MOVIE REVIEW: Anton Corbijn’s The American a beautiful but disappointing adaptation of A Very Private Gentleman

If you’ve read Martin Booth’s decadent novel A Very Private Gentleman, George Clooney seems like perfect casting of the dubious main character for the film adaptation The American (which opened at the #1 spot over Labor Day Weekend). Unfortunately the screenplay (by Rowan Joffe) and style fail the book’s rich potential, and Clooney loses his spark as he trades in his charm for a constant brood.

Signor Farfalla is struggling with his criminal and unstable life choice. He is a craftsman of unidentifiable guns for assassins, and must flit from location to location fulfilling jobs that will shape the course of history.

But the film The American doesn’t explain any of that to the audience. It’s a movie about minimalism, silence, and breathtaking landscape shots, but it isn’t about subtlety or complexities, or very much about storytelling. The theme of Clooney’s Farfalla as an American in a small Italian city is hammered home in a million tiresome ways, while still managing to reveal none of the fascinating motivations and excuses Farfalla uses for his actions. While the book culls the reader with a rich language as thick and sweet at the wild honey he so decadantly seeks out from life, the movie requires us to read it all on Clooney’s strained face. 

And that’s the problem. His character is supposed to be brooding, but he broods too much. He is without the cocktail of emotions His charater is heavy with the weight of the truth of the way he’s lived his life, but while in the book he’s still very hungry for life, George’s character is resigned. In what could have been a breathtakingly rich character study, we are only given broad strokes, the gist of him, and barely even that. The audience needs a glimpse inside his head in the form of a delicate, well-timed narration (much like Clooney’s 2009 success Up in the Air).

In many ways The American represents a type of growth for American cinema, especially considering it’s box office success. We desperately need a taste of quiet and paced film-making, but it’s not worth our time if we don’t come away from it with the sense of having had a profound human experience. Booth’s novel was fertile ground for an emotionally and philosophically complex artsy film, but Corbijn, who is famous for helping shape Tom Waits’ fantastical image through photography, is still working as a photographer here. He’s got tremendous talent as a picture-taker, he just needs to find his cinematic voice.

Grade: C+, 3 out of 5 stars