★★★★
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.
