Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors I just never managed to connect with. I’ve only seen a handful of his movies, and aside from The Informant, I don’t think I cared much for any of them; not even the one Ocean’s movie I saw that didn’t star Sandra Bullock. I suppose now is as good a time as any to familiarize myself with his work as he’s put out two movies more or less back-to-back, which is a rather impressive feat, but are they two showstopper movies from a prolific creator, or was the quick turnaround time a bad omen that I should have heeded? Let’s find out!!
.
Black Bag
Black Bag is owned by Focus Features
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
In modern day Britain, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is tasked with finding the identity of a traitor in their midst; a job he’s quite good at, but this time comes with a twist. Among those suspected of stealing a powerful computer virus is his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) who is also a British Intelligence Office and could have just as skillfully absconded with the code as anyone else he suspects. With not only national security but his marriage on the line, can George uncover the traitor’s identity, and will he know what to do with that knowledge once all the evidence falls into place?
I’m having a hard time pinning down my exact thoughts on this movie, which is rather fitting for a story about deceit and subterfuge. I left this movie with more positive thoughts than negative, and yet very little of it comes to mind as standout moments or genuinely interesting ideas. It’s a boilerplate spy thriller with much of its style and panache replaced by banality and authenticity, which ends up being an interesting take on the genre, but also lacks a lot of the thrills and fantasy that draws people to these type of movies in the first place. The movie is bookended by dinner parties, which end up being its most interesting scenes, so it feels like we’re just meandering our way from one to the other; occasionally livened up by an all too brief cameo from Pierce Brosnan. So what is it that gives this otherwise middle of the road movie an inkling of greatness? Well, as James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Austin Powers have proven in the past, a good spy movie can go quite far with a compelling main character, and this gives us not one but two. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender don’t just turn in great performances, but have a phenomenal amount of chemistry with a script that constantly has you guessing as to their motives while hoping for the best outcome. Fassbender in particular manages to turn an aloof and distant character into a font of emotional despair through the strength of his subdued yet extremely vulnerable performance. Blanchett has always been perfect casting for the perfect woman, even in shlock like Borderlands, but the role is elevated through the interactions she has with Fassbender which only invests us further in the outcome of this mystery. Their relationship is the heart of the movie, and it’s where it seems that all the effort has gone into, and while a better movie would have incorporated everything else more elegantly and thoughtfully into the relationship drama, it’s strong enough here that I can more or less ignore everything else. Frankly, with its strong emphasis on our main stars and a relatively modest production, the whole thing comes off like a miniseries that was pitched, rejected, and trimmed down to feature length. It would explain why everything else feels very matter of fact, as well as it’s extremely brisk pace, which feels like we’re only just kicking things into gear by the time it decides to start wrapping things up. I appreciate it’s more modest ambitions up to a point, as the depth of the two main characters is certainly enough of a hook to carry a movie, but the scope feels needlessly bloated for something that works on such an intimate level. Dragging not one but two Bond cameos into this leads me to believe that it wants to be taken seriously as a spy film, so in that respect the movie does fail to meet the goals it has set for itself. Still, it can take some solace in the fact that it did something so right that it’s very easy to ignore everything else it got so wrong.
.
Presence
Presence is owned by Neon
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Looking for a fresh start, the Payne family (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, and Eddy Maday) are looking for a fresh start in a brand new home, but running away from your problems is rarely the way to solve them, and it’s made doubly difficult when something appears to be in the house already. From the perspective of some unseen entity, we see the Payne’s deal with the fallout of whatever tragedy led them to moving here in the first place, as well as some new problems that none of them could have foreseen. Will this family find a way to come back together after everything that has happened to them, and are we making things worse just by being a ghostly fly on the wall?
The term Elevated Horror is a convenient shorthand, but it does not in and of itself denote a level of quality, and few movies demonstrate that better than Soderbergh’s plodding ghost flick. Oh sure, it’s well crafted, competently acted, and interestingly conceived, but it’s all for naught as the film lacks a compelling narrative; a lot of craft and artistry signifying nothing. It takes the aesthetics of Elevated Horror with its stark cinematography and heavy atmosphere, but carries with it the worst attitude possible, as it seems to be more about what it doesn’t do than anything that it does. As a ghost movie, the starkness of the cinematography is an interestingly deliberate choice as it puts you in a very unsettling voyeuristic headspace, but its utter divorcing from the supernatural, the weird, or the macabre leaves me wondering why they wanted to make this a ghost movie at all, and while I’m not one to create definitive boxes for genres, a horror movie that doesn’t even try to be scary is a hard thing to reconcile. Its lack of gore and jump scares are not deal breakers in and of themselves, but it’s so proud of itself for not using these tools that it forgets to replace them with anything fun or interesting outside its bleak atmosphere and impending sense of dread. For all its faults, Black Bag at least plays the part of a spy thriller well enough to serve a backdrop to what the movie is ultimately about, which is more than I can say about this. Taken on its own terms, the drama is adequate as this upper middle class family are struggling to reconcile after a string of recent tragedies have pushes them all further apart, but it’s a lot of buildup for a payoff that didn’t really need any of it as the conclusion comes a little too fast and a little too disconnected from what the movie had been working us up to. The answer to the two big questions, what is the ghost and what is the danger, are modest surprises that would have worked as a short on a V/H/S sequel, but I felt very little emotional resonance at the end and could only appreciate its artistry which, had it been coupled with a more compelling story and a little more ugliness, would have made this an instant classic. As a drama, it doesn’t hit the mark and the utter disconnect of our POV from the characters is a major hindrance to engrossing ourselves in their lives, and as a horror movie it falls short of the movies it most tries to emulate. Say what you will about Paranormal Activity and the slew of Found Footage films it helped to popularize; it was made with a tenth of the budget with a green director and worse actors, it’s at least arguably a better horror movie, if not a better made movie overall, and it did speak to something that the genre had never quite captured before which this feels like it’s trying to recreate here by jumping on that same bandwagon albeit it with a lot more resources and a classier veneer. For some, the lack of anything grisly coupled with its unique direction will be enough to satisfy them, and I can’t go so far as to say it’s a bad movie just because I didn’t engage with what it was trying to be, but the takeaway from this era of sophisticated horror movies shouldn’t be to stick our nose up at the giants whose shoulders we now stand on, even if they were a little crude by today’s standards.
The Reviewers Unite 