It has never occurred to me to think of the word "cut" as onomatopoeic before, but when Tilda Swinton says it, what springs to mind is a glinting knife slicing through steel. Swinton says briskly of Tony Gilroy, the writer/director of her new film, "He's no slouch," and quite clearly, neither is she: her patrician, military background is inescapably obvious as soon as she enters the room, her bearing commanding; and then there's the mesmeric, pale gaze, the famous alabaster skin, the slick of red hair, the sapling-like figure. She really is quite something.
Tony "no slouch" Gilroy is best known as the screenwriter of the three Bourne films; but next week will see the release of his directorial debut, Michael Clayton, which stars Swinton alongside George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack. A smart, noirish thriller, as involved in its plotting as the Bourne films, but constructed with a more obvious formal precision (and without the car chases), Michael Clayton is a story about corruption. Clooney plays the "fixer" in a big New York law firm called upon to unravel the messy situation that prevails when a colleague, who is acting for agrichemicals company U/North against a group of farmers claiming they have been progressively poisoned by the company's products, has a kind of psychic crisis, and decides he is working for the wrong side. A great deal is at stake, especially for the U/North in-house attorney, Karen, played by Swinton.
Without appearing to do very much at all, Swinton offers a gripping vision of a woman whose sweaty anxiety and Electra-complex-freighted relationship with her boss are her essential components. She is a figure whose language consists entirely of corporate-speak, who projects no personality except for that communicated by her Condoleezza-inspired fashion sense - and yet whose vulnerability and fear are visible from the first moment we see her. In her first major scene, she is preparing to be filmed for a corporate video, selecting her outfit, rehearsing her lines - "and rehearsing her life, really," says Swinton. "Tony and I talked about this a lot, that she was playing this part of Karen and we have no idea who she really is. There's no way of telling through this set of signals that she is determined to project." This moment is balanced by a later scene in which Karen prepares for another big moment: "She's obviously been to the hairdresser and taken them a photograph of [US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice and said, "I want that," and they've taken out this huge can of hairspray and made her this helmet. And then she's gone upstairs and laid her clothes out, like a samurai." The jacket she puts on is puffy, miles too big for her, like a ludicrous coat of armor, but it doesn't protect her - this is her "moment of collapse." Karen's story is, to Swinton, a "tragedy, in the Greek sense."
Swinton's quixotic career in the movies - from Derek Jarman collaborator in the 1980s, to the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, via Sally Potter's gender bending Orlando and a number of roles working with American indie directors such as Spike Jonze and Jim Jarmusch - isn't really a career at all, so much as an active intelligence ranging widely over the world of cinema. Her choices are made not because she wants to work up to winning an Oscar, nor because she wants to play particular kinds of character, but because she wants to satisfy her curiosity about film-makers she admires - a film enthusiast, if you like, who just happens to be a great actor.
RSS