There's a 'Dead Man' in church in this snarky 'Knives Out' mystery

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're going to commemorate Frank Gehry, who was one of the most famous and influential architects in the world. He died last week at the age of 96. Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which architect Philip Johnson described as the most important building of our time. He also designed the Disney Concert Hall in LA and Seattle's Experience Music Project, a music museum inspired by Jimmy Hendrix. Gehry's work has been described as looking more like sculptures than buildings. When Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" profiled him in 2002, Pelley said, quote, "Gehry is to architecture what Einstein was to physics, what Picasso was to painting, what Jordan is to basketball," unquote. We're going to listen back to his 2004 interview with Terry Gross. At the time, his latest project was the music pavilion at Chicago's new 24 1/2 acre Millennium Park.

Like his Guggenheim Museum, the exterior of this Music Pavilion has curving, billowing, floating shapes - shapes that are actually made of heavy, hard steel. Terry asked how him he started working with those steel forms.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

FRANK GEHRY: I came into architecture at the height of modernism. After the war, decoration was a sin. Purity, functionalism, all of that stuff. And...

TERRY GROSS: So it was an era of purity and functionalism, a lot of glass and steel high-rises.

GEHRY: Right. And it became very cold and inhuman and lifeless. Probably some people yearned for bringing decoration back, and they tried it for a while. I went a different route. I thought it was possible within the aesthetics of the day to find a way to express feeling and humanistic qualities in a building. And I got interested in movement - the sense of movement, having a humanistic effect on an inert building. And there are examples in history of that. And I've alluded - I've talked about it before - the Shiva dancing figures from India, the - a multiarmed dancer in bronze. And the best ones, when you look at them and turn away and look back, you're sure they moved. I was fascinated with that sense of movement. And since our culture, when I started making my work, was a moving environment - plains, trains, cars, whatever - I talked about it and I thought about it, but I wasn't clear about it until I started experimenting, quite accidentally, with fish forms.

GROSS: Let me ask you about fish. I mean, fish, as we all know, have - they have spines, but they're so flexible. Ad they can, you know, bend and curve. What was the parallel you saw between fish and what you wanted to do in your architecture?

GEHRY: I was interested in movement. And I loved the drawings of Hiroshige and Japanese woodcuts of carp. And I love the quality of them, and I always thought they were very architectural. I also saw a fish as being on Earth 300 million years before man. And when my brethren started to regurgitate the past in the post-modern movement, as it was called, the past they were regurgitating was anthropomorphic. And I said, well, if you're going to go back, you might as well go back 300 million years before man to fish. And, you know, it was a sort of a sarcastic remark and kind of - I didn't even realize what I was talking about when I said it.

And I started drawing - whenever I saw one of those post-modern buildings, I would angrily sketch in my book pictures of fish. And I made a 35-foot wooden fish for the fashion house in Italy for an exhibit. And the 35-foot wooden fish was very kitsch and very embarrassing-looking object, but you stood beside it, it had the same character that the Shiva dancing figure - you turned away and looked, and you thought it moved. And so, quite accidentally, I found myself into a language that I was really looking to find. And like everything else, it happened by accident.

GROSS: So you were looking to find a way of making something very stable.

GEHRY: That expressed movement.

GROSS: That expressed movement. And you found it through the form of the fish. And how does that connect to the forms that you've used in recent architecture?

GEHRY: Well, I then made shapes - I started to say, what could I do to this wooden fish that would make it less embarrassing as a piece of kitsch? And I cut off the tail, and I cut off the head, and I cut off the fins. And I started to abstract it. And I made a shape, an abstracted - let's call it a filet of fish...

(LAUGHTER)

GEHRY: ...That I used in a show, an exhibit, I did at the Walker Art Museum. And it still had this - that quality of movement when you looked back and looked around. And I made that out of a wooden frame and covered it with metal. And so that was the beginning of the language, and I took that language into the buildings.

GROSS: But, you know, in some of your buildings, including the new Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago and the Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Museum, those kinds of curving shapes, they're not made out of wood. I mean, they're made out of steel or - I mean, titanium. And how did you realize that that would be - how did you start working with titanium as a medium for something that would be really firm and stable, strong but also moldable and - not moldable. I guess it's more - I don't know. Are you molding it. Or are you...

GEHRY: (Laughs) Yeah.

GROSS: How are you getting the shape?

