Back in the kitchen on earth, Kelvin asks if he is alive or dead to which Rheya replies, “We don’t have to think like that anymore” and “Everything we’ve done is forgiven,” introducing an explicitly moral dimension, which has been largely absent up to this point, in a thinly veiled attempt at some Christian consolation in the narrative. Kelvin’s sin (driving Rheya away) is followed by repentance, guilt and purgatory (his experiences on the ship), and redemption (his supposed existence on/in response to Solaris). The narrative explores different levels of grief, via all the characters, not only Kelvin. As Kelvin confronts Snow (Jeremy Davis) with the mystery of two dead crewmen and a further one having disappeared, Clooney’s expression becomes slightly more wide-eyed and even slightly crazed as he visibly struggles to comprehend what he is experiencing.
Any potential coherence of cause and effect is broken by problematizing the distinction of reality and dream worlds. Films like Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), with similar narratives that question their own limits, have compensatory pleasures of special effects and spectacle, neither of which we have here. Stripped of Lem’s passages of philosophy, our attention is focused instead on character and especially on Kelvin, who appears in almost every scene. Soderbergh makes this very much into a George Clooney vehicle, but unlike Confessions the idea that what we see could all be a subjective dream of the main character is never really picked up. Furthermore, without the sense of cause and effect, there is also little emotional development across the film, which has very few dramatic peaks (apart from Rheya’s first appearance and her suicide, although the latter is fairly predictable). The climactic discovery of Rheya’s departure from Prometheus or Kelvin’s realization that he does not want to enter the escape capsule are accompanied by only some beads of sweat running down his face. This level of anguish is unlikely to be felt by the viewer who may resist the notion of an alien intelligence that acts in a way in which we cannot understand, for purposes we are not told.
Questions of narrative plausibility are not necessarily of paramount importance in a work of fiction. However, where the pacing is very slow, we may find it difficult to avoid considering that if Rheya is a projection of Kelvin’s memory, it does not really explain why she is so needy, which she does not seem on their first meeting; why Snow advises Kelvin to lock his door when the visitors can apparently appear at will; why none of the crew, all scientists, suggest or even mention testing these visitors, especially Rheya, except for the convoluted machine that supposedly sends her back where she came from.
The strength (or brutality, depending on your point of view) with which he leads her to the airlock and flushes her into outer space, like human waste, makes his later inability to deal logically with her return seem unconvincing. He does turn away, crying, and we fade to black but he still does this. At this point, he knows and accepts that she is not real. However, later he behaves as if she is and wants to take her back to earth, although little explains this change. The revelation of the death of the real Snow at the hands of his visitor (the unexplained bloodstain from the beginning) would suggest these projections have desires and self-preservation instincts, which the film does not really explain or explore.
Soderbergh cuts down Tarkovsky’s running time by a third. He increases the romantic interplay between his hero and projected wife, Rheya (an anagram of Lem’s character, Harey), by showing us the key points in their courtship on earth via flashback. These are experienced once on the spaceship, which the hero reaches within the first 10 minutes rather than the 45+ that Tarkovsky takes to build mood and convey the dullness of space travel, of which viewers in 2002 are much more aware. The film, like Tarkovky’s version, dramatizes the human dilemma that our knowledge of other people is really only a collection of our own impressions and memories, which we then project onto others.
According to Soderbergh, “Solaris required a complete dispersal of all the charm and good spirits that we normally associate with George,” and that “it’s really a nonverbal part. It’s a completely interior performance.”2 However, the lukewarm critical reaction and even less enthusiastic commercial performance reflect, like the planet Solaris itself, what viewers desire and expect from science fiction. The two sightings of Clooney’s naked butt originally gave the film an R rating, a commercial kiss of death, but this was reduced to PG-13 on appeal. Marketing played up the romantic and sexual element, but despite a budget of $47 million, Solaris drew only $16 million at the U.S. box office. Clooney is due to return to space in Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2012) opposite Sandra Bullock, who narrowly missed being cast as Sisco in Out of Sight.
Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007)
Henry Clayton:
So no one’s sure exactly where they are because there’re no borders or landmarks or anything.
Clooney plays the title role, Michael Clayton, a troubleshooter at a New York law firm, called in to deal with problems great and small, a keeper of secrets but one who has no clearly defined role in the hierarchy of the company and is under extreme pressure when a top litigator, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), apparently goes crazy in a meeting, jeopardizing the huge class action case regarding U-North, a producer of agro-chemicals.
The film opens with Arthur’s call to Michael about his moment of sudden realization that he is “covered in filth” from his years of working for the odious law firm Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, symptomatic of corporate corruption and greed. As an opening monologue, before we have any real plot exposition, Arthur’s speech (present from Gilroy’s first draft) crackles with metaphoric energy, energized by Wilkinson’s powerful delivery, building up to the climactic term “now.” Like the later scene with the horses, it is a rare example of a stylistic choice that makes the audience work hard to consider the meaning of what they are experiencing and, in terms of the opening, underlines the script as more literary than we might expect.
