George Clooney (12 page)

Clooney's decision to be in an episode of
South Park
this same year (1997) and more precisely to take the part of Sparky, Big Gay Al's dog, suggests not just a liking for the show but also a delight in playing with his media image. Rather than taking the kind of celebrity role associated with shows like
The Simpsons
, to associate himself with a show still in its infancy and particularly in a subservient role as a barking dog reflects decisions he has made on more substantial cinematic projects. A couple of years later, he voiced Doctor Gouache in
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
(Trey Parker), parodying his
ER
persona through a series of ridiculously wrong diagnoses. He is not afraid to try edgier projects, especially those that allow him to subvert audience expectations. The skit he filmed with the cast of
Modern Family
shown at the 2010 Emmy Award ceremony still shows a willingness not to take gossip about himself too seriously, with the final shot of him in bed with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet, leading to the line “I've gotta get a film,” delivered in an exaggeratedly low pitch to accentuate his heterosexual credentials.

A bigger problem for
Batman and Robin
is not so much a denial of a gay subtext as the fact that the character of Robin is at best superfluous and at
worst annoying and egotistical in a narrative that suffers from too many peripheral characters distracting us from the hero. Here we have lightweight villains and an insubstantial helper, who adds little to the plot. The comic-strip Robin was added to attract a wider demographic (children), and there is the sense here too that a family audience (rather than a gay one) is being targeted but ironically by means of an unattractive figure, representing moaning teenagers.

Clooney's acting style when on camera as Bruce Wayne is dominated by the same facial and body positioning: looking down, starting to speak, stopping and looking up with his head still tilted down, as when he is explaining to Robin (and us) about Freeze's backstory. In scenes opposite Alfred, he is often framed in slightly low angle, like a doctor looking down at a patient, and there is still quite a bit of
ER
posture and emotional range here (Clooney was working on the two projects at the same time). Even when he is later explaining to Robin about Alfred's condition, there are the same half-smiles, which seem inappropriate here, and when asked how he knows about this, he simply states “I can tell.” Walking outside with Alfred, Clooney walks with his hands clasped in front of him with the solemn, reserved demeanor of someone attending a funeral. This may reflect the serious nature of Alfred's condition but it is sequences like this that make Wayne hard to engage with. Even though his name is in the title, the character of Batman (or his alter ego as Bruce Wayne) does not dominate the screen, either in time or in manner when he is present. This is not Clooney's fault: the part is just not fleshed out enough to engage and sustain audience sympathy.

He wears black at all times—a turtleneck sweater, a tuxedo to the opening of the observatory, and even at the climax when Alfred faces death, he is in a hooded sweatshirt. However, the script does not allow us to see anything of a Hamlet-style darker psychology behind such clothing choices. The only broadening of his emotional life we are given is in relation to Robin's expressions of frustration and some heavy-handed sentiments about notions of family (letting Robin make his own mistakes and allowing Barbara to stay—“after all, she's family”). In this, Clooney is basically acting as a surrogate father to his nearest characters. He is showing a protective, slightly world-weary approach to them, and like a parent with a rebellious teen must bring his young charge (Robin) back into the family fold with some controlled risk taking and sharing of responsibility.

Batman's disabling of Robin's bike, preventing him from making a dangerous jump in pursuit of Freeze, feels like a parent concerned by (and possibly overreacting to) his offspring undertaking unnecessarily
dangerous risks. The subsequent dialogue between the two reads like a parent laying down house rules, which the youngster must follow “if you want to stay in this house and on the team.” However, the positive elements of Clooney's character are dissipated by the petulance in Robin, storming off not once but twice, declaring “I'm going solo,” and later marching off again after calling Batman jealous over Poison Ivy.

Batman momentarily doubts whether he is being “pig-headed” about this and asks Alfred's advice, but the older man can provide only some strangely high-flown rhetoric (“What is Batman if not an effort to master the chaos that sweeps our world?” and later “Not all heroes wear masks”). The cartoonish context of the film as a whole renders such philosophizing fairly ridiculous. Like Robin, his female parallel, Barbara, also looks like she needs some paternal protection as we see her taking bets with groups of bikers and groups of gangs, dressed like Droog-wannabes from Kubrick's
A Clockwork Orange
(1971).

