Toronto Film Festival

Two very different movies about the Iraq war from De Palma and Haggis. Plus: George Clooney finesses his way through a grueling press conference.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Toronto Film Festival, Reviews

Still from "Redacted"

Sept. 10, 2007 | TORONTO -- In Tony Gilroy's confident but overwrought picture "Michael Clayton," George Clooney plays a law firm's in-house fixer who comes to realize that the work his employer is doing -- the work he's doing -- is killing his soul. Clooney's performance is marvelous, so unforced and believable that he almost makes you forget how strained and overeager the movie around him is.

I like Clooney very much as an actor; I don't feel a burning need to be in the same room with him, so I'm not sure why I attended the Toronto press conference for "Michael Clayton." Press conferences can be humbling: There you are, packed into a roomful of people representing their outlets, all hoping -- as you are -- to draw some interesting little scraps of copy from the strange, meager proceedings. The photographers stand to the sides and at the back of the room. When the talent appears, their shutters begin clicking in unison, the sort of soft, clattering sound a field of mechanical butterflies would make. The people stuck up there on that little raised platform -- in this case, Clooney, his costar Tilda Swinton, Gilroy and two of the movie's producers, Jennifer Fox and Steven Samuels, the whole reason for our being there in the first place -- are introduced, they say a few words, and then the questioning is opened up to the assholes.

Oh -- did I write that? First, let me say that most of the journalists and writers in attendance at the "Michael Clayton" press conference were not assholes. A Canadian journalist asked Clooney if he approved of Canada's response to Darfur, Sudan. (He said that he did.) Even the usual "How did you prepare for the role" stuff was perfectly polite and well-meaning. But I single out for ridicule the joker behind me -- I didn't catch his name or his outlet -- who pompously stood up and announced that he'd heard George (these guys are always on a first-name basis with movie stars) had been seen in Venice, Italy, with a model, and he wanted to know how they'd met.

What happened next was slightly weird and kind of wonderful: No sooner had the question left the guy's lips than I felt a shift in the energy of the room, as if we all -- or at least most of us -- wished we could put some extra space between ourselves and this bonehead. In that split second, he'd broken an unwritten rule. The vibe seemed to be, "Look, we're huddled here in this room with our pedestrian, innocuous questions about 'preparing for the role.' Are they exciting questions? No. But here you are, thinking you're being a daring journalist just because you happened to get a glimpse of Hello! on a newsstand. Please go play elsewhere."

But Clooney's response to the question was so swift and so graceful, and so honest in the way he made his irritation clear without breaking the stride of his regular-guy affability, that it made me feel that somehow, one small, wrong thing in the universe had been righted: "Good -- good for you! Good question. Enjoy yourself, have a nice day." I love the fact that he didn't hide how much the question pissed him off, and that he afforded it the 1.2-second response that it deserved. And then moved on.

I'll only briefly mention the Teletwinkie who stood up and, after complimenting Clooney on how funny he was, told him with a hint of a nervous giggle, "You certainly are a cunning linguist." Did she think this would get her a date? In any event, a groan rose from the assembly: Could she have done a better job of embarrassing us collectively? Thankfully, the conference ended not long after, and I hightailed it out of there. A few minutes later I happened to see some hotel staff hustling Clooney into an elevator that they'd commandeered just for him. As much as I, like any other red-blooded human being on the planet, would have liked to get an up-close look at him, I averted my eyes. If I were he, I'd be thinking, Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Next page: De Palma's struggle to make sense out of chaos