THX-1138

365 Films

Entry #118

THX-1138 (1971)

Directed by George Lucas

First features are a tricky proposition because they evolve to be studied in the past tense as a window into the beginnings of a developed talent.  We look for clues in the primitive cave wall images to parse out thematic obsessions and begin to form some sense of continuity.  Then again, sometimes first time directors just make really good movies that exist independently of the rest of their filmography.  George Lucas’ 1971 feature film debut THX-1138 exists in the gray area between those two poles.  As a stand-alone feature, it is unlike anything else the controversial director has ever done, but in a lot of ways it displays an undiluted vision of techniques and ideas he has continued to explore in subsequent films.  I first came into contact with THX-1138 at the NYU Film library my freshman year of college.  I don’t quite know how I did it, but somehow I was able to avoid spending every waking moment of my life in there consuming everything I could possibly get my hands on.  Looking back, I kind of regret not having done this to be perfectly honest with you.  In any event, I remember watching THX on one of the bobst cubicle tiny television screens from a VHS copy of the 1971 original cut of the film.  In 2004, George Lucas (as he is known to do) went back and inserted a lot of new special effects into THX and re-released it as a brand new director’s cut.  To address the elephant in the room, yes, I think the revisions in THX actually aid the scope and vision of the film and aside from a few gratuitous CGI creatures, the new shots’ artificiality serve as an interesting contrast between it and the sleepwalking mental state of the cast.  As opposed to including a bunch of shots where people are standing around on a green stage pretending to be amazed by the sights they can only imagine, the new cut of THX just cuts out the middle man and the visual splendor passes by unremarked.  It is within that very thematic framework where Lucas presents his overall vision of this futuristic society: a place where every single molecule of human interaction has been categorized, monitored, and devolved into some sort of artificial transaction.  The narrative itself is a portrait of oblique simplicity.  There is no scrawl at the beginning or voice over throughout to inform us as to the particulars of how this society functions.  What little dialogue there is seems to be the bare minimum required for basic character introduction and for getting said characters to move from one scene to the next.  The true meat of the story is encapsulated in the visuals and the sound design (another trademark Lucas would refine over the years to varying degrees of success).  It’s rather remarkable what this film accomplishes in how it combines narrative and experimental filmmaking to create a piece that is uniquely hypnotic.  Walter Murch’s sound design is wonderful in how it combines a truly expansive world of sonic disorientation with some of the most banal technical chatter this side of a local news television control room.  In fact, even the visual design of the film patterns itself on this formula.  For while the production design is pristine and all of the camera angels are designed for maximum visual impact, yet the feel of the thing is practically banal.  Don’t get me wrong, because the film itself is extraordinarily beautiful, displaying the visual ingenuity and editing grace for which Mr. Lucas is all too rarely accredited.  It’s just that there is something horrifyingly dull about the whole thing and perhaps that is Mr. Lucas’ most subversive masterstroke.  This future is frightening and suffocating, how is that every different from now? 

             

Waking Life

365 Films

Entry #117

Waking Life (2001)

Directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater’s Waking Life was a certifiable mind bending cinematic experience for my 17-year-old mind way back in the fall of 2001.  Waking Life carries with it many specific memories for me, including the theater in which it was initially viewed.  As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog, the town where I grew up did not receive the lion’s share of independent releases.  This would have been fine except for the fact that Delaware is located within a relative ear shot of New York City, therefore inquiring minds would get a taste of what was out there but not the ability to sample.  Luckily, Philadelphia, a mere forty-minute drive away possesses not one, not two, but three independent theaters.  I’m sure there were and still are more, however, my purview was limited to the Ritz chain, which is now owned by the Landmark.  Such is the way these things go with time so no angry Philadelphian letters please.  In any event, the Ritz theaters represented something of an escape from the noise and clatter of our local multiplexes.  Before I come off sounding like some kind of top hatted, monocle wearing snob, I must say it is kind of nice when the theater plays classical music before the show starts as opposed to bombarding you with ads and obnoxious pop songs.   The Ritz represented stepping into a world where movies were taken seriously, but at the same time not as evidenced by Ritz playing the Mystery Science Theater movie when it first opened.  As future entries are written, I’ll delve into each individual story about our families’ trips to the Ritz theaters, but for now I’ll limit it to Waking Life.  Waking Life was a milestone for me because it introduced the idea that a movie composed entirely of chatter could be as thrilling and engaging as one composed entirely of shootouts and explosions.  It introduced the idea that animation’s use need not be limited to the major studios with millions of dollars at their disposal.  Most importantly of all I got to experience first hand, the low-key brilliance of writer-director Richard Linklater.  A filmmaker whom, in his own unique southern dude manner has managed to single handedly carve out a niche for himself some twenty plus years into his career and helped define and maintain the landscape of independent film.  Just take a look at the new releases from last week and his Before Midnight is doing exactly that even as we speak.  Waking Life introduced me to his work and for that I’ll be forever thankful, it remains to this day a beautiful reminder of what the autumn cinematic schedule brings with it every year, and perhaps most importantly, it showed me that movies didn’t have to necessarily kill brain cells.  They could nurture and feed them as well.     

PS

To tie this all back into the Steven Soderbergh appreciation month series, the man himself has a brief cameo in Waking Life.  Everything is connected and everything matters, now isn’t that cool?

Full Frontal

365 Films

Entry #116

Full Frontal (2002)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

2002 seems to be the year that Steven Soderbergh truly tested audiences’ capacity for his unusual filmmaking proclivities.  Aside from the befuddled reaction that came late in the years from his Solaris remake, 2002 also saw some of the wind going out of his sails with the late summer release of Full Frontal.  Boasting a loaded cast packed with celebrities of every kind of screen, constructed around a worm hole plot revealing several different layers of reality bit by bit, and perhaps what turned out to be its greatest offense, ultimately coming off as one big inside joke.  It has always been my position that Full Frontal is one of Soderbergh’s more intriguing efforts for the plain and simple fact that it is, from its most skeletal concept, an experiment.  To be perfectly frank about it, any movie that attempts to approximate the visual and cinematic equivalent of human vomit is okay in my book.  That may or not be the exact quality Soderbergh was going for, but it’s clear from Full Frontal that his fascination and obsession with digital filmmaking began here.  One gets the sense that this is a director discovering a new medium and the sense of play in the film is undeniable.  Revolving around a group of characters orbiting the mainstream and fringes of the entertainment industry, Full Frontal constantly keeps the viewer guessing as to which level of reality they are actually experiencing in any given moment.  For example, the sequences shot in the low-resolution digital video are supposed to be “real” and there’s even a verite style to the camera work.  Then again, within those sequences are visual punctuations obviously added in post-production to accentuate certain elements of the story.  The black box that covers Mr. Soderbergh’s face during his cameo, the highlighting discoloration on the half-eaten pot brownies, and the literal on screen text that appears during the shot of the money being counted.  This is supposed to be real life, yet Soderbergh goes out of his way to remind us that what we are seeing can be manipulated and distorted at any given moment.  It may be for benign and helpful reasons, but the threat is always there.  Then you take the sequences shot in the crisp and beautiful 35mm format.  Theses are sequences, which, as the credits remind us from an already finished and fabricated product (which is revealed halfway through the movie to be a work in process).  The 35mm scenes are staged flatly and shot in a traditional, uninventive style yet since they were the medium (at the time) most filmgoers were accustomed to; they somehow come off as more real.  I always find it fascinating how relieved I am to go back to the 35mm scenes in the movie, even when the content of those sequences is dull as dishwater.  The question then becomes which is more real, or, which of these people are merely performing and which are presenting their true selves?  How often do any of us present our true selves?  I don’t have an answer for any of these questions, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think the film does either.  Far from being just a cinematic wank-fest, I think this is one of Sodbergh’s more genuinely explorative efforts into the nature of cinematic reality. 

