The Essentials: The Films Of Steven Soderbergh

Editor’s note: This feature was originally published in 2013, but has been updated to reflect all the films released since up until 2021’s “No Sudden Move.”

If there are two things that mark out the career of director Steven Soderbergh, they arguably could be described as a willingness to fail and a constant routine of creative calisthenics. A process-rather-than-results person, he has, over the last 24 years, been one of the most daring, unpredictable and restless filmmakers around. His output has run the gamut of everything from indie relationship drama to star-packed heist movies, from experimental, micro-budget thrillers to philosophical sci-fi, and from melancholy coming-of-age to kick-ass action.

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First arriving as a hotly tipped new thing, one of the first major Sundance success stories, Soderbergh spent his first decade delivering poorly-received follow-ups to “sex, lies, and videotape.” And yet, just when many had concluded he was a one-hit wonder, he creatively revived himself with a self-funded indie before making a critically-acclaimed studio picture, which led to a remarkable run of success culminating in a Best Director Oscar in 2001, a particularly impressive achievement given that he was competing against himself in the category (nominated for “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich,” and winning the statue for the former).

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Things have been up and down in the last decade (though the films are rarely dull), but Soderbergh had one final trick up his sleeve: a few years back, he started hinted that he was retiring — or at least taking an extended hiatus — from filmmaking. And after a prolific last few years, that’s set to take place after his two 2013 films — “Side Effects” and the HBO Liberace biopic “Behind The Candelabra” — have been released.

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Only time will tell if posterity considers them a fitting grace note to his career (this part of it, anyway), but whatever the verdict he’s been behind one of the most fascinating and extraordinary filmographies in recent memory. And with the director recently turned 50 (one forgets that he was only 26 when “sex, lies and videotape” won the Palme d’Or back in 1989), and the release of “Side Effects” this week (our review is here), we thought it was a good time to take a look at his career to date. And once you’ve taken a spin through our takes on this diverse back catalogue, if you’re still hankering for more Soderbergh, why not check out our extensive interview with the filmmaker from this time last year right here.

Steven Soderbergh Talks The Upside Of Experiments Like Quibi, Pandemic Protocols, The Film Industry & More [Interview]

null“Sex, Lies, and Videotape” (1989)
Rare are the films that truly exemplify cinematic eras or movements, but rarer still are films that define them. Steven Soderbergh’s debut, the self-consciously navel-gazey but totally brilliant “Sex, Lies and Videotape” is one of those rarest of cases. Winning the Palme D’or at Cannes in 1989 (over Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Mystery TrainJane Campion’s “Sweetie” and Emir Kusturica’s “Time of the Gypsies,” among other illustrious competition), its success shone a bright, trailblazing light at the dawn of the independent filmmaking movement of the 1990s, and helped bring a certain H. Weinstein of Miramax bellowing onto a scene he’s dominated ever since. And all this for a low-budget talky adult drama about a group of white, middle-class late-20/early-30-somethings and their sexual dysfunctions. Yet the tightness of the film’s premise is the masterstroke, meaning Soderbergh’s writing and the performances he coaxes from his small ensemble (all of whom turn in career-best work) take center stage. In fact, it’s an early mark of the director’s characterising intelligence that he designed the film so craftily: he didn’t just write a story he’d be able to make with the limited resources available to him, he wrote one that thematically demanded to be made in just such an unadorned, lo-fi manner; the fuzzy, flat-lit aesthetic feels less like a budget-dictated compromise than a stylistic decision. The story is simple: sexually maladjusted Graham (James Spader) drifts into the lives of John, his wife Ann, and her sister Cynthia, with whom John is having an affair (Peter Gallagher, Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo, respectively), and Graham’s fetish for taping women talking about sex gradually uncovers the sewn-up secrets each has been keeping from the other, and from themselves. But what saves it from being potboilery, or salacious simply for the sake of it, is the writing: it’s often very witty, sometimes outright funny and, by its close, surprisingly touching for a film about brittle sexual facades. In fact, (much to the disappointment of flesh hounds attracted by the splashiness of the title) themes of voyeurism aside, we’d argue that it’s really a cerebral love story, detailing a strange but powerful and redemptive connection made between unlikely lovers, through the unlikeliest of means. Soderbergh would make bigger films, glossier films, more ambitious films and more complex films, but over the course of an exemplary, varied and eclectic career, we’re not sure he ever made a truer one. [A-]