GEHRY: OK, here's how you do it. I do maybe 50 models. They look - sometimes they look like crumpled paper, so people think I crumple up paper and that's how they get there. And I do - I analyze the shapes as though they're structures with the computer to determine whether I'm within the budgetary constraints. And over time, I slowly evolve these shapes and refine them. And then you've got to decide what skin to put on it, the exterior surface. A long time ago - you know, buildings are a wall and a roof, right?

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

GEHRY: And usually, the wall is a different material than the roof. And I wanted - a long time ago, tried to make the buildings into one shape. I thought if I could make it one piece, that I would have a lot of flexibility. So I - metal roofing is tradition for centuries. And there's a tradition, and there's a detailing tradition and there's a performance tradition, so that you can rely on it not to leak, not to get you in trouble if you follow the rules of it. I started making the whole building. I started to take the roofing material down and make the walls part of the roofing material. So it all was one material. And the choices then were copper, and then you have stainless steel, and you're pretty much limited to a palette like that.

Now copper, when you put it on a building, turns very dark for about 10 years, and it's kind of morose. So it - unless you pregreen it - and when you pregreen it, it looks kind of phony to me, so I reject that. And I started using stainless steel. And when you go to Bilbao and you use stainless steel - Bilbao's a city that has a lot of rain and a lot of gray skies, and stainless steel and gray skies goes dead. You'll see that. The stainless steel in Millennium Park will go quiet when it's cloudy. it won't shine. And...

GROSS: 'Cause it's a reflective, so it can reflect the sky...

GEHRY: Yeah, reflects the sky. If the sky's gray, it reflects the gray sky.

GROSS: Right.

GEHRY: And it goes gray. In Bilbao that would have been difficult. And I found titanium by accident. that in a gray sky, it turns golden...

GROSS: Oh.

GEHRY: ...And shines. And so I used it in Bilbao. It's very expensive. The reason I didn't use it here, it would have increased the budget by a lot of money. And since these shapes were not - it wasn't one whole building, they were mostly vertical, I think they'll be OK.

GROSS: I want to read you a list of descriptions of the Guggenheim Museum that you built in Bilbao, Spain, as written by journalists - a pile of improbably huge fish, fractured tin-foil flowers, a fantastic dream ship, all sails, full sweeping upstream, Marilyn Monroe's wind-assisted skirts, an exploded artichoke, heart vast hulls of a ship that used to loom over a shipbuilding town, a prehistoric beast advancing with leg and foot toward the water, an explosion in a sardine factory, a monstrous flower, a fairy-tale castle. What do you think?

(LAUGHTER)

GEHRY: Yeah, it's fine. You know, I try to describe it but not in those kind of terms, no.

BIANCULLI: Architect Frank Gehry speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2004 conversation with Frank Gehry. The globally famous and influential architect died last week at age 96.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: You were born in Toronto.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: And for four years you move with your family to a small mining town in Canada called Timmins.

GEHRY: Timmins, Ontario.

GROSS: Yeah, where your father worked for the distributor of slot machines and pinball machines.

GEHRY: Yup.

GROSS: And, boy, old pinball machines were so great. I mean, they were so - they were kind of like billboards or neon signs or, like, things that would light up and all kinds of like...

GEHRY: Right.

GROSS: ...Pictures and stuff. Did you love the design of those pinball machines?

GEHRY: They were always in the basement somewhere in my house, and I used to play with them and help him fix them and stuff like that. Yeah. I guess so. You know, when you go through a childhood like that - and it was a tough one because they were tough times for the family - and you tend to want to cut that part of your life off.

GROSS: So you don't think about it very much.

GEHRY: Forget about it.

GROSS: Right.

GEHRY: But he was involved with the carnival business, in a way, and used to bring those kind of people home. And I met - as a kid, I met a lot of them. And there was a blind boxer, Black guy, that used to baby sit me, I remember. The good thing about it all...

GROSS: Oh, wow.

GEHRY: ...was that - the mix of people that I was exposed to...

GROSS: Yeah.

GEHRY: ...As a kid, which has helped me in life. I mean...

GROSS: Well, one thing I think you have not forgotten about from that period, you've said that you were exposed to a lot of antisemitism in this small mining town.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: And did that contribute to the fact that you changed your name when you became an architect from Goldberg to Gehry?

