journal features

movie review - Shattered Glass

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2004.10.29

This is the movie that Hayden Christensen needed to redeem himself from his prominent participation in the loathsome Star Wars prequels. Having watched him stiffly make the best of the terrible writing in those movies, it was hard to see the actor. Here, he's still hard to see, but it's because he's disappeared into his role.

He plays disgraced 'journalist' (or fictionalist) Stephen Glass during his rise and fall at the American magazine The New Republic. A man driven by something - strangely, never really learn what - to excel at journalism even while bowing to family pressures to become a lawyer, he tries to keep up a steady stream of spectacular, entertaining articles. Eventually he goes too far, and writes something that is easily debunked by the reporters at a speciality magazine into whose realm he has spectacularly mis-tread.

Peter Saarsgard is one of my favourite actors, though he seems destined to a career such supporting roles as his one here and in 'Garden State' thanks to his deamenour/appearance. Here, he coolly plays the magazine's editor Chuck Lane, the opposite to Glass's flamboyant showman in every respect. A careful and dedicated writer, he resents the apparent ease of Glass's success, and seems to naturally pick up on the other man's lies.

The movie is based on the inexorable collapse of Glass's house of cards, and Lane's unforgiving outrage. It doesn't come off in an entirely engaging way, but instead seems to aim for authenticity. And it's the authenticity of the characters, their interaction, and their actions that make this story work.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.