Narrative and Anti-Narrative: The Case of the Two Stevens
The Work of Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh
In this chapter, we look at the work of two important film storytellers, Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh. They represent two extreme impulses. Spielberg’s impulse is classic linear storytelling, clearly plot-driven, and very effective (so effective, in fact, that it underpins the most commercially successful career in film history). Soderbergh’s impulse is ambiguous, experimental, and quirky. We call it anti-narrative. The impulse of Steven Soderbergh is, above all, a strategy to opt for creative rather than overtly commercial narrative solutions. That is not to say that Steven Spielberg has not experimented or sought creative solutions in his own work. Nor is it to say that Steven Soderbergh has not sought out linear, commercially viable narratives in his career. However, for the most part, Steven Spielberg has embraced one type of narrative and Steven Soderbergh has embraced the opposite. For this reason, an exploration of their work will highlight these two extreme options available to the filmic storyteller, a term that illuminates the role of filmmakers who either write or have a powerful influence on the scripts before production.
To give the chapter a deeper context, it’s useful to highlight the two contrasting impulses of Spielberg and Soderbergh from a career perspective. To put it most simply, Spielberg’s career has been marked by the popular impulse. Aesthetic concerns and socio-political concerns have taken a distant second place. In terms of narrative strategies, this has produced structural clarity and goal-oriented main characters that are easy to identify with. Spielberg is also more attracted to genres—the action-adventure film and the science fiction film in particular.
When he has taken on a melodrama, it has always been fused with a plot-oriented overlay, as in the war films Empire of the Sun and Schindler’s List. And even in his more recent work, where he embraces important socio-political material, such as in Amistad, he still gravitates to plot, focusing on the trial instead of the characters.
An important question to consider is whether the entertainment impulse in a storyteller is an asset or, in the most elitist, critical sense, a deficiency. When we look at the early careers of Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, or Federico Fellini, we can see the primacy of this impulse. We see it also throughout the career of Alfred Hitchcock. The entertainment or commercial impulse has not compromised the reputations of any of these filmic storytellers.
Perhaps a more productive way to look at this impulse is to consider it a definite strategy in a field in which there is a full range of strategies. In this sense, Steven Spielberg is a storyteller, always mindful of holding his audience. He is a storyteller who views his creative life as an amusement park, with his films as the various rides. Clearly, he prefers the rides that emphasize charm over darkness, thrills over meditations, and action over reflection.
With Steven Soderbergh, another cluster of strategies prevails. Over the course of his career, Soderbergh seems to favor the creative impulse over the commercial impulse. And instead of dwelling on genres of wish fulfillment, Soderbergh has focused principally on character-driven genres, the melodrama and the film noir; he has dwelled upon genres of the nightmare or the incursion of darkness into realist melodramas, such as King of the Hill. He has also upgraded the character layer in plot-driven genres, such as in his gangster film The Limey.
Although Soderbergh has made commercial, straight-line narratives, such as Erin Brockovich, his distinct preference is to subvert narrative conventions, the consequence of which is a series of unusual narrative experiences. One might almost call them experiments. In sex, lies, and videotape, he is experimenting with structure, and in Out of Sight and Kafka, he is experimenting with tone; the result is what we would classify as anti-narrative.
Steven Spielberg: The Approach to Character
When we look at Spielberg’s characters, we find that they are most often extreme. Polarities create conflict, and Spielberg wants as much conflict as possible to drive the narrative. Consequently, the young/old, black/white, Jewish/Gentile grid (schematic or narrative polarity) is applicable to the main character/antagonist relationship in Spielberg’s work. To articulate this relationship, we turn first to the presentation of the main character.
