Flasz On Film

Without a doubt, Steven Soderbergh’s filmmaking output can hardly be accused of being stylistically and thematically monotonous. The man’s done it all, from spearheading the early days of the 90s indie revival with Sex, Lies and Videotape (followed up by a string of less successful efforts like Kafka and King of the Hill) and pushing the boundaries of narrative storytelling with Schizopolis and Full Frontal to becoming one of the most recognizable voices in high-flying universe of prestige Hollywood with Traffic, the Ocean’s Trilogy and Erin Brockovich. He writes, directs, and produces. He makes little movies for himself as well as big opulent epics to entertain the masses. He helms TV shows, innovates with movie-based web series and apps, directs stage plays…  you name it. If it involves a camera, chances are Soderbergh has had a go at it.  

It’s nearly impossible to pin down Soderbergh’s signature stylistic traits because he seems so busy with so many concurrently running projects and on top of all that, he never turns down an opportunity to do something cool and interesting. Move to the middle of nowhere to shoot a murder mystery with non-actors? Sure. Cast a porn actress in a dramatic role or a UFC champion in an action thriller? Yes, please. Direct a movie on an iPhone? Why not. Remake a Tarkovsky classic and actually make it better? Naturally. Produce a noir story using the means and limitations of a 1940s production? Hell, yes. Thus, Soderbergh’s style has successfully evaded definition. Furthermore, in contrast to so many other film directors who, even when they don’t write their scripts, somehow gravitate to recurring themes and ideas, hence allowing a keen observer to identify the demons perched on their shoulders, it is much more difficult to do so with Soderbergh. He’s an elusive filmmaker because he’s been more of an innovator and entrepreneur than a storyteller driven by voices in his head in need of outward expression.  

However, in an eclectic mess of a filmography spanning Lester-esque farces (Schizopolis and The Informant!), prestige capers (Ocean’s movies and Out of Sight), new wave experiments (Full Frontal and Kafka), diligent biopics (Erin Brockovich and Che), elevated genre pieces (Haywire and Kimi) and bona fide stylistic challenges (The Good German and Unsane) you can still find recurring themes threaded ever so loosely throughout the man’s body of work. He’s always been interested in the power of money (Ocean’s Trilogy, Side Effects). He’s consistently returned to stories about people corrupted by power and riches (from Out of Sight and The Underneath to Behind the Candelabra and No Sudden Move) and how the idea of The American Dream often runs into the brick wall of reality (The Girlfriend Experience). And if you look close enough, you might just find that contrary to what you might expect from a filmmaker who jumps between disparate projects with glee as if to deliberately challenge himself with new stuff he agrees to do, Steven Soderbergh does have an avatar in his filmography with whom I believe he identifies thematically. It’s Mike Lane, the main character in his 2012 smash hit Magic Mike.  

In a way, I feel that both the character of Magic Mike and the films themselves hold the key to understanding Steven Soderbergh as a filmmaker and that they both reflect a lot of his own professional trajectory too. Think about it for a second and you shall see. Who is Mike? He’s a male stripper. He provides entertainment of the low-brow variety because he appeals to the audience’s primal desires. He entertains with his body and dance moves in a strictly theatrical setting. He engineers escapist adventures for women who pay top dollar to pretend for a short while they are in an erotic fantasy.  

However, this isn’t even the half of what Mike is about. When the stage lights dim and he gets into his pickup truck, Mike is just a great guy. He cares about people around him. He has a great personality. He has hobbies. He has passions. Dreams. Projects. He knows the stripping career has an expiration date and, even though he knows he is exquisitely good at it, Mike is perfectly aware that this isn’t his calling. It’s a means to make a lot of money and to allow him to do what he truly wants to do, which is making artisan furniture. Mike is an entrepreneur and someone willing to do what’s needed to enable what he feels he desires to do. Which mirrors exactly what Soderbergh himself would do as a filmmaker.  

