I watched this movie three times in two days so you wouldn’t have to (but should anyway, it’s exquisite). You should definitely watch it at least once before reading this even if you don’t care about spoilers because most of this doesn’t give much context.

• Note “Children = NFT”.
• The Wikipedia page for Bach’s Little Fugue (Fugue in G Minor) states that it uses “one of Arcangelo Corelli’s most famous techniques: imitation between two voices on an eighth note upbeat figure”. Benoit later tells Miles that he’s gathered seven people who have very real reasons to wish him harm. In reality there are eight, counting both Helen and Andi – an imitation between two voices.
• Helen sitting in Andi’s garage, surrounded by boxes – not closed for storage but open because she’d just finished searching “every inch of every room of that house”.
• More a theme than a clue, but Among Us?? “Vent – Sabotage – Kill”
• As a nice touch, when Benoit is sitting in the bath on his video call he has several items around him. Directly behind the rubber ducky his iPad is propped up so he can use it hands free for the game, but with the dock, when viewed from the side it looks very much like a gun.
• There’s also a bottle of liquor (Ricard), a glass, and a glass ashtray that has a striped motif caused by the lines of thicker glass that can be seen in a lot of the later glass props such as the piano and Miles’ desk. (“Have you tried crosswords?” asks Natasha – there are at least three newspapers scattered around open to the crosswords page, too.)
• On the dock, Benoit checks the time on an analog watch. It’s 10am.
• Claire’s wearing a shirt with white and tan stripes like a towel on Benoit’s floor in the previous scene.
• When “Andi” arrives, there’s a shot that very specifically shows Benoit studying the faces of the disruptors rather than at Andi. Incidentally, she’s wearing the same dress that the real Andi is in the picture used in the news articles about her death.
• “Whiskey. I just, I love that necklace.” “This old thing?” Miles gave her that necklace two weeks ago. He believes Duke doesn’t know about their “affair”.
• Miles’ face when he sees Helen is beyond flabbergasted. That’s not a man who just didn’t expect his ex-partner to actually turn up, that’s a man who believed she was dead.
• Helen comments to Benoit about “this rich-people shit” and then tells him he’s doing great.
• I know it’s one of the hints highlighted at the end, but I actually commented on the “inbreathiated” line the first time I watched this!
• “I got Phil Glass to compose that.” Not only an example of Miles outsourcing everything but one of the many references to glass.
• Miles very awkwardly touching Helen’s shoulder, saying “I’m very glad you’re here.” Trying to figure out how she’s here. He’s wearing a red thread bracelet on that hand – the red string of fate? Red pops up everywhere mind you, and I’m not going to mention every time or this would be a novel. Suffice to say high school English teachers will love this movie in the future for essays about colour choices in film.
• Up in the Glass Onion we see his desk and chairs that throwback to the ashtray in Benoit’s bathroom. The fax machine is highlighted too, with a couple of received faxes directly beneath it (though it moves around throughout the film to draw attention to its later importance and so they don’t have to break into Miles’ office to find the fax from Lionel).
• Benoit asks Miles if there’s any way to reset the boxes after they’ve been opened. Miles has no idea, of course, as he had nothing to do with the actual design of them. It doesn’t matter though since Benoit never had an intact box.
• Well, he might have had something to do with it. One of the clues to open it was a fibonacci sequence, one of which is prominently displayed behind him on the window with the photo of them at the Glass Onion and the fabricated napkin, and that tiny dot of red at the centre.
• There’s a beautiful wide shot here that features Baby Blue right at the centre, and the statue on the platform where Miles’ desk is facing directly towards the car.
• At the pool Duke is swimming with his gun and then fires it, showing it’s working even after being fully dunked in water. Later Miles tosses it into a bowl of partly-melted ice.
• “I’m hot for both–” Miles isn’t remotely subtle about his affair with Whiskey despite Duke being right there. And he seriously thinks Duke doesn’t know?
• Helen says Andi and Birdie haven’t spoke since the trial “a few months” ago. At first glance this seems like a timing error since later Whiskey is telling her that her first one of these trips was the previous year, but trials take a while to eventuate. That trip was probably in the middle of the pre-trial drama.
• Birdie’s blue and red wrap is another throwback to Benoit’s bathroom, which had a similar fabric swatch on his robe draped on the far left.
• Benoit deliberately brings up Sweetie Pants, having pre-researched each of the disruptors.
• Helen is already moving very carefully when she breaks into the conversation after Miles’ disruptor speech, handing off her kombucha bottle to Peg. She’s a bit of a lightweight it seems.
• When the camera focuses on Duke squeezing the (bright red) cloth in anger his gun is centered very nicely in the background.
• As Claire finishes saying “It’s like having a Che poster in your dorm room” one of the art pieces on the left of the screen, behind Benoit, is a Mondrian composition – the ones with coloured squares framed with black lines on white backgrounds. This one’s most prominent square is a red one, highlighted by the lighting above it.
