The dark side of capitalism in "Michael Clayton" and "American Gangster"
I saw two great movies at the theater this week: "Michael Clayton" and "American Gangster." Although I felt "Michael Clayton" was the better overall film in terms of structure, pace, writing, and direction, "American Gangster" allows Denzel Washington to deliver the performance of his career. I believe he deserves an Oscar for his portrayal of Frank Lucas, the notorious Harlem heroin dealer from the 1960's and 1970's (I also think Ruby Dee deserves an Oscar for her performance as Frank's mother).
The film depicts the rise of Lucas from obscurity to the height of the drug trade in Harlem; the screenplay is based on this New York Magazine article from 2000, with an interesting follow-up article here (don't read either one if you haven't seen the movie). He builds his own personal heroin empire through hard work, innovation, networking, and clever decision-making, just like any other successful businessman would. He's the ultimate entrepreneur, rising from hardscrabble poverty in the hills of North Carolina to become one of the most successful drug kingpins New York had ever seen. The point about entrepreneurship is made a couple of times in the film, with quotes like these:
The man I worked for had one of the biggest companies in New York City. He didn't own his own company. White man owned it, so they owned him. Nobody owns me, though.
This is my home. My country. Frank Lucas don't run from nobody. This is America.
This is my home. This is where my business is, my wife, my mother, my family. This is my country, I ain't goin' nowhere.
Throughout the film, Lucas is portrayed not so much as a criminal or a gangster, but as someone simply running a business that he built from scratch. It's powerful stuff, and it works very well as an allegory about modern American capitalism. In fact, the capitalism in the film dovetails exactly with the machinery and business of the Vietnam War, making what I think is an indirect statement about the kind of capitalism that profits from death. Whether the boardroom is made up of heroin dealers or directors of General Dynamics, both groups profit from the machinery of war and the politics of death. Although "American Gangster" doesn't say it in so many words, it strikes me that the film is saying there isn't a hair's breadth of distinction between corporate war profiteers and heroin dealers.
"Michael Clayton," on the other hand, tells the story of a man who seems like a gangster but isn't. George Clooney portrays an employee of a law firm whose job is to "fix" problems. He's sort of an ethical, non-violent version of Harvey Keitel's character in "Pulp Fiction" (as one character in the film says, "We aren't lawyers -- we're janitors."). The story of that film revolves around the largest client of Clayton's law firm, an ADM-like company accused of poisoning hundreds of people. Although Clayton himself is one of the good guys, the giant corporate client of his law firm is just as dark and evil as any heroin dealer ever dreamed of being. In fact, the corporation portrayed in "Michael Clayton" probably killed a lot more people than Frank Lucas and his heroin ever did.
The juxtaposition of my seeing these two films within the same week is purely coincidence, but the messages of both seem to be of a piece: the flavor of unaccountable capitalism so blindly worshiped in this country has a destructive, dark side which requires constant vigilance to keep in check.
If Ken Lay and Frank Lucas had ever met, I think they would have gotten along famously.