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Michael Clayton...movie review
Applied for yet another position at HBO - this makes four applications in the last two years, and three within the last three months. I have no idea why I keep bothering. The only way in HBO appears to be if you know someone or have a friend who works there, and I emphatically do not. Oh well, did get a few things done today - cleaned my apartment more or less, still can't quite get rid of all the clutter, went grocery shopping, went to the movie Michael Clayton with Wales - and had drinks and dinner later, where I proceeded to bore her with my job lay off woes. I've passed the stages of shock and denial and am now full throtal in anger mode. But as luck would have it - there's no one I can take my anger out on. So it is festering inside like an angry boil screaming to be popped. I keep having little ranting sessions inside my head which go no where except to make me despise myself for having them.
Michael Clayton
Interesting flick. Demands quite a bit from the audience - and is reminiscent of the 1970s and early 1980's character films such as Five Easy Pieces, They Shoot Horses Don't They, Save the Tiger, Network, The Verdict, Absence of Malice, and Taxi Driver. These were films that you had to sit and think about, concentrate on, and listen to. You didn't just escape into. Also there isn't much action in them, they unravel slowly and often will often be filled with long gaps of silence.
Michael Clayton stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack (who I've met in person and listened to a Q&A in an intimate session in college - he's the one who told me that the problem with Hollywood was whatever you created and poured your soul into, regardless of the awards you got? It's never ever good enough. And they are always asking you about your next picture. OR what you've done for them lately. Making movies is a bit like being stuck on an endless treadmill reaching for and never quite getting the proverbial carrot), and Tom Wilkinson (one of my all time favorite character actors). It's about a man's crisis of conscience and the circumstances that lead this main, the title character, to do what he decides to do and how he feels about it along the way. It is not a story about a court case or a political piece, but a story about a man who has sold out and now feels stuck, and is struggling desperately to get unstuck.
Ken Levine in his review compared the film favorably with Network, Erin Brokanvich, and The Verdict. Of the three films, it reminds me the most of Network - and Tilda Swinton's performance reminded me quite a bit of Faye Dunway's.
If you've never seen Network - you really should, if anything it will send a chill up your spine on how closely it resembles the world we are living in now - even more than it resembled the world it was depicting at the time.
Clayton is set up in a similar manner to the tv series Damages - in that we start the movie four days in the future, then flashbackwards until we eventually catch up to those four days and everything is finally played out. The device works - which is an accomplishment in of itself, since I've seen tv shows and films where it did not work. Jumping around in time is about as dicey as jumping point of views. Clayton also is into details, visual details. Such as listening to a voice over as we star at blank office rooms being cleaned by janitors - a metaphor for what the lead character does for a living - he's the Mr. Fix-it, the miracle worker, the cleaner, the janitor - who cleans up the company and the company's client's messes. Another image that sticks in my head long after the movie finished was Tilda Swinton scrunched up in a ladies bathroom, touching her sweaty armpit and staring in stressed hope at a bag with UNorth on it. I've met the character Tilda Swinton plays in this film. She has an icy cold veneer yet at the same time gets across a fragile and scared interior - like a fox perpetually caught in the headlights of an on-coming car. Her character is all the more frightening because I know it is real.
Unlike most films, we know at the end of this one who these people are, we as an audience, like or not, have walked ten miles in Michael Clayton's been under his skin. We know what he is thinking even if he doesn't say it and we know why. And in some absurd way, we know that Michael Clayton is us or known to us.
One of the best metaphors in the film is shown at the very beginning on a screen on the wall of Clayton's son's room during a tracking shot that flows over the child's action figures, and a huge green spider - the shot is repeated twice in the film - and both times the camera settles for a minute on the screen - a huge red circle with the words REALM+CONQUEST spelled out in the center. It is - we learn part of a game the son plays with his father - a type of card game. It is also a book he loans to his father's friend, Arthur, portrayed by Tom Wilkinson. Shortly after the words are shown to us - we see one of Clayton's co-workers ask about the on-coming merger with the big London firm. The merger hangs in the background just as those words do. Realm+Conquest.
What, the film asks, are we prepared to do to conguer the realm of another? What is more important? Karen Kroder defensively tries out different answers to the question of "life-work balance" in front of her mirror as she dresses for work. Finally deciding to merely side-step it. She is so defined by her job she ceases to exist outside of it. While Clayton has lost almost everything in an attempt to be able to walk away from his - he's only staying with it because his gamble did not work out but one can see how his job has beaten him down, stooped, heavy bags under his eyes, and tired beyond all reason, he shuffles as opposed to walks. So intense is Clooney's performance that even the body language conveys who his character is and what his character is feeling. It is not until close to the end that we see a glimmer of the trademark Clooney charm - but it lasts no more than a second and makes perfect sense when it does show up.
