The films “Bourne” may have put Tony Gilroy on the map, but his strengths as a screenwriter shine the brightest in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (which he essentially saved creative ruin). The brilliance of “Rogue One”, however, was overshadowed when Gilroy abandoned the first season of “Andor” in 2022. The Disney + series has recashed our expectations for the “Star Wars” franchise as nothing before it, while being enriching our perspective of the Galaxy, far, far, we know and love.) To enrich our perspective of the good, far, Love.) In the end, Gilroy delivered two beautiful striking seasons of the series, engraving an unforgettable journey for Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the friends (and enemies) he made along the way.
Before the deserved success of “Andor”, however, Gilroy also gave us the “Michael Clayton”, winner of an Oscar, the 2007 George Clooney vehicle which adopts a slow -bristling approach to expose the rot of corruption corruption. From the start, it becomes clear that Clooney is the key to the film, because his glamorous and glamorous presence appears perfectly in the role he asked to play. The actor embodies the holder Michael Clayton, a clever and unadorned fixer who never loses sight of the facts and keeps his feet planted firmly in the field of pragmatism, even when the truth becomes a little bit of recommendable. When he suddenly has to face a rogue affair concerning a lawyer with a break during a deposit, he sets in motion a fatal chain of events, as well as the own odyssey of Clayton of change of ethics and allegiance.
Yes, “Michael Clayton” has always been a critical favorite, and the thriller focused on the character of Gilroy (which he wrote and realized) continues to be praised for his acute and full -minded narration. That said, it is never a bad idea to scrutinize a beloved film through a fresh objective or to examine why he always manages to impress us today. Will history be beyond a standard criticism of the hegemony of companies, or is there more in the cinema of Gilroy who does not meet the eye?
Michael Clayton de Gilroy is an without compromise examination of conscience
After the high -level lawyer Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) underwent public ventilation in the midst of a deposition, the collective appeal of $ 3 billion which he had treated suddenly in danger. Due to the personal nature of the crisis, Clayton must marginally soften his characteristic franchise as a fixer and find a way to bring Edens back on the right track.
What starts as a single task turns into an examination of morality / personal conscience. Although Clayton is very aware of the superficial civility which masks the ugliness of the business world, is it not also part of this facade? After all, if the corporate machine is a giant superstructure, cogs like Michael Clayton are molded to serve it, even when this machine makes them helpless and body of any integrity which could be considered as a takeover.
Clayton is perfectly aware of this, which is why he understands that he must look at a certain level to better play the game, thwarting deception with deception. But he does not completely control his life, despite the way he can appear at level: a risk mitigator like Clayton must have a pulse loaded with risks, and in this case, it is a game with high issues. Even when we are faced with this aspect of his character, Gilroy does not linger, because this personal habit only begins to have more sense when it is contrasting with everything that he is forced to survive in his law firm, Kenner, Bach and Ledeen. This contrast is also represented at a visual level, because the director of photography Robert Elswit (“Magnolia”) uses the cold sterility of corporate offices to reveal the heat of a house, also imperfect or broken.
Gilroy tends to manage the characters at a root level, reaching their fundamental desires (and the ways in which these conflicts are confronted with the often brutal reality of their lives) to write stories overflowing with nuances. Cassian Andor is emblematic of this, because his evolution of the distant thief with passionate rebel (the one who ardently believes that the self-signing is worth the cause) is as beautiful and complex as we could hope. The Cassian arc is bleeding in all the other aspects of “Andor”, which ends up retroactively improving “Snape One” (although this is a big film at the beginning). In “Michael Clayton”, the titular figure obtains a similar complexity, because his increasingly frantic actions speak of the despair with which he wants to do the right thing.
The short? If you are looking to fill the post-“and” and “looking at a functionality led by Gilroy more rooted in the socio-political of the real world, then” Michael Clayton “should help satisfy this itch.
