Benoit Blanc's silly little bathing suit could (and should) murder me
daniel craig has solved the mystery of good taste...
Glass Onion is my culture because at all times I am thinking about beautiful clothes and murdering annoying people.
**no real spoilers in this article, but you’ll get more context if you’ve seen it, or at least seen pictures of the costumes**
There are just a lot of good outfits in the impeccable and beautifully fun Knives Out: Glass Onion, the latest Rian Johnson murder-mystery-whodunnit on Netflix. There’s just a lot of great stuff about the film in general - but I want to write about the outfits, because I am what? Shallow. Also - I don’t want anyone taking this extremely fun movie too seriously, and polluting it with hot takes, it’s TOO FUN for that.
But I also want to briefly write about why Benoit Blanc’s costumes are more than simply a slay, they are a masterwork in character writing. This wasn’t a case of dressing up a detective in some funny little fits and giving him Hugh Grant as a boyfriend and then saying “look a gay! they can solve crimes now” this was about using clothes to show us exactly who Benoit Blanc is - and considering he usually functions as something closer to a plot device, a vehicle for propelling the mystery, it was a clever and effective way of doing it. The Emperor has new clothes and they are cute as hell! (I don’t understand this reference and I refuse to learn, but I think I used it correctly here).
The whole film is full of iconic outfits. There are some frocks that send me into a bisexual spiral (confirming how gay I am because I’m excited about a dress, but then also confirming how straight I am because Kate Hudson is so gorgeous). Janelle Monae in particular was a perfection of style and colours. I actually want Leslie Odom Jr’s suit and brooch combo too, it’s hot.
But Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc speaks to me on a deep level. On the one manicured hand, it’s a great example of what I talk about when I say style over fashion. While rompers, especially for the gays, have definitely had their fashion moment in recent years, it’s clear that Benoit’s inspirations are more timeless than this - 60s era Bond, cabana loungewear extravaganza. The rest of his outfits on the island are pastels, done in cotton and linen, given a flourish with little neck scarves. They are colourful, even fruity, perhaps flamboyant, but with a sense of deliberation and purpose that comes with having impeccable style.
“There’s a little bit of silliness to him,” Glass Onion costume designer Jennifer Eagan tells Tudum. “[That’s what] makes it fun for me.”
“I think it really helps to find Benoit. We didn't know so much about him in the first [movie], but this one tells [us] a little bit more — through that swimsuit — about who he is.”
In fact that’s the point I’m getting to - deliberation and style.
We’re introduced to Benoit Blanc in this film having a pandemic-era flop, on Zoom in the bathtub. Incredibly relatable scenes. But even amongst that chaos - piles of books, bottles of Pernod (a wonderful choice of drink for him), he’s wearing a kind of tasseled smoking hat, chomping on a cigar. While this could be simply a kind of gag, to set him up as a ludicrous figure (not hard with his ridiculous foghorn leghorn accent, done by a British man), or perhaps to cast him as an outdated character, someone out of place or time, it’s actually so much better than that, so much subtler.
What the hat shows is that he’s a man who is deeply interested in creating a scenario, in defining an aesthetic and a scene. He has such a defined and iconoclastic style because he’s always aware of who he wants to be in any situation, and how he wants to express himself. He is not simply a guy having a mental breakdown in the bath - he is Benoit Blanc having a pandemic crisis in the bath, in a smoking hat.
All his outfits are carefully curated for the situations he envisaged – a Greek island, a billionaire’s pool, solving a crime in a giant glass onion. He is one of the figures in his own tableau, and while he mightn’t always be the flashiest, limelight grabbing figure, he’s always deeply aware of his own place within it. It’s something I’ve been reaching for with my own fashion I think, but stymied by my own narcissism and ego (I MUST be the centre of attention). But I deeply admire the deliberate sense of drama he employs, and the style he has to pull it off.
You only need to juxtapose him with the gaudy stupidity of the Elon Musk stand-in, Miles Bron, whose every grasp at aesthetics is fuelled by stupidity and insecurity. There is a similar desire to create tableaus - his guitar-playing, Jack Johnson, hippy-pants, leather bracelet, beach moment when he first welcomes the guests, or the extravagant monstrosity of his modern art gallery-cum-rec room. But you only need to look at the signifiers - his t-shirts which are ill-fitting and possibly too young, the clutter and gaudiness of the room, the upside-down Rothko piece in the background - to see that the difference between him and Blanc is one of desire and curation. Benoit Blanc’s superpower is always being able to curate and understand a scene, even down to the aesthetics. He then uses that awareness, that understanding to help solve crimes - self knowledge is partly understanding your own motivations, afterall. Bron just wants to reflect his own greatness, but doesn’t know who he is beyond ego and vaguely understood ideals. He has the opposite of style. This is continued with some of the other guests - Duke, whose only form of curation is wearing a gun next to his dick in the pool (a clear statement). Or there’s Birdie whose outfits are a projection of status and desire, and who asks Benoit what his outfit is made of, and he replying “cotton, I think” - puncturing her pretensions by establishing its pedestrian nature, and showing that’s not how he himself views outfits or their importance.
All we know about Benoit Blanc is that he’s a really fantastic detective, and enjoys above all else that process of solving a great case. We know he has a bath, and that Hugh Grant is his boyfriend or husband. We know that he is famous for solving high profile crimes. That’s fine, that’s his function in the narrative, and that’s a readily recognisable trope. But through the costumes in this film, through the process of watching him deliberate his own place in the narrative - not just his function, but his aesthetic - we learn so much more about him, and what drives him. It changes him from a somewhat comedic plot tool, to a more nuanced and more interesting character in his own right, and it’s part of what elevates this movie from tropes and big genre winks to an extremely accomplished story beyond the whoddunnit.
It’s not revolutionary to identify that costume designers dress actors in clothes that say something about their characters - but there is something unexpected about putting world-class detective Benoit Blanc in a fruity two piece. They could have easily gotten away with simply confirming what we know about him - a trenchcoat, perhaps a deerstalker cap, the trappings of genre detectives throughout time. They could have also put him in the pool in something flamboyant, some gay apparel, and made that the gag in itself, the joke being “he’s a detective… but he’s gay?” I’m not saying they’re subverting masculine expectations here - but I think that is perhaps a part of the joy. But much like the rest of the film, they use those preconceptions as foundations, and then build something far more interesting on top.
Knives Out: Glass Onion is on Netflix now! Go watch it, it’s so fun.
I am SOFT LAUNCHING my new column with this article, which is all going to be about pop-culture and queer culture, please follow if you liked it and want to read more!!! It’s going to always be free, but please subscribe if you are just a brilliant person.
Loved this! Is your new column going to continue to be here or is it on a different platform/substack?