GEHRY: Well, it was a factor and in allowing myself to be convinced by my ex-wife that it was the most important thing to do, I guess. I didn't like the idea of changing it.

GROSS: Why was it so important to her?

GEHRY: We were going to have our first child, and there had been a lot of antisemitism I experienced, she experienced. And she said she didn't want to bring a kid into the world to go through that. The name at that time was a caricature. There was a radio program called "The Goldbergs"...

GROSS: Right.

GEHRY: ...That sort of...

GROSS: Right.

GEHRY: ...Character - caricatured. And so - and I took a lot of heat for it. And, you know, I didn't want to do it. My father hated me for letting her do it. My mother went along with it. And after she did it, I was so embarrassed. Every time I met somebody, I told them.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: But you wouldn't go back to Goldberg now. Too late, right?

GEHRY: Well, I'm married to a Panamanian girl, Berta, who threatens to go back to it. She'd like to be Berta Goldberg, she says. But I doubt if we'll do it.

GROSS: Well, you've made the Gehry name too famous (laughter).

GEHRY: I think my kids - my son Sam flirts with it 'cause he wants to be an architect. So he may just want to get rid of the Gehry name for a while.

GROSS: Now, your first building that really got a lot of attention and that ended up being pretty controversial was your own home. You had moved into a small, two-story cottage? Is that a fair word for it? And you kind of designed a new home around it. And if you look at it, like, in a photograph, you have this, like, two-story building, and then around that you have - there's sheet metal and plywood...

GEHRY: Corrugated metal.

GROSS: Corrugated metal. And then on the second story there's, like, chain-link fencing around it.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: And it almost looks more like an assemblage - you know, like an assemblage sculpture than architecture because there's so many - it's so mixed -media.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: And, like, the textures all seem to be kind of conflicting. And you're not really sure, what is the purpose of the chain-link fence on the second floor. Is there a purpose for it (laughter)? Is it just there as, like, another material to contrast with the other material?

GEHRY: Well, there was a purpose when I did it.

GROSS: What was the purpose?

GEHRY: The kid was 2 years old, and his room had a door to the outside to the terrace. And the first day I was there, he started climbing down the wall (laughter). And so we put up the chain-link fence with the idea that it would be safe. It'd be like a safety place for him to play on the upstairs, outdoors of his room. And then once I started - committed myself to doing that, I then started to do things with the way it looked, I guess, and proportioned it. But it didn't work...

GROSS: Yeah. And with some pretty odd angles, right?

GEHRY: Yeah, yeah. Well, I started doing that.

GROSS: Yeah.

GEHRY: But I had played with it because chain-link is the most despised material ever. People hate it, and yet they use it so prevalently all over the world. And I was trying to figure out, how could it be so despised and yet so used and so much denial about it? That people use it, and then they say, Well, no, no, that's a tennis court But it's a damned chain-link fence. So I decided to study - I like that idea of things that people deny exist and tried to see if I could figure out a way to make it better or usable. Since they were going to use it anyway, maybe I could help them make it look prettier.

And I started to explore the qualities of it that I thought were - you know, as a material, it works like a scrim. If you look at it straight-on, you look through it, if you look at it on the angle, it closes up like a scrim does. And there are different weights of it and different coatings on it, and so I did a whole lot of research on it. By the time I got to the house, I was playing with it. I had the beginning of a language with it.

GROSS: Do you still live in that house?

GEHRY: Yes.

GROSS: Still have the chain-link fence on the second floor?

GEHRY: Yes.

GROSS: Even though there's no baby?

GEHRY: And the kid climbed out - he climbed over the chain-link. It didn't work. He climbed over it.

GROSS: When he got a little older.

GEHRY: No, right away.

GROSS: Really?

GEHRY: He was up, over it and out.

GROSS: That's some athletic baby you had there.

GEHRY: Yeah (laughter). He was something.

GROSS: So do you still - what are your gut feelings now about chain-link?

GEHRY: Well, I don't use it very much, even though I've figured out how to use it. People sometimes ask me to use it, and I refuse. But I've done some things with it. I'm not against it. It's just not - I haven't been too interested in it. We are designing a new house, though. I am...

GROSS: Oh, you're designing a new house for yourself?

GEHRY: Yeah, from scratch in...

GROSS: Where?

GEHRY: ...Venice, California. And I'm working on it now. So...

GROSS: What's the most important thing you want that you don't have now?