Pleasantville

365 Films

Entry #115

Pleasantville (1998)

Directed by Gary Ross

Steven Soderbergh may not have directed Pleasantville, although he is credited as a producer, it still contains many of the exact same themes that have fascinated him over the years.  It’s not difficult to understand why he took a liking to this particular project.  The idea of competing realities coupled with a subversive take on the American dream seem like they could have come directly from the Soderbergh dream factory,  the fable-like qualities of the film are entirely within the wheelhouse of writer-director Gary Ross.  Coming off writing the screenplays for the two populist fantasies Big and Dave, Pleasantville is a fairly remarkable feature for a first time director.  Aside from the fact that it is almost entirely composed of visual FX shots (the color intrusion into the black and white world of Pleasantville remains a marvel to this day), the juggling act the film has to take on should have flat-out sunken even the cockiest of directorial egos.  Said juggling act involves transitioning from a fish out of water sit-com premise to an inquisitive look into the pervasive influence of media into our American concepts of happiness.  Ross is aided heavily in this by a pretty mighty group of performers, hell, he even found the one role that Paul Walker couldn’t screw up.  The heart of the film, to me, remains the Joan Allen-William H. Macy-Jeff Daniels triangle and re-visiting the film, I truly believe that these performances help sell a lot of Ross’ effective (albeit somewhat hokey) satirical points with genuine and rich emotion.  The late 90’s and early Aught’s were a proverbial breeding ground for a slew of films warning us about the dangers of living within the 24 hour media cycle.  Obviously we’ve heeded all of those warnings and are completely free from it in today’s modern age, I guess it was just a lot of pre-millennial freaking out.  Pleasantville stands apart in its capacity to enchant and enrapture, if only all bitter pills went down this easily.     

Solaris

365 Films

Entry #114

Solaris (2002)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

The Thanksgiving release of Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 Sci-Fi chamber drama Solaris was met with an equal dose of skepticism and outright befuddlement.  Taking advantage of the creative goodwill engendered by the critical and financial successes of Ocean’s Eleven and Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh decided to tackle a remake of a Russian film beloved by plenty but unheard of by more than a lot.  Releasing it as a George Clooney star vehicle over Thanksgiving weekend is just another extension of Soderbergh’s fascinating Hollywood perversions over the years.  In a way, the project was doomed from the start (at least from a financial standpoint) because those most inclined to like it would instantly dismiss the film as a significantly lesser facsimile of the original while the uninitiated would be bored out of their skulls.  Said combination proved to be the film’s downfall as it is definitely one of the least considered projects in Soderbergh’s filmography.  For reasons that should be apparent to those who have been paying attention in this blog (I’m counting all zero of you), stories about transcending doomed romances seem to really Roger my Hammerstein if you catch my drift.  I have only seen Tarkovsky’s original once, and as such, I am not exactly qualified to rigorously comment on the differences between the two.  From what I can recall, Tarkovsky’s film is an immersive and overwhelming experience while Soderbergh’s is a definitely more accessible and streamlined version of the story.  Interesting side note to all this is that when the project was announced, Soderbergh supposedly stated that his take would be closer in spirit to the original Stanislaw Lem novel than Tarkovsky’s version was.  Lem had openly criticized the previous film adaptation and Soderbergh’s intentions were all for naught as Lem quickly followed suit with his dislike of the new version as well.  Why then, do you ask, is a film positioned as a lose-lose proposition ranked among my personal favorites?  The answer to that question is contained entirely within Soderbergh’s ingenious cinematic interpretation of the text.  The way the story has not only been condensed, but also claustrophobically focused on an adult relationship that manifests itself through score, cinematography, set design, and performance.  It is the clarity of vision, through which, Soderbergh presents these abstract and ambiguous ideas about love, sex, and relationships that makes his Solaris such a compelling view.  His detached, clinical approach to a future where Rainy Gray and Sterilized White are the overwhelming color schemes works wonderfully at odds with the desperate attempts of Chris Kelvin (Clooney) to reclaim subconscious control of his love affair. His futile attempts at rekindling what was lost locks Soderbergh’s camera in the fixed point of view of Solaris itself and rather than distance the viewer from his characters’ plight, it strengthens the bond.  One watches and in time, compassionately relates to a man whose fateful choice in life was to love within the world he had created rather than surrender it to the world without.  This is as evocative and powerful science-fiction as we’ve gotten recently we’d be better off if this is what all filmmakers were interested in pursuing when taking on their next big remake assignments.    

