Rotating back and forth between indie pioneer and blockbuster connoisseur, Academy Award-winner Steven Soderbergh is as bipolar as filmmakers come.
Soderbergh earned his indie credibility with his inventive exploration of sexual repression in “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” acquiring top honors from the Cannes and Sundance film festivals alike. With a production budget ranking in at a measly $1.4 million, the film’s international success was revolutionary. Soderbergh’s success electrified Miramax Films, the low-budget, independent division of The Walt Disney Company, which then went on to include the work of other American indie auteurs including Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino in their distribution efforts.
After authenticating the financial profitability of the independent film, Soderbergh spent the bulk of the 1990s contradicting himself. With a series of low-budget bombs, including a convoluted fusion of fact and Franz Kafka’s fiction in “Kafka” and the maniacal exercise in “Schizopolis,” art house and multiplex audiences alike began to doubt Soderbergh’s promise. That was until he hired J. Lo.
In 1998, Soderbergh recovered from his colossal commercial slump with the ultra-stylized Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney robber drama “Out of Sight,” receiving a handful of awards and the best reviews of his career since “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” The film, although not a box office champ by any stretch of the imagination, reassured wary critics of Soderbergh’s artistic capacity. The creative union with Clooney certainly helped, too.
Entering the new millennium, Soderbergh spread his mainstream Hollywood wings and the results were overwhelmingly successful. With the critically lauded “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic,” Soderbergh was the first individual in the history of film to receive two Oscar nominations for Best Director, winning one for “Traffic” later that year.
Since then, Soderbergh has waged an intricate game of tug-of-war with independent and Hollywood film, bouncing between avante garde and blockbuster with the slightest of ease. For instance, in 2001 he took the box office by storm with the star-studded caper “Ocean’s Eleven,” and later that year he crafted the digital-filmed “Full Frontal” in under the span of a month. “Full Frontal” showcased a complex collision of fictionalized reality and an ambiguous narrative structure anchored in tenants of the French New Wave, a movement he would proceed to draw upon for his various artistic film endeavors.
This consistent variation between art and mainstream film has rendered the contemporary Soderbergh film as unpredictable as an M. Night Shyamalan third act — just not as nonsensical and, well, stupid. Some critics have grown frustrated with his erratic filmography, lambasting his more experimental cinematic exercises as half-assed or pretentious. This year is perhaps the best example of what Soderbergh is capable of these days.
“The Girlfriend Experience,” his first film of the year, boasts a French New Wave-inspired Soderbergh, the one that polarizes critics with an almost antagonistic bravado. The film stars real-life porn star Sasha Grey as Christine, a high-end escort whose clients prowl the pre-recession streets of New York City’s Upper East Side. With jump-cuts galore, nonlinear storytelling, semi-improvised acting, vague narrative, listless dialogue and real people playing variations of themselves, “The Girlfriend Experience” plays like a hyper-sexualized, capitalism-abhorring “Cleo from 5 to 7.” The plot’s clever monotony may bore viewers in thirst of “Ocean’s Fourteen,” yet it’s probably his best work since “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” and “Traffic” — a disjointed Rubik’s Cube of emotion, and a minor experimental masterpiece at that.
Last week, Soderbergh’s second entry into 2009’s dismal catalogue of films, “The Informant!” hit screens. Armed with a nearly $22 million budget and Matt Damon, Soderbergh took off the indie hat and slipped on his Hollywood crown. Although nowhere near as radical or haunting as “The Girlfriend Experience,” “The Informant!” is a boisterous little madcap black comedy about a common man taking on the system and the varied spells of hilarity and chaos that ensues.
After comparing both films though, the subtle indifference Soderbergh exhibits towards big-budget “The Informant!” becomes pretty palpable. It seems that Soderbergh, in terms of creative integrity, is quietly sneaking back to his independent roots. It’s just a matter of time before audiences give his artistic, experimental work the same attention they provide for whatever number the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise is on. At least I hope so.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
