The renowned film director Martin Scorsese once said that Alfred Hitchcock did not make suspense movies; he made movies about sin, guilt, and the search for redemption.
Something similar could be said about “Jay Kelly” (released in some theaters last month, and on Netflix Dec. 4), which stars George Clooney as a movie star on a soul-searching trip. It is not a film about a movie star, but rather a two-hour meditation on the words of Christ in the Gospel of Mark: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
Thanks to a brilliantly written screenplay and impressive acting, “Jay Kelly” may qualify as one of the great examinations of conscience in world cinema — right up there with Fellini’s “8 1/2,” Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty,” and Zinnemann’s “A Man for All Seasons.” It is an inner adventure movie, a Dante-esque epic — episodic in form, pastoral in intention, and Catholic in its universality and cosmic reach.
Yet it also manages to be a very personal film about a soul under duress and at mortal risk — just like us.
Jay is a popular Hollywood star deciding whether to continue performing in the fanciful myth he has made of his life and career, or finally become a real person by getting rid of all the inner clutter: the artifice, presumptions, projections, and denials that come with being a Hollywood movie star. He must decide if he has the courage to face up to who he has become, and in the words of the writer, James Baldwin, find the guts to “Smell his own stink.”
It’s not an easy thing for any of us to do, but it’s the only way to break free from the half-truths and excuses we are constantly telling ourselves and inflicting upon others. One of the reasons Jay’s moral crises hit us so hard is that he (like George Clooney, himself) is the kind of person we would like to be, a rich and handsome person who lives a pleasant and exemplary life. Or at least it seems that way, until we begin to take a long, hard look at his life.
Once that happens to Clooney’s character, the movie takes off into unexplored territory. We begin to see Jay’s struggle to break free from the celebrity success myth that has swallowed him whole. In almost every scene a lie is told, a humble brag is exposed, a deceit revealed, or a self-serving half-truth repeated. We see broken relationships and shattered lives, the neglected children and the lovers left behind, friends turned into acquaintances and all the failed marriages.
Fame, it turns out, is every bit of the nightmare it’s been said to be. Fame makes it more difficult to discern reality from illusion, and so in our culture of hype, hustle, and constant self-promotion, it’s very hard for any of us to really be honest people — whether we work in the entertainment industry or not.
At one point, Jay’s manager (played by Adam Sandler) tells Jay that “we are all Jay Kellys at one time or another, and in one form or another.”
He could have added: “Or we work for him. Or we were once married to him. Jay is everywhere. He is the ubiquitous American everyman, the rich and famous version of Willy Lowman, our shadow and our brother. And we are his hypocrite audience, his witnesses, enablers, collaborators, and sometimes, even his soul’s assassins.”
This love/hate relationship between the star and his fans is illustrated during Jay’s trip to Tuscany on the train from Paris. After he improvises a charming meet-and-greet with all the passengers in the train car, one of the passengers asks a companion, “What is the secret to his charm?”
“He has the permission to be human that was taken away from the rest of us years ago,” the companion answers.
It is a telling observation in a film with many telling observations. But this one cuts to a profound source of Jay’s problems: Jay may have succeeded in being loved and desired by others, but he never learned to love other people back. Thomas Merton once wrote that a saint is not a person who is famous for being holy but an unknown person who sees the holiness in everyone else.” Given this definition, Jay gets saintlier as his career implodes.
As he looks back on his life’s choices, Jay is forced to admit to himself that at every significant crossroad, he chose self-interest over self-sacrifice, ambition over friendship, and fame over family.
As he does, his heart begins to break and his soul begins to soften, offering the audience a chance to suffer his regrets with him and remember our own regrets, perhaps breaking our own hearts, too.
At the climax of the film, Jay’s Italian hosts project a highlight reel of his greatest performances on the stage of a beautiful opera house. He has come to some sober conclusions about himself by now, and here we see every joy, loss, guilt, and grace he’s ever experienced play across the features of George Clooney’s silent face. It is a privileged cinematic moment, only this time the sentimentality is muted by a richer, deeper knowledge of what it took to get here.
I had the privilege to watch “Jay Kelly” at a small theater screening in November, so I worry this sequence may not register on your home TV screen with the same power. But I suggest you give it the chance.
