BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

(Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

Something about Matt Damon seems to bring out the black comedian in Steven Soderbergh. Think of The Informant! and its quietly hilarious depiction of escalating and mammoth self-delusion. Or even his role in the second and third Oceans films, where he is the most hapless and insecure of the leads, his part in their schemes the most comic and bizarre. In Oceans Thirteen he wears a false nose for the heist itself, and he again finds himself with an augmented proboscis in Soderbergh's Behind The Candelabra. Though the film is centred around Liberace, the Las Vegas Entertainer, Damon plays Scott Thorson, the actual protagonist of the story. He is a young Californian hunk who becomes Liberace's (Michael Douglas) live-in lover, companion and chauffeur in the late '70s. Soderbergh's film traces the rise and fall of their relationship from early bloom to late decay, all the while painting a picture of the bizarre bubble of kitsch and wealth Liberace's celebrity allowed him to live in.
The director's intelligence is evident in the way he chooses to present that world; filming in rooms of such overwhelmingly oppressive bad taste they make your teeth ache, he maintains a classical style, allowing the production design to do the work. His camera moves little, his compositions are simple and understated. He sticks to two-shots to capture conversations, occasionally giving us a wider view of the ridiculous opulence of an immense room.
As befits a production made for HBO, its a deceptively small, intimate film, intent mainly upon the relationship between these two men, opening out only a few times throughout. This becomes an issue between the characters - Thorson eventually wants to go out and meet people, whereas Liberace ("Lee" to his friends) is content to stay at home, except for the occasional visit to a glory hole in a sex shop. Later this is briefly switched when Lee asks for an open relationship, only to grow furious when he suspects Scott is seeing somebody else. They both have their issues - Lee first wants to adopt Scott, then pays for him to have plastic surgery so that they look more alike (hence Damon's nose), while Scott becomes addicted to diet pills and pays his dealer with jewellery he steals from Lee's house.
All of this is given a sort of sheen of deadpan hysteria, capped off beautifully by Rob Lowe as Lee's plastic surgeon, his own face stretched so tight he seems to have no eyes, his tone a sort of glazed amusement at everything he hears. The facelift he gives Lee means that he can never fully close his eyes, meaning that Scott finds him snoring one night, eyes half open
If their early courtship is unconventional, the way they fall apart is far more recognisable - jealousy, boredom, another person -  and the two leads are superb at evoking the pain and complexity of it all.
While Douglas brings a pretty decent Liberace impression to life, with frequently hilarious results, Damon, miscast (he is nearly 20 years too old) on the surface, does much more interesting work as Thorson, suggesting his neediness and early naiveté and tracing the way that shifts through exposure to wealth and privilege.
He is a complex mess; claiming he is "bisexual" ("Well I haven't met the part that likes women", Lee replies) and finding anal sex "repugnant" while shunning his foster-parents despite loving them, writing songs and bemoaning the fact that all Lee's entourage hate him, his peculiar situation is clearly difficult. His resultant addiction and desperation seem like a natural progression for this vulnerable kid from a harsh background, and his late collapse is nicely, furiously played by Damon. The likes of a brilliant Rob Lowe, Dan Akroyd and Scott Bakula do good work in the background as the many figures around the outskirts of their life together.
By the end, the black comedy has mostly ebbed away to be replaced by a melancholy sense of loss and regret. But Soderbergh ensures it remains a black comedy to the end, indulging in a final musical set-piece, as Thorson imagines Lee singing "The Impossible Dream"and flying off the stage.
That it is largely a true story seems almost unbelievable.