The montage of the huge empty office counterpoints the speech well, visualizing the moral vacuum in which legal exploitation seems to operate with impunity. Like the opening of the main plot of David Fincher’s Zodiac, released the same year, we enter an office space via a point of view from a mail cart. In Fincher’s film, a letter from the killer energizes the plot; here it is the pursuit of a document (the incriminating Memo 229) and its ruthless suppression that slowly emerges as the element that holds various narrative threads together. The speech is replayed later in abbreviated form, bleeding over footage of Michael flying to Milwaukee to meet Arthur and Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), their adversary, also arriving and organizing her strategy.
Crowder is first shown trying to subdue a panic attack, sweating and breathing heavily, slumped in a toilet cubicle, and reacting suddenly to the sound of footsteps. Gilroy is not asking the viewer to sympathize with her, but he does show the individual price that is being paid to sustain the monsters of corporate greed. All three of the main roles, Arthur, Crowder, and Michael, are on the verge of a nervous breakdown; the difference is that only Arthur is clever enough to recognize this. When Crowder watches the tape of Arthur cracking up in a meeting and starting to rant and strip off his clothing, she stares wide-eyed with her hand to her mouth in genuine shock as this is exactly how she feels inside too. It is only the ritualistic practice of exact words before speaking in front of others, edging into obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, that allows her to function at all and keeps her from similar outbursts. Gilroy shows her stage-managed spontaneity by cross-cutting her practice with the actual delivery of the lines. The suggestion is that her whole life is a performance, and although we do not see her practice the lines she uses to Michael in the diner, the implication is that these are rehearsed as well. Gilroy bleeds words from Crowder’s final speech across shots of her dressing, as if she is mentally practicing this performance too. At the end, when her edifice of lies crumbles, although left in the background and not the focus of our attention as Michael walks away from her, she physically collapses forward, clutching her chest. Ironical
ly, as she herself declares, if you are not ready for the huge amount of responsibility, “then you’re in the wrong place,” and ultimately Michael can prove that she is. We see little of her boss, but since his signature is on the document that Crowder is desperate to suppress and since she was his protégée for 12 years, we might assume he knows what she is like.
The first sight we have of Michael is a rotating shot around an improvised gambling table, part of an underground world, presumably for those leading unfulfilling lives elsewhere needing the adrenaline rush of risk or simply in financial difficulty. As the narrative progresses, we learn Michael has elements of both of these, swearing to his family that he has not gambled in months (clearly untrue). He has led a professional life clearing up other people’s messes at a moment’s notice, underlined by the hit-and-run episode, and receiving only a modest reward for that. He drives a Mercedes but it is leased; he owes a large sum of money from a failed business venture and has no easy way to pay. Through Crowder’s associate we learn that Michael has voluntarily moved from criminal prosecution to wills and trusts and, despite having been with the firm for 13 years, is not a partner. According to Crowder’s careerist logic, this does not make sense.
Their one and only meeting before the climax occurs at a restaurant, where Gilroy shows us an exchange of legal sparring, with Crowder lit from beneath, Michael from above, making her seem a little artificial and him calm and businesslike. His position is compassionate and understanding, focusing on the fact that Arthur’s wife died recently, his daughter does not talk to him, and all he has worked on for the last six years is the U-North case. When Arthur last suffered a relapse, eight years ago, Michael claims he helped him and watched him get better, the kind of nurturing relationship of which Crowder seems incapable. By contrast, she steals Arthur’s briefcase and rifles through its contents. As architect of the case defending the company, Crowder focuses purely on the damning evidence of Arthur’s erratic behavior, and when she has made her points, she abruptly walks off, suggesting this was a rehearsed performance and that nothing Michael could have said would have made any difference.
Mr. Greer (Denis O’Hare), the unpleasant driver of the car, who is seeking every way to avoid responsibility for his culpability, is the first of several characters who directly ask Michael, “So what are you?” Crowder (“Who is this guy?”), Arthur (replying to Clayton’s assertion that he is not the enemy, “then who are you?”), even his brother, all ask fundamentally the same question, which Michael himself has begun to wonder. To Greer he denies he is “a miracle worker,” describing himself instead as “a janitor.” There is a hint here of the Clooney from One Fine Day, allowing himself to show a slightly smug smile, although generally he does act in a measured, courteous tone with informed comment under provocation. We have a shot of several seconds with Michael just standing and looking at Greer, waiting for his bluster to blow itself out. When the phone rings, Greer jumps; Michael does not. He is calm under pressure and simply points out when his client asks if it is the police, “No, they don’t call.”
His car accelerates away from the house as if he is keen to place maximum distance between himself and the system of which he is a part. Approaching a junction, Michael signals left and then suddenly pulls right. At this stage there is no explanation given; we can only assume that what he should go back to (office or home life) has little attraction for him.
