Steven Soderbergh

Relational Independence

The Films of Steven Soderbergh Relational Independence Steven Soderbergh’s twenty feature films present a diverse range of subject matter and formal styles. They range from his 1989 breakthrough hit Sex, Lies, and Videotape, about the sex lives of four twentysomethings, to social-problem films such as King of the Hill (1993), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Che (2008), and The Informant! (2009). Carefully stylized noir in Kafka (1991), The Underneath (1995), and The Good German (2006) contrasts with the digital-video improvisation of Full Frontal (2002), Bubble (2006), and The Girlfriend Experience (2009). In Gray’s Anatomy (1996), Spalding Gray does performance art, while Out of Sight (1998), The Limey (1999), and Solaris (2002) are genre films deconstructed by an element of modernist discontinuity. Even the cost of making his films has shown great variety, ranging from the six-figure budget for Schizopolis (1996) to the star-studded Ocean’s series blockbusters (2001, 2004, 2007) that averaged nearly one hundred million dollars to produce. 2 | Steven Soderbergh The eclecticism in Soderbergh’s movies would appear to invalidate a claim to the distinctive style typical of film authorship. Moreover, one might point to his more commercial projects as evidence of a lack of creative integrity in his work. However, I would argue for the importance of Soderbergh’s films for reasons that don’t entirely discount these critiques but rather show how the variety of his work and the commercial viability of some of his films are prominent aspects of his individual style. Soderbergh’s movies merit a closer look because of his insistence on what David Bordwell calls “art-cinema narration,” characterized by complexity and respect for the audience that have too often been lacking in the American cinema during Soderbergh’s career as a director (“Authorship” 42). Yet another reason for my interest in Soderbergh’s work has to do precisely with his movies that have made large amounts of money, in particular Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, and Ocean’s Thirteen. Rather than simply part of a strategy of making commercial projects to finance more personal films, these movies employ the utopian resolve of Hollywood narrative—an optimistic determination to overcome injustice or inequality—yet contextualize it by representing some of the social determinants of these problems in a way that resonates with large audiences without capitulating to a condescending blockbuster recipe of high-concept, digitally enhanced violence and commodified synergy. Even Soderbergh’s most commercial movies offer some of the complexity and critical challenges to viewers found in his art films. An additional characteristic of the films that Soderbergh has directed that supports an assertion of authorial control is his hands-on involvement in various aspects of their production: he has written five of his features, edited seven, and done the cinematography for eleven, including everything since Traffic. Soderbergh’s contribution to these important aspects of the filmmaking process has resulted in a large degree of thematic and formal continuity across his apparently diverse range of movies. He consistently builds stories around characters alienated from a world that values wealth, power, and self-interest, and resolution of the conflicts involving such outsider protagonists rarely takes the form of the neat, individualized responses typical of Hollywood. Although he adopts his style to fit the topic at hand, and it therefore varies as much as his subjects, the form in Soderbergh’s films often breaks through the fourth wall to create discontinuity that communicates the unconven- The Films of Steven Soderbergh | 3 tional thinking of such marginalized characters, sets up critical distance for the viewer, or uses self-reflexivity, allusion, or realism to comment on a particular narrative situation. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1963, Soderbergh has stated in interviews that he watched a lot of films growing up and that his university-professor father, Peter Soderbergh, “would let me see anything ” (Kaufman 30). Steven showed a talent for drawing, and at age fourteen, his dad enrolled him in an animation class at Louisiana State University. The younger Soderbergh soon began shooting live-action films and continued making movies through high school. At seventeen, he bypassed college and moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for several years as a screenwriter and editor. An editing job on a music video for the British rock group Yes led to an offer to make a documentary for the band, 9021Live (1986), that was nominated for a...