M C

While watching the movie, Michael Clayton, I was absorbed, mostly. Though being a writer of a story or two, I was mentally poking at it with a stick, seeing what it was made of for most of the viewing.

There is a large problem. The climax is shown first and then they backtrack and show you how they get to that spot. You’ve seen this device before and it can work if there are lots of surprises along the way. Trouble is, as soon as they start back to square one, you kind of know exactly how it all will go down because of the climax that you saw. So you sit there for an hour and a half, slogging back to the scene you already saw near the beginning and you want to quietly whisper, “Okay, finally. Now let’s move on with the story.”

No one is talking about this as a problem? I think it’s a big one.

The acting is truly wonderful. Tilda Swinton as evil in full female flesh is quite enervating. Tom Wilkinson, a latter day Peter Finch from Network, is the nut who is causing all the trouble. George Clooney is the janitor/fixer. But what we quickly learn in this world of corporate greed, power and selfishness is that everyone is a version of janitor/fixer. And janitors do feel the need to clean up.

I don’t know. Hollywood seems to be congratulating itself for this movie. I think it’s just a big ol’ movie. Well done. But there’s a flatness to the story, a lack of twists, missing layers of onions to peel.

Sydney Pollack plays power very well. He is also one of the producers of the movie.

I sometimes feel sad that as Americans, we are mostly intrigued by the use and abuse of power. We are a nation of citizens who came here powerless in search of power. So it makes sense that the distribution and negotiating of power is what we mostly want to witness. But maybe juxtapose it against other human attributes without getting too cheesy?

I don’t like to have the time to pull back and think about the sociological underpinnings of a movie while I’m watching it. But with this one, I did.

Michael Clayton