Michael Clayton: Character Foils and More
I did warn you.
OH, yeah, spoilers here.
I could actually make this post even more uninteresting by telling the story of how I got onto this line of thought, but I'll largely spare you and just say that my relationship with The New York Times movie reviews, and especially Manohla Dargis', is a love-hate one kind of like the relationship some people have with fanfiction.
In Michael Clayton, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is really sort of the negative image of Michael Clayton (George Clooney).
Gilroy has said that he's interested in telling stories about someone who's the best at something. And Michael is the best at what he does, it's made clear that he really is the most able fixer around. But he's not happy with it. Michael may be great at what he does, but he's no longer invested in it, what he's invested in is finding a way out (demonstrated by the restaurant he and his brother tried to open).
Karen, on the other hand, is not the best at what she does, and knows it. So she invests everything in being able to pass for being the best, and shuts other possibilities out of her life.
Then along comes unmedicated Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) to completely disrupt their routines. Michael's reaction to finding out some of the details of the evil he's been aiding is to acknowledge it, which naturally leads to some major questioning about what he should and can be doing. Karen's response is to deny it, to try to erase the facts that don't fit with the world she's set on, which leads to some pretty dire stuff. And Karen's response is excessive, while for most of the movie Michael doesn't seem to quite manage to do enough.
There are further contrasts too. Karen seems rather focused on career advancement, Michael seems to be more worried about job stability. Michael's got a large family that's an important part of his life, we don't see any evidence of Karen's relatives, if she has any. I also get the impression that Karen is a person who is rather desperate to be liked and approved of, while Michael almost always keeps everyone at arm's length and is rather indifferent about most people's opinions. And of course, there's the gender difference.
Overall, Karen seems to illustrate "the banality of evil" and how easy it can be to fall into something large and horrible, while Michael illustrates the unexpectedness of good and how achieving that can be quite a struggle.
I watched the deleted scenes. All three were quite solid scenes, though cut for good reasons of pacing and focus. The one that stood out was the longest one, a conversation between Michael and the woman from the firm he has a casual relationship with. But what stood out the most about that one in the end, was something said when I watched it with the commentary. While that particular scene was an interesting look at Michael and hard to cut, they were glad of it in the end. Why? Because it made the movie that much more about Michael and Arthur.
Clayton is a movie where the most pivotal relationship is a friendship. And not, really, a very dramatic friendship. Michael and Arthur haven't been friends since childhood. They didn't save each other's lives in a war. They're just two guys who happen to work for the same company and enjoy hanging out sometimes. While they are not exactly ordinary people, their friendship is really pretty ordinary, and is even more professional than personal on some levels. The biggest thing to happen to it is Arthur abandoning ship and the results, which are in fact more tests of the individuals than of the friendship. And really? If Arthur had survived, I'm not sure the friendship would have.
It takes a lot of guts to put a relationship that, in spite of the dramatic people it's between, actually feels common at the center of a movie. And it takes even more skill to pull it off. I like that.
Much as I enjoy well-done romance, I'm increasingly admiring things that use it minimally or scrap it altogether in favor of exploring other kinds of relationships (or even, on occasion, just having an awesome plot).
And now I need to go to bed, like I should have done an hour ago. >.
OH, yeah, spoilers here.
I could actually make this post even more uninteresting by telling the story of how I got onto this line of thought, but I'll largely spare you and just say that my relationship with The New York Times movie reviews, and especially Manohla Dargis', is a love-hate one kind of like the relationship some people have with fanfiction.
In Michael Clayton, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is really sort of the negative image of Michael Clayton (George Clooney).
Gilroy has said that he's interested in telling stories about someone who's the best at something. And Michael is the best at what he does, it's made clear that he really is the most able fixer around. But he's not happy with it. Michael may be great at what he does, but he's no longer invested in it, what he's invested in is finding a way out (demonstrated by the restaurant he and his brother tried to open).
Karen, on the other hand, is not the best at what she does, and knows it. So she invests everything in being able to pass for being the best, and shuts other possibilities out of her life.
Then along comes unmedicated Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) to completely disrupt their routines. Michael's reaction to finding out some of the details of the evil he's been aiding is to acknowledge it, which naturally leads to some major questioning about what he should and can be doing. Karen's response is to deny it, to try to erase the facts that don't fit with the world she's set on, which leads to some pretty dire stuff. And Karen's response is excessive, while for most of the movie Michael doesn't seem to quite manage to do enough.
There are further contrasts too. Karen seems rather focused on career advancement, Michael seems to be more worried about job stability. Michael's got a large family that's an important part of his life, we don't see any evidence of Karen's relatives, if she has any. I also get the impression that Karen is a person who is rather desperate to be liked and approved of, while Michael almost always keeps everyone at arm's length and is rather indifferent about most people's opinions. And of course, there's the gender difference.
Overall, Karen seems to illustrate "the banality of evil" and how easy it can be to fall into something large and horrible, while Michael illustrates the unexpectedness of good and how achieving that can be quite a struggle.
I watched the deleted scenes. All three were quite solid scenes, though cut for good reasons of pacing and focus. The one that stood out was the longest one, a conversation between Michael and the woman from the firm he has a casual relationship with. But what stood out the most about that one in the end, was something said when I watched it with the commentary. While that particular scene was an interesting look at Michael and hard to cut, they were glad of it in the end. Why? Because it made the movie that much more about Michael and Arthur.
Clayton is a movie where the most pivotal relationship is a friendship. And not, really, a very dramatic friendship. Michael and Arthur haven't been friends since childhood. They didn't save each other's lives in a war. They're just two guys who happen to work for the same company and enjoy hanging out sometimes. While they are not exactly ordinary people, their friendship is really pretty ordinary, and is even more professional than personal on some levels. The biggest thing to happen to it is Arthur abandoning ship and the results, which are in fact more tests of the individuals than of the friendship. And really? If Arthur had survived, I'm not sure the friendship would have.
It takes a lot of guts to put a relationship that, in spite of the dramatic people it's between, actually feels common at the center of a movie. And it takes even more skill to pull it off. I like that.
Much as I enjoy well-done romance, I'm increasingly admiring things that use it minimally or scrap it altogether in favor of exploring other kinds of relationships (or even, on occasion, just having an awesome plot).
And now I need to go to bed, like I should have done an hour ago. >.