SIDE EFFECTS

(Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

Side Effects begins as a seemingly earnest issue drama focused on the prescription of anti-depressants and the role played in this by the pharmaceutical industry. But midway through the film, there is a twist of the sort loved by writers of thrillers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and suddenly Soderbergh's film reveals itself to be something different entirely.
What that something is, appears to be a twisty-turny thriller of deceit and double-cross, and the silliness of the last act, in particular, may leave some viewers who enjoyed the more nuanced drama of the first half of the film feeling a little short-changed. But Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z Burns are clever and even witty in their use of thriller devices throughout, and the rug-pull at the centre of the film is managed with real skill and subtlety.
More than that, Side Effects is a lovely movie to watch for its beguiling visceral quality. This is not unusual for Soderbergh, who acts as his own cinematographer and editor (under pseudonyms), ensuring his control over every sensory aspect of his films. He gives Side Effects a sickly green palette for much of the first act, suggesting the druggy nausea experienced by one character, then swaps that for a colder world of greys and metallic shades after the twist, as another finds his world collapsing amidst bureaucratic issues. There are numerous beautiful shots here too, and none feels ostentatious. Instead Soderbergh uses abstract shapes and focus pulls to locate or dislocate these people within or from their environments, his camera taking in Dr Banks' (Jude Law) affluent lifestyle, for instance, with a few careful shots, and he is always sensitive to body language and dress.
Banks is the psychiatrist who finds himself a witness in a murder trial when one of his patients, Emily (Rooney Mara) the depressed young wife of a stockbroker recently released from prison for insider-trading (Channing Tatum) awakens in her apartment to find her husband stabbed to death and the knife bearing her fingerprints. The drug she had been prescribed by Banks is blamed, but after his reputation is destroyed he begins to poke around in her story and that of her old Shrink (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and finds a few things don't quite add up.
While that last act is undeniably silly, Soderbergh and Burns deliver it all with a straight face, and strong performances from Law and Mara ensure it largely works. It is nicely shot, sharply written and well acted, and remains a superior, nicely stylish slice of Hollywood entertainment.
Even so, it all feels somewhat slight for something that is supposed to be Soderbergh's "Last" film.

MAGIC MIKE

(Steven Soderbergh, 2012) Few directors make films so acute and intelligent about the way we live now as Steven Soderbergh. It's partly the way he shoots. And he does shoot, acting (under pseudonyms) as his own cinematographer and editor. The control this gives him over the visual character of his films means his interest in capturing something of the fleeting, instant beauty of the modern world is evident in much of his work. Magic Mike, which has discomforting elements reminiscent of the romantic comedy, is partly a lifestyle movie, dedicated to revealing the glamour of a life far removed from what most in the audience would consider normal. And Soderbergh is skilled at making that life look truly beautiful. His film follows a 30 year old stripper-entrepreneur (Channing Tatum, wholly winning here) over three months of summer in Tampa, Florida, as he introduces an unemployed, aimless hunk (Alex Pettyfer) to his particular form of showbiz, questions his own future, and becomes attracted to his new friend's sister (Cody Horn). The story is set in a sunkissed corner of the US, and these young strippers move in a world of designer apartments and beach houses, pounding nightclubs and parties on sandbanks, drive immense 4x4s and mix with beautiful women. Soderbergh gives all of that the allure it demands. Soderbergh also captures the time and place with a fluid vividness and attention to detail and texture that gives the story a resonance on an intimate, everyday level. Whereas many modern films set in glamourous worlds feel unreal, impossibly perfect and set-dressed, Soderbergh ensures this film feels like it's set in our world. And yet, while Magic Mike seems to celebrate it's protagonists lifestyle, Soderbergh instead critiques it. The scenes of the strippers performances are shot in a manner reminiscent of the fight scenes in his last film, Haywire; master-shot displays of virtuoso skill and athleticism. A couple of them are played for laughs, and the film never shies away from the darker side of the sex industry; the injuries, the drugs, the lonely lack of a future. Only the undeniable homo-eroticism is never acknowledged, though it may be utterly implicit in the numerous instances of muscled men dancing together. This is decidedly a film for the austerity era; Mike is stymied in his entrepreneurial ambitions by cold economic reality, and there is an ever-present hard-scrabble quality to his daily activities, carrying a wad of notes in his pocket, juggling his businesses. His journey to self-discovery and escape is compelling and beautifully played by Tatum, while his friend "The Kid" is on the opposite trajectory, more or less becoming Mike. Pettyfer plays his character with just the right amount of cockiness creeping into a slightly blank lack of definition. Both are outshone by Matthew McConaughey, stealing every scene he's in as Dallas, the owner of the strip-club and a natural showman and preacher, all oiled pecs and hyperbolic southern charm. The weakest element is the love story - partly because Horn is a little stiff (but then so is her character, it might be argued) - which comes to a disappointingly predictable, if familiarly satisfying, conclusion after a few interestingly and realistically ambiguous early exchanges between its mismatched pair. Overall, however, Magic Mike is an almost casually great piece of American movie-making; brilliantly made and stylishly gripping toughout.