King of the Hill

365 Films

Entry #113

King of the Hill (1999)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Admittedly, this entry is going to be a little tricky because I have only seen King of the Hill twice and once was on HBO at a completely random viewing.  For some reason, the film is only available on DVD as a Korean import.  Don’t let that dissuade you, however, it is still completely worth seeking out.  Released in 1993 as Soderbergh’s third feature (following Kafka, which has also vanished from the face of the earth) it represented the beginning of an artistic malaise that seems to have followed Mr. Soderbergh throughout his career.  Luckily for him, and us King of the Hill was made at a time when a project like it could be financed and distributed theatrically.  The question that has dogged Mr. Soderbergh throughout his career in terms of his personal projects is, “does anybody want to see this?”  Sadly, they did not turn out in droves for King of The Hill and at a Q and A screening two years ago, Mr. Soderbergh remarked, when asked about a future blu ray restoration of this title simply said: “not enough interest.”  Which is a real shame because King of the Hill is one of the most genuinely touching coming of age stories ever put to screen.  The story of a mid-western, depression era boy forced to fend for himself when his Mother is locked away and his Father has to hit the road as a traveling salesman, is one that could have easily fallen into the realms of unearned sentiment or miserablist wallow.  The most astonishing achievement of the film is how subtle Mr. Soderbergh’s hand is in the proceedings, never forcing our sympathies one way or the other towards his characters.  It’s an intellectual distance that he is most often criticized for, but here it serves him well in that it creates an interesting environment through which, the very specific memories of a very specific time may flow.  It also pushes Mr. Soderbergh to work hard in bringing out the genuine empathy of his performers and note for note this is one of his most precisely acted pieces.  All in all, King of the Hill is a testament to when smart filmmakers take on risky material and it’s a real shame that it isn’t more widely available.  

The Limey

365 Films

Entry #112

The Limey (1999)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

When The Limey was released in autumn of ’99, it continued what would become one of the defining characteristics of Steven Soderbergh’s career: confounding expectations.  Following Out Of Sight, his second critical break-through (although not commercially so) The Limey at first appearances seems like another trip down the hip crime wormhole by way of Elmore Leonard.  It is entirely possible that its initial conception was closer to that, The Limey commentary track is one for the ages because Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs spend the entire length of the movie bickering with each other about the radical changes made to the screenplay.  What The Limey, the movie wound up as is something far more radical and existential than the revenge detective scenario would have you believe.  There are flash backs, flash forwards, and words will begin as dialogue in one scene and wind up as voice over for another entirely different sequence of images.  And certainly one of the most brilliantly staged scenes of Soderbergh’s career has to be Wilson’s one mad raid on the Valentine warehouse, staged entirely in one unbroken shot but with all the violence occurring off screen.  But The Limey is far more than just a b-movie plot jazzed up with a lot of high-falutin’ stylistics.  Contrary to the commentary track, I feel that techniques only strengthen the thematic ideas inherent in the film.  The key to all of this is Soderbergh’s utilization of clips from Ken Loach’s 1967 film Poor Cow featuring a young Terrence Stamp (who plays Wilson).  These sequences serve as flashbacks to Wilson’s hell-raising days of youth and aside from providing us with actual footage of what the younger Stamp looked like, they also serve as Soderbergh’s attempt to communicate with a different cinematic generation.  Why else would he cast Easy Rider icon Peter Fonda as the megalomaniacal record producer, a man who seems to live willingly at the expense of the outlaw reputation he once had.  As his character remarks midway through the film:

Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before? A place that maybe only exists in your imagination? Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up. When you were there, though, you knew the language. You knew your way around. *That* was the sixties. [pause] No. It wasn't that either. It was just '66 and early '67. That's all there was.

