Michael Clayton
MICHAEL CLAYTON (Tony Gilroy, 2007)
* (Has redeeming facet)
It's not my intention to turn what remains of this enterprise into a catalogue of a specific type of failure*, perhaps the most obvious signifier of white elephant art in contemporary cinema, the achronologically-told melodrama.
*Though it's easier to repeat myself than to complete and cohere my thoughts regarding why Judd Apatow and his proteges are better television writers than screenwriters, the similar structures and sympathies of the Coens' BURN AFTER READING and Roth's Indignation, or my notes for a second viewing of SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK.
It serves no positive purpose that I can discern to write a melodrama only to structure it in such a way as to drain the scenario of its drama. I assume the assumption is that we're too clever for that these days but if we're too clever for that, aren't we also too clever for shallow sophistries on the corrupting nature of modern, Western, upper class life? I'd rather a thousand barely competent but honest iterations of the vacuousness of TITANIC than another fundamentally dishonest attempt to hide a thriller behind an ineffectual cloak of would-be dramatic irony.
The only way to make these self-gratifying films about alienation, hypocrisy, and guilt compelling is to make the characters recognizably human and empathetic**. The refusal to give the audience this basic, human pleasure undermines the entire (assumed) effort to say something about life in general and the lives of these characters in particular.
**This something Neil LaBute does in his best efforts (bash, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, the shape of things) at dealing with the understanding that, in our contemporary world, we are still subject to the old world's judgment that we are all sinners. Tony Gilroy, in MICHAEL CLAYTON, prefers a flattering omniscience and a light sprinkling of mysticism. (Even Tom Wilkinson can't redeem the fooferaw about madness revealing the truth those of us in the real, grounded worlds can't see, man.) The former is considered misanthropic yet the easy judgments of the latter classify as "adult." Who has made the perceptive film(s) about the contemporary world again?
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* (Has redeeming facet)
It's not my intention to turn what remains of this enterprise into a catalogue of a specific type of failure*, perhaps the most obvious signifier of white elephant art in contemporary cinema, the achronologically-told melodrama.
*Though it's easier to repeat myself than to complete and cohere my thoughts regarding why Judd Apatow and his proteges are better television writers than screenwriters, the similar structures and sympathies of the Coens' BURN AFTER READING and Roth's Indignation, or my notes for a second viewing of SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK.
It serves no positive purpose that I can discern to write a melodrama only to structure it in such a way as to drain the scenario of its drama. I assume the assumption is that we're too clever for that these days but if we're too clever for that, aren't we also too clever for shallow sophistries on the corrupting nature of modern, Western, upper class life? I'd rather a thousand barely competent but honest iterations of the vacuousness of TITANIC than another fundamentally dishonest attempt to hide a thriller behind an ineffectual cloak of would-be dramatic irony.
The only way to make these self-gratifying films about alienation, hypocrisy, and guilt compelling is to make the characters recognizably human and empathetic**. The refusal to give the audience this basic, human pleasure undermines the entire (assumed) effort to say something about life in general and the lives of these characters in particular.
**This something Neil LaBute does in his best efforts (bash, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, the shape of things) at dealing with the understanding that, in our contemporary world, we are still subject to the old world's judgment that we are all sinners. Tony Gilroy, in MICHAEL CLAYTON, prefers a flattering omniscience and a light sprinkling of mysticism. (Even Tom Wilkinson can't redeem the fooferaw about madness revealing the truth those of us in the real, grounded worlds can't see, man.) The former is considered misanthropic yet the easy judgments of the latter classify as "adult." Who has made the perceptive film(s) about the contemporary world again?
Labels: george clooney, michael clayton, sydney pollack, tony gilroy
Click here to read the full post with comments
posted by Bret LaGree at 15:49
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