Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Great Performance: Peter Sarsgaard in "Shattered Glass" (Billy Ray, 2003)

MAN OF STEEL: SARSGAARD SHINES IN "SHATTERED"
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson


Above: Mr. Sarsgaard in heated scene from the film
 
He’s not a star and even among hardcore movie buffs, he’s only mildly popular.  Yet Peter Sarsgaard has a way of deftly handling any challenge that comes his way.  Case in point, in “Shattered Glass” he takes on a quietly complex character whose intricacies he manages to reveal, sometimes without even moving a muscle.

            That character is Chuck Lane, a real-life reporter who was the editor of The New Republic Magazine in the late 1990s.  As editor, Lane was already embattled—he was faced with leading a team of reporters who were still deeply loyal to their dismissed former boss, Michael Kelly.  But Lane faced an even greater challenge when confronting Stephen Glass, a New Republic writer whose work was built on an increasingly unstable stack of lies about computer hackers, software conglomerates, and (strangest of all) handheld urinals.

            In “Shattered Glass,” Glass himself is played by Hayden Christensen, who gamely chews the scenery as a character whose entire life is a performance.  But as Chuck, Mr. Sarsgaard takes the opposite approach.  As he listens to Mr. Christensen’s haphazard babbling, his face is often stony, even frozen.  His eyes fix firmly in one position; the corners of his mouth stay perpetually downturned. 

            Ultimately, what are truly fascinating are the complexities Mr. Sarsgaard embodies as Chuck.  With his voice a voice that sounds like a chorus of timidly plucked guitar strings, the actor captures the character’s low-key, recessive nature.  But he also reveals a firm ferocity that’s comprised of not only righteous anger, but fierce common sense.  When Glass whiningly pleads to be taken to the airport, Mr. Sarsgaard offers an irate but calmly definitive reply:

            “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

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