Generational disillusionment haunts The Limey in every single frame and it’s a theme Soderbergh has continued to explore in his quietly subversive way ever since.  It’s a vision of this country that presents the American way of life as having three distinct variations: the one that lives in our minds, that one that lives in our movies, and the one that actually is. 

The Gang's All Here

365 Films

Entry #111

The Gang’s All Here (1943)

Directed by Busby Berkeley

The first time I became aware of the miraculous existence of filmmaker Busby Berkeley was during a throwaway gag involving a parody of his musical numbers in Gremlins 2.  Upon viewing more and more elaborate parodies of his work, I began to get curious, but sadly never got around to catching up with his work until recently.  It was last summer when New York’s Film Forum hosted a newly restored version of his epic 1943 musical, The Gang’s All Here when I became clued into his brilliance.  Not to suggest that I actually got to see it at Film Forum, but reading all the rapturous praise and imagining the gorgeously trippy musical numbers was enough to satisfy my appetite.  Luckily for me, the Cinefamily here in Los Angeles hosted a run of the restored late last year and I got to see it in all of its splendid 35mm glory.  I bring this up because this is truly a film that needs to be seen in a theater, or at least on the top of a very tall mountain, either way it’s gotta be big.  The thing about Busby Berkeley musicals is that their primary function is practically identical to your typical action picture.  The movie itself is merely a conduit through which, a filmmaker may flex his or her visual prowess through a stunning series of action sequences/musical numbers.  Even viewing these types of films follows the same relative practice wherein one ticks the minutes away until the next big set piece.  That’s not to say that the non-musical numbers in Gang are boring or staged in a pedestrian fashion (by contrast, I would say those sequences actually elevate Gang definitively above Berkeley’s earlier work on pictures where he served solely as a choreographer).  At the same time, what sets this film apart and where it truly blasts out of the stratosphere are those very same musical numbers.  Unfortunately, modern Hollywood has been Rob Marshall’d into an incredibly disenchanting corner.  From the Academy Award winning success of Chicago and the financial windfall of the Step-Up franchise, today’s filmmakers seem to be on a mission to rob the musical genre of every trace of visual ambition.  In the case of Chicago, the trend is to take a popular stage show and present it in the most dull and literal way possible (see also last year’s Les Mis, actually don’t).  The Step Up variety of musical involves chopping the shit out of the images until becomes more about the idea of human movement rather than the actual practice of it.  Last year’s Rock of Ages was an unholy mixture of these two techniques and thankfully, American moviegoers looked the beast square in the eye and said, nein!  The point of all this is to suggest that The Gang’s All Here damn near changed my life and certainly changed the way I looked at what a spectacular Hollywood musical is capable of.  The sequences Berkeley concocts in this film are like nothing you’ve ever seen before.  Eye popping doesn’t even begin to describe it.  If I were to tell you that there is a routine in this film that could Tron accountable for an accusation of plagiarism, you’d drop everything you’re doing right now and go watch, right?  Sure there are scores of other classic musicals that may reach a different kind of perfection, but I can’t think of one that matches the visual ingenuity, the mind boggling ambition, and the levels sheer psychedelic bug-fuckery that is The Gang’s All Here.    

  