Spielberg’s main characters share two qualities, regardless of their age. The first is a childlike innocence. The result may be playfulness, such as one finds in Jim, the young boy in J.G. Ballard, Tom Stoppard, and Menno Meyjes’s Empire of the Sun. Although Jim is caught in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion, and although he will be imprisoned, separated from his parents, and placed in considerable danger, he remains open to seeing the world through a curious, individualistic, and playful perspective. The same can be said for Indiana Jones in George Lucas, Phillip Kauffman, and Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, and for Dr. Alan Grant in Michael Crichton and David Koepp’s Jurassic Park. Although Indiana Jones and Dr. Alan Grant are adults, they each retain a childlike enthusiasm and belief in their work. They are the opposite of jaded characters.
Second, Spielberg’s main characters typically display a great amount of reluctance. This is not to say that they are passive or ambivalent, but rather that they are characters not easily or impulsively affiliated with a goal. However, once they do commit to a side, they do so to the fullest. Captain John Miller in Robert Rodat’s Saving Private Ryan, Oskar Schindler in Steve Zaillian’s Schindler’s List, and the lawyer Roger Baldwin in David Franzoni’s Amistad are examples of this personality trait.
As expected, all of these characters are goal oriented and will compassionately see that goal through to its successful conclusion. Sheriff Brody will do all he can to eliminate the threat of a shark against the people of Amityville in Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb’s Jaws. Roger Baldwin will do all he can to defend Cinque in the slave revolt in Amistad. Elliot will do all he can to save the alien in Melissa Mathison’s E.T. And once committed, Oskar Schindler, in Schindler’s List, will do all he can to save as many Jews as possible from extermination in Nazi death camps. In each case, the main character’s initial reluctance gives way to heroic effort and achievement of the goal.
The Antagonist
For the actions of the main character to be experienced as heroic, you need a very powerful antagonist. The more powerful the antagonist, the greater the likelihood that the main character will be perceived as heroic, even if the character is a child or a reluctant adult. The antagonist consequently plays a key role in the Spielberg narrative. The essence of evil Nazism is embodied in Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Nazi labor camp in Poland. Goeth personifies the power, the arbitrariness, the cruelty of the Nazis toward the Jews. As the antagonist, he poses the greatest threat to Oskar Schindler’s goal of saving as many Jews as possible from Nazi extermination.
Nazism is replaced by slavery in Amistad. The persecution of Cinque, the leader of the slave revolt, represents the injustice of slavery. Roger Baldwin’s defense of Cinque represents an attack on this injustice. Unfortunately, in this Spielberg film, we have no character equivalent to Goeth; consequently, Baldwin’s efforts don’t reach the heroic level of other Spielberg main characters. Here, the absence of a good antagonist affects the experience of the main character and the narrative as a whole. There will be more on this issue in the discussion of plot.
For the most part, however, Spielberg does work with powerful antagonists, such as the shark in Jaws and various dinosaurs (particularly raptors) in Jurassic Park. The magnitude of this threat from the antagonist makes the actions of Sheriff Brody and Dr. Grant appropriately heroic. In more human form, the antagonist in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the rogue archaeologist—he has affiliated himself with the Nazis who are pursuing the Lost Ark to harness its spiritual and physical power for their own material and evil purposes. Because of his level of understanding of the historical-religious importance of the Ark as an archaeological artifact (aesthetics over materialism), this archaeologist is a truly dangerous man, whereas the Nazi masters are simply crude wielders of power. Together, however, they push Indiana Jones to heroic proportions in his effort to secure and protect the ark for more enlightened purposes. As a result, the main character becomes the hero.
Another example is Captain John Miller in Saving Private Ryan. Captain Miller must take his company into enemy territory to retrieve Private Ryan, the last living son (three have died) in his family. The time is the D-Day invasion of Europe. The French countryside is clearly teeming with the German enemy. Although the Germans are the antagonists, Spielberg wants to emotionalize the antagonist. During the search for Ryan, the patrol comes upon a German. Many of the patrol members want to kill the German, but Captain Miller decides to free him. Later, in the climactic battle scene, this same German soldier will cruelly kill the one Jewish member of Miller’s patrol. Such cruelty gives additional weight to the power and determination of the antagonist, and it gives a palpable and heroic quality to Captain Miller in his effort to save Private Ryan. This heroic quality is heightened even more when Captain Miller gives up his own life to achieve the goal of saving Private Ryan. Here again, the characterization of the antagonist gives scale to the achievement of the main character. He is a hero.