• Mondrian claimed that reality was the opposite of the spiritual and that art should be above reality and have as little to do with it as possible. When Miles takes the Klear proposal to Andi she refers to a reality-distortion bubble.
• “I needed to be able to look her in the eyes without glass between us.” Glass being, of course, the main symbol in the film for something both clear and complicating.
• The camera switching back and forth between the Mona Lisa and Helen, who has the exact same expression, as Miles talks about “this simple thing that you’re looking at, it suddenly takes on layers so complex it gives you vertigo.”
• The Glass Onion is powered by Klear. What a metaphor.
• After Benoit asks if the game’s already started Miles starts saying “As Watson said to Holmes-” Though he doesn’t get a chance to give the quote, I suspect it was going to be “The game is afoot”, which Holmes famously said to Watson.
• The Ren Diamond, Jeremy Renner’s small-batch hot sauce, both turning out to be major props. Not sure if coincidence but wouldn’t be surprised if not.
• When Miles gets hit by the dummy bolt, the blood is spurting from a few inches below where it hit him. He had sat down in reaction to Benoit’s correct solution, unscripted – in his original plan it would have been coming from about the same place.
• The fake blood on Miles’ shirt looks very much like the fake blood on Helen’s, later on.
• As the camera zooms in on the napkin you can see the red spot at the centre of the fibonacci sequence.
• Miles wasn’t kidding when he earlier said that the security system on the Mona Lisa goes off when a phone dings.
• “My life was taken away from me by someone, by everyone in this room.” Literally!
• Another prominent red square behind Claire during this scene.
• Duke tells Helen that they’re all holding onto that golden titty. Look, he loves boobs, okay? They’re so much fun.
• The song playing during the lead up to Duke’s death is Star by David Bowie. This whole sequence is classic misdirection from a practiced performer with Miles amping up the sensory overload while Bowie sings “So inviting, so enticing to play the part. I could play the wild mutation as a rock’n’roll star. I could do with the money (You know that I could), I’m so wiped out with things as they are.” Needing the money is ultimately the whole reason they’re all sticking with Miles.
• Duke’s knuckle tats on his left hand say “STAR” as can be seen when he grabs Miles’ shoulder.
• One shot the phone is on the table. Miles looks at it as he sits down. The next shot it’s gone. Not long after you see it tucked into his back pocket where Benoit pulls it out from later.
• Incidentally, you’d think if your dear and loyal friend was deathly allergic to pineapple you wouldn’t keep it around, and yet Miles has it in his bar and it’s in Birdie’s signature drink! I’m sure it’s fine, they’d definitely be careful with it and never get sloppy drunk around him to avoid slipping up.
• The dong hits and Miles grabs Benoit’s wrist to look at the time – 10pm, exactly 12 hours after they arrive on the dock to meet the boat.
• As Miles runs out of the room he has his hands in front of him, in retrospect exactly how you’d move if you were holding a gun in both hands. From there he always has his right hand obscured.
• This is a lot more noticeable with the subtitles on because in speech it’s slightly slurred, but Benoit calls Helen by her name as they run up to each other. Either way one of the easier clues to catch.
• REWIND TIME.
• Is Philip holding a jar containing sourdough starter? How very pandemic!
• Cassandra. Helen. Miles being brought down by a painting that he shipped in from Paris and something (someone) who isn’t what it appears. The Aegean and Ionian seas. Achilles’ heel.
• Helen’s story about Andi doing the “Rich Bitch” impression during her talks shows that both of them are “imposters” on some level, though they’re also very clear-sighted about the truth.
• When Helen shows Benoit Andi’s email it also shows the date, May 11, which she says was four days ago. This sets the timing for the movie so that Whiskey’s Taurus star sign can have relevance. (Her birthday is May 9th, just two days before Andi’s murder. When he receives the fax his penthouse still has roses scattered everywhere.)
• Benoit makes clear to Helen that all he can do is find the truth and gather evidence, foreshadowing the dilemma near the end that without the physical evidence of the napkin there isn’t anything he can do.
• Helen brings a voice recorder to her meeting with Benoit at the restaurant, the same one that she later throws in Birdie’s bag.
• Helen suggests very early on the real solution – Miles is the obvious murderer. Benoit only dismisses this because “Miles isn’t an idiot.”
• In the flashback to the night at the Glass Onion when Andi introduced Miles the song is Starman by David Bowie. It continues as the flashback moves to the night Andi came up with the idea for Alpha and as she writes we can hear the lines “Let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie.” Children = NFT.
• Ziggy Stardust was the album that really put Bowie on the map, reflecting how the concept for Alpha launched Miles’ career.
