George Clooney
Page 29
With overtones of a cleansing baptism, his angrily thumping the steering wheel reflects the frustration of the timing. He finds someone whom he can love and who loves him at exactly the point that his past catches up with him. Just as Clara treads on the bullets discarded from the scene trying out the rifle, so he cannot escape his past. Whether he likes it or not, he is a product of his history. He has tried to live solely in the present but he cannot. However, the fact that he can appreciate such fragile beauty in his love of butterflies among the brutality of a world of killing (albeit partly at his instigation) suggests that he still has the capacity for redemption. Corbijn pans away from Jack’s actual moment of death and focuses on a nearby tree upon which a butterfly (his soul perhaps) seems to be fluttering. As Jack noted earlier, the creature, like his state of grace, is “endangered.”
Corbijn, in interviews, makes much of the attempt to follow the basic structure of a western, and certainly there are elements here, particularly of the spaghetti westerns of figures like Sergio Leone, like the rugged landscape, the presence of a stranger in town who must atone for past sins of living by violence, a hero torn between the demands of the flesh (the prostitute) and the spirit (the priest), a final shoot-out, as well as a leisurely shot length and pace of narrative action. Sitting alone in a bar, Leone’s classic western, Once upon a Time in the West (1968), is on-screen, at the point where the killer, Frank (Henry Fonda), callously shoots an innocent small boy just because he heard a name. It is a reminder of the forces that are gathering against Jack but also of his own callous murder of Ingrid. He will have to atone for his sins as a killer too (also at the hands of a fellow assassin who arrives by train like the characters in the Leone film).
However, we do not have the exchange of direct looks that Leone is also famous for, there is minimal backstory, and in a sense the nationality of Jack is not central (Rowan Joffe’s script changes him from the Englishman in Martin Booth’s 1990 novel, A Very Private Gentleman). It is the state of his soul that is paramount. Whereas most westerns make it clear exactly what is being fought over, here the relative scarcity of narrative information converts Jack’s increasingly paranoid existence into an existential drama. As Father Benedetto sees, Jack is in a hell of his own making in which he destroys everything he comes into contact with, which is why he does not tell Clara his secret so that she remains spiritually pure, despite her profession, and why he is attracted to butterflies as the sole symbol of fragile beauty and potential metamorphosis in his world. This is change at a profound level, not the kind symbolized by Mathilde’s changing hairstyle at every meeting.
Most powerfully, in the final sequence as he struggles to control the car despite being wounded, Clooney’s face manages to capture not just physical pain but the spiritual pain of having his final chance of happiness snatched away from him at the last. It makes the manner of his death deeply tragic, and the riverside location, the place Clara terms “paradise,” gains its fullest meaning from his final entrance, his hand raised in greeting.
Although The American might seem a watershed in Clooney’s acting, reflecting a more somber, elegiac mood in which a sense of sorrow and loss infects the present, this is present in earlier work too. Personal grief in Solaris is partly modulated into political grief in Syriana at the corrosion of principles to religious grief here. From the opening shot where Clooney is slumped by the bed to his car scene with Clara after the picnic, he is framed looking down and needing the physical (and apparently spiritual) comfort of another. He is a lost soul, one who can maintain his body via exercise—it is his weapon after all—but who cannot gain any mental peace. This is present even in apparently minor scenes, such as his dinner with the priest, where we see Jack toying with a small crucifix and a version of “Madam Butterfly” is being sung in the background.
Cinematic trailers played up the action scenes, and with the dominant icon on posters and DVD cases being Jack in midstride, carrying a gun, the impression is of an action thriller. However, in this the film was misrepresented, in part contributing to some audience disappointment. The film is a study of the interior price paid by one man’s soul for the sinful life he has led. Guns are present, but even in the scenes where they are assembled, they are not fetishized (the riverside scene where Mathilde puts the rifle together focuses on Jack’s reaction, and the assembly process is conveyed almost entirely by sound effects).
Corbijn and Clooney wanted to keep to the agreed location despite the earthquake in the region in Abruzzo five months before shooting was due to begin, in order to help support regeneration efforts. It is hard not to see Clooney the man here, at home in Italian cafés, being able to understand the language around him, watching and attracting the attention of beautiful young women. When he smiles and invites Clara for a coffee (or, in a deleted scene, she offers him a strong coffee to ease his shoulder pain), the crossover into a Nespresso commercial is almost complete. For the Italian public, familiar with Clooney’s commercials for Fastweb and Fiat alongside his film career, allowing him great wealth, a luxurious home, and global fame, he personifies the possibilities of American life.