Having started in the indie scene and taken the world by storm with his debut, it took a while for Soderbergh to gain any considerable traction in Hollywood. He struggled to get his movies released, let alone appraised and understood. To this day, most filmgoers just don’t know he ever made King of the Hill, Kafka, or Schizopolis. However, the tide turned after his Elmore Leonard adaptation starring George Clooney (at the time probably one of the most recognizable faces in TV) became a success. Opportunities followed and within a few short years, Soderbergh was an Oscar-winning director and a massive box office draw. Ocean’s Eleven together with its sequels made a tonne of money, which bought him enough clout in Hollywood (together with his prestige appeal) that he could get any project of the ground. And he could also afford to direct movies that nobody else would want to see. 

After all, nobody came out to see Solaris. Hardly anyone turned up to watch The Good German. Literally no-one knows Bubble exists. Making movies “for them” allowed Soderbergh to make other movies “for himself”. Which makes his life almost exactly mirror Mike Lane’s. He strips at night by making big populist blockbusters which will make loads of money for his financiers, and on his day off Magic Steve makes his artisan furniture. His indie movies. His experiments. His whatever-he-feels-it’s-cool-to-do. 

By the way, Matthew McConaughey’s character in Magic Mike becomes a functional stand-in for a movie studio, which perhaps makes The Kid (Alex Pettyfer) function as an analogue of Christopher Nolan, whose career was immensely helped by Soderbergh’s involvement, and who remained faithful to the big studio money enabling him to make unforgettable spectacles. But that’s neither here nor there.  

Now, the story of Mike in the film includes a dramatic shift because his narrative arc is propelled by his desire to leave the life of stripping at one point to commit to actualizing as an entrepreneur-artisan-furniture-artist. Thus, Magic Mike foreshadows (or perhaps reflects) Steven Soderbergh’s own desire to eventually ditch blockbuster filmmaking “for them” to concentrate on doing other things and hoping they would be successful enough to support his family and his lifestyle. He doesn’t want to “strip” forever by churning out populist hits he’s simply great at making but which he treats as nothing more than a well-paid job. So, long before Behind the Candelabra came out as his own tacit takedown of the Hollywood machine of corruption and sleaze, Magic Mike was already a de facto herald of Soderbergh’s impending retirement. Not from filmmaking as a whole, but from filmmaking he didn’t believe in. Fittingly enough, it was his last big smash hit before he left the scene and moved on to try new things, like TV showrunning (The Knick and The Girlfriend Experience), app-based experiments, Broadway and the like.  

However, we all know his retirement from feature filmmaking didn’t last very long and Soderbergh eventually came back to the fray with Logan Lucky. Though, before formally stepping into the shoes of a film director in 2017, a little movie called Magic Mike XXL saw the light of day in 2015. Although Soderbergh didn’t technically direct it, he ended up serving as a cinematographer and editor in assistance to Gregory Jacobs, his longtime collaborator. In fact, some viewers may have accused him of ghost-directing the movie anyway, which isn’t necessarily too egregious a claim to make, given how Soderbergh has always been known for wanting to do a lot by himself.  

What is more, the movie itself – again – reflects and foreshadows Soderbergh’s comeback, as it deals with, you guessed it, Mike Lane’s own reteaming with his stripper pals for another hurrah on stage. In the film, Mike still has his business, which isn’t exactly doing great. Although he doesn’t let it be known, he is struggling to get it off the ground because – simply put – there is a chasm between what he wants to do and what other people want to pay for. What is also an interesting wrinkle here is that one of Mike’s friends also wants to be an entrepreneur, as he dreams of opening a frozen yoghurt truck, which is something Mike definitely supports… Much like Soderbergh himself would, I can only imagine, if you spoke to him about going your own way as a filmmaker. I think that like Magic Mike, he would have your back too. Do you still need proof that Mike Lane and Steven Soderbergh are essentially the same person?

