Tag Archives: Steven Soderbergh

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 218 – Contagion

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We may be living under lockdown conditions, but no virus can stop us, and to prove it we’re taking on Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 thriller Contagion, about a virus that rips through every country on Earth, the scientific work to stop it, and the social decay that it leaves in its wake. Suggested as a podcast by an irony-seeking Mike, it backfires as it actually just frightens him.

At least, for a while. We think about the film in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic currently upon us, of course, praising what we recognise in the film’s imagined crisis, remarking upon the differences. Much of what it depicts feels very true to life, and it strongly evokes panic and a sense of uncertainty; on the other hand, the difference less than a decade makes is thrown into sharp relief with the film’s essentially competent and well-intentioned government response to the disease, a far cry from the lies and bluster being spouted by certain American presidents today – something that would have been not only unimaginable but laughable at the time of the film’s release. José notes that a high proportion of the public worry in our current outbreak comes down to its economic effects, which again, Contagion does not imagine as even a minor point.

It’s a well-made film, tightly plotted and paced, juggling several plots and sets of characters, understanding keenly how and when to jump between them, and its staging, editing and cinematography bring to life the paranoia of living in a society in which any surface innocently touched by any stranger’s hand could spread a deadly disease, and the fear and confusion engendered by a lack of trust in the government and loud countervailing voices. Contagion uses its characters and scenes as representative of ideas as much as, or more than, things in and of themselves, which Mike argues leaves it emotionally distant and overly simplistic – though there’s plenty of room for debate, particularly over Matt Damon’s performance.

All in all, Contagion is an impressive piece of thriller fiction whose successes and failures are both given oxygen in the light of very recent developments. If you watch it, be prepared to be made even more paranoid than you currently are… because the world we’re living in now is even more insane.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies 55 – Unsane

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A low-budget psychological thriller, Unsane is a less involving film than its subject matter and star deserve. Claire Foy is extraordinarily powerful as a paranoid prisoner of mental trauma inflicted on her by a stalker and bureaucratic malfeasance, distressed, knowing, sarcastic, resistant. The film fails her in other areas but is an intriguing experiment nonetheless. We find much to discuss, including its cinematography, relationship to termite art, Soderbergh’s recent efforts, potential audiences and whether the lighting of black characters in this film is inherently racist.

Recorded on 1st April 2018.

 

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José Arroyo and Michael Glass of Writing About Film

 

Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2017)

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Logan Lucky: a great performance from Daniel Craig, amiable ones from the rest of the starry cast (Hilary Swank, Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katie Holmes, Seth McFarlane); every shot is something worth looking at; there are at least a trio of really interesting female characters (written by Rebecca Blunt, who it is said is a pseudonym, though it is not clear for whom), and the theme of getting one over a system that seems stacked and unfair is very well done. For a change, here’s an American film that *likes* its white, working-class rural characters. There’s a lot to praise. So why did it feel so slack and rambly to watch? This has been an interesting feature of quite a few of Soderbergh’s recent films: Haywire, Contagion, Side-Effect. And yet, there’s Behind the Candelabra when every shot is necessary and everything moves at a clip, hard to do in what is a character study, even such a flamboyant one. Odd. And I don’t think this is true of his Magic Mike films or his other more glam and streamlined caper films, except for maybe Ocean’s 13.

José Arroyo

Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2012)

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There’s a complex rich movie to be made about the price men pay when they choose to commodify themselves as sexual objects for money; Magic Mike doesn’t explore the theme with any great depth but it is brilliant at depicting the world of male strippers and what choosing to become one might feel like and lead to. The director is having a good time (all those unusual abrupt endings) but I’m not sure the audience is; I certainly didn’t; though like the majority of the people at the theatre, I was very keen to see the display and, if outright fun is denied us, then a much more complex treatment of the subject would have been appreciated.

People turn themselves into sex objects for easy money and lose their youth and future choices in a sea of drugs and easy sex. Big deal. We’ve seen this before. The only difference is that now it’s men rather than women; and that difference — how men charging for a peek at their package, for their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’, affects their masculinity, that which should have been central to the film’s exploration — is largely bypassed.  The film is too much about the phallus as fun and too little about the effect on those reduced to nothing but its symbolizing function (and only the non-threatening aspects). I would have liked to see more about the tension between the lead characters’ merchandising of the phallus and their own awareness of the fragility of the penis.

Channing Tatum’s  got a sculpted body, very lean and lithe, and he moves energetically, but he looks and moves as if enshrouded in a cloud of depression: ‘bitchy-resting face’ on him would seem sparkly. Either he’s never heard of fun or he’s had so much of it already the serotonin has been all used up. Mathew McConaughey is playing the equivalent of the wise-old-whorehouse-madam roles Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford were reduced to near the end of their careers and his success in this part  started a career revival that seems in no danger of abating. Alex Pettyfer is lovely to look at and very good; he looks like a model from Attitude but walks like the guy in the pub who’s always yelling ‘oy, mate!’ just before barfing. I felt sorry for Joe Mangianello who reportedly cut his price in order to work with such a distinguished director only to be asked to take off his clothes, oil himself up and get in the background just in front of the extras.

Magic Mike was a big box-office hit and made many critics’ top-ten list at the end of the year. I wished I’d liked it more or at least only a little less than friends I respect who are positively rabid about the film. Perhaps its mysteries will reveal themselves once I see it again on DVD.

José Arroyo