Clooney's character has three visionary flashbacks of himself as a boy being looked after by Alfred (he looks off-camera and we cut to a dissolve of Alfred picking him up when he falls, a later bedtime story, and a final projected vision on a window, where he is putting flowers on his parents' grave). These intrusive snapshots of the only family life he has known do not sit well with Barbara's description of freeing her uncle from “this dismal life of servitude.” Although Wayne asks Alfred later whether he regrets working all his life for the Wayne family, the loyal butler denies this. There is, nonetheless, the residue of a baronial manner here. Wayne is a multimillionaire and perhaps his acts of philanthropy reflect guilt about how he derives his wealth. However, the occasional arresting shot (like the snapshot of the Riddler's costume in the Criminal Property Locker at Arkham Asylum) does not make up for the emotional neutrality of the film as a whole. When Batman, Robin, and Batgirl put their hands together at the end, it feels less like the beginning of a Three Musketeer-style adventure and more like the conclusion of a business meeting.

The fact that in this the fourth incarnation of the series, we have the third different actor playing the part reflects the anonymity of the role of Batman. Unlike the Bond franchise, where individual actors can bring some new elements to the role, it is much more difficult with the dramatic realization of Batman. With 90 percent of the body covered by a rubber suit, it is the costume and the gadgets that dominate (the latter a similar distraction with Bond sometimes). There is a limit to how much emotion you can exude from lips and cheekbones alone. Clooney does have an edge here however with a distinctive voice, reflected in his TV commercials (see chapter 9).

Batman and Robin
signals a shift away from a more adversarial focus on Batman and a single villain to a diversification of subsidiary roles, with two goodies (Robin and Batgirl) and two baddies (Freeze, Poison Ivy, and even a further sidekick, the feral Bane), the effect of which is a loss of narrative focus and of a greater sense of the serial over the climactic event. If Batman vanquishes one opponent, another will appear a few minutes later.

Critically, the film fared poorly, and certainly given the hopes of the studio it was not the blockbuster it might have been. Perhaps denigrating one's own work and playing up its camp qualities is the best that Clooney can do. Certainly, compared to other films considered in this book, although it made more money than almost any of them, in terms of quality, even on its own generic terms, it represents a low point in Clooney's career that he did well to escape from. Reports of the death of the Batman franchise were premature, but it did not really recover until eight years later with Christopher Nolan's
Batman Begins
(2005) and especially
The Dark Knight
(2008). However, it did show Clooney what being part of a franchise could mean for his career. A more successful reception of the film might have meant making the difficult choice of whether to stay in a role that was lucrative but limiting as an actor. As it was, the decision to move on to other projects was not hard to take.

The film has a strong Bond-like feel in its action sequences, criminality filling the void of post–Cold War politics and minimal concern with character motivation. Villains are either rogue Russian generals, like Kodoroff (Alexander Baluyev), or dissident Europeans, like Dusan Gavrich (Marcel Iures), whose political motivation is more hazy than their emotional reaction to personal losses in war. Despite mentions of Sarajevo or Bosnia, there is no attempt to educate viewers about European politics: it is strictly an otherland of political infighting and double-dealing.

The opening Bond-style prologue, showing the theft of the nuclear device, blends
Harry Potter
-like anachronisms in the steam train with the gratuitous spectacle of shadowy figures jumping from one train to another. Several other Bond films also dramatize the attempt to steal
nuclear weapons, like
Thunderball
(Terence Young, 1965), particularly in a destabilized former Soviet Union through the course of the 1990s. The pairing of Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman) and Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) adds to this impression of a Bond-like universe. Initially, Kelly appears to have some elements of strength in her character, like her civilian rank, her title, the ability to speak Russian, and her political knowledge. However, as soon as she shares the same screen space as Devoe, her character visibly wilts, becoming instantly deferential to his assertive manner and forceful personality. Kelly's breaking into Russian in Vienna feels like Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) in
The Spy Who Loved Me
(Lewis Gilbert, 1977), asserting at every opportunity the equality of women, but here she is still excluded from the nods and winks exchanged between Devoe and Dimitri (Armin Mueller-Stahl).

