YOU’VE GIVEN ME–GIVEN ME!–NOTHIN’ BUT SHATTERED GLASS: So I had a whole line-up of newspaper movies in the Netflix queue–His Girl Friday (utterly stellar, except for the insane creepiness of the death-penalty/suicide-attempt plot–human lives used as macguffins rather than real characters–so I can’t like this classic “remarriage comedy” even though I wanted to); Absence of Malice (better than I expected, but ultimately not that awesome, and misogynist IMO); and then Shattered Glass. It’s the story of how Stephen Glass snookered the New Republic into printing his completely fabricated stories of debauched Young Republicans (it’s hard for me to understand why this story was scandalous really–I mean, actual young Republicans act like monkeys all the time!), political memorabilia salesmen, and teenage hackers.

I got so obsessed. I mean, I watched the movie; then I immediately watched it again with the commentary track (the writer/director, and Chuck Lane, TNR editor and movie hero); then I watched the “60 Minutes” interview with Glass as he promoted his novel about a Glassine figure; then I watched the commentary again. Seriously, for about 24 hours I lived and breathed Shattered Glass.

There are ordinary reasons for this: Billy Ray, the writer/director, really understands all the different aspects of his craft. He had insightful comments on the camerawork, the framing choices, the soundtrack, the casting (although I’m super not sold on Chloe Sevigny). And the movie is set in my milieu: that part of Washington where people who are much too young have too much influence. The scene where Chloe S’s character edits another young woman’s work is brilliant, and exactly true to life. The cubicles, the faux-quirkiness of too much modern journalism… yeah. Plus, I love Peter Sarsgaard and Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures).

But there’s also a reason worth exploring as we careen toward another Lent. Shattered Glass is essentially about the divide between the public face and the private man. It’s about the opacity of the face we present to others every day, and about all the shameful secrets that face was developed to hide. How many of us can stand the thought of being seen for who we really are?

One of the more astonishing features of Catholic Christianity is its relentless insistence that God knows who you are, requires you to confess all that your public face hides, and loves you anyway.