Conclusion
Clooney’s breakdown at the end of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (2011) may seem new, but that level of emotional complexity has been present in his performances reaching back as far as Solaris (2002), through Michael Clayton (2007), Syriana (2008), Up in the Air (2010), and The American (2010). Chris Kelvin, Michael Clayton, Bob Barnes, Ryan Bingham, Jack in The American, even Harry Pfarrer in Burn after Reading—all of these characters are inches away from mental collapse. Perhaps reflecting this growing sense of interiority, The Descendants uses voice-over extensively, like Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) (and in the early sections of Up in the Air), which is perhaps justifiable initially given the amount of backstory about the legal question of the land as well as following the first person narrative of the source text, but it may still seem intrusive to some viewers.
Based on the debut 2008 novel of Kaui Hart Hemmings (the author can be glimpsed in a cameo as Clooney’s secretary), The Descendants manages to tread a very delicate balance between mawkish sentimentality as absent father Matt King (Clooney) has to return to Hawaii to deal with a comatose wife and a fragmented family. Although it may seem that we are seeing a brand-new side to Clooney’s art, his character, unequal to the pressures of fatherhood mixed with a subtle mix of grief and anger at his wife (whom he discovers was adulterous), is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Like Michael Clayton and Syriana, he is a father distanced from his children by marital breakdown and the demands of a particular career, respectively. Tearfulness in earlier work develops into open crying both at discovering the name of his wife’s lover and at her bedside at the end, in an outburst of grief that perhaps excuses some of his character’s decisions elsewhere (the island trip in particular).
What is new here is the gender balance: he is father to teenage girls. Far from his usual predominantly male environment (Ocean’s, Three Kings, Perfect Storm) he must struggle to understand not just his own flesh and blood but the female side of his family (his wife included). What is also new is that, apart from parodies like Collinwood, this is the first time we have seen him play a character lacking expertise. Unlike Clayton, Kelvin, or Jack in The American, we do not see professional competence, only a private insecurity in coping with two wayward daughters, Scottie (Amara Miller) and elder sister Alexandra (Shailene Woodley). He describes himself as “the backup parent,” and part of the muted comedy and dramatic pleasure comes from the understudy being thrown into the main role with minimal preparation, especially in scenes between Matt and Alex, who has a greater sense of the reality behind the façade of their family bonds.
Unlike his measured exercise regime in The American, we see him running breathlessly in flip-flops (in a scene added from the novel and with a close-up of his distraught face): he is not in physical, familial, or emotional control. Like Ryan in Up in the Air, family life has continued wit
hout him. He is forced to catch up fast on the emotional nuances of relationships he has neglected to find a place for, not just within the family but in relation to his past and potential future. This latter point is implicit in the final decision to keep the land; but also perhaps there is an element of Matt as a calculating lawyer, refusing to sell to a Hollitzer, since Speer, Hollitzer’s brother-in-law, would benefit from the deal. There is almost a road movie element in that the family, together with Alex’s boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause), takes a trip, ostensibly to help heal emotional wounds but also to allow Matt to confront his wife’s lover, Brian Speer (Matthew Lilliard). This ulterior motive diminishes Matt as a caring father, prepared to drag his children into a marital dispute. As a rich lawyer, Matt King is an urban animal out of his usual element, signaled by shift from business suit to Hawaiian shirt, although the use of the landscape remains an urban version of paradise, i.e., a lived form of a popular ideal. Hemmings’s novel does not feature any specific physical description of Matt’s appearance, allowing for some debate over Clooney’s casting but also giving him freedom in interpreting the role. Ironically, before the film went into production, in one of the early hospital scenes in the book, Scottie wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Mrs Clooney.”
All of the films in this chapter require a shock to a middle-aged male living a financially comfortable existence, often administered by a collision with a spiritual or emotional loss experienced outside the character’s usual environment (a space station in Solaris, a hillside in Michael Clayton, and a small picturesque Italian town in The American). Clooney seems increasingly comfortable with portraying characters on the edge of emotional breakdown and even sanity at times. There is no other actor in contemporary Hollywood who so powerfully articulates masculinity in crisis but with enough wit and humor to carry mass audiences with him.
Chapter 9
Time for a Commercial Break
“What Else?”
As an actor with a very distinctive voice, Clooney is often in demand for work where audiences only hear him. I have discussed his contribution to Fantastic Mr. Fox elsewhere, but in terms of commercials, Clooney has starred in TV and radio ads for Arthur Andersen, AT&T, British Airways, and Budweiser among many others.1 He has been criticized for making commercials at the same time as speaking out on humanitarian issues, but it is a charge that could be leveled at many actors. Even before the soap opera developed in the 1930s via short radio adverts, commerce and mass media have been closely entwined. It is hardly a sign of the corruption of contemporary culture. More interesting is exactly what Clooney does in the adverts and how they work with or against his star image.