Kelly's presentation is instantly derailed by Devoe's fairly rude interruption, which reduces her to a breathless nervousness. There is a sense of playful one-upmanship about his reading of the photos on display, which at least suggests insensitivity in undermining Kelly's position. If a more romantic relationship were to develop in the film, it would have to accommodate such awkward scenes and may be one reason why it does not happen. He apologizes with “my enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of me,” but it is delivered with a smirk and by then the damage to her on-screen credibility is already done. Rotating camera movement around the characters in the offices does not conceal that their lives are essentially static; i.e., Kelly's area of expertise is at some distance from the action.

Theoretically, he is her “military liaison,” i.e., subordinate to her in political and management terms but given relatively free rein in the theater of combat. The problem is that after this first presentation, the relationship is not playful or combative: Devoe takes charge and Kelly defers. On the phone and in person in her office, Kelly tries to assert authority, issuing commands, but she seems weak and hesitant in dialogue with Devoe. At the mention of a suspect's name, he takes charge, literally grabbing the phone, and from this point, he is the one driving the investigation forward. Even though she is the one who has the ear of the president, we almost forget her superior position, until Devoe has to wait for clearance from her before launching the helicopter raid into Russian airspace. There seems little real steel in her character.

On the plane ride they share, there are several instances of Clooney looking down and half smiling, as if at some private thought or joke. For some viewers, such gestures suggest sweetness and an inner life; for others, this may convey alienating smugness. Clooney's subsequent films
represent a struggle to escape the trap of such gestures, to embrace a wider emotional life of his characters and deny viewers the potential reading of his character as patronizing.

Devoe's first appearance in the film, after 22 minutes, presents him as a rule breaker, defending his arrest for a brawl, possible involvement with a prostitute, and inappropriate use of taxpayers' money in negotiating with an arms dealer. He seems to be a character that has to apologize or at least explain his actions fairly regularly as he does so effectively. The lone hero, unorthodox but effective, again aligns him with the early and late Bond narratives. His military rank, lieutenant colonel, and the fact that he is in the Special Forces, may explain his arrogant self-confidence but makes him quite difficult to work with as he assumes command of any situation of which he is a part.

In the sequence in Schumacher's palatial Viennese offices, he enters the lair of the enemy with a
Mission Impossible
-style deadline, as a computer identifies (with unbelievable slowness) his face from a CCTV picture. This device appears in films like
No Way Out
(Roger Donaldson, 1987), which also uses a male lead as a high-ranking American officer, Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner), unmasking corruption, but here it seems quite contrived and more a prompt for Devoe to show his physicality in smashing Schumacher's face in a table. As soon as violence occurs, Kelly becomes a stereotypical screaming victim who must be protected, although her reaction of terror is genuine because he has not told her his plan of action. Her skills are more refined, hacking into the computers; his methods are blunter, pulling a gun on the man and literally twisting his arm to extract information.

He takes the wheel, driving the narrative as well as their car. The car chase evokes films like
Goldeneye
(Martin Campbell, 1995), which also features a car chase in the narrow streets of a European city, St. Petersburg, and shots of cars racing parallel to one another. It also looks forward to more recent films aspiring to the Bond mantle, such as
The Bourne Identity
(Doug Liman, 2002), which has a lengthy car chase in Paris between a single hero and apparently insurmountable opponents. The close shots of German automotive engineering, Mercedes and BMWs, and the frenzied pursuit down narrow streets evoke the headlong speed of
Taxi
(Gérard Pirès, 1998) in Marseille but especially
Ronin
(John Frankenheimer, 1998), also placing American stars (playing character with backgrounds in Special Forces) alongside European minor characters but decidedly European in location with car chases in Nice and Paris.
Ronin
also uses no musical accompaniment to these scenes, except at the end of its final chase, and some actors (including Clooney) perform
their own driving or are at least visible in the car; i.e., stunt work was kept to a minimum.