This may be amongst the best films I've seen this year. It plays with my head, it's images rolling about, asking to be contemplated. Examining again and again the difficult and complex emotions that inhabit its characters and how those characters choose to act on them.
Overall Rating:A+
Michael Clayton
Interesting flick. Demands quite a bit from the audience - and is reminiscent of the 1970s and early 1980's character films such as Five Easy Pieces, They Shoot Horses Don't They, Save the Tiger, Network, The Verdict, Absence of Malice, and Taxi Driver. These were films that you had to sit and think about, concentrate on, and listen to. You didn't just escape into. Also there isn't much action in them, they unravel slowly and often will often be filled with long gaps of silence.
Michael Clayton stars George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack (who I've met in person and listened to a Q&A in an intimate session in college - he's the one who told me that the problem with Hollywood was whatever you created and poured your soul into, regardless of the awards you got? It's never ever good enough. And they are always asking you about your next picture. OR what you've done for them lately. Making movies is a bit like being stuck on an endless treadmill reaching for and never quite getting the proverbial carrot), and Tom Wilkinson (one of my all time favorite character actors). It's about a man's crisis of conscience and the circumstances that lead this main, the title character, to do what he decides to do and how he feels about it along the way. It is not a story about a court case or a political piece, but a story about a man who has sold out and now feels stuck, and is struggling desperately to get unstuck.
Ken Levine in his review compared the film favorably with Network, Erin Brokanvich, and The Verdict. Of the three films, it reminds me the most of Network - and Tilda Swinton's performance reminded me quite a bit of Faye Dunway's.
If you've never seen Network - you really should, if anything it will send a chill up your spine on how closely it resembles the world we are living in now - even more than it resembled the world it was depicting at the time.
Clayton is set up in a similar manner to the tv series Damages - in that we start the movie four days in the future, then flashbackwards until we eventually catch up to those four days and everything is finally played out. The device works - which is an accomplishment in of itself, since I've seen tv shows and films where it did not work. Jumping around in time is about as dicey as jumping point of views. Clayton also is into details, visual details. Such as listening to a voice over as we star at blank office rooms being cleaned by janitors - a metaphor for what the lead character does for a living - he's the Mr. Fix-it, the miracle worker, the cleaner, the janitor - who cleans up the company and the company's client's messes. Another image that sticks in my head long after the movie finished was Tilda Swinton scrunched up in a ladies bathroom, touching her sweaty armpit and staring in stressed hope at a bag with UNorth on it. I've met the character Tilda Swinton plays in this film. She has an icy cold veneer yet at the same time gets across a fragile and scared interior - like a fox perpetually caught in the headlights of an on-coming car. Her character is all the more frightening because I know it is real.
Unlike most films, we know at the end of this one who these people are, we as an audience, like or not, have walked ten miles in Michael Clayton's been under his skin. We know what he is thinking even if he doesn't say it and we know why. And in some absurd way, we know that Michael Clayton is us or known to us.
One of the best metaphors in the film is shown at the very beginning on a screen on the wall of Clayton's son's room during a tracking shot that flows over the child's action figures, and a huge green spider - the shot is repeated twice in the film - and both times the camera settles for a minute on the screen - a huge red circle with the words REALM+CONQUEST spelled out in the center. It is - we learn part of a game the son plays with his father - a type of card game. It is also a book he loans to his father's friend, Arthur, portrayed by Tom Wilkinson. Shortly after the words are shown to us - we see one of Clayton's co-workers ask about the on-coming merger with the big London firm. The merger hangs in the background just as those words do. Realm+Conquest.
What, the film asks, are we prepared to do to conguer the realm of another? What is more important? Karen Kroder defensively tries out different answers to the question of "life-work balance" in front of her mirror as she dresses for work. Finally deciding to merely side-step it. She is so defined by her job she ceases to exist outside of it. While Clayton has lost almost everything in an attempt to be able to walk away from his - he's only staying with it because his gamble did not work out but one can see how his job has beaten him down, stooped, heavy bags under his eyes, and tired beyond all reason, he shuffles as opposed to walks. So intense is Clooney's performance that even the body language conveys who his character is and what his character is feeling. It is not until close to the end that we see a glimmer of the trademark Clooney charm - but it lasts no more than a second and makes perfect sense when it does show up.