In addition, his relationship with Brooke seems to have fallen apart, which inadvertently puts Mike in a position of someone likely to drift back to his old ways… perhaps to recalibrate and recapture the magic of what he used to do. In a way, this is further vindicated in a scene where the gang visits upon a house full of middle-aged women, all of whom are either completely unhappy with their love lives or who don’t have such lives anymore because their marriages fell apart. Is this where Soderbergh realized some people need escapism? That the low-rent entertainment is a necessary feature of life for many people whose regular existence sometimes needs a springboard into a world of fantasy? Does he clue into the fact that he’s always been great at serving entertainment some people find value in despite the fact he may see it as completely disposable? Maybe.  

Nevertheless, you can easily see that following his return with Logan Lucky, which is a piece of entertainment first and foremost, the charm wasn’t too long-lived. Soderbergh is still enamoured with experimentation. He still yearns to do stuff “for him”… but at the same time he isn’t getting any younger. As the edge blunts over time, filmmakers don’t necessarily tend to make their most aggressive and audacious movies in their later years. What is more, with the arrival of the pandemic, it may have perhaps been the case that whatever audience there had been for artsy Soderbergh stuff, was no longer there. People wanted other things and even if they didn’t, the sudden arrival of streaming as a de facto rival to the cinematic experience meant that, despite being able to raise funds to make movies, the industry was due a course correction, or even a paradigm-redefining upheaval.  

This is how we meet Magic Mike in the recently released Magic Mike’s Last Dance. His furniture business got ruined by the pandemic and Mike is now a slave to the gig economy. He pours drinks at charitable events. God only knows what else he does to stay afloat. I suppose, “whatever it takes” is the answer. Point is that we meet him at a time where he is essentially lost at sea and finds rescue in the arms of a rich lady who becomes literally entranced by his “entertainment” skills. Mike is then given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go back to frontline entertainment and stage a one-night-only revival of his male stripping career – his titular last dance.  

Again, the movie is a fitting analogy of Soderbergh’s own life trajectory, as it became the first big movie he did in years, and the first one since Unsane not to be released on streaming services first. Was it a return to form? I’m not sure. Although some critics see it as a valuable entry in his filmography, I think it is once again, first and foremost, a herald of things to come rather than an intriguing cinematic specimen to investigate on its own terms. It’s a swan song and a reminder that Soderbergh in his sixties is not the same beast who made Traffic, Out of Sight and Ocean’s Eleven. Therefore, just like I think I’m sure enough to bet money on there not being any more Magic Mike movies, I believe Magic Steve is gone too. He had his last dance with Magic Mike’s Last Dance and it is for us to decode the film’s ending to understand what he’ll do next. Mike finds Max (Salma Hayek) in the crowd and the two kiss after the final dance in the rain inspired by their first encounter. Does it mean Mike is now done with the life of an entertainer? Does he know what he wants? Does it mean Magic Steve knows it too? 

I think Magic Steve may have finally realized that the big stage is no longer fit for him and that, even if it doesn’t make money or attract attention, it is in his best interest to make movies “for him” and to express himself in other ways. Now, I have been wrong before so I’ll be happy to revisit these assertions in the future if Soderbergh ends up surprising me, but I think that Mike Lane wouldn’t want to come back to do any more stripping. Even though he still looks great, a male form ages relentlessly and it becomes eventually unsustainably difficult to keep it in tight shape. Such is the case with the blockbuster acumen. I don’t think Soderbergh will return to make another glitzy caper or a populist display of visual showboating, unless it is in the guise of self-reflection. Magic Steve has just had his last dance. His Hollywood swan song may have reached its crescendo and the curtain may be on its way down. 

But it of course does not mean he’s willing and able to sit down on his porch and smoke a pipe. He’s still at it and will continue to make movies until his dying breath. Just like Jean-Luc Godard – Soderbergh’s lifelong idol – he will make cinema. By hook or by crook. But it is my estimation that Soderbergh the blockbuster magician is no longer in attendance.