TIFF’s TOGA! The Reinvention of American Comedy Review: Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright, Maria Bello
Director: Jason Reitman
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of TIFF’s TOGA! The Reinvention of American Comedy which runs from July 17th to August 29th at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For more information of this unprecedented film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

Jason Rietman’s 2005 directorial debut Thank You for Smoking is one remarkably assured film. Based on Christopher Buckley (son of the famous American conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.)’s novel of the same name, Thank You for Smoking recounts the tale of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the vice president of the Academy of Tobacco Studies which is funded by big tobacco and claims that cigarettes are safe and there is no link between them and lung cancer. Naylor is the face of the Academy, going on talk shows and talking his way out of sticky situations.

This may well be Eckhart’s finest performance because it shows more range than an actor is typically allowed to display in one character. And he goes at Nick so enthusiastically, it is impossible to see anyone else in that role.

Naylor says he talks for a living and that’s all. Why is he a lobbyist for big tobacco and not some worthy cause? Because as he also says: it pays the mortgage. It’s hard to say whether or not he actually believes what he’s saying but it doesn’t really matter. He says it so convincingly that you’d never know if he didn’t believe it and he’s not going to tell you.

Naylor begins to rethink his career choice when his son Joey (Cameron Bright) begins to take an active interest in what his father does. They begin spending more time together, something Nick treasures, and he starts helping Joey come out of his shell. At the same time, he’s faced with the fact that he is basically telling people they should smoke while knowing full well that it is deadly. He begins to twist what he does as nothing more than clever talking and it can be applied to anything, such as addressing Joey’s presumptuous (in Nick’s eyes) history essay. Nick seems to feel guilty for teaching his son the age old art of double talk, but is also proud when Joey begins to master it.

Nick’s relationship with his son is central to the story and it is through the lessons he’s teaching Joey that he learns how to be a better person in the long run (sort of). Near the end of the film, Nick is faced with a difficult decision regarding his future livelihood. He makes his decision based on something he tells Joey and figures that his son needed to see his words in action for once, instead of some ephemeral spin that ends up being meaningless at best and a lie at worst.

Eckhart is really on display here, showing equal amounts of boundless charm and bottomless depression. The sequence of events that makes Nick doubt his commitment to his job and leads to his revelation that his son and the lessons he’s teaching him are more important than anything else are extreme, like being kidnapped by anti-smoking activists and having nicotine patches slapped all over his body (which would have killed a non-smoker) or having an in-depth exposé published by a reporter he was sleeping with, but they are what was needed to shake this character out of his ego-driven mindset. Eckhart is so convincing as Nick that he disappears into the role. We aren’t watching the man who would eventually be Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight (2008) or any of the other roles he played previously or in the future. This may well be Eckhart’s finest performance because it shows more range than an actor is typically allowed to display in one character. And he goes at Nick so enthusiastically, it is impossible to see anyone else in that role.

Reitman’s direction is also a highlight of the film. Being his first film, it would have been too much to expect a style or anything innovative, but Reitman does the job well. He understands how long to hold on a scene and refreshingly isn’t afraid of a long stretch of silence. While the film is very funny, he plays the touching moments for all they’re worth without getting too sentimental. He lets his actors use their gestures and expressions as much as he lets them emote through voice. In a lot of ways, Reitman is fearless in his direction of Thank You for Smoking because he doesn’t just play it for laughs, which could have been easily done. He makes sure that he has characters that you care about, even Nick’s friends who are also lobbyists for unworthy causes like alcohol and guns. In another person’s hands, this could have been a farce that ridiculed its characters and held them in contempt. Reitman takes the road less traveled and makes his characters, most of whom are terrible people really, and makes them human. We are allowed to see the human frailties of people whose public persona is easily despised.

Reitman and Eckhart do this best when Nick is faced with a serious question from a Senate hearing. He is asked if he would give his son a cigarette on his 18^th birthday. After thinking about it, and to stay in line with everything he’s said over his career, he says that if his son wants to smoke he’ll buy him his first pack but it’s up to him to decide. The voiceover has Nick wrestling with this notion because he knows everything he’s said about smoking not being proven to be bad for one’s health is a lie and he’d really rather his son not smoke. But to not seem hypocritical, he sticks to his guns and says what he does. On his face and in his voice there is no doubt that he would do as he says. But you know that the hypothetical situation would play out differently in practice.

In a lot of ways, Reitman is fearless in his direction of Thank You for Smoking because he doesn’t just play it for laughs, which could have been easily done. He makes sure that he has characters that you care about.

With Thank You for Smoking, Jason Reitman catapulted himself into my radar of people to watch. With his subsequent films Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009) (I admit I have not caught up with his 2011 film Young Adult yet), he has cemented himself as one of my favorite young directors. His work is always fresh and unexpected. He always gets stellar performances out of his actors and seems to always make the right choices throughout the whole of his films. Debut films are often ones that directors want to be hidden, like Stanley Kubrick and his near total suppression and elimination of his first feature Fear and Desire (1952) which only recently resurfaced after Kubrick had been dead for 10 years. Thank You for Smoking is not one of those debuts. Reitman should be proud to have crafted such a magnificent film his first time out and to keep making smart, worthwhile cinema in a time when such films are underappreciated if they even get made.

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Doug Heller

Sr. Staff Film Critic

I believe film occupies a rare place as art, entertainment, historical records and pure joy. I love all films, good and bad, from every time period with an affinity to Classical Hollywood in general, but samurai, sci-fi and noir specifically. My BA is in Film Studies from Pitt and my MA is in Education. My goal is to be able to ignite a love of film in others that is similar to my own.

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