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.