What I learned watching all movies by Steven Soderbergh

It is great to be back on my sofa for another binge-watching experiment guided (or rather directed) by The List of The World’s 40 Best Directors. During The Stage One, I was watching all the movies by David Lynch. Stage Two introduced me to the enormous creative universe of Martin Scorsese. Then came The Stage Three, movies by Coen brothers. I managed to watch (and in some instances re-watch) them all. But the summary article has never happened, the experiment stalled and the Researcher (yours truly) found herself amidst major personal transformation which left little if any space for all things cinematic. Not writing the report, however, resulted in me losing a good portion of the experience and insights gained. So this time persevere I must.

16 min readDec 26, 2018

The Researcher’s Background

Before the Stage Four of this experiment, the films of Steven Soderbergh had mostly been unknown to the Researcher (I have mixed feelings about coming out with this statement publicly). I had watched Ocean’s Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen and Behind the Candelabra and also had heard of Erin Brockovich. That was it.

The Description of the Experiment

As usual (mixed feelings again) I tried following Soderbergh’s filmography in the chronological order as given by IMDB skipping, however, two series he directed: K Street (2003) which I could not find and The Knick (2014–2015) which I could not watch for it was way too graphic for me.

So here is my final watch list:

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
Kafka (1991)
The Underneath (1995)
Fallen Angels (TV series, 2 episodes; 1993–1995)
Shizopolis (1996)
Gray’s Anatomy (1996)
King of the Hill (1993)
Out of Sight (1998)
The Limey (1999)
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Traffic (2000)
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Full Frontal (2002)
Solaris (2002)
Eros (segment “Equilibrium”; 2004)
Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Bubble (2005)
The Good German (2006)
Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)
Che: Part One (2008)
Che: Part Two (2008)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Informant! (2009)
And Everything Is Going Fine (2010)
Contagion (2011)
Haywire (2011)
Magic Mike (2012)
Side Effects (2013)
Behind the Candelabra (2013)
Logan Lucky (2017)
Mosaic (TV series, 6 episodes; 2018-)
Unsane (2018)

Key Findings

All the time while watching movies by Steven Soderbergh I could not shake off the thought that context (both — creative and existential) was seriously undervalued in our fast-paced culture. With the life cycle of products shrinking almost as much as our attention span we tend to worship the power of the Shortcut. However observing the context and trying to understand it gives the art its power and (in broader context )— the life its taste. Soderbergh is very much about following the real world’s narrative and reflecting upon it in his quest to stay relevant.

He is a skillful characters director but he is also a keen cinema craftsman. In the credits to Traffic (2000), he introduces Peter Andrews, the cinematographer who has been filming all his movies ever since. In 2002 (Solaris) he brings in Mary Ann Bernard, who has been the editor for most of his movies and series. Both, Peter and Mary Ann, are Soderbergh’s pen names.

Soderbergh is very open about finding his creative voice. His first film Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) became a sensation and brought him (then a 26-year-old cinema debutant) the Oscar nomination for the best screenplay, 3 Golden Globe nominations and Palme d’Or in Cannes Film Festival. And then he went on to make “5 films in a raw that nobody saw”.

“That whole period, that I write about in the book, was a crucial part of my development. Those movies from Sex, Lies to Out of Sight was me really trying to figure out what kind of filmmaker I was and what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. Where did I fit? These were all questions that I was trying to answer. They were all necessary projects, regardless of their outcome or regardless of how I feel about them. I needed all of them to get to Out of Sight, which is clearly a watershed project for me, career-wise.”

So in my attempt to understand Soderbergh I am going to single out his “elements” in these 6 films first and then project my findings on the movies that followed.

The Palme d’Or and 5 films nobody saw

Steven Soderbergh and James Spader on the set of *Sex, Lies, and Videotape; image credit: IMDb*

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989): most scenes in this movie are dialogues of two people in a room. Soderbergh is analyzing the psycho of his characters and building the story around it. He is also bringing in the critique of the real world trends— our infatuation with self-help and therapy.

Kafka (1991): this is Soderbergh’s first genre movie. He has discovered genre as the means to smuggle in controversy and “things will never be the same again”. The movie is a noir dystopia and describes the means to control masses (the critique of the real world trends — 2nd time here again). It also deals with complex inner struggles of the main character (I’ll continue hashtagging it as psycho).

King of the Hill (1993): this is another genre movie which is now set in the times of Great Depression. So one more point goes to the hashtag the critique of the real world trends; it is the unhumanistic face of the capitalism that gets the full blast this time. Again Soderbergh is diving into the psycho of his main characters and introduces another element — plot twist (spoilers alert! the happy end was absolutely unexpected).