GEHRY: A garden. I bought a piece of land that'll give me a garden.

GROSS: That's nice. And will there be a kind of architectural design around the garden or...

GEHRY: Yeah. I'm doing a - it's a half-acre lot, and so I'm building several pavilions.

GROSS: Oh.

GEHRY: More like the Philip Johnson house in New Canaan, where there's a living room, and then there's a separate room - a building for bedrooms and stuff.

GROSS: So it'll be like two separate houses.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: Why do you want that?

GEHRY: I'd like to live in the garden...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: OK.

GEHRY: ...Or outdoors. You can do that in LA quite easily.

GROSS: Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

GEHRY: Yeah.

GROSS: Well, thank you so much. Congratulations on the completion of the Pritzker Pavilion. And thank you so much for talking with us.

GEHRY: Thank you very much.

BIANCULLI: Frank Gehry speaking to Terry Gross in 2004. The world-famous architect died last week. He was 96 years old. After a break, we remember Raul Malo, lead singer of the Mavericks, who died this week at age 60. And Justin Chang reviews the newest movie in the "Knives Out" franchise, "Wake Up Dead Man." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Last weekend, Raul Malo and his veteran roots music group the Mavericks were scheduled to play at a tribute concert in their honor at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The concert was held as planned. And among the other genre artists taking part were Steve Earle, Patty Griffin and Jim Lauderdale. But Raul Malo himself wasn't there. Fighting cancer for the last few years, he watched from his hospital room last weekend as a special feed of the concert was streamed to his bedside. Raul Malo died Monday at age 60.

Raul Malo was born in 1965 the son of Cuban immigrants in Miami. In his early 20s, he became the guitarist and lead singer for the Mavericks, a genre-bending band that lived up to its rebellious name. They played punk clubs in Miami Beach, but with a mixture of music that embraced not only Latin rhythms but roots music, rock 'n' roll and country. The Mavericks recorded such popular hits as "Here Comes The Rain" and "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down." Their most recent studio album was last year's "Moon & Stars." And their eclectic LPs over their four-decade career included an all-Spanish album and a tribute to Mötley Crüe.

In 1995, the Mavericks released "Music For All Occasions," which included the hits "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down" and "Here Comes The Rain" and the opening track, "Foolish Heart." Terry Gross spoke with Raul Malo when that album was released. She began by playing the opening song, "Foolish Heart."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOOLISH HEART")

THE MAVERICKS: (Singing) Foolish heart, you made me weep. Foolish heart, I'm yours to keep. You're the one that's still with me, foolish heart. Don't set me free. There was a time...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: Raul Malo, welcome to FRESH AIR.

RAUL MALO: Thank you.

GROSS: Some people, I imagine, might think it's incongruous for a Cuban American to be a country singer. Did it ever seem that way to you?

MALO: (Laughter) Sure. It still does sometimes. But, you know, I never gave it a second thought. I mean, it is what I love to do. And my parents, you know, certainly have supported me in doing so. And, you know, I grew up in a pretty musical household. So there was all kinds of music around always. I mean, we listened to everything from Hank Williams to Celia Cruz to Sam Cooke to Bobby Darin. It didn't matter.

GROSS: Now, what was your neighborhood like when you were growing up?

MALO: It was a good neighborhood. You know, it's a Cuban immigrant neighborhood and not very rough, but hardworking people. Blue collar people working every day for a living, you know, just trying to stay in the game.

GROSS: So what was the club scene like in Miami when you started playing in bands?

MALO: It was pretty wild, actually. You know, there wasn't a lot of country music, to say the least. I think we were the only country band actually playing in these clubs. They were original music clubs, which was the good thing.

GROSS: What do you mean original music clubs?

MALO: Well, they were clubs that allowed the bands to come in and play their original music instead of...

GROSS: Oh.

MALO: You know, instead of bands coming in and doing, like, four sets of covers, you know, all night. So at the time, you know, we were allowed certain creative freedoms, you know, where you could basically go onstage and play whatever you wanted. And sometimes it led to interesting nights because we'd be right on after, you know, some punk rock or some heavy metal band. And here we were playing, you know, "I Fall To Pieces" or "Crazy Arms" or something, you know, just something that sounded old and country. And, you know, they didn't quite know what to do with us. But they found themselves having a good time and digging it.

