Michael Clayton

Last week was Movie Night, and I chose Michael Clayton (2007).  George Clooney stars in the title role as an attorney in a large New York law firm.  He is a "fixer," someone who "cleans up" the unpleasant and embarrassing problems left by clients of other lawyers in his firm.  Although he started out as a litigator in a prosecutors office and liked the good he did there, he joined the firm to better his career and financial independence.  Now he is trapped trying to manage the breakdown of the firm's most successful litigator, Arthur Edens, who has gone off his medications and is building the case against his client, U-North, a large agro-chemical corporation defending a class-action suit brought by cancer victims of their products.  As he searches for Edens, he begins to suspect that the firm is on the wrong side of the suit.  Opposite Clayton is Karen Crowder (played by Tilda Swinton), the general counsel for U-North, the corporation manufacturing the carcinogenic pesticide.  She's cosy with the chief executive and adopts his brutal and immoral tactics to ensure that the damaging information Edens has collected is not exposed -- ultimately arranging for Edens to be killed and an attempt to be made on Clayton's life. 

Of course the corporation is bad, and where there is a bad corporation there must also be a bad law firm.  Yet the central conflict is among the characters and their differing approaches to their lives within the corporate environment.  Edens has a mental break from the stress of serving the horrid corporate master full-time for six years.  Clayton is a soldier in support of Edens and sees himself as Edens friend.  During a confrontation in an alley he declares to Eden, "I am not the enemy!"  "Then who are you?" responds Edens.  As Edens assembles the evidence that will destroy the corporation, he muses "Is this the sum of my existence?"  It's a question that is equally applicable to the three characters.  Is Edens just defending a monsterous corporation that intentionally hurts people?  Is Clayton just a "fixer," a "bag man" who cleans up unpleasantries?  Is Crowder just helping to advance an impersonal corporate business even as it destroys the users of its own products, but is blind to this reality?  After years of being on the wrong side, can Clayton suddenly change and "fix" the damage caused by the malfeasance of Crowder and U-North?  Through a sub-plot concerning his family (his brother the good cop, another brother addicted and deeply in debt, and a son who he wants to protect from the bad he sees all around him), Clayton must find a way to extricate himself from the Devil's den and somehow do some good. 

This is a great movie, a thriller that jumps around and slowly builds tension and springs unexpected surprises .  The evilness of the corporation and its executives is so exaggerated, though, that they become caricature.  Corporations don't just make destructive products, their executives kill to protect themselves and the business.  Lawyers protect that evil, and collect an obscene fee whether they are successful or not.  And once one is held by the corporate trap, the difficulty is finding any way to get out and return to the idealic good that one aspires to. 

This all makes for great viewing pleasure, and yet leaves a skewed vision of corporations that is in line with modern conspiratorial culture.  The malfeasance of Ford executives in allowing the Pinto to go into production, discussed by Brinkley in Wheels For the World, is far more interesting as a lense into corporate evil.  How could Ford stand by and let its customers drive the Pinto when they knew the safety risks?  Indifference, complacense, a lack of care for others presents most of the answer.  That is far more human -- and real -- than the murder and conspiracy of Michael Clayton.  But see it anyway, for the tension, for the suspense, and as a demonstration of why George Clooney is such a force in the movie business. 

. 

Comments

[TD]

Interesting how we all see these movied from our own perspective. Apart from being a great thriller, I view it as an indictment of the wasteful litigation system that largely avoids justice in the interests of procedure--a movie about "document review" the bane of every litigator.

[Dianne Schmidley]

Tom, After I read your article in the "Anti-trust" newsletter, Henry IV came to mind. I am sure you know the quote, "First, let's kill all the lawyers."

[Lindsey Bestebreurtje]

"Indifference, complacense, a lack of care for others presents most of the answer. That is far more human -- and real -- than the murder and conspiracy of Michael Clayton."

I don't know that I agree with that statement. I think it had more to do with the fact that they had already sunk so much money into its production, they thought that dollars to donuts they could get away with putting out an inferior product. I would say that producing a dangerous lemon of a car is murder and a lack of care for others safety is too.