• There are differences between the exact text on the two napkins. Some are abbreviations (“Crypto manage” vs “Crypto management”, for example) but others are subtly quite different. “World wide accessibility” becomes “world access”. “Code A delivery” becomes “Code delivery”. “Time stamp” becomes “Timeline.” “I.C.O” becomes “Icon”. “Darkweb efficacy” becomes simply “Darkweb”. Andi’s finger is covering one on the bottom left but it clearly ends with “fication” while on Miles’ napkin in the same place it says “divers” for some reason. And of course, you can see the Glass Onion watermark on Andi’s version.
• (When Helen shows the napkin in the climactic scene we can see it says “Diversification” on Andi’s, which sort of explains “divers” even though that’s a really weird abbreviation to use, and in the bottom right where the line of stick figures are it says “manpower” rather than Miles’ “people”. Incidentally, this is actually a different napkin than the one we saw Andi writing on. Presumably they had a few different copies for it, like how people don’t usually actually eat and drink when their characters do because the shot is filmed multiple times. They probably didn’t know which exact ones would be in the final cut so it would have been hard to match them perfectly.)
• She’s using a book as a surface to write on. The book is The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.
• On the contract for investing in Klear, Miles’ email address is alpha@500alphaHQ.com. Andi’s is andibrand@imbermail.com.
• Miles’ postcode is 10271, which if you search it is revealed to be a tiny postcode bang in the middle of the financial district where apparently no one actually lives. Meanwhile, Andi’s is 10801, referring to New Rochelle. The median home value is about half a million and median income is $54k, both lower than the immediate surrounding areas. About quarter of the population is Black, and a little over half are white. Most housing was built before 1939 and about 60% of it is renter occupied. This wasn’t that long ago – Andi is massively rich, but very much doesn’t live like it. She probably didn’t even really have to move after she lost her ownership of half the company, which shows just how close she was to New York and how Miles could get there so fast after learning about the email she sent.
• While Helen is telling Benoit the story of the trial he calls it “a bald-faced fabrication”, the same phrase he uses later.
• Running around, ticking boxes, searching all the rooms, which Benoit claims not to be good at, are things Helen is seen doing all through the second act of the film, right from the very next scene.
• The Serena cameo is absolutely hilarious.
• (I don’t know why they think the envelope would have to be hidden in someone’s room. It’s not that big an envelope and Birdie for starters spends half the film accessorising with massive bags.)
• Further solidification of the date – Helen’s phone says it’s May 22, giving her a week between first meeting Benoit and now to practice her Andi impression before the trip.
• “Miles Bron is an idiot.” This whole time Miles has been assuming Miles wasn’t the murderer because he was not an idiot, so yeah, the fact that he is an idiot is massively important. “The key to this entire case”, as Benoit says.
• I just noticed during this scene, on my third viewing of the movie, that the painting immediately to the left of the centrepiece portrait of a shirtless Miles seems to be a modernist picture of a tiger attacking a man. I employed some google fu to try to figure out what exactly this is but didn’t manage to find it, however the big thing it draws to mind for me is Tipu’s tiger – extremely similar positioning, a base at the bottom that both figures are anchored on, a long rectangle down the tiger’s side where it opens up to show the inner workings for the sound mechanism, etc. The resemblance is pretty strong and the story behind it resonates – the original tiger was built for Sultan Tipu, the last major ruler in India to really stand up to the British and even to beat them in some really significant fights. It was looted in the final siege where the British finally beat him and still exists in the British Museum, just like the way Miles collects and surrounds himself by items created by people much more brilliant than he is.
• Benoit points out that Miles handed Duke his own glass “right in front of us” – “a bald-faced fabrication”, he says again.
• “It’s so dumb it’s brilliant.” “No! It’s just dumb!” Benoit sounds legitimately angry here. It’s so resonant of the people who insist that the likes of Trump and Musk are playing 5D chess to explain their frequent incompetence.
• Miles got the idea for Helen’s murder from Benoit, as shown in the throwback to “put a loaded gun on the table and turned off the lights”. Miles claimed at the time that it was a pre-planned part of the murder mystery, but in the script he couldn’t have said something dramatic at 10pm as he died not long after 8.
• Every time Miles does get a win it’s because he did something so obvious and stupid the much smarter people didn’t predict it. (Straight up killing Andi himself, blatantly lighting the napkin on fire…)
• The disruptors are happy to join in when Helen’s smashing all Miles’ glass statues but want her to stop when it comes to breaking the thing – the Mona Lisa. They never really met Miles’ definition of a disruptor in the first place. None of them ever got close to breaking the system.
• Even Baby Blue is destroyed in the fire thanks to Miles storing it on the glass roof despite not being able to drive it rather than leaving it somewhere with, you know, roads.
• There’s enough Beatles references that I’m sure they all match up themes and stuff too but, to be honest, I never really cared enough about the Beatles to bother learning enough to notice them. Bowie > Beatles.