Oscarmaniacal
Okay, this is what I have to say about the movie Michael Clayton.
Stories of redemption, like road trip movies, are only interesting if the journey takes the characters far, far away from where they started. A road trip movie about me walking down to the corner to get my mail is not going be interesting, even if Chuck Norris ambushes me from behind the Browns’ house. A road trip about me walking to Newfoundland, however, would be interesting, even (especially?) without Chuck Norris.
Similarly, you can’t put a man who only really rates so-so on the evilness scale (and who’s trying to be a good person to boot) in the middle of a moral dilemma and expect any kind of drama. Yeah, he’s a fixer, and it’s all kind of sneaky and underhanded, but he is helping people, and he does have doubts about it. In the geography of his worth as a man, his starting point is just down the block from where he ends up when he cooperates with the police and turns down the money.
To switch metaphors, how a character changes in a story is called a character arc, and Michael Clayton’s arc seems to have been the victim of the same mistake the guys in Spinal Tap commit when they use double quotes instead of single quotes to indicate the size of the Stonehenge mockups.
Why did this happen? Because the makers of the movie wanted to make a believable movie (all of George Clooney’s movies scream “I’m sincere!” “I’m for real!”), and it’s hard to make a very evil character a) believable in and of himself and b) believable in his journey of redemption. To really wow the audience, Michael Clayton should have
gone from psychopath to saint (which is why a biopic of St. Augustine would make a great movie – think of all the free publicity the picketing nuns would generate!).
In contrast to Michael Clayton, a rare example of a believable and very ambitious character arc is the movie The Devil Wears Prada, which I saw by accident (obviously), and really enjoyed. The main character believably becomes the opposite of what she was at the beginning of the story (losing the vapid, anime-eyed boyfriend along the way). It’s
not common for a movie to move a character such distances.
So, that’s why Michael Clayton was quietly ignored at the Oscars, except for the supporting actress nod, which I think was more an aknowledgment on the part of the academy of the lengths the actress had to go to in order to imbue at least one aspect of the movie with some kind of drama. She overacted the hell out of the part (a woman
that agitated would have either quit or suffered a nervous breakdown long before), but good for her. Watching her shiver and shake was the best part of the movie.
