Shattered Glass

How entertaining should it be, really? A young writer at a prestigious policy magazine fabricates some articles, gets caught, and creates a crisis for a young managing editor who hasn't yet won the loyalty of his staff. If this weren't the incredibly true story of Stephen Glass –– the real-life writer for The New Republic, whose sensational stories established him as one of the hottest young writers in America before his lies were exposed – the movie never would have been made. That the movie Shattered Glass works as a taut thriller and terrifying character drama is a tribute to the fine writing, acting, and directing. While it was on screen, it was thoroughly captivating entertainment, but once the movie was over, it left me with many questions unanswered, and many more unasked.

The movie covers the brief span of time between two critical firings: former New Republic editor, Michael Kelly, and Stephen Glass. Glass is the youngest contributing editor on an unusually young staff. He tells us in the opening that the secret to his career is two-fold: modesty in his professional life and a willingness to see the reader's needs within the story. By the end of the movie, we see how both qualities have ruined him. Glass has a fine art for extrapolating small details into a compelling story, regardless of the veracity of that narrative. The plausibility of his tales, combined with his willingness to please his audience and lack of presumption, mean that his research is rarely questioned. Glass, played subtly by Hayden Christensen, tells everyone exactly what they want to hear, responding timidly, "Are you mad at me?" when anyone comes close to questioning his fictions. The movie portrays Glass not so much as an unethical journalist, than as a pathological liar and crafty self-promoter. When the carefully constructed lies begins to fall apart around him, the collapse of Glass's personality is truly terrifying.

The movie takes on many issues here, and the most compelling of the movie's subplots involves the ascension of new managing editor, Charles Lane, played with the right balance of leadership and vulnerability by Peter Sarsgaard. After former editor Kelly was fired by the publisher for political reasons, Lane finds himself with a staff fiercely loyal to Kelly and on the verge of mutiny. The crisis with the popular Glass strains the office even further. The movie does a great job of showing how difficult it was to prosecute the truth of Glass's reporting while also fulfilling his role as advocate for his writers. The way that Glass systematically exhausts Lane's favor and forces Lane to refuse Glass any further sympathy is heartbreaking.

The movie does leave many questions open, and as a result, this is a movie that I find myself still thinking about days after seeing it. The movie never really addresses the underlying causes of Glass's behavior. It somewhat suggests that Glass broke under the stress of trying to manage a writing career while attending law school, but his fabrications and lies began long before his graduate studies. Was Glass nothing more than a social climber? The movie also suggests so, showing Glass courting successively more prestigious publications, while actively denying his ambitions to his colleagues. And yet, when Glass is exposed as a fraud, he continues to dissemble, destroying his career in the process, rejecting opportunities to repent and rehabilitate his reputation.

The most frightening aspect of the film is its most unsolved:– the gap between research and reporting. The movie was released the same year as the Jayson Blair scandal and reports on journalists being paid by the Bush administration to repeat government opinions as news. The Glass scandal nearly sunk The New Republic and permanently damaged its reputation, but the movie never really addresses how these kinds of scandals come to pass. Michael Kelly is practically canonized here, and when the characters realize that most of Glass's falsifications happened under Kelly's editorship, the movie quickly changes the subject, as if afraid of the implications. If the movie has any lingering conclusions to make, it is to shatter trust in those whose words seem so polished and whose ideas seem so sure, and to expose them as flawed human beings in a flawed system.