Blanc solving the murder mystery in like, an hour, because he’d been deprived of mystery solving for like two years due to the pandemic is sooo fucking funny
when andi said her life was taken away from her by someone, everyone in that room - and then emphasized it - my life! do you even know what that means? - and you come back and realize it’s helen saying that and she means it literally because andi is dead.
Big Glass Onion Knives Out spoilers below, do not read if you haven't seen the movie!
Analyzing *that scene* at the end of Glass Onion
Someone has probably already talked about this, but the glass smashing scene! I cannot stop thinking about that scene because of how it DIRECTLY parallels Miles's speech about being a disruptor.
"If you want to shake things up, you start with something small. You break a norm, or an idea, or a convention, some little business model. But you go with things that people are kind of tired of anyway."
Miles has a giant room full of glass statues. Hell, his big fancy dome is called the Glass Onion, so easly breakable with all of its glass panes. He has a lot of it and it would all be so easy to knock over and destroy with one wrong step, and we see Peg almost do just that very early on.
And when Helen starts grabbing them and smashing them? Miles laughs. To him, she is a small, insignificant person who thinks she can get back at him by smashing some (probably very expensive) sculptures. But they don't actually matter - he can always buy more. They will always be replaceable. But she doesn't stop.
"Everybody gets excited because you're busting up something that everyone wanted broken in the first place. That's the infraction point."
The others start to cheer her on. They want these broken too. They wanna do something that makes them feel a little better, like they've gotten back at Miles a little bit. So they cheer her on and then they join in. They smash glass and cheer and you can tell that they're having a lot of fun with it.
Does it help anything? No. Does it change the fact that they've turned their back on Andi and Helen? No. Does it actually do anything to screw over Miles or reject the conditions of his monetary support? Nope.
It's just a bit of fun for them to take the edge off.
"That's the place where you have to look within yourself and ask, 'Am I the kind of person who will keep going?' Will you break more things? Break bigger things?"
They've had their fun, hell, even Miles partook and smashed the cup he was holding because none of it fucking matters.
But Helen keeps going. She doesn't stop at the statues. She pushes.
"Are you willing to break the thing that nobody wants you to break? Because at that point, people are not gonna be on your side. They're gonna call you crazy. They're gonna say you're a bully. They're gonna tell you to stop."
They tell Helen to go easy, to calm down.
She smashes the piano and you can see they're all concerned. Birdie comments that she thinks the piano belonged to Liberace. The glass statues were fun, but this piano is important and how dare you break it.
She smashes the bar cart and everyone is getting more worried. Miles is getting mad. He tries to bargain with her, asks her what she wants because now he's upset, Helen has taken things farther than she was supposed to.
And then she takes the lighter and sets it ablaze.
They tell Helen to stop, to wait. They tell her enough, that she needs to be done now because they're uncomfortable. They had their fun and didn't sign up for anything meaningful to actually happen.
Even your partner will say, 'You need to stop.'
The line about your partner is the only one that doesn't hold true.
Blanc was Helen's partner in all of this and he was the one who told her to keep going, he was the one who handed her the solid hydrogen, who told her to remember why her sister walked away, and by doing so gave her the green light (even though she didn't need his permission) to burn it all down.
"Because as it turns out, nobody wants you to break the system itself. But that is what true disruption is. And that is what unites all of us. We all got to that line and crossed it."
Helen finds the line - she throws the Klean fuel and everything explodes in their faces.
And then the ultimate crossing of the line, their horrified faces as they realize what she is about to do as she lunges for the Mona Lisa and it goes up in flames. Nobody wants you to break the system and everyone is terrified when you do.
Helen crosses the line, burns Miles's whole empire down in the process.
All of Andi's friends just reshaped the systems to serve themselves.
Helen is the only one of them who ever crossed a meaningful line.
spoilers for glass onion but love benoit saying that miles isn't an idiot and wouldn't risk murdering cassandra because he would be the obvious suspect to realizing that yes, miles is actually an idiot
i adore the theme of not "playing the game" that was in knives out with marta reluctantly going along with harlans plan, and then playing it her own way at the end to catch ransom in a trap, and im so happy it continued in glass onion
these shitheads™ are all so into playing this pseudo intellectual game with each other, thinking miles is sooo clever and gleefully solving the mystery box together. but helen? she knows what they are. she doesn't give a shit about miles's game. so she beats the shit out of that box; she's not playing the game, she's coming in and taking no bullshit.
and you can see that she's actually the real disruptor; miles goes on about how people like changes to the things they grow bored of, but once you start crossing the line and going for "the thing nobody wants to break", everyone tells you to stop, but you don't. well, miles seemed very happy to watch helen break every glass statue in his living room, he was encouraging it. he was bored of them. but when she goes for the piano? when she starts crossing the line? suddenly he's protesting, until the final dash for the override button and the mona lisa, "the thing nobody wants to break", is destroyed. his words are completely turned back on him, and she's taken her revenge
Cassandra was a princess of Troy who gained the power of prophecy from Apollo but was then cursed by him so that no one would ever believe her prophecies because she refused his favour.
Andi refused to go with Miles' plan and he ensured in the legal battle that everyone believed she was lying no matter how much she tried to tell the truth.
I love Benoit Blanc so much it's insane. He really could have just told Helen that she needed to report the crime to the police. But no. He's too gay for that. He has too much panache. He said girl, go see my friend for a chic new look, we are GOING to Elon Musk's Murder Island.
my favourite part of 1899 was when the 2 fake priests were telling each other they were fake priests but they had no clue since one was Portuguese and the other was danish
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
tangentwithtanner
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
