I just realized something about Glass Onion and the way it’s structured, and like everything else in the movie it was told to us in the start:
(GLASS ONION SPOILERS AHEAD)
… it’s a fugue. The movie is a Fugue.
During the puzzle box sequence when the music box puzzle opens, Yo Yo Ma tells Peg that the music they’re hearing is Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor” he explains:
“A fugue is a beautiful musical puzzle based on just one tune. And when you layer this tune on top of itself, it starts to change and turn into a beautiful new structure.”
Right in front of our eyes, Rian Johnson just told us how the movie was going to go. It starts out with a simple tune, your classic murder mystery setup much like the Clue movie and half of the mysteries Agatha Christie was famous for writing. We meet the eccentric characters, a murder happens, everyone runs around for a while, and the detective seems ready to tell us whodunit…
And then the movie starts over again, and every scene from Helen or Benoit’s perspective changes *our* perspective on the last half of the movie, scene by scene. This new layer of the film adds to it and forms a beautiful new structure itself.
