FilmBlather.com

"Are you mad at me?"

Seen at the Telluride Film Festival.

Everybody loves a con man. When you hear about someone pulling an elaborate scam on some corporation or government entity, isn't there a feeling of vicarious triumph? Let me answer for you: of course there is. "Sticking it to the man" is an American tradition, whether the act is morally justifiable or not. With the possible exceptions of Jayson Blair, who was successfully painted as a pathetic figure by the very media he managed to swindle, and those who destroy the livelyhood of others (Enron execs, et al), those who perform amazing feats of deceit have the surreptitious admiration of many, even if they have not earned it.

Of course Stephen Glass, the anti-hero of the gripping and idiotically titled new movie Shattered Glass, wasn't exactly a harmless rogue. I am certain that he hurt people, both personally and professionally, throughout his abbreviated career. But he was also an interesting guy, a very, very skilled liar, and a terrific subject for a movie. Though he may disagree with me on my general view of Glass -- and in fact I know he does, since I asked him -- writer-director Billy Ray would have to concede that last point.

Oh wait -- have you never heard of Stephen Glass? I thought everyone knew who he was (maybe because I attend his alma mater), but upon asking several of my compatriots, I learned that this was not the case. Glass was the star reporter for The New Republic, an upscale political rag billing itself as "the inflight magazine of Air Force One." Turns out, however, that Glass fabricated the majority of his feature stories, some only partially, others -- like the one about a teenage hacker being sought by a fictitious software company called "Jukt Micronics" -- sewn out of whole cloth.

When beloved editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria), known for being fiercely protective of his writers, is fired, the considerably less friendly Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) is promoted to replace him. Around the same time, the hacker story runs, and a rival magazine smells something funny. Hot on the trail of a story, a journalist at Forbes Online (Steve Zahn) starts fact-checking the piece, and Glass is left desperately trying to wiggle out of seemingly certain professional doom.

Glass is played by Hayden Christiansen who is puzzlingly good in the role; puzzling because he is so laughably awful as Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Remarkably, he is playing over his age here, and he creates a character who is both fascinating and frightening, impish and seductive, sympathetic and detestable. It's a remarkable performance, almost as remarkable as that of Peter Sarsgaard, whose Chuck Lane is one of the year's most interesting heroes.

The film itself is neither a slash and burn nor a traditional biopic. Billy Ray does an intriguing thing in stubbornly refusing to allow us access into the mind of Stephen Glass. With the exception of a brief and heartwrenching moment in the final minutes, Glass is seen entirely from the point of view of others. This would normally annoy me, but I found it to be a wise decision here: a more personal exploration of someone like Glass would be unlikely to tell us anything we don't already know. The approach proves excellent for creating suspense, as well as making the title character an enigma -- in a good way.

And suspenseful it is, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. Tension mounts at the same rate that evidence mounts against Glass, and as his editor's suspicions slowly become certainties, you start to hear members of the audience squirming in their seats. This is partially thanks to the fact that while we know what is coming, the film apparently does not. More precisely, it seems to assume that we already know, but does not really hint at the truth, such that a tabula rasa viewer would see a slightly bizarre thriller in which the revelations seem to be a foregone conclusion. To the rest of us, the events unfold with a riveting dread inevitability.

At the end of the day, Stephen Glass is a tragic figure. But you have to wonder: at the height of his unearned popularity, was he having fun?