The Issue of Identification
Writers use a number of strategies to enhance the audience identification with the main character. Spielberg’s use of the antagonist is one example. There are other strategies that Spielberg favors and others that he sidesteps. He is not drawn to a charismatic main character. In fact, quite the contrary, he takes pains to establish that his main character is ordinary. Sheriff Brody in Jaws is a simple family man concerned about his kids and about doing his job responsibly. Elliott in E.T. is an ordinary young boy—playful, earnest, naive. Jim in Empire of the Sun is curious and creative. But both he and Elliot are very sensitive. They are neither bullies nor nerds, but rather are somewhere in-between. Indiana Jones is boyish and enthusiastic, a bit irresponsible with regard to relationships, but well intentioned. Even Dr. Grant is a stiff academic. None of these characters is charismatic. So what is it about them that invites us to identify with them?
We’ve mentioned the “Everyman” qualities of Spielberg’s main characters. Spielberg also likes to position the main character in a dilemma—call it situational or moral, the decision the character will make clarifies his values. In Jaws, Sheriff Brody must decide whether his job is to protect the economic well being of Amityville or to protect lives. Dr. Grant faces a parallel dilemma in Jurassic Park, as do Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List and Roger Baldwin in Amistad. By choosing human values over material values, these main characters affirm their own humanness.
The moral stakes rise when life itself is on the line. For Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, each life saved is a virtue; each life lost is profoundly felt. Miller’s struggle is to value life, to view life as a temporary gift to be treasured. Elliot in E.T. chooses to save an alien life, which makes his plight all the more innocent and decent. E.T. becomes “another kind of being,” equally deserving of being saved. This struggle over the primacy of human values in Spielberg’s main characters makes them easy to identify with. Even an ambiguous character such as Oskar Schindler visibly transforms himself from opportunist to humanist. This movement helps us to identify with him.
A final strategy that makes identification with the main character possible is the deployment of plot. In a sense, Spielberg uses plot the way Hitchcock and Polanski use plot—to attempt to victimize the main character. By operating as if the threat of a man-eating shark or a man-eating raptor or a man-eating war will destroy the main character, we in the audience quickly identify with the potential victim who avoids being victimized and who, in fact, becomes a hero by overcoming the forces against him. There is never a cynical last twist that defeats the character. He always succeeds in the end, and by doing so, he emerges a hero, a very easy character with whom to identify.
The Approach to Structure
One of Spielberg’s approaches to structure relies on the narrative being both centered and linear. If the goal-directed main character keeps moving relentlessly toward resolution in the face of a powerful antagonist, at complete odds with the plot, that movement becomes heroic. But to be considered a hero, there must be resolution, an answer to the question: Has the main character achieved his goal? In Spielberg’s films, this answer is always answered in the affirmative; there is always a sense of closure by film’s end. This struggle leading to closure characterizes classic Hollywood narrative at its most effective.
To understand the specifics of this structure, we need to look at the operation of the plot, or foreground story, as well as the background story, or character layer. We need to look also at the balance of these two layers. Finally, we need to look at the trajectory, the dramatic arc from critical moment to resolution (the organization of the three-act narrative). We turn first to the deployment of plot in Spielberg films.
The Role of Plot
Plot-driven narrative is a major reason for Hollywood’s international success. Steven Spielberg isn’t obsessed with plot, but, as we stated earlier, he has gravitated toward plot-driven narratives. One of his earliest films, Duel, is essentially all plot. A motorist angers a truck driver on the road, and then the truck driver begins pursuing him with murderous intent. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are entirely plot driven. Although there is a modest father–son character layer in Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade, that narrative is also dominated by plot. As well, Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park are both essentially dominated by plot.
