Michael Clayton
“Maybe if you’d gotten a pageboy you’d have a snowball’s chance in hell at Best Supporting Actor, crazy.”
This is a really well-built movie. You can’t see any of the joints or threads until the end, by which point you’re prone to forgive it; it’s a master class in directorial control. Unfortunately for Tony Gilroy, Best Director Oscars customarily get handed out for showing the work, not hiding it, and while you can win for understated, you won’t beat the Coens at it, not this time. Against a different slate, that statue is Gilroy’s, but for 2007, “it’s an honor just to be nominated” is going to have to do. I hope the nomination at least encouraged more people to see or rent the movie; it’s a solid two hours.
Clooney’s nomination is interesting, too. The only other Best Actor performance I’ve seen as of this writing is Viggo’s in Eastern Promises, another well-built, makes-it-look-easy movie whose early release date probably took it out of contention for other nominations it deserved just as much — Casey Affleck is very good in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Montgomery Ward, but he’s nominated for the wrong performance, and the nomination took a spot from Vincent Cassel, who I could not stop raving about after seeing Eastern Promises. That guy is a five-tool player.
Of course, it’s There Will Be Blood and No Country‘s year and nobody else is medaling except the actresses and costume designers anyway, but when I compare Clooney’s performance to Viggo’s, it holds up. Clooney’s previous win is one of those Sorry You Didn’t Win It For This Other Thing Oscars — you know, “Between Brokeback and Crash, you’ve got no shot, but congrats, it’s a great movie, and props for endangering your actor brand by getting fat for that other film” — and I thought he deserved at least a nom for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, so I’m good with the make-up statue. But Clooney is one of those actors whose work on that basis is very difficult to assess because of everything Clooney is that you can’t put aside — that in addition to wearing a tux extremely well and being a guy even other straight guys would switch sides for, he’s a socially responsible, funny, savvy, hilariously dry person who gets things done and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Like, I have an idea for a short film about scientists who try to clone Clooney, and it goes horribly wrong, and you have all these Multiplicity Cloons running around like Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but it kind of only works if Clooney plays himself, and the only reason I still have the idea rattling around on my to-do list is that I think Clooney would consider doing it. He wouldn’t do it definitely, but he would consider it.
You feel like you know Clooney The Guy, and my point is that between that and Clooney The Brand…I wouldn’t change a thing about how he does his thing, because it works, don’t get me wrong. Boyfriend hasn’t put a foot wrong since Perfect Storm. It’s just hard sometimes to look at what he’s actually doing, besides being George Clooney, and feel like you know what’s going on. With that said, I think it’s a very strong performance. He had a Doug Ross Thing with the head-tilting instead of doing the work with his face; that’s pretty much gone now, and there’s none of it here. He’s got some high-volume work to do that isn’t traditionally his strength, but he’s not overcompensating, and putting it in context with Tom Wilkinson, who has a couple of Oscar-reel scenes that force Clooney to do the thankless careful-listening straight-man job, it’s good work. The knock on Clooney is that he coasts, which…who wouldn’t, if they looked like that guy, but I’ve never gotten that from him. He’s not trying to be anything he isn’t; he isn’t trying to eat Sean Penn’s lunch. That could look like coasting, I guess, but it’s not the same thing.
In any case, he’s not winning. Daniel Day-Lewis made a spot for that shit on his mantle two years ago and he’s going to fill it, and that’s okay; I think Tommy Lee Jones also got nominated for the wrong thing, I think he could have made it a horse race if they’d put him up for No Country, but that’s okay too. I may think differently once I finish my nominated-movies sprint this weekend, but from where I sit now, Clooney could have won. The script helped him stretch, but he didn’t pull anything, and it’s among his best work, if not his best; it’s just badly timed. Ditto every other category it’s nominated in; Blanchett is a hopeless long shot in Best Actress, so they’ll probably give her Best Supporting to make up for it, which shuts Tilda out. Best Screenplay, no way (Juno). Best Director, no way (Coens, knock wood).
See it anyway. It’s excellent.
