The American director, who signs the continuation of “A Knives drawn” broadcast on Netflix, explains in an interview with the “world” to have wanted to make a very contemporary film.
Interview by Thomas Sotinel
After making the last episode of the Star Wars saga, the last Jedi, Rian Johnson has raised a genre that was believed to be deceased: the enigma film, in the manner of death on the Nile or the Limier. At knives drawn, released indoors in 2019 just before the pandemic, almost convinced that the distraction cinema did not need superheroes to survive. Today, the second investigation by detective Benoit Blanc, which Daniel Craig is still interpreted, is released on Netflix. The director, who, for the moment, devotes himself exclusively to this series of surveys, returns to the unexpected meeting he organized between Agatha Christie and the world of tech.
“Glass onion “is distinguished from” a knives drawn “by its magnitude – the means implemented, the themes addressed …
by its magnitude and by its tone. The tone corresponds to the film scale. From the moment I put a billionaire of tech at the center of the plot, the film became larger, if only because it is located on a private island. He grew up because it is a luxury holiday film, but also because it is a satirical comedy. I like each of these films to find its tone and its scale. The next one may be more modest and darker.
The recent news gives you the impression of having been prophetic in terms of tech billionaires?
I wrote the film in 2020, and it is not a particular billionaire. The film is not very subtle, it talks about big lies and power structures through which people who want to preserve their interests comfort these big lies. The idea was to take the genre of the enigma film, which so often took the form of the film in costume, and to make it a very contemporary film. Glass Onion is a way of screaming in the face of carnival unreason of the last five or six years, faced with the stupidity that we have seen in the powerful, and faced with all these huge, stupid lies, that we have taken for a 3D chess game
and you gave it a very opulent appearance by recreating this Greek island…
I wanted to orient myself towards a sub-genre of the enigma film, the great exotic production, died on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978), murder in the sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982) or the dangerous invitations (Herbert Ross , 1973) – I particularly like this last film. One of the attractions of this sub-genre is to go on vacation with the characters. I wrote during the pandemic and I said to myself: “This is where I would like to be.”
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