Thank You For Smoking
Nobody smokes in this film. At least, I never saw it. The closest we get are old advertisements shilling the medical value of one cigarette brand over another, a vague haze in some of the indoor scenes, and a nicotine tinge to the film processing.
Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart, aka Harvey Dent/Two-Face) is a PR representative for the tobacco industry. His talent is debate, and his secret is that he doesn’t really care about his topic, his opponent, or the outcome of his argument. All that he cares about is that he not lose. For an industry with the bulk of public opinion against them, not losing is about as good a defense as Big Tobacco could want.
For Naylor’s part, there’s no more challenging or rewarding an argument than defending an indefensible position. It’s not that he’s amoral. It’s true that he meets with representatives of the alcohol and firearms lobbies, and jokes with them about which of their products kills the most Americans on a day-to-day basis. (Of the three, it’s cigarettes by a wide margin.) Throughout the movie, his actions, reactions, and manner portray him as warm, fascinated with life, even idealistic. It’s more that he feels that every perspective, even and perhaps especially the most ludicrous or amoral, needs an equal airing. So on the one hand this job allows him to defend some of the least loved opinions on the planet, and on the other the sheer impossibility of the task gives him a thrill not unlike a nicotine high.
The story skips along at a comfortable pace, and progresses logically from the characters’ personalities. The cast is mostly character actors, well-chosen and well-performed. The script is witty and nuanced, much of the dialog delivered either directly to camera or in voiceover. The cinematography is some of the best in recent years.
There are revelations later in the film which, as the movie currently stands, feel like they come from nowhere. Associated with those revelations are some apparently profound changes that, to the audience, never feel like changes at all.
It comes back to the cigarette thing; why, in this of all movies, do we never witness the characters smoking? Not even representatives of Big Tobacco? And as far as sacrifices go, is it possible to miss something that we’ve never known?
This is a smart movie. It avoids getting trapped in the specifics of its subject matter, preferring to observe characters, their motivations, and the way they present their claims, both to each other and to themselves. The cigarettes are there to give the characters something to form opinions and talk about. The story is there to give the characters a canvas in which to interact and explore their dynamics.
If you’ve seen the TV show Better off Ted, that is to Thank You For Smoking what Parker Lewis Can’t Lose is to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That is to say, it’s a TV adaptation in all but name. The movie lacks the smug desperation of the TV show, probably for the better.