Martini (2000)
“No Martini, no party”
The ad opens with a fantasy set, filled only with attractive women dancing by a pool. Clooney, playing himself, rings the bell but is not allowed in with the closing slogan, “No Martini, no party.” Playing against his romantic image, he is rejected in a series of variations on the same theme. There is even a closing shot of him at the door with cases of Martini and a clichéd wordless popping of a cork. “Night over Manaus” by Boozoo Bajou reflects the shift to sophisticated lounge music and music channels like Deluxe, aimed at a slightly older demographic than MTV. We occupy the space outside the door as Clooney is rejected and his surprise is registered by looking down.
A subsequent ad shows Clooney downstairs from a noisy party, disturbing the mood he is hoping to create with a woman whose glasses (and by implication, much else besides) he is about to remove. Going upstairs, he walks around collecting drinks from partygoers like an overzealous waiter in reverse, before delivering the familiar “No Martini, no party” punch line, now with the ring of a punishment about it. However, before he seems too much of a killjoy, he switches the music from pop to classical, suggesting a slightly more mature persona.
“Bellissimo” (2007)
Like a later Nespresso ad, there is a false element of tension here as the two leads (Clooney and Shannyn Sossamon) both make for the last serving of the product at a party as if their lives depend on it, although there is clearly more available. She takes the more direct route while he has flashbulbs going off in his face. Although she is walking through fountains in slow motion, the element of glamor is undercut by the statue that appears to be peeing on her and also Clooney’s absurd expressions and his final gestures for her to wipe her face on the handkerchief he gives her. Although supposedly set by the sea, this is a parody of the excesses of a Hollywood party.
As someone known to have a home and an interest in Italy, the idea of Clooney as a fake Italian fits with his image well. With the fake moustache, the exaggerated facial expressions, and the delivery of the single word “Bellissimo,” he comes across like a wannabe Casanova, still struggling with the language. It also reflects Clooney’s vain character of Miles Massey in Intolerable Cruelty and McGill (with a similar moustache) in O Brother. Clooney seems happy to mock his own image: a monographed “G” is briefly visible on his handkerchief.
“El Toro” (2007)
Clooney plays the same character again, here identified as a film star, named as “Giorgio” in a large poster, at a film festival, greeted by screaming fans at a premiere or an after-show party. However, the sense of glamor is undercut by some fairly crude humor: lacking ice cubes, Leonor Varela dressed as a matador provides two by cutting an undisclosed part from an ice sculpture of a bull. Culturally, there is some conflation of stereotypes here since Varela’s costume and the title point to a Spanish theme and yet the name “Giorgio” is Italian. The music is provided by Mark Mothersbaugh’s band, Mutato Muzika, who had contributed to Collinwood, and Mothersbaugh would go on to score Fantastic Mr. Fox. Like “Bellissimo,” this is shot in black-and-white (except for the product), features only a single word at the end (“Magnifico”), and is more a carefully choreographed example of melodramatic pastiche.
In a further Martini commercial, in brilliant color, we see Clooney running out of gas on his speedboat and having to choose between rescue and giving up a case of Martini, at which point we cut to the final shot of him marooned with the Martini by his side. Clooney is playing a less exaggerated version of himself here, running out of gas on a date cliché of running out of gas transferred to the life of a Hollywood star with unnamed female beauty attached. Rather than keeping his boat (and the girl), this hero chooses the product.
Emidio Tucci (2003)
Clooney shows his sartorial side here, donning a light suit for a change and definitely outside his usual color range: a light brown, with matching tie and shoes. His character is seen approaching a house, apparently guarded by burly bodyguards. Climbing a fire escape and hopping across a roof and in through a window, he meets the object of his quest (his mother), whom he presents with flowers. Clooney here blends his persona as master spy, deftly able to avoid detection, but also associations of an honorable son, who still has time for his mother (particularly important in Mediterranean culture perhaps). He even has time for a telltale nod down the lens at the viewer at the end.
An earlier ad (2002) shows him playfully riding a bicycle backward and forward on a seaside promenade while performing various feats of balance. The more daring moves in longer shot look like a stunt double, but tighter shots are Clooney himself. Like the later Nespresso ad, the voice-over lists adjectives, ambiguously referring to both the product and Clooney’s persona in endorsing them: elegant, natural, distinctive, attractive, with character. The pseudo-martial arts moves he performs on the bike and the final shot of him still playing at dusk have a slightly Karate Kid-feel, perhaps pushing his action more toward the childish than playful.
An earlier ad still from 1999 shows him coming home and slipping into something more comfortable: a Tucci suit, complete with rust-brown tie. We might assume he is getting ready to go out, but the implication is as he slumps in front of the TV that such stylish clothing is more comfortable than sweatpants.
Toyota (2001)