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Cross-posting from Small Question Sunday (with some addendcums) upon suggestion: Maybe I just missed it, but a little surprised to see no discussion of Knives Out, Wake up Dead Man on the forum given the culture war angles of the previous two (immigration, tech billionaires). Disclaimer - I haven't seen glass onion. I will avoid major spoilers but minor spoilers may be included. I wouldn't read if you haven't watched it yet and want to.
Wake Up Dead Man certainly seems to be set up to skewer the church, and conservatives, with characters including a sci-fi writer-> substack blogger who is paranoid of the "libtards", a failed right-wing politico, who is attempting to build a following through youtube videos, and Monsignor Wicks, the bombastic preacher who exclaims that he must "fight" the decay in the country as an excuse for his own failings.
However, despite this, I was drawn to the film by the character of Father Jud - a young priest who killed a man in a boxing ring before coming to the priesthood, he is a compassionate character who pushes against the excesses of Wicks while nonetheless being devoted to Christ and to his faith. He offers eloquent verbal parries to Detective Blanc's (the main character in the Knives Out series, played by Daniel Craig) rationalist, atheist worldview, and takes his vocation seriously.
One of my favorite scenes involves Blanc and Jud working to try to find a clue which involves Father Jud calling a construction company and getting their receptionist. There's the standard comedic setup of the super-talkative receptionist who won't let him ask the question they need an answer to, but the whole scene shifts when she asks him to pray for her (link here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VHPrO3SX5A). It's a really beautiful portrayal of pastoral care and prayer, and played straight. It seems to impact Blanc as well.
The sacrament of confession also plays a role and is highlighted in its entirety, a scene that happens due to Blanc's realizing that the moment calls for personal grace more than his grand reveals.
Father Jud seems almost more apolitical than political to me despite his opposition to Wicks and the other more conservative characters - he comes across as much more above politics than taking any particular political stand.
It seems like Rian Johnson has had a history of being religious but fell away from the Church at sometime in the last few decades.
Anyway, curious to hear what others thought of it.
I'm surprised, too. The last two movies were all over social media I consume, but this one? Not a peep about it. I was very surprised to learn a third movie had been made.
Again, just going off the synopsis, but it made me go "Yeah, this is a movie written by a Protestant" and that seems to be correct:
The church structure etc. as per the synopsis of the movie makes no sense in Catholicism. Where is the bishop in all this? Who is "Reverend Prentice Wicks, Jefferson's grandfather"? Does this mean his grandfather was a Protestant minister (if he has a daughter) and the daughter then had her illegitimate son who... became a Catholic priest????
Oh well, I guess we should be glad that we're still the movie face of religion, because when you need to show the church, you show the Catholics!
I believe they specified his grandfather had a daughter, his wife then died, and THEN he became a priest
In the past, this might have been accepted in some places(notoriously Tolkien was raised by a Catholic priest) but today having a child is generally disqualifying from the priesthood absent exceptions for married priests, and allowing priests to be guardians is incredibly rare(there is literally a single case in the entire US where a priest is allowed to be a guardian of a minor child- and in that case, the mom abandoned her baby when the parish was offering free babysitting so she could work an unusual shift, then got arrested, and they weren't able to track down the grandma for something like a year, at which point she testified that the kid should remain with the priest).
The adult children of former Anglican-now Catholic priests and of Eastern rite priests are very different people, is all I can say.
Prentice Wicks would've lived a long time ago given the age of Monsignor Wicks.
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