Félix ElvisI’m watching Columbo for the first time and I like it a lot. I’m four episodes in and even if the direction and writing have aged a bit, it still holds up very well. I haven’t watched or read much detective stories and I thought they all were “whodunit” stories. But in every episode of Columbo, you see the crime being committed in a very detailed manner, and only then Columbo enters. The whole game is how the criminal will fall, not who they are, or why they did it.
My personal take on the police is that they’re here to maintain the status quo and that status quo is conservative, favoring the rich and maintaining inequality. I couldn't really watch a show where the police investigate the life of everyday people. BUT, in Columbo the perpetuator seems to always be rich, bourgeois and dominant, while Columbo is more of a commoner. He’s out of place, bugging them, and their demise most always comes from their contempt and disregard for the working class.
Which led me to my big revelation about Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho: it’s actually a columbo episode! We see in minute detail every moment leading to the crime itself, as in every Columbo episode. But there is no place for Columbo in a movie where poor people take on the rich. Who wants to watch the police crushing people in need for wanting what should be theirs? It’s a detective story without a detective.
It also helped me to understand why I didn’t quite enjoy Glass Onion. It has the same “working class vengeance” trope as Parasite but there is a detective. Realizing your main character should not be your main character is a pain. It’s happened to me more than once and the switch is never easy. For Rian Johnson, it was impossible, Benoît Blanc being the main reason Glass Onion got produced. But it would have been such a better story without the detective.
Benoît Blanc is a private eye, not a police officer, but I think that makes him all the more at the service of the rich. What role could he play in a narrative about oppressed people trying to get back against the dominant classes? There's nothing to do for his character. He’s just painfully explaining everything we’re seeing while being rendered powerless by the narrative. More than a bending genre movie, I think Glass Onion is a story that coudn’t be.