The Underneath (1995): there have been crimes in Soderbergh’s movies before but this is the first time crime becomes the focal point. The main character is going through a lot of transformations (psycho), he has got serious gambling addiction which he tries solving with self-help books (the critique of the real world trends — is that a double?). Plot twists will occur again. And the editing becomes distinctive: color-coding of scenes/moods/characters, non-linear timeline, etc.

Shizopolis (1996): with this project Soderbergh joins the mid-nineties discussion of what the new cinematic language should be. The movie is heavily influenced by MTV (the critique of the real world trends) and resembles a music video clip. Editing and plot twists (intermingled storylines) are saturated to the level of absurdity. And it is all orbiting around the psycho (which is even in the title of the film).

Gray’s Anatomy (1996): a stand-up comedy monologue (psycho) becomes a movie providing just enough plot twists to keep the viewers engaged. The interviews in the intro part make it for the distinctive editing. And Soderbergh will use this trick later in the Full Frontal (2002).

Hollywood, Oscars and other plot twists

And then Soderbergh gets his shot. The movie Out of Sight was what they call “an open director assignment”. Soderbergh might have been number 10 on the producers’ list of possible directors but the references he used to illustrate his vision for the movie were right on spot and he got the job. This is his first collaboration with George Clooney and also his first robbery movie (hashtag “crime”). The film did good in terms of box office and also got two Oscar nominations — for the best screenplay and the best editing. The editing of Out of Sight was done by Anne V. Coates (The Elephant Man, Lawrence of Arabia, Murder on the Orient Express and later — Erin Brockovich). And editing really “made” this movie a hit. It turned the otherwise boring sequences into a captivating experience.

I am tempted to continue telling “the success story” but the Key Findings of the Stage Four must prevail and the Elements of Steven Soderbergh must be defined.

Element #1. Relevance: the hero’s journey is set in the context of real-world imperfections.

A bold statement here: for Soderbergh cinema is about observing the reality and presenting it back to the audience to provoke further thoughts, discussions, and observations. He regards cinema as an approach, as the means of exploration and making sense of what is surrounding us.

Thus relevance becomes the cornerstone. Soderbergh is primarily interested in the power of the characters, what moves us, what transforms us and what makes us click (hashtag psycho). But there is always a bigger picture, an extra layer of complexity — the context that helps to extract our true nature. And Soderbergh gets more mature in his approach, too: rarely does he criticize the trends but rather uses them to build a relevant set for his stories to unfold.

So here are the examples of such micro struggles (the hero level) that take place amidst the bigger picture (the context) in Soderbergh’s movies:

Erin Brockovich (2000) is the first film where Soderbergh introduces a female protagonist and Julia Roberts is brilliant to portray this struggle, integrity, and transformation (winning her first and so far the only Oscar). The context is not only “the greedy corporations” with sub-zero CSR levels but also an extreme social vulnerability of a sole mother in the United States.
In Traffic (2000) Soderbergh shifts the perspective 180 degrees: it is the movie of the context where individual characters and storylines, however brilliant, are just parts of the monstrous jigsaw. With this film, Soderbergh wins the Oscar as the best director in 2000 while Erin Brockovich (also directed by him) was among other nominees — an unprecedented case in the history of the Academy Awards.
The Ocean’s trilogy (2001- 2007) is built around individual charismas but there is the question of ethics here too: how is it possible for a gambling industry to be accumulating such enormous wealth.
Solaris (2002) is an intimate almost theatrical drama (a “two people in the room” type) set in space. But it touches several tabu subjects of our modern culture: how do we deal with grief and how do we perceive/judge suicide.
Bubble (2005) is about the mental health problems of working-class people in small American towns. Here the context not only contributes to the hero’s journey but in many ways determines it.
The Good German (2006) also has a strong female character (Cate Blanchett) in the center of the action. The movie takes place in the post-war Berlin and Soderbergh depicts many daily problems that have been censored out of the heroic narrative.
Che: part 1 and 2 (2008) — a very particular project in Soderbergh’s career; an epic scale drama he has not attempted to replicate. The micro-level (hero’s journey) brought triumph to Benicio Del Torro in Cannes Film Festival (he won the Best Actor award). The macro-level (the context) shreds some light on how revolutions are made and what are the reasons for them to occur.
In The Girlfriend Experience (2009) the context (the premium segment of escort services market) and the heroine’s story (maintaining a committed relationship while working as a top-level hooker) are also marching hand in hand.
The Informant! (2009) is the story of a pathological lair, based on the true facts and set in the context of international corporate business.
Contagion (2011) is in a way like Traffic — a collection of individual storylines (tragic, heroic or ambiguous). But they are set amidst a global epidemiological catastrophe. The movie is fiction but Soderbergh manages to include the very much real World Health Organisation, FBI and internet bloggers into his narrative.
In Magic Mike (2012) the male protagonist is extremely sympathetic (almost to the degree he is losing his credibility, which is again okay for a genre movie) and his struggle is noble, too. Mike is trying to lift himself up the social ladder using his night job as a stripper to accumulate capital and launch a small business. Does anyone else find it as satirical as I do?
The context of Side Effects (2013) is the marketing of prescription drugs that help to deal with mental illnesses (mostly depression). The quartet of main characters and its internal dynamic resembles a bit Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
Behind the Candelabra (2013) — a flamboyant gay drama with Matt Damon and Michael Douglas that explores multiple complexities of personal relationships (yes, I am trying hard NOT to spoil it!). But the big picture is there, too — the AIDS epidemic.
Logan Lucky (2017) — is not just another robbery movie with charismatic characters. Soderbergh is setting it tight into North Carolina: Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) has lost his arm in Iraq, his brother Jimmy (Channing Tatum) has been fired because of medical predicaments.
Unsane (2018) — in this movie Soderbergh questions sanity on a great many levels and goes quite far exploring mental health. But he also shows the instances of corruption in the health insurance system. The life of the career-focused female lead (by Claire Foy) is also very contextual.

