Wednesday, August 1, 2012

August 1: Traffic (2000 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★★

Traffic came out the same year as Erin Brockovich, but its style is the anti-Erin alternative.  Erin Brockovich uses enhanced mimetic visuals and a transparent Hollywood cinematic style, but Traffic calls attention to its filmic elements in every frame.  It’s as though Soderbergh set out to make both a Bazinian and a Brechtian film in the same year.

From its opening, Traffic insistently calls attention to its cinematic elements.  An impossible yellow tint fills the wobbly, handheld frame as Javier and Manolo intercept a drug shipment in the desert of Tijuana, and the film goes on to alternate between three tints: yellow in Mexico; blue in the chilly corridors of East Coast authority and the homes of the authorities; and a rich, natural color in California.  This tinting suggests the lighting that Soderbergh had recently used in Grey’s Anatomy, but the highlights in the frame here are often burned out while the camera varies between steady and unsteady.  Also, occasional bravura blocking and editing segues from one plot line to the other, as when the camera turns from following Helena’s car to pick up Javier as he walks into bar on the same street.  Soderbergh uses no such attention-getting flourishes in Erin Brockovich.

There’s a clear purpose behind some of these meta-cinematic elements.  While Erin Brockovich tells the story of one woman’s struggle and follows this single character mimetically through its length, the subject in Traffic is much more general: drug use and its effects.  Traffic is a film of ideas, an analysis of drugs in the US, than it is the story of an individual, so the distancing that Soderbergh’s technique creates is appropriate here in a way it wouldn’t have been in the Brockovich story.  In addition to the distancing, the overt techniques help the film communicate better.  Traffic looks at drugs in three realms – Mexican distribution, the US government’s war on drugs, and American smugglers who distribute it – and Soderbergh color-codes each of these areas to help the audience keep the stories separate and reasonably clear.  And the hand-held camera gives a feeling of immediacy. 

Soderbergh also does an impressive job of handling a sprawling cast of characters to give breadth to his analysis of his subject.  Like Altman or PT Anderson or even Jean Renoir, Soderbergh finds depth, complexity, tragedy and smiles as his many characters deal with their respective roles in the drug trade.  Some characters are destroyed by their contact with drugs (Manolo, Salazar, Ray), some are damaged (Erika, Ana, Robert), and some flourish (Javier, Helena, Montel), but whatever their role or outcome, they’re all connected.  The achievement of this fine film is the range and detail of its description of its subject.

And all the while, many of the things I like most about Soderbergh are on display here.  He once again gets excellent performances out of his actors.  Michael Douglas plays the naïve politician/out-of-touch father well, and Erika Christensen all but outdoes him as the daughter who is slipping into a drug habit.  Catherine Zeta_Jones gives a complex performance that ranges from helplessness to confidence.  And Benicio del Toro dominates the screen as powerful giant who nonetheless seems vulnerable whenever he’s in front of us.  Seeing his performance here, it’s no surprise Soderbergh wanted to work with him again on Che.  And there’s a return role for Albert Finney here, too, albeit a minor one. 

Soderbergh’s fluidity and economy are also on display in Traffic.  From his rhythmic editing to the smoothness (or roughness) of his camera movement, Soderbergh continually engages viewers in the film.  For the most part, Soderbergh’s economical editing keep the film moving quickly.  In one POV shot, Erika sees an exit sign at a park, and a couple of shots later, we see her running down a small road.  At another point, Javier and Manolo are tasked with bringing in Francisco.  We soon see Javier walking into a gay bar where we find Francisco drinking, and after that, we find Javier and Manolo delivering a bound Francisco to Salazar.  Even Salazar asks how they accomplished the task that quickly, perhaps a wink at what the audience is thinking.  But Soderbergh can use such editing economy well to give us the facts we need without dwelling on  too much detail that slows the film down.

That said, there are a few plot points that suffer from too-economic editing.  I’m still unclear on how Manolo is betrayed, and I still don’t understand how he came to be handcuffed in the car with Javier.  I need a little more information there.  And unrelated to economy, I find the story a little more upbeat that I expected.  The bad guys are punished here, and there’s a faint glow of redemption on the horizon for the Wakefields.  Tijuana gets its ball field, Helena has a much better idea of how to live, and Montel continues his fight against the drug trade.  While not exactly a happy ending, the conclusion of Traffic is much happier than I might have expected.

But those small quibbles aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this film.  And on the Criterion blu-ray release, there are some excellent extras on the technical side of how it was made.

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