The following contains spoilers for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, coming soon to Netflix.
Director Rian Johnson thought long and hard about the title he wanted for his new film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. According to the Netflix promotional material, he wanted to evoke something hidden in plain sight. He thought it would fit well for his detective Benoit Blanc, who has a penchant for overexplaining. "I'm always fishing for something fun that Blanc can grab onto as an overwrought metaphor that he can beat to death," he said. He eventually latched onto the Beatles song -- released on the band's White Album in 1968 -- which itself is a bit of a joke about reading too much meaning into something.
That plays out in the movie's narrative as well as the title. "Glass onion" has many meanings, and the film takes delight in exploring them in myriad ways, prompted by Benoit's shaggy-dog explanations as Johnson intended. That includes both little Easter eggs and larger plot structures, too, including the cast of characters themselves, who -- as is typical for drawing-room mysteries of Glass Onion's ilk -- reveal a considerable number of layers beneath the surface.
Glass Onion Lives Up to Its Title in More Ways Than One
One of Glass Onion's running jokes involves the sheer number of glass onions -- literal and symbolic -- that crop up. That starts right away, as eccentric billionaire Miles Bron invites his friends to a private party by sending them each a giant wooden box. It's a puzzle, with each solution leading to still more puzzles until the whole thing opens to reveal an onion-like ornament containing a simple invitation on a card.
That soon gives way to Miles' island compound, which he named "The Glass Onion" after the bar where all of them used to get together. The building itself is topped by a giant glass sphere, which Miles loftily proclaims represents his past, present, and future. The compound abounds with hidden features -- such as the anti-smoking alarms that go off when Blanc lights up a cigar -- and Miles even has a neon sign reading "glass onion" above his desk, which he took from the bar.
How Glass Onion's Title Reflects Its Mystery
The story stays true to the title as well, largely in the interactions of the characters themselves. Though all ostensibly friends, they have dark feuds in their past, and Glass Onion slowly reveals their various grievances and rivalries. Though outwardly successful, all of them owe Bron for their various triumphs since he supported their endeavors financially. And as the circle's spurned outsider Andi notes, all of them would cheerfully kill each other to maintain his support.
The question of the murder itself plays into the theme as well. As is typical for these kinds of stories, everyone has a motive for the crime, making it hard to zero in on a single suspect. And yet the answer itself is obvious in hindsight, with all of the details to solve the mystery presented along the way. Like any good mystery, the movie disguises them so that they don't seem important until the final reveal. The various rivalries and schemes beneath the veneer of friendship come to light as well, but like onion layers, they're simply interesting distractions from what lies at the core.
Even the victim plays into the theme, and while revealing the specifics would spoil the ending unnecessarily, Glass Onion's very real murder comes amid a flurry of deceit, misdirection and aborted make-believe. The title itself is so saturated into the film that it becomes its own running joke: deftly repeating the franchise's trick of sending up the very thing it actively embodies.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will be available for streaming on Netflix starting on December 23.