SALON

Thursday, Feb 7, 2013 1:00 AM UTC

“Side Effects”: A chilly, mysterious thriller ends a strange and brilliant career

If Steven Soderbergh is really quitting, the icy, satirical "Side Effects" captures his strengths and weaknesses

By

Topics: Movies, Thrillers, Steven Soderbergh, Jude Law, rooney mara, Side Effects, Channing Tatum, anti-depressants, depression, anti-anxiety, Big Pharma, medication, Magic Mike, Film, cinema,

Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum in "Side Effects"

It’s not enough to say that the absence of human feeling is characteristic of Steven Soderbergh’s films. It’s more that the absence of human feeling is Soderbergh’s principal subject matter, and central to his diagnosis of contemporary society and its pathologies. From his 1989 debut with “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” onward, Soderbergh has seemed divided between a yearning for human contact and a (supposedly) detached and dispassionate belief that it can’t happen anymore and maybe never could.

In Soderbergh’s new movie “Side Effects,” which he says will be his last as a cinema director, all human interaction is mediated by some abstract force, whether that’s money or a commodified and quotation-marked notion of sexuality or an impressive range of psychoactive pharmaceuticals, most notably a fictional antidepressant called “Ablixa” that serves as an enormous plot MacGuffin. This follows such recent Soderbergh films as “Contagion” (scripted, like “Side Effects,” by frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns), whose true protagonist is arguably a pandemic virus; “Haywire,” in which almost every meeting between characters leads to violence; and “Magic Mike” and “The Girlfriend Experience,” tonally opposite but thematically linked films that depict human sexuality as a marketplace and prostitution as its governing metaphor.

Whether Soderbergh’s essential problem with the universe is philosophical (it’s human nature to long for the unattainable) or political (the rift is caused by modernity, capitalism, etc.) is best left to the authors of dissertations yet to be written. In fact, I think it’s the wrong question. Soderbergh is a master craftsman first and foremost, a formal stylist who may be without peer in contemporary American cinema, and he always follows the dictates of form. If his studio pictures like “Out of Sight” and the “Ocean’s” series paint a sunnier picture of human relations than his chilly low-budget indies do, that’s because big commercial movies demand a happy ending. So too did “Magic Mike,” despite its minuscule budget, since that movie’s essentially a gender-reversed tale of the hooker with a heart of gold and the regular guy who redeems her through love.

In Soderbergh’s controversial and exciting four-hour drama about the 20th century’s most famous guerrilla, the idealistic or utopian vision that supposedly motivated Che Guevara is almost never mentioned. Instead, “Che” defines its protagonist as a morally ambiguous man of action, both in his ascent toward victory in Cuba and his descent toward ignominious defeat and death in a Bolivian backwater. It’s tempting to view “Che” in retrospect as a fable about the artist or filmmaker’s job, where what you say is a lot less important than what you do, or to seek analogies between Guevara’s up-and-down career and Soderbergh’s. Too tempting, no doubt – although Soderbergh has said he first began to contemplate retirement after completing that punishing production.

I can feel Soderbergh, from several New York neighborhoods away, almost physically resisting my attempt to psychoanalyze him through the motion pictures he has made, and he is undeniably well defended on that front. With a few exceptions, he gave up writing his own screenplays early in a career that has veered from studio tentpole productions to no-budget, no-audience indies and all points in between, exemplifying the essentially collaborative and haphazard nature of American filmmaking. While he has no objection to talking about the philosophical implications of his movies, he does so with technical dispassion, in the same spirit as talking about lenses and color schemes, or his favorite moments in Hitchcock or Howard Hawks.

So I won’t reach too far to read “Side Effects” as some kind of Soderberghian grand statement or swan song. For one thing, even calling this slick and deceptive thriller his “last movie” is a term of art that’s almost meaningless; “Behind the Candelabra,” with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his younger lover Scott Thorson, will hit HBO later this year (largely because the major studios didn’t want it). Still, let’s say this: “Side Effects” is highly representative of a certain strain in Soderbergh’s work. It’s got movie stars getting a chance to play ambiguous characters, with Rooney Mara as a depressed young wife, Channing Tatum as her befuddled financial-hustler husband, Jude Law as the cocksure shrink plying her with drugs, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a mystery woman from the past. It’s masterfully shot and edited, with a brooding soundtrack and a mysterious, dreamlike undertow – and, when all is revealed, it’s not even half as interesting as it seems to be. “Haywire” or “Contagion” or “Magic Mike,” all terrific examples of Soderbergh’s mid-career control over the medium, would have been better movies to say goodbye with. But then, nobody ever accused this dude of being sentimental.