And that was the whole point, you know, that we were trying to do, that we're still trying to do is to bring people in that, you know, would normally turn away from country music. You know, we want them to go, well, no, you know, this is cool. I want to go buy a Patsy Cline record. I want to go buy a Hank Williams record and that kind of thing, you know, and listen to the music. And, you know, it was an interesting time because it really allowed us to do whatever we wanted.

GROSS: Now, all the country people who you've mentioned, you know, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, they're among the early country performers when country was still not dressed up in a lot of studio accoutrements.

MALO: Right.

GROSS: Is that what you prefer?

MALO: Well, you know, that's not only in country music. I mean, in pop music as well, you know, basically you have...

GROSS: True enough. Yeah.

MALO: We have people now that, you know, you don't even have to be a good singer. You don't have to be a musician. You don't have to be anything, you know? You just got to be this little image with long hair and ripped up jeans and throw a flannel shirt, and we'll make you sound good, kid. You know, don't worry about it. And that's the way it goes in all kinds of music. I mean, so, you know, there is something to be said about the old way of, like, just going in and actually having to sing. What a concept? And actually having to play your instruments, you know? That's the problem I have with a lot of today's music.

GROSS: What year did you actually move to Nashville?

MALO: I think I moved here - I'm trying to think. I'm going on three years that I've actually been living in Nashville.

GROSS: Did you go into culture shock at all? Was it a very different place than what you were used to?

MALO: Well, it certainly is a different place. I mean, you know, (laughter) Miami and Nashville, there's a big difference. No. 1, you know, you don't have the big Latin influence that you do in Miami. So that's a big part of the change. But quite honestly, I've really enjoyed living here. And I call it home now, and I do like it a lot. And I do miss, you know, certain things from home, you know, the coffee, the people talking about Fidel, you know, the old men playing dominoes at the park and talking about how, you know, they're going to do this and they're going to do that to Fidel. But (laughter) so I do miss a lot of that. You know, but I'm gone all the time. And I'm on the road. So you don't really have time to even think about it, you know, when you get home. You know, my parents just moved up to Nashville as well.

GROSS: Oh, really?

MALO: Yeah, so that's a little bit of Miami moving up, you know, a bunch of Cubans moving up to Nashville. So I like that. You know, that's fun now.

GROSS: Now, you're talking about the different influences that you've drawn on and all the different kinds of music you listen to. On your new CD "Music For All Occasions," you do a song that I know from my past (laughter). This is "Something Stupid" that Frank Sinatra - I mean, the song isn't stupid. The song is called "Something Stupid."

MALO: (Laughter).

GROSS: And Frank and Nancy Sinatra recorded it back in 1967. It rose to the top of the charts.

MALO: Right.

GROSS: You do a duet of this with Trisha Yearwood. What inspired you to record this?

MALO: Oh, you know, I don't know. It's just one of those songs that I grew up listening to. And we wanted to do a duet with Trisha. And, you know, we start going through all the different kinds of scenarios. What kind of song can we do? And we didn't want to do the typical country music duet, you know? We didn't want to do a George and Tammy Wynette song. We didn't want to do a John Cash and June Carter song. So we found this one, and we gave it a shot. You know, we just thought, well, you know, we'll see how it goes. We'll give it, you know, worst comes to worst, we'll have a laugh. And when we were done with it, we really liked it. And we kept it on the record.

GROSS: I like it, too. Before I play it, I just want to ask you one thing. Didn't you always think when Frank Sinatra and his daughter, Nancy, sang this together, I mean, don't the laws of God and man prohibit a father and daughter from singing a love duet like this?

(LAUGHTER)

MALO: Yeah, but it's Frank Sinatra. The rules don't apply to him.

GROSS: OK (laughter). So here...

MALO: He changes them, baby.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So here's the Mavericks' recording of "Something Stupid" from their new album, "Music For All Occasions," with my guest, singer Raul Malo.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOMETHING STUPID")

TRISHA YEARWOOD AND THE MAVERICKS: (Singing) I know I'd stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me. And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me. And afterwards, we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two. And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you. I can see it in your eyes that you despise the same old lines you heard the night before. And though it's just a line to you, for me, it's true and never seemed so right before. I practice every day to find some clever lines to say to make the meaning come true. But then I think I'll wait until the evening gets late and I'm alone with you. The time is right. Your perfume fills my head. The stars get red and, oh, the night's so blue. And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.

