'Knives in the Back: The Mystery of the Glass Onion': Agatha Christie's Refinement for the Instagram Age

Agatha Christie and fashion have always gone hand in hand, at least in the movies.

In his adaptations there was the mystery, the intrigue, the guessing game, who killed who and why, but none of this would have had the desired effect in the films about his novels without the sophistication, without the style associated with each of his characters, without the turbidity disguised as beauty.

Hollywood always understood it that way and when the translations of the British novelist ceased to be in vogue, between the 1990s and well into the second decade of this 21st century, her recovery came once again clinging to exquisiteness.

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'Murder on the Orient Express': Agatha Christie continues to play

In

(2017), Kenneth Branagh rescued the handouts of bells, the refinement in the settings and in the costumes, and the charisma of his performers with the same sufficiency as Sidney Lumet in his 1970s version.

And Christie became fashionable again.

So much so that one of the new big names in American entertainment cinema, Rian Johnson, who, after directing the eighth chapter of the

the highly controversial

had been separated from the galactic universe and the plans of a new trilogy, designed a Christie character for the new times: detective Benoit Blanc, played by the

Daniel Craig, as gobsmacked in forms as the mythical Hercules Poirot.

An update, a reinvention of her intrigues that, starting from the basic postulates of the queen of crime —intrigulis, spite, death, investigation, distinction—, seems written by a revived Christie and willing to analyze the substance of Instagram and the image as measure for triumph and fame.

from 2019, cost 40 million euros and raised 310.

The

the English term that defines the subgenre, with its contraction in a single word of the phrase "who has done it", once again take over the screens with the recent premiere of

and the confirmation of this

which comes to Netflix after briefly going through theaters a few weeks ago.

And here, more than ever, style is the key.

Or the sum of styles of each of the characters, summoned on a private Greek island by an eccentric and murderable businessman, in a story directed and written alone by Johnson.

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Actually,

is as much a classic intrigue as it is a parody of that archetype.

He plays both while laughing at his own entertainment.

And sometimes, just sometimes, Johnson's invention is too baroque.

Not so much in the dialogues and the relationships between the characters, the most unlikely gang of friends in memory, which are the assets that make the film more fun the crazier it gets, but in the detective details, which are exaggerated. in its construction that at times make you want to leave.

Witty, probably too long and full of intricacies that are difficult to find an exciting outlet for,

works better as a bitter critique of contemporary nonsense in its entirety than as a criminal intrigue.

But the connection to Christie's novels, which he imitates by way of pomp without their delicate simplicity, remains one of his main virtues.

Because Johnson, who had made his directing debut with

(2005), a formidable renewal of the intrinsic glamor of film noir set in a high school, is very shrewd: the novelist's effete and conceited aristocrats, her unbridled passions and her class confrontations up to murder, find a revealing echo in the gang of modern morons from his new movie.

KNIVES IN THE BACK: THE MYSTERY OF THE GLASS ONION

Directed by:

Ryan Johnson.

Cast:

Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn.

Genre:

intrigue.

USA, 2022.

Platform:

Netflix.

Duration:

139 minutes.

Premiere: December 23.

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