Michael Clayton

Big corporates hiding big secrets isn8217;t anything new. Nor employees blowing the whistle. Where Michael Clayton differs is in sketching out the main characters and recording how each reaches where they do.

Be it a prominent lawyer with a law firm, a woman trying to find her footwork as chief counsel of a major company in the midst of a potentially damaging lawsuit, or a man everyone knows as Michael 8220;The Fixer8221; Clayton 8212; the film gives an intimate portrayal of them through four days and nights in their lives. The stirring of conscience in two of them coincides with the third slowly snuffing out hers.

Nominated for seven Oscars, the maximum for any film in the acting department, Michael Clayton lays out the low business of high business almost perfectly. There are no bad people here, only people trying to do what they think they ought to do. Gilroy, the man behind the Bourne series, is nominated for both direction and original screenplay.

Clooney, among those up for an Oscar for best actor, is the fixer in the law firm 8212; 8220;a lawyer among cops and a cop among lawyers8221; as his brother puts it. The moral as well as physical ambiguity of his position in the law firm is routinely laid out for him. On the verge of losing a restaurant he opened as a side business, he needs money, adding yet another weight to the scales he is trying to balance.

Swinton is the newly appointed chief counsel of U North, which is fighting a class action suit over a weed produced by it that may be harmful to humans. Her career depends on ensuring that the company gets out of the suit unscathed.

Wilkinson8217;s is the third Oscar-nominated performance. Having worked with the law firm handling the U North case for years, he has decided to now heed the call of his conscience. Part mad and part absolutely clear about what he wants to do, he sends the quiet little world where truth can8217;t be spoken topsy-turvy.

Michael Clayton is also set apart by its cinematography, giving the film a veneer of quietness, below which brews a storm. The scene with the horses at the start best captures this.