Ocean's Thirteen

365 Films

Entry #111

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Attempting a trilogy is hard enough.  Trying to mount a third installment when the second was universally derided has to be a task of herculean proportion.  Luckily, Ocean’s Thirteen manages to strip the plot back to the basic while packing in plenty of the heist movie absurdity the previous two entries cracked so successfully.  On the other hand, I remember something very strange happening when Ocean’s Thirteen was released in the summer of 2007.  The tide of cultural engagement with the film had receded significantly.  When the first film came out only six years prior, it seemed to hit a sweet spot in terms of its coolness cache.  But in the meantime, a new kind of comedy had burrowed its way into the brain stems of the American viewer and all of a sudden, the non gross-out-different kind of bro-tastic adventures of the Ocean crew seemed stale and warmed over.  As an ardent non-admirer of the Apatow/McKay/Phillips frat comedies, this was a most appalling development.  I remember rolling my eyes with contempt whenever a co-worker would dismissively mock the absurd concept behind the very idea of Ocean’s Thirteen.  Looking back on it, I probably should have focused my energies to more positive ends.  But at the same time, the film most assuredly speaks for itself and never needed me to come to its aid.  In returning to Las Vegas for the final go-round, the gang finds themselves plotting a revenge heist against Al Pacino’s Willy Bank and his gaudy monstrosity of a casino.  Bank has cut Reuben (Elliott Gould) out of a proposed business venture while also leaving him in the hospital due to a serious heart attack.  Right from the beginning, we see that Mr. Soderbergh and his writers seemed to have taken some of the criticism from Twelve to heart and grounded this episode in at least a facsimile of genuine human emotion.  That being said, the film consistently rails against pretty much all of the rules laid down by the precedent of past trilogies.  I can’t think of any other mainstream comedy that would invest so much visual wit into a seemingly throwaway gag involving a completely unnecessary worker’s revolt at the die factory in Mexico and have it pay off so beautifully.  It’s as if when the narrative foundation was decided to be as old fashioned as what Thirteen eventually plays out, Mr. Soderbergh’s boundless visual imagination went to work and while it may not be as experimental as the second installment, the pacing is decidedly much more precise.  By keeping the visual momentum constantly on the go via zooms, dolly tracking shots, pans, and steadicam, Mr. Soderbergh allows the few moments of quiet contemplation to burst forth in a most unobtrusive style.  While remarking upon a bygone era of Vegas class and showmanship, the film is almost an elegy to itself.  As if the people behind and in front of the camera knew the party eventually had to stop sometime.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s emotionally complex or anything but there’s a definite sting of melancholy to these proceedings that very few other films of its type would even dare to try.  This is merely one aspect of the myriad of subversions Mr. Soderberg tosses into the mix in his admirable quest to surprise us.  His Ocean’s trilogy may not have been the cinema of monumental, groundbreaking, or eloquent importance.  But they are the successful, collective achievements of a team trying to make grace and elegance not only hip again, but invigorating as well.  Job well done.   

    

Ocean's Twelve

365 Films

Entry #110

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Ocean’s Twelve put something of a damper on the runaway success of the original.  I only say that because it seemed to have left a really bitter and sour taste in some viewer’s mouths.  In re-visiting the film, I came to the conclusion that if Ocean’s Eleven was a tribute to old Hollywood, than Ocean’s Twelve was completely hijacked by the spirit of the French New Wave from conception to execution.  A much more prodigious mind than mind will be able to correct me on this incredibly pretentious proclamation I’m about to make, but, does anybody else think that Ocean’s Twelve is the Ocean’s movie that early 60’s Godard would have made?  Seriously, nearly every single scene, performance, and line of dialogue can’t help but allude to the fact that the very idea of a sequel to something as innocuous as Ocean’s Eleven is anything but absurd.  I think the film is about one step shy of having each actor look into the camera and wink after they deliver a line of dialogue.  The plot begins when Terry Benedict is tipped off to the whereabouts of Ocean’s Eleven and begins to track each one down individually demanding restitution with a deadline of fatality should they fail to pay.  Under the barest traces of story necessity, the gang is whisked off to Amsterdam so that they can essentially hop scotch across Europe for the next two hours pulling off a variety of increasingly outlandish heists only to wind up with the coveted item through a simple backpack lift on a crowded Parisian train.  That particular beat definitely gives me the most delight when reconsidering the film.  To recap, after lifting a house from its foundations only to find that another thief had beaten them to the punch, and then swapping out a priceless Egg from a Rome museum with a goddamn digital hologram, the entire film comes down to switching backpacks with some guy on a train.  Oh and we only see it in flashback, and Tess is roped into the museum heist playing Julia Roberts, and Bruce Willis is there for some reason.  As you can see the film proceeds to lodge itself directly up its own ass in a matter of minutes and becomes little more than a hall of mirrors style series of inside jokes.  Don’t get me wrong; this is what I love most about the film.  Putting the content aside and the fact that while I’m sure a script was written, the plot seems like the cast is making it up as they go along, this is a beautiful fucking movie.  It’s a film that really makes you long for the days when Soderbergh shot on film and I can’t think of a better showcase for his DP abilities than this film either.  Pulling out all the stops, ignoring any rational dictates of taste, Ocean’s Twelve is perhaps the sequel to end all sequels.  I can’t think of another second entry in a series that goes as much out of its way as this one does to point out how entirely pointless and useless sequels are in general.  Yet, at the EXACT same time, it essentially follows all of the “rules” of sequels in terms of being bigger and more of a visual spectacle, in addition to deepening some of the character relationships (take that with a grain of salt, they do it as much as you can in an Ocean’s movie).  You’ll forgive me for beating a dead horse but much like Van Sant’s shot for shot Psycho remake, I believe Ocean’s Twelve is Soderbergh’s attempt at putting a nail in the coffin of big budget studio sequels.  You can dress it up however you want, spin as complex a web as you need to, but at the end of the day, its meaninglessness is kind of the point isn’t it?  This movie makes my head spin and in case you can’t tell, I kind of love it.      

