George Clooney is one of the most recognisable faces in American cinema, and with very good reason. He’s an infuriatingly handsome man, and his enormous, chiselled face dominates the screen throughout The American. When I sit down to chat with director Anton Corbijn, I put this to him, and he agrees. ‘He can say a lot with very little script. Not many people can carry that off and keep you interested.’ It is a shame, then, that Clooney’s magic touch cannot lend more depth to this beautiful yet empty film.
The story is fairly minimal, with Clooney playing an unnamed gun mechanic, customising weapons for assassins until he is forced to hide after he becomes a target. He stays in Castel De Monte, working away on another assignment whilst avoiding the locals – all except the prostitute Clara (Violante Placido), first visiting her out of loneliness, before gradually falling in love. Sadly, little else happens, and all of the above is dragged out over 103 long minutes.
However, when something unexpected does happen, Corbijin handles it with quick, precise expertise, yet such moments are all too rare. Still, they are certainly visually efficient, and it is in this efficiency that his origins as a photographer become clear, with the film conveying his distinct vision. He shrugs at this, admitting, ‘As a photographer it is a single vision, just you and your camera, which is much easier to stay in control of. With anything that involves other people it is much harder not to lose your direction, and the more people that get involved, the harder it is.’
There is plenty of time for detailed characterisation, but Corbijn neglects this, choosing instead to keep Clooney’s character a mystery. We are not told anything about his past, yet instead of intriguing its audience, this narrative silence merely reduces our sympathy for him, and by the end, one inevitably loses interest in him and the film.
Nonetheless, The American is not wholly without merit. Corbijn uses his photographic eye to create some stunning shots – the Italian countryside has rarely looked this idyllic. It should also be said that both Clooney and his co-star Placido have real, tangible chemistry; the sex scene is especially intense, with Clooney revealing rather more than usual. I ask Corbijn about his approach to this, and he reveals, ‘I filmed it in a way that you feel sexuality rather than seeing it, which I thought was important because I know a lot of sex scenes usually don’t feel sexual… I don’t think it was easy for George, though, because he never does that in films; you don’t see many love scenes of George Clooney and definitely not a scene like this.’
Yet despite Corbijn’s clear enthusiasm for the film and the effectiveness of his visual style, these are not enough to hold one’s interest throughout. He hasn’t created something to stand up to his last film, Control, something even he admits: ‘I know that I can’t top Control in the critical sense – the recognition was so immense it is just something you can’t aim for.’ It is a shame that his expert balancing of both aesthetics and story has here been lost. This time around, Corbijn only seems to have concentrated on the former, and the result is a beautiful yet oddly cold experience.
