Gilroy Was Here

“I realized, Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life.” 

That piece of voiceover, from the opening of Tony Gilroy’s 2007 legal thriller Michael Clayton, is a message from Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a veteran attorney at a white-shoe law firm, to Michael Clayton (George Clooney), a “fixer” deployed by the same firm to get their high-priced clients out of a scrape—or, really, to put out whatever brush fire happens to threaten the business or anyone associated with it. In the past, Arthur might have been the type to request Michael’s services—the two plainly have had a long and cordial relationship—but now it’s Arthur who is the brush fire that Michael needs to put out. After working for six years on behalf of an agricultural conglomerate, U-North, that’s defending itself from a $3 billion civil lawsuit for a weed killer that allegedly caused hundreds of deaths, Arthur can suppress his conscience no longer. 

This endangers the case. This endangers the company. And, given the massive stakes involved, this endangers him. 

In the years since Michael Clayton opened to great acclaim, solid box office, and one Oscar (among seven nominations) for Tilda Swinton, the film has gained a kind of cult reputation, to the point where the comedian Joe Mande designed a piece of merch that mimics the “In This House, We Believe” language of a popular liberal yard sign. I use the phrase “a kind of cult reputation,” because the film has none of the eccentricity or singularity or outré appeal of a typical cult movie, but is, in fact, a handsome and impeccably crafted studio production with an A-list leading man. Perhaps that makes it a rarity in itself, like a Sidney Lumet film in an age without Sidney Lumets, or perhaps the subtlety and sophistication of the script are just that peerless, capped by one of the most satisfying comeuppances in recent memory. 

But there’s something else at play, too, with Michael Clayton that strikes a chord, suggested by Arthur’s opening monologue and affirmed by Gilroy’s underrated follow-up feature, Duplicity, released two years later. Much like the government was the boogeyman in post-Watergate thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, the shadowy nexus of power in Gilroy’s films are corporations, which are equally disinclined to tolerate dissent or play by the rules. There’s simply too much shareholder value at stake to allow a whistleblower to threaten a $3 billion lawsuit or to protect a corporate secret without deploying the security and counterintelligence staff of a major industrialized nation. Gilroy treats it as alarming in one movie and hilarious in the other, but the corporations in both feel like rogue states. They mirror Deep State government operations, but to advance their own twisted set of priorities.

The greatness of Michael Clayton isn’t immediately apparent, because Gilroy, as a first-time director, doesn’t knock you out with any stylistic touches. The son of a Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Frank D. Gilroy, he spent 15 years turning out screenplays in Hollywood, many of them adaptations, before finally getting behind the camera. In terms of look and feel, there’s not much daylight between Michael Clayton and other legal thrillers of its kind, though Robert Elswit, best known at the time for shooting Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, brings a backroom pallor to it that recalls Gordon Willis’ work on The Godfather movies. Gilroy wants to take you to the room where it happens, which in his corporate world aren’t boardrooms or anyplace else where someone might be taking official minutes. The real decisions are always made off the grid.