Tags: movies
“Vincent Cassel, who I could not stop raving about after seeing Eastern Promises. That guy is a five-tool player.”
As opposed to Viggo, who is nominated for his one-tool performance. (Sorry. It was right there and it’s early still.)
Anyway: best Clooney performance I’ve seen, and if you can manage to be a Best Picture nominee and still underrated, this movie fits that bill.
“that in addition to wearing a tux extremely well and being a guy even other straight guys would switch sides for”
Ha! My boyfriend and I were just discussing our top five same-sex choices, and of course Clooney is his #1. And I’d definitely see that Clooney-Cloney movie.
I totally agree. This is a really, really good movie. One of the things I love about Clooney is that he knows how to take the God-given assets of being gorgeous and charismatic and do a bunch of different things with them. I actually think the reason he gets accused of coasting is that one of the interesting things he does with those assets is play guys who coast, and where that’s the character’s great flaw. Doug Ross was coasting, not Clooney. But this performance is a bit different from that — this guy is what comes after thirty years of coasting. This is sort of the dark side of waking up and realizing coasting’s all you’ve ever done. What I love about his performance, and about Swinton’s — I was saying this to a friend last night — is that with both of them, you just watch them suffer most of the time. There’s not nearly as much capital-A Acting as in many performances. It’s similar to what you’re saying about the directors, actually — that’s a great note about showing the work as opposed to hiding it.
I’m of course partial to this film because they spent two weeks in my law firm’s offices filming all of the office scenes – that giant conference room at the beginning and end including the giant exterior helicopter/crane shots? ours. Clooney’s office? one of ours. When Tilda Swinton breaks down in the bathroom? that’s right, it’s our bathroom. And the grand finale was at the Hilton next door.
…of course, then they got our firm’s name wrong in the credits.
“Daniel Day-Lewis made a spot for that shit on his mantle two years ago and he’s going to fill it, and that’s okay”
After seeing both movies and loving them both, I read this review on Salon: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2008/02/20/daniel_day_lewis/index.html
Which made me think a lot about the difference between the two performances. I was really iffy about whether or not Clooney would sell his performance to me – I had just done a weekend marathon of the “Ocean’s” trilogy, and that was such a comfortable role for him that I just didn’t think I would see him as anyone else. But I realized about halfway in that I had bought it hook, line, and sinker – that even the way he was holding his jaw when at rest was completely changing his face.
So when I compare his Michael Clayton (with the small but significant gestures, and the quiet consistency) with the bombast of Daniel Plainview, I’m kind of inclined to think that while Clooney won’t get the Oscar, he actually deserves it more.
You’re overlooking the best part of this movie — Clayton’s son is named Henry, and everybody calls him HEN.
Hen, for cryin’ in the mud! You cannot go wrong with Hen.
I just watched this today! I have little to add to what you’ve said, except that for me the most lastingly memorable part of the movie will be Tilda Swinton’s really, really amazing work (and maybe the opening voiceover monologue). It’s just exactly what a supporting actress role should be about, expanding the world of the movie almost infinitely without pulling any of the focus from the larger picture. So, so great. I’m glad she at least won the BAFTA (right?) so she’ll have something to polish while thinking back on this role.
Sigh….I’ve loved her since Edward II. It’s so nice to see her getting recognized and, hopefully, ridiculously rich.
Sam, did they shut you down for the shoot or are you keeping your star-interaction anecdotes to yourself?
I like Tom Wilkinson. I’d have nominated him instead of Geoffrey Rush for *Shakespeare in Love.* But you know who was terrific in this? Denis O’Hare as the hit-and-run prick. They nominate women all the time for fice minutes of screen time (hi, Ruby!); it’s too bad the competition across the way is always too crowded with possibilities.
And please don’t give Cate Blanchett the Best Supporting Actress award– I bet on her to lose in the Oscar pool.
Thanks so much for posting this, Sars. Exactly. This is a really, really terrific piece of (I mean it as a total compliment) meat-and-potatoes filmmaking: good story, good acting down the line, everything fits together beautifully. And as noted, it doesn’t scream “look at me!” throughout, so not everybody might notice how hard it is to bring this sort of thing off. In fact I’ve read some online comments to the effect of “I don’t see why it’s even nominated, it’s nothing special,” which in a way is a tribute to all concerned and how effortless they made it look, but still bugs me.
