Shattered Glass ('03) 2003, Lions Gate

Buy it from

A Lions Gate release. Written and directed by Billy Ray; starring Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard.

The epic biography (biopic) is one of the most inherently flawed genres in Hollywood. Unlike other dramas or comedies, the biopic doesn’t only have to tell a story complete with driven characters and rising and falling action, it has to tell a story that has driven characters and rising and falling action that also correctly corresponds to the real life situations from which the material is drawn. And that is a tall order. Making interesting movies is a hard enough task for filmmakers without having additional constraints placed on them.

For this reason, the most successful biopics are usually the ones that aren’t all that biographical in the first place; the ability to place narrative structure into a subject's life allows for a much better movie. Ron Howard knew this when he made A Beautiful Mind. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsmith himself noted that only 5% of the material audiences saw in the Oscar winning film was accurate.

First time director Billy Ray's film Shattered Glass managed to buck this trend (and do so in a most entertaining fashion) by placing the emphasis in his film squarely onto the story, not the main character. It's a risky move, especially given that the 'Glass' in the title refers to the film's lead, but the more traditional way of presenting the material vastly benefits the final cut of Ray's project.

Based on the Vanity Fair article by Buzz Bissinger, Hayden Christenson stars in Shattered Glass as Stephen Glass, a young writer on staff at The New Republic. Glass is on the fast track to a successful career in the world of journalism. Having written for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, and Rolling Stone as well as The New Republic, Glass' stories were lively works that had an eye for extreme detail. The only trouble with his pieces was that the majority of them were works of complete fiction. Ray's camera follows Glass as his world comes crumbling down around him.

Besides the captivating story at its core, Shattered Glass has two other great features working in its favor: excellent performances by Christensen and co-star, Peter Sarsgaard.

Starring in movies that George Lucas has directed can occasionally tilt America's perception in the wrong direction about whether a given actor can perform and Christensen is probably the poster child for this phenomenon. Delivering an uneven performance (with lots of help from poor editing and direction) in Lucas' Star Wars Episode 2, it came as something of a surprise to me to see Christensen digging into his role with the ferocity that he did, perfectly capturing the worminess of Glass' character and his pathological need to belong. Sarsgaard plays Glass' emotional opposite, The New Republic's new editor, Chuck Lane. Determined, by-the-book and unwilling to tolerate any lapses in judgment, it is Lane who ultimately faces the decision of what to do about Glass' chicanery.

Shattered Glass is the extreme rarity, an interesting and entertaining biopic. I truly hope that Ray's success in Shattered Glass will get more directors to start crafting their biopics with the story at the forefront of the project instead of the characters. This is well worth seeing.

chris neumer

yes, it's true: Since the events of this movie occurred, Stephen Glass has written a "novel" about a young man who writes false articles for national magazines.