When Spielberg has veered away from plot—in Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple—the films have been less successful commercially; consequently, he has been very mindful of plot in his latest films. The plot is set up to oppose the goal of the main character. If that opposition is successfully structured, the plot should maximize conflict, thus serving as the primary challenge the main character will be forced to overcome. Consequently, our involvement and participation in the main character’s plight will also be maximized.
Let’s turn to three examples of this plot structure in Spielberg’s work. The plot of Schindler’s List is the relentless attack on the Jews by the Nazis. The creation of the ghetto, the liquidation of the ghetto, the transport to the labor camp, the random killing of Jews in the labor camp, and the transport of Jews to Auschwitz are all plot sequences in the film. Each event illustrates the atrocities being committed against the Jews.
The goal of the main character then becomes saving the Jews from extermination. To do so, Schindler creates a fictitious factory where Jews work in his business enterprises. In fact, the real goal is to save as many Jewish lives as possible—this goal directly opposes the plot. In the course of the plot, many more Jews are killed than are saved. Schindler’s efforts only scratch the surface, but his efforts are heroic relative to the scale of the Nazi killing machine.
In Amistad, the plot centers on a slave revolt aboard the ship Amistad—the slaves’ overtaking of the ship, the capturing of the ship in American waters, and the subsequent trial of the captured slaves (the focus is on the leader, Cinque). The goal of the main character as the defense lawyer for Cinque is to seek acquittal for his client. The fact that slavery is legal makes the slaves’ revolt illegal. Consequently, the goal of the lawyer is to condemn and overturn the immoral, yet legal, practice of slavery. In fighting against such great odds, which in essence is the plot, the actions of the lawyer are morally justified, and so heroic.
In Saving Private Ryan, the goal of the main character, Captain Miller, is to save the lives of his men or, at the very least, to prevent them from dying. The plot, the progress of the war from the D-Day invasion of France to securing Private Ryan, who is the last surviving son in his family, works to challenge the goal of the main character.
In each of these examples, plot is working in the classic narrative style, which is to work directly against the goals of the main character. This is the dynamic we find working so well in the work of the most effective classic film storytellers—Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Zemeckis, to name a few. All of these storytellers are attuned to the use of plot to amplify the dynamic of the dramatic arc. But no one has understood the usefulness of plot better than Steven Spielberg.
The Role of the Character Layer
In Spielberg’s work, the character layer plays a secondary role to plot. Both the genres chosen and the approach to character suggest a discomfort or, at best, a reluctant acknowledgment of the usefulness of the character layer. To understand how Spielberg has used the character layer, an explanation is needed of how this layer and the film’s premise are linked, because this linkage is central to the experience of the film narrative.
The character layer, or background story, is key to our emotional relationship with the narrative. Plot is exciting, filled with action, surprise, twists and turns, but it is the character layer that invites us into an emotional relationship with the narrative. Not until the father–son layer of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was there an emotional connection with the character of Indiana Jones. We enjoyed the action of the first two films of the series, and we related to the boyish enthusiasm of Indiana Jones, but we weren’t emotionally rooted in the series until Spielberg and writer Jeb Stuart implemented this character layer in the narrative. In a sense, this is the key to understanding the means Spielberg uses to emotionalize his films. To state the structural choices in a different way, Spielberg uses plot for conflict and excitement, and he uses character in a subsidiary fashion to emotionalize his narratives.
Another approach to the issue of the character layer is to link Spielberg to Stanley Kubrick in his narrative approach. Where possible, Kubrick replaces character layer with plot. He does this in the search for excitement, as in the journey of the main character in Eyes Wide Shut (rather than exploring the husband–wife relationship) and in following men through training and battle in Full Metal Jacket (rather than more deeply following the course of peer relationships). In contrast, Spielberg doesn’t eschew the character layer in Saving Private Ryan; he simply embeds it deeply into the course of the plot. We get the character layer, but we never forget its subsidiary role to plot. The opposite unfolds in Raoul Walsh’s The Naked and The Dead and in Ed Dmytryk’s The Young Lions.