This may be amongst the best films I've seen this year. It plays with my head, it's images rolling about, asking to be contemplated. Examining again and again the difficult and complex emotions that inhabit its characters and how those characters choose to act on them.
Overall Rating:A+
My grade: A-
Loved this movie....for the most part. However, I thought the time tinkering didn't work, because it placed the focus of the movie on what I thought was the weakest part: the attempted assassination.
Paula and I went out of the theater going, "That was great!" The scene in the alley between Michael and Arthur, the final showdown between Michael and Karen, every scene with Sydney Pollock (Pollock's stolen movie count: 2), the whole bit with Karen rehearsing her "causal patter"--just great, great stuff. Agree completely, reminiscent of the character-study films of the late 70s, and worthy of that comparison.
But Tony Gilroy (writer/director) almost lost me at the beginning. When Michael left the car to see the pretty horsies, I was going, "Ohhhhkaaay." Were they symbols of the freedom he had lost? Were they the "horses" he needed to take down UNorth once and for all? The symbolism seemed forced in such a gritty, hyper-realistic character study.
And it's difficult to believe that professional assassins--who killed Arthur in chillingly efficient style--couldn't get their shit together and make sure their quarry was in the damn car when it blew! Never mind the horsies--suppose Michael had stopped to get some gas and a snack? Suppose he was off on the side of the road taking a whizz? There were many possible reasons he might have been out of the car, and the black ops guys should have known that. Their sloppiness pulled me out of the movie a bit, and knocked a half-point off the ratings.
Otherwise? Terrific.
Re: My grade: A-
RE: the horse bit - you must have missed the comment Tom Wilkinson's character made to Clayton? (Wales also missed it, when we saw it - she didn't get the horse bit. I was looking for it and caught it.) He asks Clayton if he ever stopped to look at the horses? "Do you ever stop to look at the horses? Just look in their eyes? Really see them?" Remember Clayton was a gambler - big time. Both men were in a way. So it has two meanings. Looking at the client, and two looking at the thing you are abusing to make money. It won't make sense if you don't catch the line the friend says.
RE the assasins - they aren't infallible. And it made it sense if you think about it. Unlike the previous job, they are rushing. They had planted someone at the card game to keep him there, but he left earlier than they'd thought and had to get out before finishing the plant. As a result they weren't entirely sure it worked. Also they had to time the bomb going off so that it happened away from anyone. Clearly she got across to them that they had to do it fast and they were all panicking a bit. The piece operates on stupid human error - the bad guys fail due to pride and ego and arrogance. The fact they were panicking is telegraphed in the scene where she's sweating in the bathroom. The two men exhibit it when they are tracking Clayton. They had a tiny window of opportunity and were acting fast on it. While with Arthur, they had more time, ability to plan and everything fell into place - Arthur was manic-depressive, history of weird behavior, and a good reason to want to commit suicide. Clayton - had a background as an ADA, was part of the committee to stop Organized Crime in his past, had a cop brother...the best way would be a car bomb which would never be traced back to them, but more likely to a host of other people, including the people Clayton owed money to. (Note he's in a underground poker hall.)
3. The Poker Game - the guy at the table was Clayton's conscience - telling the audience the internal conflict inside him. The desire to be a rock star, yet never achieving it.
(Oh a bit of insider info that I got from a movie critic who knows the actor that played the guy talking to Clayton at the Poker Table - that guy wrote Rounders, and has been in numerous underground poker games around the city.)
Not sure if that adds a new layer of insight or not. The movie is incredibly detailed.
.......couldn't drag me away
But I still have the feeling Gilroy had a script problem, and decided to hang a lantern on it:
"hang a lantern on it": Instead of trying to hide a script/credibility problem, address it in full measure, so it can be dealt with and discarded.
The way Gilroy's story was structured, we knew Michael was targeted for death the minute he went to Arthur's apartment and picked up the receipt for the copy place. But how does Michael survive, when (1) Arthur was killed with ruthless efficiency and, more importantly (2) nobody (except Karen) is even aware that Arthur was murdered, and the killers are targeting Michael next? Gilroy had to really work to create a set of circumstances wherein Michael could survive the assassination attempt and stay under the radar long enough to contact the cops and formulate the plan to take down Karen, Jeffries and UNorth. The problem is, I could see the writer working. It didn't feel organic to me.
Re: .......couldn't drag me away
Arthur's death was actually very easy. They were wiretapping him, had already gotten access into his apartment. He wasn't on to them. He had no friends outside of Michael Clayton (who he was on the outs with). He was a manic-depressive who had gone off his meds. I mean come on, I could have planned that one. Anyone could. It was easy. Just make it look like the guy overdosed on his meds. You've got the tape as corrborating evidence and no family or friends to really look into it. Also again, keep in mind the time frame - they had weeks to plan Arthur's death, how to do it, which was best. And they'd gathered a lot of intel on him.
