking up and following social distancing protocols than the men's rights streamer Duke, whom we first meet while he is decrying the "breastification" of America.

In a recent video in which he breaks down the arrivals scene on the dock, director Rian Johnson remarks on the blocking of the sequence, which makes it clear how each character relates to the others: Jessica Henwick's Peg, for instance, moves towards the edge of the scene to avoid hugging Duke, while Birdie swoops into frame to embrace him. In the opening of any other murder mystery, this would serve as a clue as to the nature of the relationships, and it does here too, but having just reminded the audience of the 2020 setting, it also encourages viewers to keep in mind the degree to which characters like Birdie and Duke care about the comfort and safety of others.

In that same scene, one of Miles' aides (played by Ethan Hawke in one of many surprise cameos) also sprays a mystery substance into each of the guests' mouths, subsequently informing them that they no longer need to wear masks. It's an expedient way of ensuring we don't have to watch two hours of actors delivering muffled lines through face coverings, but it's also a jab at the notion that the more resources you have, the fewer barriers you will encounter when accessing healthcare. In Johnson's fictionalized version of 2020, Miles Bron has had the cure for Covid this whole time, and kept it a secret.

One of the pleasures in a Rian Johnson whodunnit is that while the satire of class and politics tend to be on the broad side, his plotting and characterization are more intricate. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, we would be encouraged to instantly dislike Birdie for her selfishness and repeated political incorrectness, and Duke for his lib-owning shock jock persona. But just like the titular onion, these characters have layers, and so the viewer is invited to look past their first impressions and own subconscious biases and to see them as fully-formed people. (Whether or not Johnson is encouraging us to be more forgiving to those we may have judged harshly at the height of lockdown is a matter of interpretation.)

But the context of Covid exists in the movie beyond simply providing us with additional character details: it's a nifty way of foreshadowing the film's (literally) explosive conclusion. Because if Miles and his cohort are willing to break Covid restrictions followed by everyone else in order to attend this party, then it stands to reason that they would also turn a blind eye to the dire threat to public safety posed by his experimental new hydrogen fuel if it means they can continue to enjoy the perks of being rich and well-connected. It's only when it blows up in their faces (again, quite literally) that any of them even begins to consider doing the right thing.

In the best stories, character informs plot. And there is no event in living memory that has revealed people's true character—their motivations, priorities, and what they are really capable of under pressure—more than the pandemic.

While the plot of each Benoit Blanc mystery is self-contained, it is becoming clear that Johnsons' mission is to continue to skewer the social mores of the rich and powerful, as a way of exposing the unjustness of the ever-growing class and wealth divide. Glass Onion evokes a time when some celebrities were failing to acknowledge the privilege of being able to bunker down in giant mansions ("Imagine" video, anyone?) and downplaying the ways in which the pandemic disproportionately affected people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and takes that cringeworthy lack of self-awareness to its most ludicrous extreme.

We don't know yet what time and place will ground the next Knives Out Mystery. But for now, Johnson seems to have done the near-impossible: he made a movie set in the pandemic that people actually enjoyed.

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