The character layer in Amistad unfolds in the progression of plot, principally the trial, whether the relationships are white/black, free/slave, or lawyer/defendant. The same is true in Empire of the Sun. The progress of the war and its implications—capture, incarceration, the struggle to survive—for the main character, Jim, are constantly put in the foreground, with an emphasis on how Jim experiences these events. The character layer—with its issues of child/adult, Chinese/English (servant/master), Japanese/Caucasian (master/slave), English/American, male/female—is subsidiary to the drive of the plot. An exception to this approach to the character layer is found in Schindler’s List. In this case, Spielberg, with writer Steve Zaillian, in effect mixes two genres: the war film, in which the plot layer (the war against the Jews) dominates, and the melodrama, in which the character layer dominates. In that character layer, Oskar Schindler is a powerless person challenging the power structure of the Nazi war machine. The primary relationships that are explored here are the Nazi relationship with Amon Goeth and the Jewish relationship with Itzhak Stern, the Jewish accountant at Schindler’s plant, a plant created to save Jews. In exploring these two relationships, Spielberg articulates the two choices for Oskar Schindler. One is to experience total power over the people who work for him and whom he is saving. This option, emotionally articulated, represents the apogee of human corruption. The other option is to view an employee as an equal, to share feelings and mutual respect for and with another. By his actions, Schindler chooses the second option. That choice and its implications are the through line for the melodrama layer. Schindler’s List represents the exception in Spielberg’s career. More often, plot prevails.
The Centrality of Linearity When we speak of linearity at its most orthodox, we think of a narrative that begins with a goal-directed character introduced at a critical moment—indeed, a point of crisis. In short order, the character meets the roadblocks produced by the plot and the antagonist. He moves forcefully through the first-act turning point that opens up the narrative. In Act Two, the act of confrontation, the action intensifies, with the additional press of the character layer. The act ends with a second turning point, an event that forces the main character to make his or her choice. Finally, the character moves through Act Three toward resolution. The level of effort rises to new heights. The plot is resolved. The character layer resolves. The main character either achieves or does not achieve his goal in the resolution. The resolution is definitive in the narrative. Closure is achieved. This is the pattern of the linear narrative. Few film storytellers embrace that closure and the linear pattern to reach closure more vigorously than does Steven Spielberg. In many ways, he represents the quintessential linear storyteller.
We’ve already discussed the plot orientation of the Spielberg narrative, but to highlight the linearity, two points denote the tightness of that structure: the critical moment at which we join the story and the resolution of the narrative. The slave revolt on the ship is in progress as Amistad begins, while Jurassic Park begins with the characters making arrangements to visit the park. In spite of its prologue, the critical moment for Saving Private Ryan is the D-Day beach landing. Jaws begins with the shark attack on the first victim. There are, of course, exceptions—both Schindler’s List and Empire of the Sun begin with an introduction to the main character. In Empire of the Sun, that introduction is quite lengthy, giving us a look into Jim’s mind, his psychology. For the most part, however, Spielberg quickly launches us into the story.
Resolution is equally resolute. Indiana Jones retrieves the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark. At the conclusion of Saving Private Ryan, Private Ryan has been successfully saved. At the end of Schindler’s List, the war against the Jews has ended and the Jews who were saved by Schindler acknowledge their debt to him. At the end of Amistad, Cinque is acquitted, and, implicitly, the practice of slavery has been discredited in the United States. At the end of E.T., E.T. returns home. At the end of Empire of the Sun, Jim is freed from internment and is reunited with his parents. In the linear Spielberg narrative, the resolution is definitive.
