CHARLIE KAUFMAN: CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN (2002)

If we chroniquons this film, 13 years later, it is to try to unravel the mystery of CHARLIE KAUFMAN – if that was possible – before the release of his next feature film Anomalisa, February 3, 2016. Return, therefore, to CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN, where he is still “only” a screenwriter (George Clooney realizes it), to see what happens when there is no match between script and direction.

But before you start speaking of Charlie Kaufman, I need to drain out all my bile against George Clooney-director. If I love the class and the composure of the actor, I cannot stand anything its realization. I find that it has no awareness of the scope of the image, he does not know how to generate empathy (a shame for a director who merely talk about obnoxious people), or how to give rhythm to his works. He seems content to illustrate flatly (but let’s face it, with style) script with strong potential, to stage “the way” (Coen, Soderbergh, etc.) without ever finding its your own. Yet, Clooney tackles interesting topics, sometimes rich in interpretations, sometimes political – never operated with sensitivity.

If you can not really defend The Monuments Men, spreading out all of the problems above-mentioned more of a concern for the bottom regarding the idea story from the start or of the ambitions of the aesthetic reduced to zero ; we suggest, however, the effective Good Night and Good Luck, where-despite the lack of acuity of Clooney, David Strathairn takes the film to give the multiple challenges in each, and thus portray an era of a conservative and interventionist as a reflection of ours.

About CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN, he appears as an illustration, linear and very shallow potential psychologico-analytical inherent in the scripts of Charlie Kaufman. Clooney, on the contrary, Michel Gondry, and especially Spike Jonze, has no empathy for the neuroses of the author. He seems to only see him as “the guy nominated to the Oscar for the best scenario” and the opportunity of a good story… It pulls so that a good history and flange enormously on all other points, thus preventing, for example, his actors to express any subtlety, whereas we assumed it to be present in the initial script.

Because we know the writer quick to put his own personality into his scripts for better analysis of his own neuroses (less restrictive and more beneficial than a psych after all).

Thus, when one draws a parallel between the lived experience of Charlie Kaufman and the writing of the script for CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN (dating from 1997), the double meaning behind the illustration of Clooney appears to us :

Chuck Barris, is a day producer of TV shows are vulgar and the next hitman for the CIA…

But is this not a metaphor “light”of Charlie Kaufman the screenwriter is knowing absolutely talented but the pinnacle of the career is for the moment having signed a few scripts for TV series (at the time, it was not ultra-class-huh) and this light controls on the TV shows the moronic but cults and followed (The Dana Carvey Show, for the fans of Wayne’s World);

Isn’t this also a metaphor for the “dark” of the Charlie Kaufman compelled to write adaptations of a yes man for Hollywood, such as CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN , or those denied, which we do not even know the existence ?

This script is not it in the end, a way for Charlie Kaufman to express all the bitterness of his situation pre-In the skin of John Malkovich ?

“The movie appears as an illustration, linear and very shallow potential psychologico-analytical inherent in the scripts of Charlie Kaufman.”

In the pure lineage In the skin of John Malkovich, Human Nature and Adaptation ; concepts of identity, duplication, liberating death and fantasy are present in CONFESSIONS Of A DANGEROUS MAN … from this point Of view, the film ceases to be that object pretentious shot by a filmmaker in search of recognition.

Charlie Kaufman would have disavowed the film – without any bitterness or resentment against Clooney, but all the same. An index such as what his Trojan horse worked half-way.

AGREE ? NOT AGREE ?