Element #2. The movie-maker’s craft: the script, the cast, and the final cut.

Soderbergh loves plot twists, especially in genre movies. Unexpected U-turns set his films off the beaten track and make these stories even more captivating. This is essential both for comedies and crime dramas. The Ocean’s trilogy (2001–2007), Solaris (2002), The Informant! (2009), Contagion (2011), Haywire (2011), Side Effects (2013), Logan Lucky (2017) all have plot twists in their very DNA.

Steven Soderbergh was writing scripts for his early movies but then realized that he cares not about becoming a Woody Allen (a writer-director). Eventually, he has developed into almost a solo movie-making machine (directing, filming and cutting his own movies). But somehow writing is something he feels okay to delegate. The only exception is Solaris (2002). Soderbergh wrote the script for the movie himself as he had a very precise vision of where he wanted to take the novel by Stanislaw Lem.

The second most important piece of the puzzle is successful casting. Like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch or Coen brothers, Soderbergh tends to work with “his” actors on many projects. But there are a lot of complications when it comes to professional actors (schedule conflicts being among them). Soderbergh is a very intuitive director: in many of his interviews, he says he likes to work extremely fast (in fact he claims that the quality of his work gets worse if he gets more time!). So the connection between the director and the actors and between the actors and their characters is vital.

But for some of his projects, Soderbergh invites non-actors as there are certain things, certain performance nuances that he can only get from non-actors. For instance, Debbie Doebereiner, the female lead for Bubble (2005), was cast straight out the KFC joint where she had been working for 24 years. Practically the entire cast for Bubble was made of non-actors which gave the movie this authentic feel. For The Girlfriend Experience (2009) Soderbergh invites Sasha Grey — “the adult movie superstar”. And for his spy action Haywire (2011) he casts in Gina Carano, the “Face of Women’s MMA”. It is almost like he is reversing the method acting making movies real again.

And finally to the cut. Soderbergh enjoys working in the editing room trying to achieve his initial vision:

“The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn’t.”

The editing in Soderbergh movies is often so distinctive and loud it deserves its own line in the final crawl. One of his favorite effects is coloring scenes according to a storyline and/or character. You can see it in Traffic (2000), Bubble (2005), Che (2008), Haywire (2011), Magic Mike (2012), Side Effects (2013), Logan Lucky (2017) and Unsane (2018). Another effect Soderbergh is using a lot is non-linear timeline: flashbacks and flashforwards are common in The Limey (1999), the Ocean’s trilogy (2001–2007), Solaris (2002), Che (2008), The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Mosaic (2018-) and Unsane (2018).

And I could have called it a wrap here if not for one particular speculation.

