The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: The Arts

Media Credit: www.ferdyonfilms.org

The Oscars are over. The Coen Brothers' "No Country for Old Men" pulled in four awards (including Best Picture) and Cameron Diaz spoke critically about movies she had obviously never seen before. I was okay with this. After all, who am I to start a debate on film history with the actress who starred in the classic French New Wave film "Charlie et Ses Drôles de Dames"? Her knowledge of film history is clearly superior to that of the audience (and the academy, of course).

Cameron Diaz's speech aside, the nominees for Best Picture this year were overwhelmingly of the art house variety. In fact, almost all of the distributors of this year's best picture nominees are known to be either independent or art house film distributors. "Atonement" was distributed by Focus Features, "Juno" by Fox Searchlight and Paramount Vantage and Miramax Films collaborated on both "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men." In an altogether indie slanted field, Warner Bros. bid for Best Picture, "Michael Clayton," was a bit of a dark horse candidate.

"Michael Clayton" seems to have slipped below the radar for most film buffs. It probably didn't help that George Clooney was the film's protagonist and that, for the most part, the movie's publicity stank of Hollywood blockbusterdom. Actually, the only piece of publicity that piqued my interest was the mysterious looking movie poster with the words "The truth can be adjusted" superimposed on an out-of-focus shot of Clooney.

I guess the movie poster and the general response of audiences watching the Oscars (the all too frequent "I've never even heard of 'Michael Clayton'") have more than a little in common. But they shouldn't. It's a spectacular Hollywood-esque film.

Clooney's character is Michael Clayton, a "fixer" for a New York law firm who gets his car blown up within the film's first 15 minutes. Luckily, he wasn't inside. The car's explosion sends us four days into the past (via a whiteout, not a blackout) when Clayton is asked to save one of the firm's best attorneys, Arthur Edens (played by Tom Wilkinson), from a magnificently botched job. Arthur had a mental breakdown after working on a case for a large corporation for six years when he finds an internal memo that leaves his client clearly in the wrong (and that's putting it lightly). I won't say anymore because I don't want to spoil the plot, but maybe his breakdown was less than uncalled for.

Continued...

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