BIANCULLI: That's Raul Malo and Trisha Yearwood from the Mavericks' CD "Music For All Occasions." Raul Malo spoke with Terry Gross in 1995. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1995 conversation with Raul Malo, guitarist and lead singer of The Mavericks. He died Monday at age 60.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: I know you had an earlier album, I believe, independently released in which your songs were - some of them were more political, is that right?

MALO: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Were you writing different kinds of songs, then?

MALO: No, I wasn't writing different kinds of songs. Well, I guess, in a way, I was. I mean, you know, part of that whole - the whole - the feelings behind all those songs is that, you know, you have - you basically have your whole life to write your first record. So, these were songs that I had written, you know, in all my years there in Miami since I started writing songs, you know? And they were - they happened to touch, you know, political, social nerves, you know, and there's still songs that I play live. You know, we still sing these songs live, and they're important to us. But I realize now that at that point in time, you know, those songs were written from a real personal point of view. And to tell you the truth, I had a problem at the time wanting to put those songs on the record. I was outvoted by everybody else. I don't regret that they're on the record, and I don't regret the record that was made. But I always felt that they were a little too personal. You know, the album was very much about the life and times of The Mavericks in Miami. And I always thought that, well, you know, the people around us know what these songs are about. But, you know, the rest of the world or the country won't know unless we go out and explain it to them, and then, you know, we go out and play. And it's that whole scenario. But that's - you know, that's my take on it, you know?

GROSS: Can I ask you for an example of a lyric that was very personal?

MALO: Sure. You know, in "Hell To Paradise," the song about my aunt leaving Cuba and coming over here was inspired by her, but anybody who's been in Miami knows somebody who's been through this because we all came over from somewhere. And the funny thing was, when we were touring this song - this album, I remember going through all parts of the country and playing the song and explaining it. There's a little part on the show where I explained the song, and I remember having all kinds of people, all walks of life, coming up to me after and going, wow, you know, I remember - older generations, I remember, you know, seeing the Statue of Liberty when I came over from Poland or from Czechoslovakia or from other parts of Europe, you know? And so it touched a lot of people's nerves, you know, in that it not only dealt with the Cuban immigrants, but I think we're all immigrants in this country, and we all came over from somewhere. So it was neat that it affected other people. And one of the lyrics is this 90-mile trip has taken 30 years to make. They tried to keep forever what was never theirs to take. I cursed and scratched the devil's hand as he stood in front of me. One last drag from his big cigar, and he finally set me free. That's the last verse on the song "From Hell To Paradise."

BIANCULLI: Raul Malo speaking to Terry Gross in 1995. The guitarist and lead singer of The Mavericks died this week. He was 60 years old. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the newest film in the "Knives Out" murder mystery series. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Our film critic, Justin Chang, recommends "Wake Up Dead Man," the latest film in the "Knives Out" murder mystery series. Like its predecessors, it's written and directed by Rian Johnson and stars Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc. In the new film, Josh O'Connor plays a Catholic priest who teams up with Blanc to solve a whodunnit in his parish. "Wake Up Dead Man" also features Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington and Glenn Close, and is streaming now on Netflix. Here is Justin's review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: When I was in my early teens, I was both a devout churchgoer and an avid reader of mysteries. One of my favorite writers was PD James, whose Anglican faith informed her fiction in subtle ways. For James, the plotting and solving of murder was a grisly yet profoundly moral undertaking. A detective story she wrote confirms our hope that despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means. The new movie "Wake Up Dead Man," Rian Johnson's latest whodunnit after "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion" is too funny and slyly over the top to feel like a PD James story. To my knowledge, James never incorporated body-dissolving acid or the old poison beverage switcheroo trick. But in his own crafty way, Johnson is also using mystery conventions to open up a spiritual inquiry.

The story takes place in and around a Catholic church at a small town in upstate New York, where a junior priest named Jud Duplenticy, played by a terrific Josh O'Connor, has been assigned to serve. Unfortunately, he's forced to work under Mons. Jefferson Wicks, whom Josh Brolin plays as an angry fundamentalist fire brand, spewing hatred and contempt for gay people, single moms and the entire hellbound secular world. Although Wicks' behavior has reduced church attendance, he's surrounded himself with a small group of loyalists.