Element #N. David Lynch

Watching (almost) all movies by David Lynch during The Stage One of this experiment conditioned the Researcher way more than she had initially realized. But what is seen cannot be unseen and the influence of David Lynch on early Soderbergh noticed by the Researcher must be reflected in this report :)

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) with its seemingly unremarkable Americana set resembles a lot the white fenced and carefully manicured front yards in Blue Velvet (1986). The number plates on doors and buildings that Soderbergh pictures in his movie are one of the favorite games Lynch is paying with the viewers.
The black-and-white “Eastern-European” feel of movie Kafka (1991) has much in common with the London set of The Elephant Man (1980).
In The Underneath (1995) the Lynch influence becomes almost physical: the sign on the side of the winding road in the woods reads “Whispering Pines” (did not have the population numbers on it though), white fences pop up again, the duality of the main character is the plot’s cornerstone. And then there is a nice cameo of Harry Roaz (Deputy Andy Brannan from Twin Peaks (1990–1991) as Guard Casey).
Shizopolis (1996) is so bizarre and multi-layered one can find ANY references there. However, the main story is built around the idea of a doppelganger which is central for David Lynch (and Twin Peaks (1990–1991) in particular).
In Gray’s Anatomy (1996) Spalding Gray is telling the story about the sweating lodge ceremony and it comes very close to the White/Black Lodge symbolism of Twin Peaks (1990–1991).
The Researcher’s favorite cross-reference pops up in The Limey (1999): the opening sequence almost mirrors the one of the Mulholland Drive (2001): the hero arrives at the LA airport, takes a taxi, gets to the hotel/place to stay. The only thing is that Mulholland Drive was released two years after The Limey, in 2001, so how can these movies be related? The Researcher would have dropped this question if not this newspaper cut-out that appears in The Limey (1999) exactly on 01:54 :

Dr. Jaffe in Erin Brockovich (2000) was played by David Brisbin who also played in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Traffic (2000) featured Miguel Ferrer — the iconic FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield from Twin Peaks (1990–1991).
Full Frontal (2002) also features an actor from Twin Peaks — David Duchovny (DEA Agent Dennis), and it deals with the dream factory — one of David Lynch’s core subject matters.
In Solaris (2002) we see the idea of doppelgangers re-surface.
Soderbergh continues playing with doppelgangers in Equilibrium (his piece in Eros (2004); and the storyline is built around the dreams — another of Lynch’s favorites.

Then the signal gets lost (as does David Lynch from the movie-making). And we pick it up only in 2017 — the year when Twin Peaks Returns.

In Logan Lucky (2017) there is a one-armed man — Clyde Logan.
Mosaic (TV series, 2018-) has got so many parallels with Twin Peaks that the Researcher had to use the chart.

For those few who read this report and struggle with the Researcher’s hand-writing here comes the transcript (major SPOILERS ahead!):

Both series are set in the forest area (Mosaic takes place in Utah and Twin Peaks in Washington state).
Iconic waterfalls in Twin Peaks correspond to springs in Mosaic which play a major role in the plot development.
Olivia Lake (Mosaic) was murdered and her body was found wrapped in a cloth. This is all too similar to Laura Palmer’s body discovered wrapped in plastic.
In Mosaic, quite a number of scenes take place in the hotel. In Twin Peaks, The Great Northern is one of its main locations.
Detective Nate Henry in Mosaic and Sheriff Harry Truman in Twin Peaks are both very similar characters — crystal honest cops.
Beryllium deposits in Mosaic correspond to the lumber mill in Twin Peaks (natural resources that get exploited).
Twin Peaks has the “other side” — the entire dimension accessible through the Black and White Lodges. In Mosaic this extra dimension is Art.
The Red Room in Mosaic is just too similar to the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks.

We can still argue if David Lynch has any influence on Steven Soderbergh but Soderbergh’s next movie, High Flying Bird, is coming out in early 2019 and it features none other than Kyle, Agent Dale Cooper, MacLachlan.

The Resume

Steven Soderbergh is constantly searching for new meanings and new means. His latest (to date) movie, Unsane (2018), was shot using iPhone and not even the most recent but a humble, according to Apple marketers, iPhone 7 Plus.

Soderbergh is also a vicious critic of the movie industry as it is today — its homogenizing approach to movies, its love for the endless franchises and ultimately its disconnectedness from the audience:

“The cultural real estate that a movie emerging like that used to take up has been stolen by television. People don’t talk about movies the way they talk about TV now because most of the movies don’t matter. They’re not about anything that matters, and the ones that do matter, or could matter, can’t reach the kind of audience that these massive spectacles reach”

Soderbergh is currently disrupting the distribution/marketing model to help “particular”/culturally relevant movies find their way to the audience by-passing. So LMK if he is hiring :)

PS: Here are the links to my two other binge-watching experiments: