Michael Clayton

written and directed by Tony Gilroy
USA 2007

Rather than just another issue-based left hook, Michael Clayton delivers a more cinematic glimpse at the underbelly of an otherwise canopied corporate world. Although the plot centers around a law firm and its mega-corporate client's criminal negligence, writer-now-director Tony Gilroy concentrates instead on the upper level power struggles involved, and deftfully brings to life an exciting interplay of major corporate movers and shakers. You might think this sounds like an irresponsible blockbuster stunt, going so far as to foresake its centripetal issue (corporate greed and the human costs), but happily this film is refreshingly far from typical Hollywood material. Gilroy keeps the morality theme interesting by removing his titular character one step from the dilemma of conscience (Clayton is played by an ever-resourceful George Clooney, who has mastered the puppy-dog trick of channeling a tendency to appear vulnerable into shere loveableness). The guy with the dilemma is Tom Wilkinson's Arthur Edens, something of a Peter Finch character from 1976's Network, who spits hellfire and brimstone at Clayton eventually in vain. Clayton is unaffected not because he's a cold corporate drone, but because he has a kid, a mortgage, debt, retirement anxiety, a family member with a personal problem. He's dealing with a lot of stressful shit, and now you're asking him to care about humanity?

If these things sound familiar it's because they happen to just about everybody. Gilroy attempts to show that these big money Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Corporate Robots have issues like the rest of us, and they're just trying to stay afloat in the arduous journey that is life. Corporate interests aren't happy when they poison communities with byproducts, but they're locked into a system that forces them to put aside morals in the name of personal stability.

Gilroy takes it too far, though. The end is a pitiful Hollywood bit of wrapped-up closure, where Clayton and the rest of those on the correct end of the moral spectrum get back at the bad guys. The point is that everyone is a victim, even those bad ones. The system is the problem, and Gilroy makes no further attempt to examine it. His cinema chops are fine, and it's a nice ride while it lasts, but it's almost as if this director is another character in his own story. He's got a job to do, a career, probably a family, etc. Eden's ethically-charged ranting falls on Gilroy's deaf ears, too, and though a nice film comes out of it, the issue is completely gone.

No Country For Old Men

written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
novel by Cormac McCarthy
USA 2007

I finally decided what nails me about this film, and it was only after something my friend Brian mentioned. The Coen brothers prove to be masterful nearly all of the time, combining taste and imagination with solid physical delivery of information within the film, for instance a dog chasing a man down a river is not only an awesome idea while the physical sights and sounds of it are pretty awesome in themselves. This is a usually unnamed feat that marks great filmmaking but in the Coen universe is held in higher regard than the film itself. It's similar to movies seriously immersed in genre, but the essential difference is that in those films thematic material--i.e. the message of the filmmaker--is allowed to surface due to that genre adherence, while in Coen work this thematic material gets completely lost. Any themes that exist in No Country, because they certainly exist, come across as some kind of sideline attraction on a cinematic rollercoaster.

The idealogy of competitive men, that violent motivation that runs the world and in a significant majority of cases supercedes that of all other human sects, including women, children, socialists, etc., is once again on full display. Can you name a 2007 film that doesn't, for lack of a better term, fetishize human masculinity? In the case of No Country this reliance on such a thematic mainstay is the only reason the film actually leaves any resonance. We pay rapt attention to the man-dance on stage and whatever existential struggle that plays out is unfortunately overshadowed by the many years of man that came before. OK, I'll admit it's about time existentialism is treated with the hilarious irony it deserves. Rather than some Sam Shepherd world, taken a shade too seriously, Cormac McCarthy's story bounces not only with the absurd humor of founding thinkers like Ionesco and Albee, but somehow these days this absurdity makes complete ironic sense. Either way, there's some solid filmmaking here that only seems to get in the way of it all.