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Arts & Culture/ Reviews
Date Posted:
11/21/03


Shattered Glass
by:Edwardo Jackson

MOVIE BIASES: Hmm. Jayson Blair’s inspiration…
MAJOR PLAYERS: Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: Attack of the Clones), Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don’t Cry), and writer/director Billy Ray (screenplay, Hart’s War).

Ever want to be a journalist? Yeah, neither did I. For career day in fifth grade, instead of tailing the author-mother of a fellow student, I was sent on a tour of the Seattle Times – and I was PISSED. But after seeing “Shattered Glass,” a take on the 1998 real-life downfall of New Republic journalist/fabulist Stephen Glass, I truly have respect for the rigors of the fact-telling profession. With journalism as the backdrop for a good old-fashioned treatise on honesty, integrity, professionalism, and the art of charm via pathological lying, the truth behind “Glass” is anything but shattered – it is startlingly crystal clear.

Youngest associate editor at the New Republic, one of the snootiest political magazines in the country, 24 year-old Stephen Glass (Christensen) is a white hot up-and-coming star. What makes him burn brightest is his insatiable knack for finding the outrageous story and telling it in a way that’s even more entertaining. As the self-effacing, eager-to-please Glass slides through life on sheer ambitious talent couched in innocuous charm, his favorite superior (Hank Azaria) is replaced by a colleague as editor, Chuck Lane (Sarsgaard). Whereas Glass was once able to glibly cover up his mistakes with an earnest “Are you mad at me?” his very journalistic professionalism comes into question as the straight arrow Lane slowly builds to a conclusion that could cost Stephen his career and the vaunted reputation of the New Republic.

Even if you didn’t know the widely publicized facts behind the Stephen Glass infamy (he fabricated parts of 27 of his 41 pieces for the magazine), watching “Shattered Glass” is like watching a train wreck in “Matrix” bullet time. The script, written by longtime scribe but first time director Billy Ray, has a wildly effective framing device of Glass talking to what appears to be a journalism class at his old high school on – what else – journalistic ethics as he flashbacks into his infamous spring of 1998 at the New Republic. As with everything associated with Glass, the ending proves this to be the greatest fiction of all. Ray wisely employs a fairly straightforward directing style, allowing the facts (and the fictions) to speak for themselves with one of Glass’ stories getting picked to pieces by Forbes journalists (a nice dash of Rosario Dawson and Steve Zahn) to a Mychael Danna minimalist piano score.

And it is so eminently watchable. At its core is Hayden Christensen, in a role so revelatory, it completely erases his wooden dialogue in “Attack of the Clones” from your memory. Combining an endearing, constant sense of self-apology, a seductive, elephantlike attention to detail (he alphabetizes his beers for crying out loud), and pure conviction in the truth of his lies, Christensen’s Glass is the definition of pathological. He simply cannot help himself from trying to make everyone around him like him and be entertained, to the point his only defining characteristic is the belief in his lies (Is he in law school? Is he gay? Is he a Canadian actor playing an American???). When watching him mentor other reporters through their pieces and on journalistic ethics, it’s not just watching the blind lead the blind; it’s like watching the world’s best magician crying to be found out on the world’s biggest stage. Sarsgaard’s Lane is the perfectly not-too-righteous foil for Glass, wanting desperately to believe the star reporter in order to stave off an office insurrection, but not nearly enough to betray his own journalistic ethics (“I want you to tell me the truth. Can you do that, Stephen?”). If journalism truly is the “art of capturing human behavior” as Glass claims it to be, then watching Lane read off a list of tainted pieces to a vaguely distant Glass is the equivalent of a journalistic firing squad.

As a writer, this movie left me aghast. As a perennial seeker of truth, this movie left me breathtaken. You don’t feel sorry for him, you don’t hate him. You just wonder in amazement at how far some people (with powder blue collared shirts and thin, dorky glasses) can coast through life expecting “sorry” and “It’s probably nothing” to cure all and satisfy their inner-Libras (we’re pleasers, I’m told). When I first heard about Jayson Blair, besides being horrified for the way it made the race look, I was shocked that so many smart people could have been made to look so stupid. Now, I know how. Didn’t Stephen Glass get his own tour of the Seattle Times in fifth grade?!?

 

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