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“Kafka” (1991)

With an initial success like “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” Soderbergh was always at risk of attracting tall poppy syndrome with his second outing, and by making “Kafka” — an offbeat, expressionistic psychological thriller/horror/noir, based loosely on the life and work of the great Czech writer — he seemed to be actively courting attackers. They came in droves, the film receiving negative notices and few audiences (it’s still never been available on DVD in the U.S.), but we’d argue that it’s actually the director’s most undersung work, even if critics at the time were baffled by a piece of work that falls somewhere between Fritz Lang and David Cronenberg. Lem Dobbs‘ script focuses on ‘Mr. Kafka’ (Jeremy Irons), an unprepossessing office drone who, after the disappearance of a colleague, comes across an anarchist terrorist group, and the secret society they fight against. It’s undoubtedly something that works better the more familiar you are with Kafka’s works (“The Trial” and “The Castle” are the key ones to bone up on), and probably suffered at the time due to relative proximity to Terry Gilliam‘s “Brazil,” which owed a huge debt to the writer. But “Kafka” is very much its own beast, from the gorgeous German Expressionist-ish black-and-white photography (anticipating the equally unsuccessful “The Good German” in some ways) from ‘Sex, Lies’ DoP Walt Lloyd — the two never worked together again, and Lloyd’s been working exclusively in TV for the last 15 years or so — to the sci-fi/horror tinges and fine supporting performances from character actor greats like Alec Guinness, Joel Grey and Armin Mueller-Stahl. It’s so odd, and so unfriendly to general audiences, that it’s not surprising that it failed to connect. But as the ‘lost’ Soderbergh film, it’s a very strong and idiosyncratic piece of work, and one that the directors’ fans should seek out without delay. [B+]

null“King of the Hill” (1993)
If “Sex, Lies and Videotape” was Soderbergh’s Nevermind, the next three films were akin to Blind Melon records after No Rain; the audience just wasn’t responding in the same way and his sophomore slump lasted about three movies. The director’s always marched to the beat of his own tune and that’s probably never been more apparent in the early ‘90s. While “Reservoir Dogs” was beginning to build the Tarantino brand in 1992, Robert Rodriguez had just delivered the ultra-kinetic “El Mariachi” and filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Jim Jarmusch were exploring films that tapped into this new slacker/angst Gen-X/disenfranchised energy, Soderbergh was moving upstream and away from the zeitgeist, and tackling a very not-of-the-moment Depression-era coming-of-age story. Based on A. E. Hotchner’s evocative memoir childhood hardships in the 1930s, the film centers on a boy struggling to survive on his own in a St. Louis hotel while his mother is sent to a sanatorium, his absentee father tries to make money as a traveling salesman and he has to parent and feed his younger brother who is soon torn away with him to live with relatives. While ignored because of its out-of-step milieu, “King Of The Hill” is a moving and subtle character-driven tale that’s deeply touching and empathetic. Watching this boy (one of the earliest feature performances by Jesse Bradford) scrape by and the cruel and bleak adversities he must face each day is particularly affecting. Perhaps a non-named cast didn’t help either. While Adrien Brody, Karen Allen and Elizabeth McGovern have supporting roles (plus brief appearances by Lauryn Hill and a very young Katherine Heigl), the core family, Bradford, Jeroen Krabbé, Lisa Eichhorn and Cameron Boyd still to this day aren’t exactly household names. While it was entered in the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and received generally decent reviews, the film barely grossed $1 million in the U.S. [B]