HAYWIRE

(Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

Steven Soderbergh is such a professional, so technically gifted, so intelligent, and so interested in cinema. It seems at times he can do anything. His career has spanned genres and styles, and he more or less excels in each of them. But I think the intellectual in Soderbergh sometimes sabotages the commercial filmmaker. Instead of a classic "one for them, one for me" strategy, he combines the two, crafting big studio-funded genre entertainments with their own hidden agendas and themes. Oceans 12 is perhaps the best example. A sequel to Soderbergh's purest entertainment (and biggest hit) filled with megastars and at massive expense, Soderbergh turns out an utterly post-modern compendium of sketches and set-pieces loosely linked by a baffling, almost mockingly complex plot in which the cast get to mug, enjoy Europe, and play themselves, while Soderbergh indulges in some beautiful stylistic experiments.
Haywire is another Soderbergh experiment. Driven here to put MMA fighter Gina Carano in a movie, he fills the cast with male stars for her to batter, then has old collaborator Lem Dobbs write a non-linear espionage tale to link the fight and chase sequences.
His interest is plainly in those action sequences, and they are correspondingly terrific. Avoiding the immediacy of the handheld-and-fastcutting style (best seen in the Bourne films) Soderbergh instead displays Carano's acumen by shooting mid-shots and editing only when necessary. We see her pull off these flips and kicks and Soderbergh's shot choices let us know instantly that its real as we see her execute moves only a real expert would even attempt. That those moves are integrated into fights which are brutal, plausible and thrilling is one of the joys of the movie. These fight scenes have real impact - when Soderbergh does cut during hand-to-hand combat, he does it either for a purely narrative reason (so we can tell exactly what is going on) or for maximum visceral effect. When Carano kicks Michael Fassbender straight through a door in the middle of the most viscious of these fights, Soderbergh shoots that in two set-ups, wih one quick cut between them. And we feel that door go. Furniture and bones break, and Carano has to earn every victory.
There are a few adrenalinised chase sequences here too, but it is in the dialogue scenes in-between that the intellectual in Soderbergh - and in Dobbs - is most evident. There's something a little too arch and removed about all the exposition and the way the generic characters are established, something secretly arty in the absence of establishing shots and off-hand loingo, something a bit reminiscent of Anton Corbjin's The American, something a little ashamed of fully embracing the pulp world this tale belongs in.
That is no problem for me; I love movies that sit firmly where the art house meets the pulp genres, but I can see it preventing Haywire from being any sort of hit.
Who cares, though? There are numerous other pleasures here. If Carano is a little stiff in some of her scenes, she is thrillingly, obviously utterly convincing in motion. That cast of hunks are all solid - Tatum and McGregor get the most to do, and both do it very well - the locations are atmospherically sketched in (though it was odd for this Dublin boy to see the banal familiarity of his hometown become the venue for SWAT pursuits and rooftop chases), Soderbergh's photography (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews) is stylish and lovely throughout, and David Holmes' update of a Lalo Schifrin score is magnificent.

CONTAGION

(Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

Taking a particular subgenre of the popular 1970s disaster movie, the pandemic thriller, and thoroughly modernising it, Soderbergh, together with his screenwriter Scott Z Burns, demonstrates again that there are few better filmmakers in America currently making adult entertainments. Contagion is a procedural, a precise account of how a virus spreads through the world, and also an account of how the bodies put in place by the human race identify it, classify it and eventually counter it. But it is also, in it's inimitably Soderberghian, chilly way, an utterly gripping thriller. We see people we like put at risk and tested by this virus, we wonder who it will take next, and the deaths of two major stars tell us early on that nobody is safe. Then we are with the scientists racing to create a vaccine in order to save not one, but millions of lives.
Then there is the fact that it is an epic. Almost casually epic, a globetrotting, international story with a massive cast of speaking parts and at least five separate and equally important narrative threads running simultaneously. And nobody - except perhaps Micahel Mann - captures the real world, "the now" quite as well as Soderbergh does. Each location feels different and distinctive, from Hong Kong to the American Midwest, largely due to Soderbergh's ability to pick up on detail and texture in his environments.
Detail is crucial here; early on the camera lingers an almost subliminal beat longer on certain objects and surfaces until the viewer queasily realises that these are all subject to communal touch; a bowl of peanuts on a bar, a door handle, a handrail on public transport. Later the visceral fear of germs, and by extension of other people, is vividly communicated in the arc following Damon's character, immune to the virus himself but terrified his teenaged daughter might get it.
He is as solid as ever, but each of the stars here dials down the wattage on their starpower in order to slip seamlessly into the impressive ensemble. Jennifer Ehle is perhaps the great standout, but she too is outshone by the film's focal character and protagonist; the virus itself.