Michael was the wild card. And heck of a lot harder to kill. Kroder didn't really understand Michael or know what he did, just a bit of stuff that was in the public record. She knew Arthur and knew what he did. So did the guys who killed him - they had time to investigate him. They had a lot more time with Arthur.
When Michael found out - they had a day maybe two if that. They had no time. It takes a lot of time to plan an efficient murder - to see all the variables. Plus, things can go wrong - like they had no idea he'd stop on the road to check horses, or he'd be called to go check on a hit and run, or he'd leave the poker game early. Nor did they know he'd bribed by the law firm not to talk about the case and signed a confidentiality contract - that was what he was telling Kroder - I've already been bought you stupid nitwit. She didn't know that. Which was very realistic - I've seen that happen in companies - the right and left hands don't talk to each other. Arthur on the other hand - they knew practically everything except one little detail that they overlooked - easy to overlook when you are in a rush - the fact that he had over five thousand copies of those documents. (They didn't know about that - or they would have destroyed those copies. I'm guessing they didn't know about it until Clayton took them there.) Also, you are assuming they made the decision to kill Clayton the moment he entered the apartment and found the copy sheet. Hardly. It took time. It probably wasn't approved until he was seen with Anna, then at the copy place.
So, what happens - how Michael survives is to an extent dumb luck. But again that's realistic. And staying under the radar? Not that hard, since Karen, Jeffries, and UNORTH didn't know everything. They didn't know about Clayton's gambling debt (or they'd have tried something else), they didn't know that his law firm already bought him off, they didn't know what Michael did for a living, they didn't know about his relationships with Jimmy and his brother - they were *selfabsorbed*. And they delegated it to someone else.
Everything that happened worked for me, because I've seen similar things happen in real life. You'd be surprised.
Re: .......couldn't drag me away
Bought and Sold
But you know, I almost wish we didn't have the twist where Michael does the right thing, even for the wrong reason. Part of me really wanted Michael to take UNorth's ten million, then tell Marty Berg to go screw himself. As it is, what's going to happen to Michael after the movie? Marty will stop the $80,000 check, fire Michael, and our hero will be REALLY screwed. Even if Karen and UNorth didn't manage kill him, the mob might do it.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree on the assassination attempt. I know that sort of thing happens in real life, but it felt "staged" to me.
Re: Bought and Sold
We judge things based on our experiences and perceptions, forgetting that there are possibilities that lay outside of them. I've met a trained assassin. I was his attorney in law school. My job was to get his transcripts. And I read the transcripts. They were a comedy of errors. And felt staged in places. So what I saw fit my experience. If that makes sense.
I can see why you wanted that ending, which is the traditional noir ending. I'm glad it didn't go that way. For a lot of reasons, the least important of them: Seen too many movies and tv shows and stories that have lately. And after a while, for me at least, the noir ending gets old. Michael Clayton wasn't meant to be a noir film - Network was in many ways more of one. The main reason I'm glad it didn't is it would have gone against Clayton's character. A man who had decided to start a bar with his no-account brother, who talked books with his son, who was struggling with his job - and was so beaten down, you could tell he hated himself and that job - would not have done what you hoped he'd do. Yes, that is the *cool* ending, the twisty ending. The *noir* ending. But it is also the easy one for a writer - the one we are all tempted by. I was tempted by similar types of endings in my recent novel - tempted to go for the most painful one possible, only to realize, oddly enough, that it was the least true to my story and characters.
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To answer your question: No, I doubt he read it.
I've learned that most people in business do not read. If it is longer than five sentences? They won't even look at it.
It was probably one of a million pieces of paper that cross his desk and he signed it, not thinking twice. That's a matter of course for most corporations in America.
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That said, I'm pretty sure Don Jeffries wasn't a lawyer, he was the client. Kroder was his lawyer.
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Then of course there was that little scandel with the CFO, who was allegedly in line to take over the company, but ended up resigning in scandel and disgrace because of some interesting biz decisions that had a lot more to do with the five women arguing over his money.
Also least we forget, good old Arthur Anderson, who attempted to destroy the legal and tax documents that ended up killing Enron, those memos were found and took Arthur Anderson down with them...
Trust me, Michael Clayton was totally believable. I know some stories about corporate America that would blow you away. Just because they got to the top, doesn't mean they are smart. It's all about networking.