Inheritance
Upon the death of rich eccentric Wladyslaw (Jan Peszek), his isolated mansion plays host to a collection of bickering family members, all out to see who will be most blessed by his inheritance. There’s put-upon Dawid (Maciej Stuhr), trying to hide his imminent separation from unhappy wife Zofia (Gabriela Muskala); broke author Natalia (Joanna Trzepiecinska) and her lover Gustaw (Piotr Pacek); and would-be emigrant Karol (Mateusz Król) and his boyfriend Karol (Piotr Polak). Everyone has their secrets and everyone has their motivations for wanting Wladyslaw’s fortune, but all are unprepared for what occurs in the mansion.
This Polish film, from director Sylwester Jakimow, might as well have given a big shout out to Rian Johnson at the end, because it is trying so hard to be a combination of Knives Out and Glass Onion that it powers past homage, doesn’t stop at lifting and can be safely considered to be something of a rip-off by the time we get to the end of the 94 minutes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a bad film either. Inheritance just about manages to overcome its clear status as something shamelessly derivative to instead graduate to the level of being a not unworthy distraction, through decent characters, a nice bit of comedic whimsy, outright slapstick on some occasions and an alright mystery to be solved.
Ironically, the biggest thing missing from all of this is a Benoit Banc-type character to focus everything around. In place of that we have a succession of family members all with their own neurosis and problems, along with the butler, the cops, and the lingering ghost of the uncle himself, whose demented “game” to determine who gets the inheritance crosses the line from funny to creepy to back again at will. It doesn’t have the biting edge of Knives Out of course, so the hijinks and puzzles and such all have a certain whimsical non-threatening quality, helped along by the presence of actual children in the cast and a routine resort to the ridiculous, like one character whose constant approach to adversity is to headbutt it while screaming “Zidane!”. When I say that Inheritance is a Knives Out rip-off, I mean in its sense of style – even the colour palette will be familiar – the nature of its cuts – a sequence of time skips involving interrogations will look familiar – and in its effort to craft an ensemble mystery of various kookie characters.
Things trip along and Inheritance does not outstay its welcome, perhaps recognising that it doesn’t really have the capability to justify a Glass Onion-sized running time. It probably sounds like I am being very harsh in focusing on that comparison, but it’s hard not to. The cast is fine, the script has a few laughs here and there, it doesn’t lose too much in translation and the mystery behind the central death actually does have a clever resolution, so there is plenty in Inheritance to recommend it. So I guess I kind of am too. It’s not a patch on what Daniel Craig and Johnson can pull off though.
(All images are copyright of Netflix).
Never Felt Better 