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SHATTERED
GLASS
7/10
USA
2003 : Billy RAY : 95 mins
Though barely
reported overseas, the Stephen Glass case sent shockwaves through the
world of serious American journalism. A highflying 24-year-old feature-writer
on the prestigious New Republic magazine with a string of impressive
stories to his credit, Glass was exposed as a fraud when staff on a rival
publication exposed one of his articles to rigorous scrutiny. It emerged
that the majority of his pieces were wholly or partly fabricated, and
he was fired in disgrace by editor Chuck Lane.
In 1998 the
Glass story was, ironically enough, turned into an article in a fancy
magazine (Vanity Fair) by Buzz Bissinger – which forms the basis
for writer-director Ray’s screenplay. Given the nature of the project,
one does hope Ray verified every aspect of Bissinger’s piece with the
forensic rigour of a Chuck Lane. Ray reportedly (and repeatedly) interviewed
all the key players with the exception of Glass himself (who was presumably
too busy with his very autobiographical-sounding novel The Fabulist.)
Ray faced
similar problems to those famously encountered by William Goldman on All
the President’s Men: this is a real-life story whose conclusion is
widely known, at least by many who’ll be interested in seeing the movie.
Of course, the Glass affair is no Watergate – and Ray must convince us
that such a relatively minor tale is deserving of Hollywood’s attention,
and our own. He manages to do this by keeping the action moving along
at a fast clip – editor Jeffrey Ford deserves special praise – and by
concentrating intensely on the two main participants, nimbly shifting
focus around the halfway point from Glass (Hayden Christensen) to Lane
(Peter Sarsgaard) as the extent of Glass’s deceptions come to light.
Sarsgaard
has won many critics’ awards for his performance – he’s generally reckoned
very unlucky not to be have been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor
Oscar. He makes Lane – initially something of a withdrawn, hesitant figure
– genuinely grow before our eyes into a man of steely resolve and admirable,
idealistic integrity. Virtue is very tricky to portray on screen, but
Sarsgaard pulls it off – then again, we’ve come to expect no less from
this terrifically talented actor: he’s always this good, equally
impressive in lauded indies (Boys
Don’t Cry) and big-budget misfires (K-19
: The Widowmaker). (And, yes, he does always sound this much like
John Malkovich.)
Sarsgaard’s
absence from the Oscar ballot is more a matter of the movie than the performance.
Shattered Glass is a thoroughly sober, intelligent and careful
piece of work - very much a ‘Chuck Lane’ kind of film, in fact – with
no weak links among the cast. Star
Wars refugee Christensen is suitably appealing/creepy as the semi-sociopathic
Glass; Hank Azaria excels as his beloved ex-editor Michael Kelly; Steve
Zahn, Rosario Dawson, Melanie Lynskey and Chloe Sevigny make the most
of their limited screen time.
And the film,
will, of course, be fascinating for anyone connected with journalism (which
perhaps explains its popularity among film-critics). But the wider public
may well prove harder to satisfy. There are very serious issues
being explored here: we’re told more than once that New Republic
is “the inflight magazine on Air Force One”, and thus a major “opinion-former”.
The Glass/Lane dynamic, meanwhile, will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone
who has ever tried to wool over their bosses’s eyes on even the most trivial
of issues.
For all its
strengths, however, Shattered Glass does end up a little “so what”–ish.
It’s often as horribly absorbing as watching a slow-motion car-crash:
we know what’s happening, we can’t do a thing about it, we can only trace
the painful details leading up to the inevitable cataclysm. Only afterwards,
however, do we look again and realise that what we witnessed was a toy-truck
pile-up – a miniature tragedy - and that no actual blood was spilt.
2nd
February, 2004
(seen* on VHS in Sunderland, 12th January. Thanks to Sarah
Crosby and David Miller)
* trust me…
by Neil
Young
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