Dan's Papers - October 19, 2007 - Guy de Fraumeni's Hollywood In The Hamptons

Are you tired of being run down by dim-witted, blockbusting movies that leave you tired of movie going and feeling like running down to the video store for a good old film? Try this as a cure.

The Product: George Clooney starring in Michael Clayton, written and directed by Tony Gilroy.

Active Ingredients: Intelligence. A moral and ethical conscience. Gripping thrills. Brilliant performances behind and in front of the cameras.

Warnings: It is mesmerizing. Your body and soul might be totally captured. You could become addicted to fine quality films.

Rarely are films of real artistic ambitions as wondrously entertaining as the persuasive Michael Clayton. Remarkable is its dedication to the smarts of the audience who is assigned the role of fitting together the jigsaw pieces of compelling scenes that create the large mosaic of a complex investigation of corporate corruption. Most intrinsically involved in the disparate narrative threads is Michael Clayton as most daringly portrayed by George Clooney. Clayton is a loser lawyer now scraping the bottom of the legal barrel as a fixer (bag man) for a high-powered, white shoe New York law firm. Realistically, he's a janitor in Armani $750 suits who mops up the stinky doo-doo of careless clients. He'll even fix a DUI charge but he can't clean up his own act. His family life and relationship with his son is in complete collapse. Even his venture into being a restaurateur is crumbling like over-ripe blue cheese. His world stinks. Can he redeem himself, even in his own mind? To add to his rancid bitterness, his boss, played with crass acidity by the terrific director and actor, Sydney Pollack, gives him an impossible job: One of their top litigators, who's been defending a huge class action suit against a major client, has been having a mental meltdown. He's been taking his clothes off when off his meds and worse, he's siding against the client. Alas, poor Michael, his life is spiritually dissolving from within and he has to reign in a mad man.

The film opens with a montage. We hear the ranting voice of Tom Wilkinson, the profoundly consummate British actor, railing against his profession. He's the firm's top guy turning to molten madness. Elsewhere, Michael is picking up his son from his ex-wife's house. In the gleaming window-lit nighttime, Manhattan skyline, through a skyscraper window we see Mr. Pollack as the senior partner refuting a Wall Street Journal reporter's assumption that the firm was merging with another. Actually, they have to. Then, in a bathroom is a very professional looking woman. Swamped by anxiety she is sweating heavily. You will find that she is the chief counsel for the agrichemical giant client and, as villainous as they. Tilda Swinton's perspiration runs as greasily as the conscienceless company's phony sweet commercials.

That same night, Clooney's Clayton is feverishly being seduced by failure. In Chinatown, he's gambling as if his life depended on it. During talk about his restaurant his cell phone chatters with complaints by one of the firm's clients. Soon he is driving, then he stops off the road to see some deer and, blam! his car explodes. The varied sequence of events is confusing. It's meant to be. It informs the audience they will have to be on their toes. They are involved and engaged by their fascinated complicity in it. The movie's multileveled bedazzlement has you also in jeopardy. Michael Clayton is the first directing stint for one of Hollywood's top screenwriters. Tony Gilroy has written all the Jason Bourne films and, though this film is a far departure from those pulp actioners, it shows how he's terrific at making every narrative second as powerful as possible. Very different interrelations take on ticking clock importance, as confronted by the beleaguered Michael groping for redemption. The film's masterful storytelling dispels all similarity to previous same subject movies and, by spell-binding you, leaves you haunted.

Michael Clayton is both rough and slick, gliding and grating against each character's ethical frailty. Edges are blunted and then scraped to a jagged, tearing sharpness that cuts past the bone. Each and every moment is slashing. Tilda Swinton's discomposure in the bathroom stall or, readying her stockings before an important presentation are as thrilling as an assassination done completely without sound. And, there is George Clooney who got the project green-lighted, he gives his finest performance to date. He's not ashamed to do a movie with a message. In a time of unmitigated corruption with lies and greed seemingly the only real linchpins of our society, Michael Clayton's arrival is to be celebrated. And, ain't it great to have an old-fashioned, darn good movie.

Guy-Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions including the Oscars, the Emmy's and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.