Shattered Glass
by Anne Gilbert

The poster for Shattered Glass will never be the most eye-catching one at the multiplex, despite the larger-than-life view it offers of Hayden Christensen's face. It is subtle and pretty easily dismissed, but there is some interesting stuff there, if you care to look for it. Christensen's face might be unassuming, but it is still charming; he may be expressionless, but there is the briefest hit of a smirk toying with the side of his lips; and then there is the starburst of fractures in the lens of this glasses. The effect is quiet, but it is a surprisingly perceptive reflection of the film itself. Shattered Glass is hardly dynamic or fast paced, but it is a riveting character study, a tense morality play, and a scratch on the surface of the narcissism and desperation that consumed one young journalist.

Though he now rates inevitable comparisons to the slightly more timely case of Jayson Blair, when Stephen Glass came to fame in 1998, he was quite unrivaled in the journalism world for either his sheer audacity or his sheer stupidity. As an associate editor for The New Republic, with all of its snooty self importance and pretentiously impeccable reputation, and a freelance writer for like magazines (George , Rolling Stone , Harper's), Stephen Glass was young, talented, and on top of his game, until Adam Penenberg, a reporter for Forbes Digital Tool began to check on Glass's story. His carefully crafted mystique could not hold the scrutiny, and Glass was quickly revealed to have fabricated, in three years at The New Republic, most of his stories, in whole or in part.

Considering that this fraudulent exercise is Glass's claim to fame, Shattered Glass is not a film of mystery or of slow discovery; at least, not one by the audience. Instead, the pleasure, and disbelief, it offers is in the contradictory, baffling portrait of a young man who seemed to believe that he could get away with this, even that he was doing nothing wrong. Simply knowing that he is lying from day one makes his earnest, eager demeanor and early victories at the magazine that much more daring and fascinating. And understanding how pervasive his lies were makes the picture wickedly funny to watch, as everyone -- even dogged reporters from a rival publication -- continues to believe that the fraud was pulled on The New Republic, not by a member of its editorial staff.

As portrayed by Christensen, Glass is a mass of neuroses, contradictions, and brilliance. It would have been simple to cast him as a devious kid, utterly lacking in morals and willing to do anything to achieve fame and power. But the Glass that appears onscreen is far more complex, not to mention infinitely more interesting than a two-dimensional villain. He is compulsively self-deprecating: “It's stupid; I don't even know if I am going to finish it,” he says, after pitching a story with an elaborate performance that reduces his coworkers to veritable groupies. This Glass is desperate to be liked, casting himself as an unworthy stray dog to his friends and colleagues so that he is in a position to beg for scraps of their affection. He routinely asks, “Are you mad at me?” and actually seems to believe that he can sweep all his indiscretions away with a genuine apology and an admission of some fraction of his guilt. Even as his complicity becomes increasingly clear, he cannot stop spinning tales, creating increasingly elaborate, and obviously fake, excuses and rationales. His editor, Charles Lane , as he ruthlessly presses Stephen for details and specifics to prove either his guilt or his innocence, finally has to shake him and demand that he “stop pitching.” Stephen simply cannot turn off his desperate need to be liked.

Shattered Glass was based on a Vanity Fair article, and chronicles the intricacies of the news world. As such, it maintains a very “just the facts, ma'am” mentality, for both better and worse. Other characters fade into the background behind Glass, reducing many of them to bland supporting roles with no discernible purpose. This is especially true for Glass's coworkers, Amy the pushover (Melanie Lynskey) and Caitlin Avey (Chloë Sevigny), a devoted but inexplicably shrewish office diva. Steve Zahn, as the shrewd Penenberg, punching holes in Glass's fictional tale of computer hackers, has the advantage of a plucky, comedic role, but he is nevertheless just a vague outline of a full person. Only slightly more well rounded are Glass's editors. Hank Azaria's Michael Kelly, the veteran editor fired from The New Republic before Glass's scandal broke is, by both description and depiction, a great editor: he fights for his writers, defending them against the management and angry subjects. As Kelly, Azaria is eminently competent, ethical and paternalistic; he is the idealized and engaging father figure of Glass's adult world. His replacement is Charles Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), promoted from the ranks of the other writers because he will presumably be more willing to toe the party line in corporate politics. Lane is a cut-and-dried family man, not as glamorous or well liked as Glass around The New Republic, but Sarsgaard still manages to infuse him with both an uncomfortable hesitation as he takes over his new position and a vitriolic anger as he recognizes that he has been conned in the worst possible way. It is a largely thankless role, but Sarsgaard shows unusual adroitness in making him a vivid personality.

The film does little to delve into the motivations or underlying psychoses that went into Glass's fabrication of the articles. There are brief hints about the pressures of his family, and the time spent in Glass's former high school, where he has now returned in order to play hero to a group of teenage reporter wannabes, indicate that Glass was driven by some long standing need to impress, to be appreciated and revered. But in fact, there is no real reason or justification offered as to why Glass lied so thoroughly and publicly, as to what compelled him to perpetrate so public and complete a crime, or even if he thought he could ever get away with it. On the one hand, this lack of motivating factors is refreshing: it keeps the film free of supposition, speculation and psychobabble. On the other hand, however, there is little to the film that is not part of the common lore surrounding Glass's notoriety. It is about the discovery of what Glass did, rather than why. This is an interesting choice, and one that is adept at raising more questions than it is capable of answering, but it makes for a film that is not particularly glamorous or dynamic, more of a languid uncovering of layers upon layers of contradiction and complexity.

As a character study, Shattered Glass is among the finest; as an independent narrative, however, it ranks somewhat lower on the scale. It is languid, thought provoking and compulsively interesting, but, much like its poster, it won't be the most exciting film at the multiplex.

©2003 Anne Gilbert
CineScene