Soderbergh Marathon: Part 22

Intro

Today I'll be reviewing two movies that could be called comedies.  Steven Soderbergh does not appear interested in making a traditional comedy, so both of these movies are not really what you think of when you think of comedy.

The Laundromat (2019)
The title of this movie is enormously unhelpful in figuring out what the movie is, and so is the face of Meryl Streep on the promotional tools of the movie.  Because Meryl Streep is not really the main character and it's about money laundering which is not exactly the first thing that pops to mind when I see "The Laundromat."

This movie is really about the Panama Papers, and the subsequent release of the Panama Papers.  I don't know if that would have been a better title, because it would suggest a more serious movie than what's provided on screen.  It's based on a true story, but it's told in a fourth wall breaking way.  It's a very confusing movie to try and describe to be honest.

There's no real protagonist - it follows three separate stories.  The first is the story of the two guys who got busted as a result of the leak of Panama Papers.  They narrate the story in a fourth wall breaking kind of way and are played by Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman.  Oldman does a weird and goofy accent.  Between the accent and the fourth wall narration, well you figure out the tone of the movie pretty quickly.

There's a second story that focuses on a billionaire and his daughter catching him in an affair with her friend, which shows basically the absurdity of the system.  Then the third story is based on the real life death of Neil Haywood, who was an intermediary trying to funnel money abroad for wealthy Chinese.

It's a very short movie, and it doesn't necessarily work well as a movie.  It works well as a message.  The message effectively being "Boy this capitalistic system we have sure is fucked up" so I guess if you want some sort of history lesson on one specific fucked up-ness of this system, this wouldn't be a bad guide.

I appreciate it more than I liked it.  The humor is more of the absurd variety than laugh out loud and like I said, it's mainly there to drive home the point that we have a fucked up system.

2/4 stars

Schizopolis
Well this is easily the weirdest fucking movie Soderbergh has ever made.  It's called "an experimental comedy" and boy does it earn that label.  I combined these two movies because 1) there's not much to say about either 2) both are ostensibly comedies without really being funny and 3) both don't follow traditional narrative structure.

In the case of Schizopolis, this is way farther out than The Laundromat.  This isn't told in a linear fashion, it features actors who were willing to work essentially for free for nine months and be ready at a moment's notice in Baton Rouge, which essentially means it features mostly non-actors, including Soderbergh himself.

The "employing non-actors" portion of Soderbergh is not my favorite version of him.  It in theory lends authenticity to scenes, but really leads to a lot of what seems like bad improvisation.  And Soderbergh supposedly didn't write the scenes until right before he was about to shoot them and allowed for some improvisation.  Admittedly, of the three movies I've seen where he employs mostly non-actors, this feels the least like bad improv and stilted line readings, so its' got that going for it.

But it's just so weird.  There are a couple of funny parts actually, like when the characters supposedly speak to each other, but the dialogue is just them expressing their true emotions.  The exterminator sleeping with everyone's wives, got to say, I don't really understand that plot point.  That is in fact not made up by me, even though it absolutely sounds like it is.

Soderbergh probably could have been a working actor if he wanted to, as he's reasonably good in this.  He cast himself, his ex-wife, and people who lived in Baton Rouge.  And his ex-wife was his ex-wife at the time, which I guess they divorced on good terms.

Anyway, this is an extremely weird movie whose wavelength I was not on, and apparently the beginning and ending scenes of what I saw were added because of a poor reaction at Cannes.  Well, it didn't really come out any better for me.  So let's call this one a misfire.

1/4 stars