The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Michael Clooney . . . George Clayton . . . Oh, Forget It

March 1st, 2008

I wanted to like Michael Clayton. While I’m not as much of a Clooney-phile as many women seem to be, he’s a decent actor; the movie also stars Tilda Swinton (who just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film) and Tom Wilkinson, whom I’ve seen in approximately one movie per year for the past fifteen years and haven’t grown tired of yet. The movie’s plot summaries—along the lines of “a corrupt legal ‘fixer’ begins to develop a conscience after his colleague goes bonkers”—made it sound kind of like classic Hollywood, like something in black-and-white that Gregory Peck would star in. Plus, the director/writer is Tony Gilroy, the scribe behind all three Jason Bourne movies. If a writer can make your Otter like an action flick as much as I’ve liked the Bourne movies, he’s pretty good.

Unfortunately, however, Gilroy seems to have been determined to make Michael Clayton as different from the Bourne movies as possible while still working within the genre of conspiracy thriller. It’s like you can hear the gears clicking in his head throughout the movie: “Must . . . not . . . do . . . anything popular or crowd-pleasing.” It’s not just that it’s a “talkier” movie than the Bourne movies—I revel in ridiculous amounts of dialogue, so that doesn’t bother me. The biggest problem is actually the movie’s structure: it starts out in media res and then goes back to fill in the details. The first time we see Clayton in action, he’s already tired of his shady ways and beginning to suspect that his firm’s client, U-North, may be even more crooked than he thought. He’s also in precarious financial circumstances, he has family troubles, and, oh yeah, he’s a recovering gambling addict.

The problem with starting at Clayton’s lowest point is that we’re told that he’s really good at the sneaky, greasy things he does—but we never get to see him in action at his peak. Therefore, we don’t really know what he’s like before his “fall,” so to speak, a fall into conscience that seems to be spurred mostly by concern for his friend Arthur Edens (Wilkinson). Yes, his last name is “Edens.” No, it’s not subtle, especially since the first sign of Arthur’s mental instability is when he strips down naked in the middle of a deposition.

Arthur is the most interesting character in the film, not only because of the grand literary tradition of fools who speak truth, but also because, as Wilkinson plays him, you can also see the brilliance speaking through the madness. You can see why he’s been such a success in the courtroom—something you never see with Clayton himself. We don’t see anything of Clayton’s and Arthur’s relationship before Arthur bares it all at the deposition, though we’re told that Clayton helped Arthur years before when he had gone off his medication and had a manic episode. We don’t really see why Arthur matters so much to Clayton, though, perhaps because the movie spends so much time dealing with Clayton’s relationships with his equally dysfunctional siblings and son. We need to see more of the relationship between Arthur and Clayton to understand Clayton’s later actions.

As much as I enjoyed Tilda Swinton’s bizarre Oscar acceptance speech, I was a little surprised at her win, because her character wasn’t fully fleshed out either. Swinton, as Karen Crowder, the chief counsel for U-North, manages to convey the outline of a woman who’s fought to the top and will do anything to preserve her uneasy place there. The movie does hint that she’s both victim and villain—I found myself thinking that her story would be a lot more interesting than Michael Clayton’s. And Tilda Swinton could have done marvelously in the title role of a movie called Karen Crowder–one of the many, potentially better movies lurking within the unwieldy plot of Michael Clayton. As it was, we just got to see her put on a suit, sweat profusely, and speak with an American accent.

I’ve already voiced my opinion that The Bourne Ultimatum won all three Oscars for which it was nominated because voters realized they should have nominated it for Best Picture instead of Michael Clayton. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I do genuinely think The Bourne Ultimatum is a better movie. Plus, there’s more running and chasing and things that go boom—things that I do occasionally enjoy, believe it or not.

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