Yeah, Jessica Henwick was criminally underused in this movie.
My favorite Peg moment has to be her trying to contain her laughter when Miles opens up the necklace, revealing the diamond.
But the “ethnic slur” convo is a close second.
And her horrified question about sweatshops and sweatpants is a strong third.
If anyone’s interested, Rain Johnson has published the shooting script on his website
I keep thinking of this movie, and Miles Bron.
Bron isn’t a direct analogue for Musk: Edward Norton says they took “inspiration” from a number of Silicon Valley personalities. But the whole “move fast, break things, disrupt” is central to the character and a big point of the movie is how successful (until the very end) this is.
Every time Bron is confronted with a problem, he takes the most direct route to eliminate it, regardless of legality, morality or the long term consequences to him. None of the people opposing him understand this, and are frequently and sometimes fatally surprised that there isn’t anything actually stopping him from metaphorically knocking the board over and declaring victory.
Andi gets proof of her ownership? He drives over to her house and puts poison in her coffee right in front of her.
The science says Klear is lethally dangerous? He just ignores it and goes ahead anyway.
He’s told he has to keep the Mona Lisa locked up tight, so he installs an override switch.
Duke starts blackmailing him, he poisons him 10 seconds later right in front of several people including the world’s greatest detective.
Helen finds the napkin, proof of his lies and murder? He just burns it as she’s holding it.
As Blanc points out, these are not clever moves. They are blunt and obvious and dumb. But to a large extent they work. Largely because no one is prepared for them. Everyone thinks there’s some sort of system that would stop him doing this, and the big point of the film is that there actually isn’t.
He can just get away with it, partly because he is very rich and very connected, but mainly because once he has acted his actions cannot be undone. The only thing that gets him in the end is someone even more committed to unthinkable destruction as problem solving technique.
This bodes ill, is what I’m saying
Interesting and astute observations! But I’m not sure it plays out like that—namely, with situations where the only successful countermeasure to aggressive “disruption” is more aggressive disruption—as neatly in the real world.
I think of the extremely aggressive disruption of Al Capone and his gang warfare, which was ultimately contained by 1) a constant barrage of legal red tape on undramatic charges such as tax evasion, and 2) mental deterioration due to lifestyle-related health conditions (in Capone’s case, syphilis contracted apparently as a brothel enforcer early in his career).
Even big direct unthinkable-destruction-type disruptors are never doing only big direct unthinkable-destruction-type acts. They’re also creating ever-expanding networks of smaller consequences, which sometimes get big enough to seriously impede them.
This is true. And I may have been indulging in a spot of melodrama there
But as far as Capone’s tax evasion beef goes, that’s the sort of thing that happens when you have a legal system that offers a wide array of consequences, a justice system that recognises and responds to destructive behaviour by attempting to contain and punish it, and more widely a civil society that deplores destructive behaviour and has sufficient standing to demand action from its legal/justice system.
There were places in the same era - Kansas City I believe being one - when at least for a time these conditions didn’t hold. The “fix” was in, the justice system did not respond to destructive behaviour and civil society was powerless to demand action.
At the risk of straying (further) from the pleasant bounds of Cafe Society, there is at least an attempt being made by Musk (among others) to place oneself beyond the law, to control or disempower the justice system and to demoralise or win over civil society such that there is no coherent call for action.
I mean yes, by all means, destructive behaviour should be dealt with through the system we have built for precisely that purpose, but if, as in the Glass Onion, that system should fail… none of the options look amazing at that point.
(As for your second point about chaotic personal behaviour having inevitable physiological/psychological consequences: there’s an uncertainty there, but also not the sort of thing one can wiggle out of, so fair enough).
Loved it, I actually enjoyed it more than Knives Out which I really liked a lot.