About Maxing Out

Post 928:

Spoilers:

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with work and concurrently consumed by personal problems, like you’re boxed in from all sides and there are no good choices and no clear ways out from any of it?

Me neither. What do I look like? Got it all together over here. Smooth frigging sailing.

Seriously though, we’ve all been completely maxed out to some extent. Watching Michael Clayton the other day, it sort of made me feel better about my problems. I mean, talk about taking it from all sides.

I’ve heard it said that life has a way of providing and withholding. If things are going good with your lady, your boss is breaking balls. Career’s on track but home life is suffering a little. You get the picture. Not so with old Georgie Boy Cloontown in Michael Clayton. This guy can’t catch many breaks. Even when he does, it’s not much of one.

I don’t know that I love this movie, but it’s really freaking good. I’ve watched it several times now and dig the pace, the way the dialogue is slick and it doesn’t explain too much so you have to listen and trust. There are some scenes that seem pretty far afield from the main narrative but it all works out and comes together for one of the great verbal smackdowns at the end, making the fusillade of frenetic angst and worry and mental illness and lying worth it.

What a great final scene. It’s not even that complex. Just a big middle finger. And though there’s a red book and a receipt in a red book that play perhaps a little too heavily in the outcome of what is a weblike story, who cares. Adults making movies for adults. That could sound weird, I realize. You get what I mean.

Catch me on another day, but today I’m thinking that it may be just a little too dark to be an all-time fave. It’s just so many problems, and this is one of the tricky things about stories. You can’t have stories without bombarding the characters with problems—but it can’t be all problems. Now that’s a problem. Excuse me while I delete all the novels I’m currently working on. Kidding. I think. Cheers and see you after.