The Approach to Voice
The tone of the narratives in Spielberg’s films is best described as genre-appropriate. His action-adventure and science fiction films are optimistic, sunny, and hopeful, and his war films are realistic. If there is a Spielberg voice—and we believe there is—it is an optimistic voice, hopeful even in tragic circumstances. The voice is the quintessential American voice—celebratory of individuality and of decency. Another layer of that voice is Spielberg’s liberal view of social issues, as is seen in his two films about Blacks in America. Where possible, Spielberg also advocates children’s rights in a world dominated by adults.
The Approach to Genre
The choice of genre essentially sets the parameters for the storyteller. Screenwriters do have the choice of altering genre, as the Coen brothers, the Dahl brothers, and the Wachowski brothers often do. In each case, the film is definitely a film noir or an action-adventure film, but by altering a motif or by mixing genres, the experience of the narrative changes (which we will discuss in Chapter 9). Steven Spielberg is much more orthodox in his work with genres. First, Spielberg has a distinct preference for genres that involve wish fulfillment. The majority of his films have been action-adventure or science fiction. In both of these genres, the actions of the main character are challenged by the plot—life in the character’s world will be adversely affected if the character doesn’t succeed. And both of these genres are dominated by plot. Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all exemplify Spielberg’s approach to action-adventure and to science fiction.
Another explanation of the appeal of these genres to Spielberg is the dramatic arc at their core; science fiction centers on the struggle of technology against humanity. The action-adventure film focuses on a local or global catastrophe, the effects of which are overcome by the efforts of the main character. In both genres, success creates a hero.
This view of the main character’s transformation is central in Spielberg’s realist films—the war films such as Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List. The same can be said for his biographical film, Amistad. Although the fate of the main character in the war film can veer toward a wasted life, as in Robert Aldrich’s Attack and Too Late the Hero, or toward the surreal good fortune of appearances, as in Agnieska Holland’s Europa Europa, Spielberg needs to see the actions and fate of his main character in heroic terms. The same can be said of the dramatic arc in Amistad.
The genres chosen, the approach to character, and the shape of the dramatic arc all point to a maximization of classical narrative strategies. For Spielberg, classical narrative is used to celebrate the potential in character. Even if life is sacrificed, it’s a choice the character makes. Plot exists to energize that struggle, to make a hero of the main character or to acknowledge that views of children can be wise, sometimes wiser than the views of adults. It’s a romantic vision. It represents the classic narrative impulse at its clearest.
Steven Soderbergh: The Approach to Character
If Steven Spielberg’s characters are ordinary people who reluctantly take heroic action and succeed, Soderbergh’s characters are more often ordinary people who take action and fail. With two exceptions, which we’ll shortly address, Soderbergh’s characters find themselves in circumstances or relationships that overwhelm them. Some survive, but most find themselves condemned to the netherworld where one finds all film noir characters—betrayed or buried. Soderbergh characters occupy a world somewhere between realism and the dark side, the nightmare world, quite the opposite from Spielberg’s characters.
The Main Character
Soderbergh has presented two characters who, through their will, succeed in the face of considerable adversity. Erin Brockovich in Susannah Grant’s Erin Brockovich and Aaron Kurlander in Soderbergh’s King of the Hill are classic melodrama main characters—powerless and looking for power in their particular time and place. And each survives and emerges heroic despite the impossibility of the task.
In King of the Hill, Aaron is faced with the problems of economic survival; he is a 12-year-old with a marginally employed father and a sick mother. The family’s living arrangement in a hotel is vulnerable, his brother has to be sent to a relative in order to save a dollar a week, and the repo men are about to repossess the family car if they can find it. Aaron is looking at personal disaster. The only help Aaron has is his intelligence and his attitude; his optimism helps him survive.
In the case of Erin Brockovich, the problem is also economic; she’s a single mother and needs a job to support her children. At a deeper level, she needs to restore her self-esteem. To do so, she assertively pursues a job in a lawyer’s office and, shortly after getting the job, she pursues the cause of victims of toxic waste dumping in a nearby small town. Her target becomes the power company responsible for the toxic waste. Erin’s challenge is immeasurable. In both films, it is the attitude of the main characters that enables their survival and, indeed, their triumph.