Many of my complaints about “Side Effects” have to do with aspects of the plot I obviously shouldn’t discuss in detail. For now, let’s say that Burns’ screenplay requires an increasingly ludicrous suspension of disbelief, and that what initially feels like a dark, hard-edged satire about psychiatry, finance, Big Pharma and the justice system eventually gives way to a thriller plot that’s both hackneyed and implausible. You almost get the feeling the whole movie is fundamentally insincere and enclosed with quotation marks, as if Burns and Soderbergh sat around watching and rewatching “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct” (and “Vertigo” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much”) and deciding what to pilfer.

Soderbergh shows us the aftermath of a violent crime, likely a murder, in the first seconds of the film – but we don’t know who’s dead, or who did it. Then we go back several months in time and meet Emily Taylor (the impressive, chameleonic Rooney Mara), at that point a mousy, stringy-haired creature who ends up in a Manhattan emergency room after an apparent (if ambiguous) suicide attempt. Jonathan Banks (Law), the suave British shrink who treats her, agrees not to hospitalize her if she’ll begin treatment with him promptly. No, he’s not a creep or a perv, in classic movie-shrink fashion; what ultimately makes Banks so disturbing is that he believes he’s doing the right thing all along, but is hemmed in by a medical system, or a world (or just a movie) that makes bad things get worse rapidly.

Banks has no predatory interest in Emily, exactly, but her case is precisely the sort of challenge that attracts ambitious professionals. Her husband (Tatum) is about to be released from prison after doing time for insider trading. Emily seems overwhelmed by worsening anxiety and depression, and there seems to be some unresolved tension with her previous shrink, Victoria Siebert (Zeta-Jones), out in the leafy Connecticut suburbs. It’s Siebert, looking rather too much like the crazy but seductive ice-bitch out of an ‘80s thriller, who first suggests to Banks that her former patient might do well on Ablixa. He’s a true believer in psychopharmacology who’s pumping his blond trophy wife (Vinessa Shaw) with beta-blockers and doing lucrative consulting on the side with a different pharmaceutical company. I mean, this stuff has all been tested, right? What could go wrong?

OK, I’ve said about 5 percent too much, but that’s all, I promise. Soderbergh is partly cashing in on the fact that half the viewing audience will be personally familiar with drugs like Zoloft and Wellbutrin, and 100 percent of us will be at least mildly uncomfortable with the long-term personal, social and environmental consequences of all those pharmaceuticals. Even if “Side Effects” is not ultimately about those questions, it is about Banks’ arrogance and unfounded optimism, which stands in for our own. We’d like to believe that our SSRIs and MAOIs will bring us happiness, that love is real, that art or spirituality can offer transcendence. Steven Soderbergh would like to remind us that it’s all a trick, and we’re on our own.

“Side Effects” opens nationwide this week.

Andrew O

More Andrew O'Hehir.

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

7 motorist-friendly camping sites

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 9

Sponsored Post

  • White River National Forest via Lower Crystal Lake, Colorado
    For those OK with the mainstream, White River Forest welcomes more than 10 million visitors a year, making it the most-visited recreation forest in the nation. But don’t hate it for being beautiful; it’s got substance, too. The forest boasts 8 wilderness areas, 2,500 miles of trail, 1,900 miles of winding service system roads, and 12 ski resorts (should your snow shredders fit the trunk space). If ice isn’t your thing: take the tire-friendly Flat Tops Trail Scenic Byway — 82 miles connecting the towns of Meeker and Yampa, half of which is unpaved for you road rebels.
    fs.usda.gov/whiteriveryou


