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This was one of those increasingly rare occasions where I had a chance to directly compare a BD to its DVD counterpart, and the differences were as apparent as someone who's sunk a lot of dough in a state-of-the-art home theatre would hope them to be. As Michael Clayton was shot in true 'scope as opposed to Super35, I was surprised by the abundance of grain on the DVD, but evidently that's just the noisy by-product of poor compression. It evaporates on the Blu-ray alternative, which boasts a 2.40:1, 1080p presentation that positively gleams. Gone are the charcoal greys of the standard-def transfer, replaced by blacks jet and liquid; gone is the mess of artifacts that made George Clooney's hair look like a dust bunny, replaced by precision detail that actively leads to a more engaged viewership. Although some shots are still a little soft, in HD you can clearly tell that this is a photographic issue, not a mastering one, and you don't have a layer of digital crud further obfuscating the image. Even the audio is clearer on Blu-ray despite the absence of anything fancier than a Dolby Digital 5.1 track; evidently the slightly wider berth given to the bitstream here pushed it over the edge. This is not a very interesting mix since dialogue is its most important component, but nevertheless: dialogue is its most important component--and voices breathe better and sound less pinched on BD.
Writer-director Tony Gilroy and his editor/brother John Gilroy meanwhile offer a listening alternative in the form of a feature-length yakker that is the very definition of a production commentary. As the Gilroys seem to think it's bad juju to parse their own film, much of the conversation revolves around the challenges Tony faced as a first-time director. Highlights include Gilroy's original pitch for the material (he wanted to make a movie about lawyers that never set foot in a courtroom) and courting of Clooney for the title role, though to be honest, my attention started to drift before the halfway mark, perking up just in time to hear Tony's recollection of Clooney's motivation for the film's celebrated closing shot. The Gilroys return for optional commentary over a 5-minute block of three deleted scenes (4:3 letterboxed in 480i) featuring, in addition to some justification for the conspicuousness of the attempt on Michael's life, a wisely-deleted cameo from "Chamomile Lawn" beauty Jennifer Ehle (pronounced "Ee-lay") as Michael's booty call. Nothing against Ehle, but--God help me--I agree with the test-audience consensus that introducing any kind of love interest for Clooney creates superfluous anticipation if the movie has no intention of following up on it. For what it's worth, the only leg up the DVD has on the BD is that it also contains a bunch of trailers--like we need more trailers.-
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The Film
Big corporations and the American legal system are each rife with corruption, and the stampeding of moral boundaries in the name of perpetual comfort and wealth often wears down those who participate in it--so what else is new? That's the question nagging at Bourne scribe Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, a game stab at a character study as the titular law firm "fixer" (George Clooney) attempts to perform some in-house damage control after star attorney Arthur Edens (a ferocious Tom Wilkinson) strips naked during a deposition for his client, an agricultural conglomerate embroiled in a class-action suit. This breakdown is the result of a serious crisis of conscience the world-weary Clayton must contain, a massive debt--the result of a hefty gamble with his junkie brother (David Lansbury)--hanging over his head all the while. It's enough to send Clayton on his own introspective journey about his nature as a janitor, bagman, and all-around asshole, typically manifesting itself as navel-gazing amazement at those who haven't fallen under the treads of corruption, from his son (Austin Williams) to a Wisconsinite plaintiff in the case at hand (Merritt Weaver) to, er, a pack of horses.
Like the Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, another film about the slow realization of the screamingly obvious, Clayton has a tough time seeing past his personal blinders and expects everyone to bend over backwards to accommodate his spiritual reassessment. Intriguing, yes, but too often does Michael Clayton take its anti-hero's quest in earnest, sharing his disillusioned awe over the depths of human depravity and kindly offering him (and us) a series of metaphors for the error of his ways like some ersatz Jacob Marley. Even when Gilroy indulges in his conspiratorial tendencies by introducing a pair of hitmen (Terry Serpico and Robert Prescott) hired by the conglomerate's nerve-wracked chief counsel (Tilda Swinton) to keep an eye on Edens, for the most part they're around to serve as an analogy for Clayton's duties in cleaning up other people's shit. To call the character a stretch or a new direction for Clooney's limited chops would be ridiculous, as it's more or less the perfect compromise between his mainstream and independent sensibilities--or precisely the sort of role he takes whenever he goes bowling for Oscars, with the added bonus that he gets to deliver a witty coup de grâce at film's end. (The expectation for and fulfillment of which, I suspect, contributes a goodly portion to the matinee idol's appeal.) Still, Gilroy is a sly director, possessing a sharp eye for audience expectations and cautiously tinkering them, casually playing with the film's chronological structure and admirably refusing to let Clooney's innate charm have the last word.-
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DVD GRADES:
Image A
Sound A
Extras B- |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
120 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.40:1 (1080p/VC-1)
Languages
English DD 5.1,
French DD 5.1,
Spanish DD 5.1
Subtitles
English, French, Spanish
BD-25
Warner
Buy the MICHAEL CLAYTON poster at Moviegoods (click on image)
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Published: February 18, 2007
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