Lawyer Michael Clayton (George Clooney, right) tries to get co-litigator Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) back into the courtroom. (Warner Bros Pictures)
What’s the upside to paranoia, corporate greed and an unsavory scent in the Oval Office?
Well, back in the 70s, the last time America felt so queasy, a burst of great movies followed. There hasn’t been a Taxi Driver for the oughts yet, but at least two recent American films — The Brave One, and now, Michael Clayton — match its epochal psychic decay.
Michael Clayton is a better manifestation of modern skepticism than The Brave One, a reactionary cheese-feast with Jodie Foster’s twist-tie mouth righteously tighter than ever, but both tell the story of a country whose faith in authority has been weakened to the breaking point.
Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a “fixer,” or, as he comes to call himself, a janitor: when a big-wig client of his mega-global corporate law firm commits a hit-and-run, Clayton is sent to Westchester in the middle of the night to sweep up. Clooney looks gristly, a little bloated, and very likeable. It’s a great, measured performance filled with lingering reaction shots; the Clooney smirk is on holiday. He looks like a man who is a professional listener.
Clayton isn’t a bury-the-body guy, but a former D.A. who dances between the cracks in the law to keep the elite protected. Peripherally, the film is about our insane relationship to work: Clayton is a divorced dad making all the compromises that go along with needing to pay the bills. He knows enough to want to get out — he just lost his shirt on a bar investment escape plan — but not enough to do right. Someone else will do the whistle blowing: Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a top lawyer gone off his meds and into the light of moral clarity. Twelve years of defending a deadly pesticide, destroying evidence and lying to 450 cancer-struck plaintiffs could make anyone strip down at a deposition and yell: “I am Shiva! God of death!”
Over the top? Maybe, but so was Enron. Writer-director Tony Gilroy hasn’t just made an action movie coated in a convenient liberal patina, he seems to have started with the great human questions — Who am I? What am I capable of? — and laid a thriller over top.
Tilda Swinton plays the brutally ambitious new senior in-house counsel for the agro/chemical company who sold the weed-killer. Before delivering a silky smooth speech about her promotion (“Who needs balance when you love what you do?”), she practices in her home. Gilroy cuts between her rehearsal — in the mirror, as she dresses, makes breakfast — and the speech itself, suggesting with a chill that power is merely play-acting. Her stockings and pearls lie on the bed like a costume. Because we’ve seen this tense, terse woman humanized by her sweat stains and performance anxiety, it’s all the more terrifying when she makes unconscionable, inhuman decisions in the name of her job, which is little more than an elaborate piece of theatre.
As Clayton gets closer to the truth of his own existence — like the monster realizing he’s somehow different from Dr. Frankenstein — the film shifts into a smart, sinister cat-and-mouse game. What seemed somewhat convoluted and confusing at the start turns out to have been carefully plotted, a route toward a revelation.
Michael Clayton looks unblinkingly at the motivating myths of our time — that work is a substitute for family; that one’s value is monetary — and finds something wormy. One suspects, and hopes, that in these times, this won’t be the last movie to notice.
Michael Clayton opens Oct. 5 in Toronto and Vancouver, and Oct. 12 across Canada.
Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.
More from this Author
Katrina Onstad
- Lost in transition
- The Golden Compass on screen: opulent but misdirected
- The many faces of Bob
- Todd Haynes discusses his Dylan biopic, I'm Not There
- Twisted sister
- Margot at the Wedding is a venomous look at family
- Guns blazing
- Brian De Palma's antiwar film Redacted is a preachy mess
- Five questions for...
- Laurie Lynd, director of Breakfast With Scot
