I’ve been finding it funny that people have been trying to make a political talking point out of a movie like Glass Onion. Like it, don’t like it—I do not care. I happen to really like it, but I also appreciate that it takes Agatha Christie and the 1973 Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins (yes, that’s right) classic The Last of Sheila, and it adds some satire to the mix. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that Dave Bautista prancing around in a speedo with a gun hanging out of it as some Joe Rogan/Andrew Tate Just asking questions to fight the death of masculinity online celeb type upsets people that think that way, but I’m still holding out that people will surprise me.
I’ve also seen a few people link it with another movie that’s available on one of the 10,0000 streaming services you signed up for a few years after you shouted “Hallelujah! I’m free from the tyranny of cable!” The Menu, along with Glass Onion, have both been described as “Eat the rich” films, and, truth be told, I’m more of a “Sad rich dicks” guy myself. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so team Tom Wambsgans on Succession. The guy boasts about having “a dick the size of a red sequoia and I fuck like a bullet train,” but he’s also, as Kathryn VanArendonk once pointed out, sad. And that’s a funny combination.
But the other thing about Succession I love is the Roy family’s taste in things or lack thereof. Rachel Syme for The New Yorker once wrote about how they dress in things that are “expensive but inconspicuous,” and that’s something I go back to a lot. The Roy family has everything, but they also have nothing at all. Succession isn’t a show about eating the rich, but it’s a show about the rich eating themselves alive.
And that’s something Glass Onion and The Menu have in common with it. If you haven’t seen either, I’m going to say maybe hold off reading this until you have because I’m going to do some *Spoiler* stuff below this photo of Ralph Fiennes contemplating how he deserves an Oscar nod for his role.
I mentioned the 1973 film The Last of Sheila as an influence on Glass Onion, and there are multiple reasons I can get into there, from the setup of the film to the incredible costuming in both movies, but ultimately the one thing I kept thinking about is if you just omitted Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc and Janelle Monáe (who is a force of nature in this film), then it’s very similar to the 1973 movie where you have one rich guy who is the puppetmaster and a bunch of people that show themselves to be sycophants through and through all the way to the end where the puppetmaster gets what he deserves, but the rest of the cast probably haven’t learned any real lessons. They’re still miserable people. Maybe even more by the end of the movie.
The Menu, meanwhile, doesn’t take long to fill us in on how awful the people that take a boat to an island to eat a breadless bread plate and chicken breast tacos with a little scissor stabbed into the meat to mimic the scissors the chef’s character used to stab his own abusive father are. You’ve got the philanderer who has dined there eleven times and can’t recall a thing he’s had, the finance bros who act like trash and the snooty critic who has ruined plenty of businesses in her time. You also get a few people who just happen to be there, like Aimee Carrero’s character who is there because she’s John Leguizamo’s character’s assistant and she went to Brown without any financial aid. In the line of fire, so to speak.
At the end of the day, there’s no bad or good, there’s only misery. And one thing that really stuck out to me was a part when it’s mentioned that all the people sitting in the restaurant could have tried to get away, but they didn’t. That stayed with me until the penultimate scene when we get to the dessert course and—surprise!—it was the customers and the staff. They’re all going to dress up like s'mores and burn! They all get their chocolate hats and their marshmallow vests and they seem sort of whatever about it. And as the fires rage around them, they’re crying and upset, but they aren’t trying to get away. They’re accepting it. They gave up a long time ago. Long before we see them get on the boat to eat at Hawthorn.
Like Glass Onion, you don’t have to try that hard to understand how The Menu is a satire on a number of topics, from art vs. commerce to overconsumption. But the other thing the two films share, along with Succession, is emptiness. The Roys all live these very boring, sterile existences. They aren’t ever having fun no matter how lavish the party is. Everybody Miles Bron (Edward Norton) invites to the island is unhappy. Even the heroes are, though, for different reasons—Blanc hasn’t had a case that really puzzled him in some time and Monáe’s Helen is playing her sister who has recently died in order to catch the killer. But the rest of the people are miserable. They have to appease Miles or else it’s over for them. Not to get all Bob Dylan, but everybody has to serve somebody in all of these plots, literally and figuratively. And the worst part is that the people towards the top are not only miserable, but they think their money can buy taste.
That’s the great unifier you see in the rich eating themselves alive movies and films. The Roy family clothes or sterile homes, Miles Bron just buying all kinds of art because he can, the people going to the expensive restaurant and either not really caring about the food or the thought, but the clout or, in the case of Tyler (played by Nicholas Hoult, who is even funnier here than he is in The Great, which says a lot) obsessing over the technique in a manner that drains any magic out of it. Fiennes plays a world-famous chef who is insane, but he’s also lost the love. He doesn’t enjoy cooking anymore until he’s given the request to go back to his roots and make one last cheeseburger at the end of the film. He seems happy for a second…but he’s still going to kill himself and everybody in the restaurant.
You can have it all and still have absolutely nothing. That’s what these films really highlight. People want to look at it like it’s an anti-rich person thing. But I see it as a larger commentary on our everyday lives. Yes, there are plenty that have very little, but there are so many of us that have so much more than we could have ever imagined a decade or two ago and somehow it isn’t enough. Somehow so many of us are still very unhappy. I wonder in 10 or 20 years when we look back at movies like Glass Onion and The Menu if they’ll be viewed in the context of “eating the rich” or that society had so much when those films came out and people were still unhappy.
Whatever the case, I wouldn’t try to snag a reservation at Noma before it closes. You don’t want to end up being part of the meal.