The episode with the horses is a direct challenge to the viewer. Michael pulls to a stop before he sees the horses, so he is not drawn by a sight of natural beauty. He does not know why he stops, why he approaches the horses on the hillside, and why they do not run away. It is only in retrospect, after the scene with the book, that we might feel that Michael has in some measure apprehended something of Arthur’s feelings about the world, and in following his lead (Arthur is very interested in the book), it saves his life. The single horse of the book is replaced by the three on the hill (possibly linked to Michael as one of three brothers), shown lined up, sideways on, and he approaches the animals apparently in a state of driven curiosity. The episode is clearly important (we are shown it twice after all), and each time we see shots of Michael looking down the road behind him on getting out of the car as if he is afraid of being followed. There is no music, dialogue, or voice-over in the scene, no cues for viewers, just the sound of his breath in the air and a close-up on Clooney’s mournful face, prefiguring what Arthur says later about the carrying of “a burden.” The second time the horse scene is replayed, shots of Michael are accompanied by choral music and he momentarily glances up, suggesting a man who is looking for spiritual redemption.
Clooney himself was not well at the time, and although not contrived deliberately, the weight loss adds to his sense of being haunted. Handheld camera movement follows Michael up the hill, at times from slightly behind him, so we have the horses in shot. At the top of the hill, twice we have an angle down the hill with horses on the right foreground, Michael in the midground and car far away in the background, all in shot simultaneously. There is a moment of silent communication in which Gilroy does not cut suddenly but rotates around his subject slowly, first almost from the horse’s point of view looking at Michael and then the reverse angle, up the hill. There is at least one full minute of screen time from starting up the hill to the car exploding, provoking Michael’s look of bemused concern before running down the hillside. He is drawn by a force he does not recognize or understand and this specifically saves his life, as if he has a destiny to fulfill in bringing down Crowder and her boss and the explosion gives him the means to do this, creating a false death. Gilroy also scripted the Bourne movies, and here we have a car chase of sorts, although Michael seems unaware that he is being pursued, and an explosion, shown twice, but that is motivated by character rather than the pleasures of spectacle.
Gilroy wrote several pages of the fictional novel Realm and Conquest (which also appears as a screensaver near the opening of the film), and in collaboration with the production designer, Kevin Thompson, the prop was given the look of verisimilitude with Expressionist-style illustrations. We never see explicit sections of text, and the connection with the scene with the horses is implied rather than crudely spelled out, but Gilroy’s own son apparently likes such books and games and is a means by which the two communicate. It may also allude to debates around the status of Deckard (Harrison Ford) as a replicant in Blade Runner, in part informed by a dream sequence, originally deleted but reappearing in the director’s cut, where we see a section of another Scott film, Legend (1985), and the appearance of a mythical unicorn (linked with the foil creatures that Gaff [Edward James Olmos] makes, suggesting he controls Deckard’s thoughts).
There is an explicit link between Clayton’s son, Henry, and Arthur as we overhear a strange, illicit nighttime phone call, where the two seem to connect at a philosophical level. Arthur is a pseudo-father figure here, listening in a way that Michael was not earlier in the car when the boy tried to tell him about the book. Arthur is an avid listener. The key point here is the aspect of the game in which a group of characters are drawn to a place “as if they’ve been summoned” because they have experienced a shared dream (of which they are unaware). This is the force drawing Michael to the field, that he shares the dream of Arthur, of a fairer, more just society, and thereby rejects the life and the lifestyle he has led up to this point. Arthur later uses the term “summoned” to Michael in the hotel room, attempting to explain what he has learned from the boy’s book. Whether left deliberately for Michael to find in Arthur’s flat or not, the book contains the receipt for the copies of the incriminating memo and the picture of the horses.
Like the lingering shots of Clooney as Bob walking toward the camera in Syriana, we have a lengthy shot of Michael walking through his empty work environment, carrying his own bags to a plane with apparently no other passengers. He is a principled individual, framed alone, battling institutional forces of corruption, but is also part of that system. In
terms of dress, he seems to be dominated by dark, sober colors that give him almost a funereal air. Crowder is also framed alone (at the gym, in an elevator, and entering a building) but she cannot connect with people like Michael does. He can also be a very charming people person, as when on the phone instructing his young legal team in Milwaukee succinctly but sensitively. He passes an envelope to the man who has been looking after Arthur, offering him tickets to a game if he is ever in New York. He knows how to make low-level corruption and diplomacy work in a spontaneous and interactive way, which we never see Crowder manage.
Gilroy’s script links a number of elements. Some are obvious, like the boy’s description of a game in which you can be talking to someone who turns out to be your “mortal enemy,” which Michael notes “sounds familiar” but is exemplified in the apparently friendly knock at Arthur’s door later. Other links are a little more subtle. Clayton’s son sarcastically informs his mother that he has had breakfast even though there are no waffles with “It’s a miracle” (like his father, he is something of a charming “miracle worker”). In the game, “all the people are hiding in the woods to try and stay alive,” which will be Michael’s fate shortly after his car explodes. Michael sees the boy off to school with the order to “teach these people something,” but the boy does actually have knowledge, which first Arthur values and implicitly Michael comes to understand, if not at the level of conscious comprehension. The man to whom Michael owes money refers to an alcoholic wife as being “like strapped to a bomb” (reminding us of Michael’s car). Clayton describes Arthur as “a killer” in the sense of possessing a brilliant legal mind but he will fall victim to unscrupulous men for whom this term is literally true.
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