    Image credit: Getty

  • Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest via Noontootla Creek, Georgia
    Boasting 10 wildernesses, 430 miles of trail and 1,367 miles of trout-filled stream, this Georgia forest is hailed as a camper’s paradise. Try driving the Ridge and Valley Scenic Byway, which saw Civil War battles fought. If the tall peaks make your engine tremble, opt for the relatively flat Oconee National Forest, which offers smaller hills and an easy trail to the ghost town of Scull Shoals. Scaredy-cats can opt for John’s Mountain Overlook, which leads to twin waterfalls for the sensitive sightseer in you.
    fs.usda.gov/conf


    Image credit: flickr/chattoconeenf

  • Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area via Green Road, Michigan
    The only national forest in Lower Michigan, the Huron-Mainstee spans nearly 1 million acres of public land. Outside the requisite lush habitat for fish and wildlife on display, the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area is among the biggest hooks for visitors: offering beach camping with shores pounded by big, cerulean surf. Splash in some rum and you just might think you were in the Caribbean.
    fs.usda.gov/hmnf


    Image credit: umich.edu

  • Canaan Mountain via Backcountry Canaan Loop Road, West Virginia
    A favorite hailed by outdoorsman and author Johnny Molloy as some of the best high-country car camping sites anywhere in the country, you don’t have to go far to get away. Travel 20 miles west of Dolly Sods (among the busiest in the East) to find the Canaan Backcountry (for more quiet and peace). Those willing to leave the car for a bit and foot it would be remiss to neglect day-hiking the White Rim Rocks, Table Rock Overlook, or the rim at Blackwater River Gorge.
    fs.usda.gov/mnf


    Image credit: Getty

  • Mt. Rogers NRA via Hurricane Creek Road, North Carolina
    Most know it as the highest country they’ll see from North Carolina to New Hampshire. What they may not know? Car campers can get the same grand experience for less hassle. Drop the 50-pound backpacks and take the highway to the high country by stopping anywhere on the twisting (hence the name) Hurricane Road for access to a 15-mile loop that boasts the best of the grassy balds. It’s the road less travelled, and the high one, at that.
    fs.usda.gov/gwj


    Image credit: wikipedia.org

  • Long Key State Park via the Overseas Highway, Florida
    Hiking can get old; sometimes you’d rather paddle. For a weekend getaway of the coastal variety and quieter version of the Florida Keys that’s no less luxe, stick your head in the sand (and ocean, if snorkeling’s your thing) at any of Long Key’s 60 sites. Canoes and kayaks are aplenty, as are the hot showers and electric power source amenities. Think of it as the getaway from the typical getaway.
    floridastateparks.org/longkey/default.cfm


    Image credit: floridastateparks.org

  • Grand Canyon National Park via Crazy Jug Point, Arizona
    You didn’t think we’d neglect one of the world’s most famous national parks, did you? Nor would we dare lead you astray with one of the busiest parts of the park. With the Colorado River still within view of this cliff-edge site, Crazy Jug is a carside camper’s refuge from the troops of tourists. Find easy access to the Bill Hall Trail less than a mile from camp, and descend to get a peek at the volcanic Mt. Trumbull. (Fear not: It’s about as active as your typical lazy Sunday in front of the tube, if not more peaceful.)
    fs.usda.gov/kaibab


    Image credit: flickr/Irish Typepad

  • As the go-to (weekend) getaway car for fiscally conscious field trips with friends, the 2013 MINI Convertible is your campground racer of choice, allowing you and up to three of your co-pilots to take in all the beauty of nature high and low. And with a fuel efficiency that won’t leave you in the latter, you won’t have to worry about being left stranded (or awkwardly asking to go halfsies on gas expenses).


    Image credit: miniusa.com

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 9

Related Videos

Comments

 6 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
505 points506 points | 24 comments
vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
396 points397 points | 30 comments
vote
Yes, there is a better search engine (1998)
96 points97 points | 27 comments
vote
Machiavelli doesn’t belong to the 1 percent | "The Prince" is oft-quoted on Wall Street, but its author was a hero of the working class who despised elites
93 points94 points | 33 comments
vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
89 points90 points | 9 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Joker": Laughing at life's deepest sorrows