Wake Up, Dead Man Raises Up The Church

And I wish it hadn’t.

Rian Johnson’s Wake Up, Dead Man is a fun, schticky whodunnit attached to a supposedly acid but ultimately timid and half-baked political parable. As a result, it takes part in the long Hollywood tradition of films that are entertaining if you don’t think about them that hard—a tradition that is, unfortunately, especially ill-suited for our current christofascist moment.

For this third Knives Out outing, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns with more facial hair and a remit to investigate an impossible killing at a Catholic church. Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire and brimstone right wing asshole, is found murdered in a storage closet where he has paused to refresh himself during Good Friday service. His assistant, Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer and bleeding-heart do-gooder, is suspected. Blanc has his doubts, though, as well as plenty of suspects in the radicalized and mean-spirited flock. And that’s even before Wicks rises from the dead.

Johnson is an entertaining filmmaker, and there are lots of fun twists and bits. Wicks habit of tormenting Jud by confessing to him at great length about his masturbatory habits is a solid gag; so is the bishop who curses like a sailor, especially since he does so in the inimitable voice of Jeffrey Wright. Craig chews scenery with his accustomed abandon, and he and O’Connor channel a pleasing slapstick energy as they race around as an oddball believer/atheist duo seeking clues and/or absolution.

The political content here seems like it should be timely. Wicks is a Trumpish figure, animated by hate, intolerance, and greed, who uses scapegoats, misogyny, fear, and promises of miracles to poison his parishioners. He forms an alliance with Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), a would-be right-wing politician obsessed with social media who says his basic approach to inspiring people is to “show them something they hate and then make them afraid it’s going to take away something they love”.

That quote is a fine summation of right-wing psychology and tactics. But the insight gets rather lost in the tergiversations of the plot. Partly that’s just a result of the need for a whodunnit to tergiversate; it’s hard to keep your eye on the fairly straightforward fascism when you’ve got to approach it through the murder mystery maze.

The maze though ultimately starts to feel like an intentional distraction. Johnson isn’t really interested in showing how the religious right targets its enemies and sows violence and cruelty. Instead, his main message is that the church—the real church—should not be blamed for the evil done in its name. The two and a half hours of red herrings, apparent miracles, flashbacks and reversals isn’t meant to find Christian nationalism guilty; it’s meant to find Christianity innocent. That’s why Father Jud, the good priest, is the main narrative focus—not the bad priest, and not Blanc, the atheist. And it’s why the set piece denunciation of the killer is paused by explicit divine intervention—with light through a church window and everything—in order to make way for a dramatic scene of forgiveness, in which the murderous religious whacko who has devoted their life to hate is ushered into heaven.

Whodunnits are supposed to thrive on surprise, but this particular twist is unfortunately all too expected for Hollywood and for culture more broadly. Part of the reason that christofascism has such power is that, in a Christian majority nation, people are generally less interested in standing in solidarity with Christianity’s victims than they are in rushing to forgive Christianity and Christians for the lies, violence, harassment, theft, murder, and worse that are perpetuated in Christianity’s name. You can’t just show the death that results from the work of faith; you’ve got to raise the corpse and make sure that everyone, even (or rather especially) the worst victimized acknowledge the miracle.

Of course, Christians are human beings like everyone else and can do good things as well as bad things. But Wake Up, Dead Man isn’t satisfied with that unobjectionable insight. As an atheist Jew currently watching christofascists terrorize my communities and destroy my country, it is difficult for me to recommend a film that puts so much energy into convincing me that the heart of the Church is innocent and that, whoever else dies, the cross must be saved.