By M
I think I am probably one of the very few people who really needed to see this movie. By now, (I mean, after Contagion, or Magic Mike) I am sure everyone would bet on this movie being bad, or at best, ok. Let’s say it’s bad so that we get that bit out of our way.
My expectations were low. I was resigned to watch it because I happen to follow Soderbergh. The interesting thing for me, however, was that T informed me today that Soderbergh has said this would be his last movie, as he has decided he is devoting his time to painting. That’s a great idea, but I’ll come back to it. The guy is 50, so I guess one could safely say that it’s unlikely he sticks to his commitment, but then, as T has explained to me (also today, the day was Soderbergh intense) that would only mean that I respect him more than what he respects himself.
That is SO true. Soderbergh has directed 36 movies according to IMDb, which is in fact over-rated, as we know they count documentaries, TV movies and cinema movies all together. But still, that is a lot. I have seen many (not all, but almost) of them, because we started with Sex, Lies and Videotape. And I contend that when one starts with Sex, Lies and Videotape then, there is no possible way we don’t follow that person for the rest of our life, no matter what he does.
If I heard someone saying ‘all the rest is bad’ I would remain silent, I confess, but I’ll think that’s unfair. I ‘like’ some of the others. Just to be snob, I’ll simply give The Girlfriend Experience as an example of those. When everyone was delirious on how good Traffic was, I thought people were on drugs. Now, I am grateful that Soderbergh has made this movie so that we understand they were NOT on drugs. Haha.
Right. So, this movie. If one has religiously followed (some permissive religion) Soderbergh until now, it’s really important that you watch this movie.
First, at some point we need to get serious about cinema, and he seriously knows what an image is. So he thinks about it, shoots it, and it’s beautiful. Through his camera, Rooney Mara doesn’t have a beautiful skin, she is a peach. On that same note: light is exactly what it is supposed to be, he makes the most of it, he doesn’t use light, he films it. So about that, we are enthusiastic and it’s great that he has decided to paint.
Second, people study long years and train a lot to be movie directors, so this is a profession, with its set of skills. And he knows them: he can direct his actors. I mean, not that any of them does any sort of amazing performance, but again, someone seems to have thought about it, and that is likely to have been Soderbergh. We learn, for instance, that Catherine Zeta-Jones has a peculiar nose, which we didn’t know before.
So the good things, that, out of experience, you would expect to find in a Soderbergh movie, are there. As a flip side, the bad things are also there: the story is convoluted to avoid being obvious. He induces you into one story (it’s true that the guys who put the trailer together did a great job) and then tells you another. The story he induces you to believe is that an innocent girl has committed a murder as a side effect of the anti-depression medication she was taking. The story he tells you is that all that is part of a murder plot motivated by war-of-sexes-kind-of-revenge and money. Of course, the problem is that while the story he induces you to believe is boring, the story he tells you is soporific. Whatever.
When you decide to watch the movie, sit in front of it, the truth is you are not really ‘alert’, right? it’s not as if you were watching Lynch. So Soderbergh sort of plays with you: a traveling all over the apartment with the close-up on the drugs, and you think “yeah ok man, we got it, the drugs are making her crazy, don’t be so obvious”, or when Catherine Zeta-Jones says “I might have some samples” you think: “Did someone actually write that or did the actors come up with it?” but then… we were wrong!!! he used images to make us think that!!! and we bought it!!!
I finally get why people don’t like movies to be spoiled.
Of course, the actual revelations are as ridiculously set up as the fake ones: the drug representative revealing that certain pharmaceutical stock-market actions went up after the crime and others down, is a joke. The fact that that the revolving doors of the restaurant “Le Cirque” revolve for half a minute so that you can properly read the name of the restaurant… oh well. And… the ending!! I will resist to comment on Jude Law going to pick up his kid to the school or on the zoom out of the psychiatric institution building. Nop. I won’t comment.
I wouldn’t recommend you watch it unless you have a priori sound reasons for it.
cucurbitacee 