And Clooney’s performance is one of those reactive ones that looks easy (Swinton and Wilkinson had showy ones, and were nothing short of splendid) but is actually filled with skill and smart choices that a lesser actor couldn’t have supplied. He makes me smile when I think of him, because who would have predicted such a distinguished future for him, back when he was a hunky young sitcom guest star?
One question: It felt to me as if a sequence or subplot might have been cut (for time?), when he has to get to Milwaukee to deal with the Wilkinson situation. There’s a blizzard, we’re told, Swinton is calling to see what the airports are like. But then practically everybody is in Milwaukee, they stay overnight, and the next day they instantly return to NYC, no mention of travel problems (and we know the flashback story all happens in a very tight timeframe). Did anybody else notice a disjuncture there?
I gotta admit, I went on a spree and watched all five of the Best Picture noms yesterday (hooray for AMC), and this was the movie that would have my vote if I were a member of the Academy. Not that I think Blood and No Country were bad–they weren’t, and Day-Lewis knocked that role out of the park–but they left me cold. Past a certain point I just grew tired of watching.
This is on my Netflix queue and you’ve just inspired me to bump it to the top! (Of course, there’s a Very Long Wait for the next available copy. Oh well.)
Speaking (however tangentially) of Crash, Sars, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on that particular Best Picture winner. It seems to really divide people. Everyone seems to either think it’s the most insightful and challenging picture ever, or that it’s a completely shallow and lazy discussion of racism. I have yet to hear from anyone who occupies the middle ground — “yeah, it’s OK/pretty good/I didn’t hate it.”
I not only just added it to my queue, I bumped it to the top. I’m going to trust the recommendations of anyone who appreciates Vincent Cassel (have you seen Read My Lips? He’s so damn good and playing a role I’d never seen him play before…and the movie’s kickass too) as much as I do.
@Leslie: I agree; he’s always good. And another Law & Order guest-star staple, Michael O’Keeffe, played Barry; I wish we’d seen a little more of that character.
@Rinaldo: I noticed that too. It didn’t bother me for long, but if they closed the Milwaukee airport, you *know* LaGuardia freaked out and closed too.
@MCB: I was actually in that middle ground…sort of. I didn’t hate it — and it’s entirely possible that, because I expected to hate it (the Couch Baron almost always is an accurate bellwether of what I will love or hate, movie-wise, and he loaaaathed it), the fact that it sucked less than I’d expected it to worked in its favor. And sometimes, movies I have to watch for work reasons don’t bother me as much as they would if I couldn’t write them off on my taxes (e.g., Cinderella Man).
I could have sworn I did a write-up of it after seeing it at the time, but I can’t find it on the site, so I guess I didn’t, but here’s the short version: the writing is the worst kind of unmodulated, self-satisfied, “look at these important issues I’m showily not flinching away from” PSA tripe. There was some discussion at the time of the fact that this is a movie by Angelenos, for Angelenos — that The Race Question is understood differently in that city than it is elsewhere in the country — but “you just didn’t get it” is not an excuse you can use when the problem is ham-fistedness. This New Yorker understood what it was trying to say just fine; that was the issue.
But the movie had a brace of excellent performances on the acting side that saved it from being an And That’s One To Grow On debacle — Terence Howard, Ludacris, Sandra Bullock, Michael Pena, Cheadle, Espo — and given what they had to work with, there was significant achievement there. (The one nomination it got was not one I agreed with; I thought Matt Dillon was serviceable, no more, but some of the other nominations in that category the same year were fucking baffling (William Hurt), so who knows what they’re thinking at the Academy sometimes.)
That it won Best Picture is just wrong; I’m all for taking risks, but the risk that actually paid off, Brokeback Mountain, was the class of the competition that year, while Crash’s Oscar was the Hollywood establishment patting itself on the back for its handling of a difficult issue — and it wasn’t even handled well.
