In the last five years, Ben Affleck has transitioned from romantic-comedy / faux-action-star placeholder to a lesser seen, more admirable actor / director. Perhaps it was his ability to take the reigns of Gone Baby Gone and steer it towards critical success that altered his trajectory. Perhaps he was wise enough to take advantage of a dump truck full of paychecks after his success with Good Will Hunting and sock away enough money to write himself a blank check for the future while mortgaging his reputation and credibility in the present. (How else does one explain Reindeer Games, Bounce, Pearl Harbor, Changing Lanes, and the insufferable Gigli?)
Regardless of the reasons, Affleck has emerged as a confident actor in roles that are best suited to his appearance and his demeanor. In The Town, he generated believable sympathy as Doug MacRay, and in The Company Men, a little seen film about three men living through the downsizing of a billion-dollar company, he makes us want to root for and watch the precipitous fall of Bobby Walker, a man so convinced of his security at GTX (Global Transportation Systems) that he and his wife purchase a Boston-located home that far exceeds his $120,000 salary.
Overall, the commentary within The Company Men focuses on the push/pull of capitalism and humanity. Like a number of films in the last few years, this one illustrates the enormous gap between the 1% and the 99%. In this case, James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) are the 1% while Walker (Affleck) are the 99% trying to be the 1%. As the company dissolves one of its divisions, Walker is let go and forced to face his shortcomings, the tribulations of unemployment, and the competition he faces from a younger rogue wave of MBA graduates willing to work for nothing in order to get their foot in the door.
Here, director John Wells branches a bit away from totally castigating the wealthy and observes that, with the exception of the resurgent auto industry in Detroit, this country only produces two things: consumers and business students. Here, the auteur is correct, so much so that our wealth of graduates willing to work for nothing has become a heavily-used augur to widen the gap between the rich and the poor – or upper lower middle class if we want to get all euphemisticy.
Our country’s inflated economy of education – one that has, for the most part, set aside the value of engineering, construction, the arts, and infrastructure in favor of management and capital generation – creates a veritable crawfish bucket of competition. This is doubly illustrated through the firings of Woodward and McClary. The latter – with his hundreds of millions coming from stock shares — is better off financially than the former, but both signify the elimination of senior employees with bloated salaries and experience in favor of yes-men sycophants who will toe the company line in order to keep their jobs and move vertically through the company – or another company.
An employee’s mobility is also glossed over in this film inasmuch as Woodward is encouraged to totally revamp his resume, eliminating the time he has spent in a company and focusing more on the responsibilities that he held. In other words, loyalty is a little valued commodity, whereas multitasking is coveted. This in itself connects back to the nefarious relationship between humanity and capitalism. Fortifying the bottom line and ballooning one’s salary becomes the most important objective. However, this involves trimming bloated overhead (Woodward) and eliminating naysayers and competitors (McClary).
All in all, The Company Men accurately looks at the conflicts inherent in combining friendship and business, though it might offer too harsh of a critique on the apathy it suggests resides within. Upon someone’s death – which is a nearly improbably way to die in the current day and age – Salinger avoids the funeral. Throughout, Salinger is vilified, but I’m not sure if this type of indifference and near-evil turnabout would happen outside of a Dickens novel.
Likewise, a number of the scenes are shaded with melodramatic music to remind the audience that the scenes are meant to be seen as tragic. At times, this works, but music is also a way of covering an inability to show emotion on screen. Let us see Walker ruminate over his poor financial decisions. Let us see him wallow in his crumbling hubris. We don’t need a crescendo to let us know that it’s all coming down.