Ocean's Eleven

365 Films

Entry #109

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Unless it somehow slipped by your radar, this Sunday, May 26^th will mark the (supposedly) final feature film from director Steven Soderbergh in the form of a Liberace biopic called Behind the Candelabra.  In anticipation of that, and because I spent the previous weekend pouring through the unfettered narcissistic nastiness of Noah Baumbach, I decided to take a look at three lighter entries in the Soderbergh canon.  In case you haven’t already figured it out, that would be the Ocean’s Trilogy which began in 2001with Ocean’s Eleven.  I’m not sure this connective tissue will at all add up but I feel that these films are worth re-examining in light of Candelabra because of their relationships with old Hollywood and dank pit of sewage (editorial comment) known as Las Vegas.  To begin with Ocean’s Eleven, I must admit I’m a bit conflicted for choosing these three films with which to launch the Soderbergh legacy entries I had planned on formulating.  I say that only because Ocean’s Eleven is perhaps the best known of his films and obviously the king of his specific box office intake.  I say yes to and acknowledge all of those things but I still feel these films are important because, in some ways, they show us the full breadth and scope of Mr. Soderbergh’s wildly vertiginous cinematic gifts.  The first entry in the Ocean’s franchise was more or less pitched as an updated version of the rat pack original.  Having not seen said original, I can not speak to how closely it mirrors the specifics of plot, but I can safely say that even that film was little more than an excuse to put a bunch of really famous, glamorous people in one movie and watch them have fun.  And a special, added high-five goes to Mr. Soderbergh for practicing what he preaches in his address to the state of cinema at the San Francisco Film Festival earlier this year.  He chose to remake popcorn as opposed to a classic. Then again, the very next year he went and remade Solaris, but you know, I’m sure he had a very good reason.  Anyway, getting back to Ocean’s, the film itself is just undiluted pleasure.  Most heist stories (especially those set in Vegas) are all at their core, not entirely subtle metaphors for the entity known as Hollywood filmmaking.  You have a blue print, you get a group of people together, you assign each of them roles and then you perform your heist and depending on what kind of reviews you get, you either play one night or you get to continue for as long as you’re able to do so.  It is in this construct that I feel Soderbergh snuck in his sneakiest and most subversive note in pointing out the elaborate fakery that goes into not only heist movies, but movies themselves.  And instead of being a finger-wagging scold about it, Mr. Soderbergh chooses to revel in this passion and invites us to do so with him.  If that line I used earlier about watching a lot of over-paid movie stars joke around for two hours doesn’t appeal to you, this movie will make you a believer.