I’ll give the movie a B-minus. Its Best Picture win gets an F.
…actually, no. This is where I explain that they only let us know at the very last minute that this was going to happen (for obvious reasons), and the two week span happened to coincide with a very long-planned trip to visit my peace corps volunteer brother who was stationed LITERALLY on the other side of the world in Palau.
So, no star interactions, but our office wasn’t shut down – we’re huge and have 13 floors of a midtown office building. They used the 2 conference room floors and 1 “office” floor that was largely unoccupied at the time. Lots of the extras running around in the opening conference room scene are our administrative services folks.
Thanks for your two cents on Crash, Sars! I was hugely curious about what you thought because I’ve really been digging your movie reviews. I was in the Couch Baron’s camp. I absolutely hated it. I agree that the acting was pretty good, but generally speaking, I can’t get past bad writing in a movie no matter how good the performances are. Plus, by the time I saw it, it had already won the Oscar and I was expecting … well, something that could plausibly rival Brokeback Mountain in quality and power.
I still haven’t seen Crash but my feeling about it winning was that it really put the lie to Clooney’s acceptance speech earlier that evening about Hollywood being at the forefront of social issues. I was like “Well, 17 years after Do The Right Thing the Academy’s finally decided racism is bad, maybe in another 17 years it’ll decide it’s okay to be gay.”
I adored Michael Clayton; I thought Wilkinson was a bit over-the-top sometimes but that scene between him and Clooney in the alleyway may be the best two minutes on film I saw this year. And very well put, everything you said about Clooney the Man and Clooney the Brand. I couldn’t have said it that well, but it’s pretty much exactly how I think of him, too.
One thing I really liked about this movie, as a lawyer, is the relatively realistic portrayal of how lawyers actually get things done – we sit in enormous conference rooms sifting through piles of dusty documents. Cases are won on documents, not on courtroom grandstanding. I liked this about Syriana too.
I loved Tilda Swinton’s portrayal. I’ve come across people with similar traitsto this character – not homicidal! but successful, capable people who are completely defined by their jobs and incapable of hiding the fact that they are desperately insecure.
I really enjoyed this – spent yesterday at the Best Picture Showcase, a twelve-hour marathon of all the nominees for this year – but I don’t quite see why it was nominated for Best Picture. It was like a courtroom drama with no courtroom, to me; we’ve seen this kind of movie before. But I totally agree that all the acting was top-notch. And hey, Swinton pulled off the win! More power to her.
Clooney the Brand is definitely a presence, though. When they were at the birthday party out in Queens? It’s a room full of normal people, and then Clooney the silver fox. He can’t help it, but it was distracting sometimes.
My one big beef, though, was the second runthrough of the car bombing. I mean, it was scary as hell the first time around. But then the second time we’ve got the guys racing around, the thumping pounding soundtrack telling us that this is a Very Tense Moment, the unaware Clooney driving around… but it lost all its urgency because we know he’s hanging out with the horses when it goes off! That was just lame.
I just saw this, so thank you for…writing about it? I freaking loved it, but I am sadly very partial to anything Clooney is in – I liked all the Ocean’s movies, so granted, I’m a little biased. But wow. So good. I love this “yay I just saw a really good movie” feeling – I don’t feel that way very often anymore.
Like, I have an idea for a short film about scientists who try to clone Clooney, and it goes horribly wrong, and you have all these Multiplicity Cloons running around like Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Heh. Send in the Cloons, I say. I’d see that movie. I liked Michael Clayton more than I expected to, for many of the reasons you give here. I don’t think there was a bad performance in the lot. I agree with Linda’s observation that Michael Clayton is the guy waking up after thirty years of taking the easy route, thinking “How in hell did I end up in this?” I’m not sure Doug Ross would ever had cared that much.
The scenes between Clooney and Wilkinson are excellent – especially, as noted, that sequence in the alley. Also, Clooney always has great rapport with kids onscreen. It was part of Doug Ross’s appeal, it must be said. That rapport was in full spate in Michael Clayton. The scene between Clayton and “Hen” in the car gave me goosebumps.