If the Dos Equis spokesman is “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” Mark Whitacre might be the most complicated. This was a man who imposed strict moral standards in his personal life and was pervasive with his unethical behavior in his professional one. Whitacre was a man who could mentally compartmentalize his life in a way that made it seem somehow principled in his mind, perpetuating the problems his faults caused to a more severe conclusion than necessary.
The director, Steven Soderbegh, paints Whitacre (Matt Damon) as a person whose biggest flaw was that he believed everyone was as intelligent, scatterbrained, and paranoid as him with brains that worked in the same incomprehensible manner. Most individuals have a certain mental stability that prevents them from the same cognitive dissidence from which he is continuously afflicted. Whitacre brought down the executives at ADM, a food manufacturing company, ironically illuminating his own inequities that would have never been uncovered if not for his conflicting conscience. “The Informant!” intriguingly raises the possibility that the shame and guilt Whitacre felt about ADM’s corruption were actually a mirror of his own internal shame derived from the inaccuracies in his personal business dealings.
Whitacre is essentially the antithesis of Don Draper, the wonderfully diverse person on “Mad Men,” played by Jon Hamm, who might be the greatest character in television history. Draper has immense integrity and loyalty that is almost a hindrance at work and yet has an extremely difficult time staying loyal to his wife and keeping his family together, while Whitacre’s character flaws are exactly reversed. Both are extraordinarily complex characters but are seen through different prisms. “Mad Men” is much more subtle, which is where its greatness lies by attaining a more authentic version of real life, with more interesting and multi-layered supporting characters. “The Informant!” has more definable and broadly written supporting characters whose complexities are not shown explicitly.
Matt Damon is being talked about as a possibility for Best Actor, and he does express the constant contradictions within this man as accurately as could be imagined. He leaves a mystery as to what his motivations are for exposing this price-fixing fraud. Are they a selfish excuse to take over the company from the beginning or are they genuine concerns that later become solely about him getting away with illegal dealings that would send most of us to jail for a very long time? The film and Damon do not say nor speculate and neither should they. Some characters have so many questions that to answer all would simply create more unanswered problems, which is precisely what makes both the character and the film so fascinating.
This might not be a perfect movie, but, as with all of Soderbergh’s films, it has a focus and understanding of its tone that is almost startling. Whether you agree with the zany nature in which the film proceeds, one must admire its ability to constantly stay within the original atmosphere that the director wishes to articulate.
Earlier this year, Soderbergh made a precise assessment of human nature with “The Girlfriend Experience,” which was a solemn, quiet, meditative film with a subject matter and filmmaking style different from “The Informant!,” exhibiting his immense range and extraordinary talent in exposing true humanity with tones going from dramatic and intense to screwball and goofy. He can make films that focus intensely on a limited number of individuals, such as in “The Informant!,” “The Girlfriend Experience,” “Erin Brockovich,” and “Out of Sight,” and others focusing on various characters centering around a singular message, like in the “Ocean’s” trilogy and “Traffic,” with a persistent journey toward perfection expressed in every frame.
“The Informant!” is never boring and is generated at a kinetic pace, even if stopping the action to examine the personalities of the supporting characters would have created a more dramatic story arch with real, unnerving, hurtful consequences. The film might be a little too light for its subject matter toward the conclusion, when he is facing serious prison time, as the blocks built around the corruption of his business dealings began to tumble around him, eventually crushing the dreams contained within his life. On second thought, it is the story of a man who simultaneously was embezzling millions of dollars and working for the FBI on a price-fixing raid while constantly lying to everyone, including himself, causing him to be given a lengthier jail sentence than any of those he exposed. Sounds like a comedy to me.