The most devoted is Martha, who keeps the church running. She's played by an amusingly nosy Glenn Close. There's also Kerry Washington as a sharp-witted attorney and Jeremy Renner as a sad sack alcoholic doctor. Cailee Spaeny plays a famous cellist who donates large sums to the church in hopes that God will heal her chronic pain. Two characters feel like sharp cynical jabs at American conservatism. One is a formerly liberal writer, played by Andrew Scott, who since drifted rightward. The other is a failed young Republican politician turned aspiring YouTuber, played by Daryl McCormack. With the best of intentions, Jud tries hard to break Wicks' hold on his flock and lead them into deeper faith in God. But he succeeds only in making an even greater enemy of the Monsignor. And when Wicks is fatally stabbed in the church, and on Good Friday, no less, suspicion immediately falls on Jud. But Jud insists that he's innocent. And before long, the private investigator Benoit Blanc, played once again by Daniel Craig, with a courtly Southern drawl, comes knocking.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY")

DANIEL CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) Oh, I'm sorry. Are you open?

JOSH O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) Always.

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) You alright?

O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) Yeah. Uh-huh. Sorry. There's no Easter mass.

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) Oh.

O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) I'm sorry. You're welcome. Come in.

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) Thank you.

O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) Come in.

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) Thank you. I don't want to take you away from your priestly duties now, do I? Well, this is something.

O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) Right? It's hard to be in here and not feel his presence.

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) Whose? Oh, God. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

O'CONNOR: (As Jud Duplenticy) You're not a Catholic?

CRAIG: (As Benoit Blanc) No, very much not. No.

CHANG: Blanc believes that Jud is innocent and enlists him to help solve the murder, which won't be easy. Wicks is the victim of what is known in detective fiction as an impossible crime, one that seems to defy rational explanation. At one point, Blanc gives Jud and the audience a crash course in the work of John Dickson Carr, the undisputed master of the impossible crime novel. Since Carr is another of my favorite writers, Johnson's next-level genre geekery (ph) almost had me levitating out of my seat. "Wake Up Dead Man" may not be the best movie I've seen this year, but in some ways, and I don't often say this kind of thing, it feels like the movie that was made most for me. That goes for its ideas as well as its genre trappings.

Just as the first two "Knives Out" movies skewered racism, classism, billionaires and tech bros, "Wake Up Dead Man" takes sharp aim at what it sees as the intolerance and insularity of the Christian right. The political jabs aren't always subtle, and sometimes the petty, ill-tempered parishioners sound too alike in their strident bickering. But that just makes Father Jud all the more appealing a character as he sets out to humbly, yet radically, love his community. Given how good O'Connor has been lately in movies like "Challengers" and "The Mastermind," it's saying a lot that this is one of his best performances, and one that elevates this snarky, satirical murder farce to a genuinely contemplative plane. Even as tensions mount, there's more than one victim and possibly more than one killer. The movie becomes a kind of theological debate, pitting Jud, the earnest believer, against Blanc, the fierce skeptic. Who emerges the winner? Let's just say that with a puzzle as satisfyingly constructed as "Wake Up Dead Man," God really is in the details.

BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is a film critic at New Yorker magazine. He reviewed "Wake Up Dead Man," now streaming on Netflix. On Monday's show, Zadie Smith. Her critically acclaimed best-selling first novel, "White Teeth," was published when she was 25 in the year 2000. Now she's 50 and is looking at life as a middle-aged woman and is thinking about the current generation gaps, including between millennials and Gen Xers. Hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests, behind-the-scenes shorts and iconic interviews from the archive. Let's close with some more music by The Mavericks.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TODAY")

RAUL MALO: (Singing) Walking down the boulevard. I don't need no lucky charm today. Not today. 'Cause I got a rhythm in my feet. I got my pockets full of dreams today. I just can't wait. I'm going to see my little girl before the sun goes down. And there's nothing left to do but to do the town today. What a day. I'm going to meet her at the station at a quarter to three 'cause she's finally coming back, coming back to me today.

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman and Julian Herzfeld. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TODAY")

MALO: (Singing) Today. Oh, what a day. I'm going to meet her at the station at a quarter to three 'cause she's finally coming back, coming back to me today. (Singing in Spanish). I'm going to see my little girl before the sun goes down. And there's nothing left to do but to do the town today. What a day. I'm going to meet her at the station at a quarter to three 'cause she's finally coming back, coming back to me today.

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