Economical Exposition in Michael Clayton
Exposition is a narrative term for background information about a story’s main plot or characters. Providing exposition can be a challenge without making it look like exposition.
You can always spot bad exposition, when something onscreen pulls you out of the story and makes you think, “No one acts or talks like that in the real world.” Of course, not every story element or piece of dialogue must adhere to reality, but it ought to be realistic within the context of the diegesis, or the universe of the story.
Exposition in Film: Some Examples
Exposition can take place when one character stops whatever she’s doing and explains something to another character, thereby inviting the viewer to do the same.
In The Matrix (1999), Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) halts the action for a brief moment to explain to Neo (Keanu Reeves) how the matrix and construct work. After the explanation, we return to the story.
Or exposition can happen when one person tries to convince another of something.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), two government agents visit Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). While they try to find out what the Nazis are up to in Cairo and recruit Jones for their cause, we also get a short introduction (exposition) to the adventures that lie ahead for Jones.
Last, an exposition technique not used much anymore is the pre-movie exposition, in which onscreen text explains what is happening. We see this, most famously, at the beginining of the Star Wars films and in Blade Runner (1982).
Michael Clayton and the Interview
An arguably more well-crafted exposition comes from a scene in Tony Gilroy’s legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007). Gilroy both wrote and directed this film, which marks this as his directorial debut, but it’s not his first screenplay.
The scene I’m considering is an interview around the start of Act Two. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is the top legal adviser to U/North, a gigantic chemical fertilizing company.
In the scene, Crowder is about to give an interview for the company’s internal marketing. We start off by seeing her at home rehearsing a speech (we don’t know exactly what yet). Then, Gilroy cuts to a conference room in which she sits in front of a camera crew and the interviewer with a senior partner at her side. Crowder delivers a thoughtful and serious answer to the interviewer’s first question; she seems confident and on top of the situation.
But after the first question is answered, Gilroy crosscuts between the ongoing interview and Crowder’s at-home rehearsals. In the comfort of her own private space, the character is just the opposite: nervous, fumbling with her words while trying to find the right answers to the prepared questions.
Not only do we get a great deal of exposition about Karen Crowder here — she’s a workaholic and a young rising star as the in-house legal adviser — but we also see her as a fragile and somewhat emotionally unstable woman who is working very hard to keep her facade intact.
Now, watch how it played out in the movie:
In only two minutes of screen time, Gilroy introduces Karen, sketches out her background, and reveals her complex personality: both her calm, professional side and her fragile, unstable personal side. All of this prove to be vital clues for later events.
Note how seamlessly we ease out of “exposition mode” when the secretary enters the room and interrupts the interview. Those engrossed in the film likely don’t even notice the exposition has ended.
It’s also worth noting the exposition in this scene was not created in editing; it was apparently written this way from the start.
A scene like this from Michael Clayton could have taken up much more space and time, and could have been much less elegantly told. But Gilroy’s version is economical, to the point — and most significantly perhaps, it never feels like exposition.
In the 1990s, Simon Lund Larsen was a production runner on a couple of movies, a sound engineer on others, and a producer of some. Now he works at a large toy maker in Denmark and writes in his spare time. When he is not polishing his latest post on Medium, he can be found on Twitter as @SimonLundLarsen or at SimonLundLarsen.com
