Michael Clayton

After Michael Clayton (George Clooney) finds out that his friend and colleague Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has died he goes to a bar to console and be consoled with other friends of Arthur. Simmering with unease and bewilderment at Arthur’s suicide, Clayton is told something about Arthur which makes him think his death might not have been a suicide. What is most striking about the final shot of this scene is the particular use the director (Tony Gilroy) makes of a visual trope used throughout the movie: bright but smudged/hazy lights crowding the screen, enveloping Clooney. But in this particular instance the director pulls off a bravura halo effect, managing to make the lights appear to share the same spatial plane as Clooney’s face. He lingers on the shot for at least two reasons: it’s gorgeous and it (along with Clooney’s dumbstruck questioning look) signifies the dim awareness our protagonist is beginning to have of the evil around him.

Tilda Swinton’s Karen Crowder can’t look at a mirror without wanting to vomit. Her moneymaker -- the ability to make words handle the weight of nothingness and deceit -- has finally cashed out, and her desperation and disgust lash her as she battles her sorry mirror-image presentation of self in everyday life. The power of positive thinking routine of finding your id plus ego-ideal self in a warm-up speech before a private mirror -- ah, the luxurious safe haven of a closed door -- isn’t working anymore. Unfortunately, the movie can’t quite make enough room for her character. We never know if she, like Arthur and Clayton, has become aware of how deeply she is involved in a nefarious enterprise, or if she is simply suffering under the demands of keeping up a pretense of power and justness for public consumption. A shame, for she’s Clooney’s double, and a more drawn out meeting between the two characters would have added thematic depth to the film.

Swinton furtively using a small, plastic trashbag as a glove to handle some items she shouldn’t have her hands on is hilarious. It points to her desperation, but it is also a brilliant dig at the pathetic backroom trickery of corporations. (Wearing the plastic bag also links her to Clayton: they are both "janitors.")