More typical of the Soderbergh character is Jack Foley, from Scott Frank’s Out of Sight, a very successful bank robber who keeps being caught because of his consideration and decency. The usual gangster character is a driven character, an ambitious character, neurotic, filled with desire for success. Foley is not typical of the gangster main character. He is more reminiscent of George, the main character in Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa; he is too emotional to be a successful criminal. Wilson, in Lem Dobbs’s The Limey, is also a main character overwhelmed with emotion. Wilson’s goal is to get revenge for the death of his daughter. For various reasons, Wilson was never much of a father to his daughter. His actions are not intended to further his career; rather, they are intended to restore his identity as a father. Likewise, Michael Gallagher in Sam Lowry and Daniel Fuch’s The Underneath is a man pulled back home to restore the relationship with the girlfriend he had abandoned. To reconnect with her, he will use others, turn to crime, and betray his family. He is the classic film noir character. Desire blurs his judgment and his actions end up destroying him.
This cross-section of Soderbergh characters shows that he favors vulnerable characters. But none is more vulnerable than Ann Millaney in Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape. She is a depressed and passive character; she awakens only once she has a relationship with Graham, her husband’s old friend, and discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her with her own sister. Although Ann does awaken, the aura of vulnerability and sadness that she exudes dominates the narrative.
With few exceptions, Soderbergh’s main characters are rarely heroes. More on display is their humanity and vulnerability. The narrative becomes the microscope through which to observe their behavior. How we feel about that behavior is an issue to which we’ll return in the discussion about identification. But first we turn to the role of the antagonist in Soderbergh’s films.
The role of the antagonist is complex in Soderbergh’s work. In fact, sometimes, Soderbergh does not use an antagonist at all. When he does, the antagonist doesn’t prompt the main character to heroic action. At best, the complexity and humanness of the antagonist make that character as vulnerable as the main character. We could even go so far as to say the emotional nature of the antagonist adds to the humanity, the emotionality, of the main character.
In sex, lies, and videotape, Ann’s husband, John, is the antagonist. He is a liar as well as a lawyer, and is insecure in his relationship with Ann’s sister. He is the antagonist, but he is a flawed one; he is victimized by his own actions. Flawed but dangerous are the words that best describe Mad Dog, the antagonist in Out of Sight. Just as we see Jack Foley with his decency as well as his determination, we see Mad Dog with his insecurity as a killer. Both main character and antagonist play against our expectations. Terry Valentine, in The Limey, is a rich, opportunistic but nervous music promoter. Soderbergh goes a long way to show us how vulnerable, how all-too-human, Terry is. The result is that each of these antagonists is diminished dramatically so that the main character’s actions are experienced as human, as opposed to heroic. In this sense, we could say the manner in which Soderbergh uses the antagonist contributes to the anti-narrative feel of his narratives. It certainly slows the sense of linearity in the narrative.
A second form of antagonist, which also contributes to the anti-narrative feel in Soderbergh’s work, is the use of an institution or an event as antagonist. An example of this is the Depression in King of the Hill. Its length and depth promote antagonistic behavior on the part of the hotel manager, but not enough to imply he is the antagonist. Here, the event, the Depression, creates an aura where personal behavior, in this case that of the hotel manager, reflects the desperation it has promoted. The Depression becomes the real antagonist.
Similarly, in Lem Dobbs’s Kafka, it is the Castle—the center of government power and bureaucracy—that prompts Kafka’s paranoia. A police officer and the head of medical records become stand-ins for that power and its abuse, although they do not become the antagonists. The Castle, in its imposing position and its role in the death of two of Kafka’s colleagues and friends, fulfills the role of antagonist.
The Issue of Identification
Soderbergh does not go out of his way to invite us to identify with his main characters. Kafka is intense and paranoid; Ann Millaney is depressed; Michael Chambers is self-absorbed and self-destructive; Jack Foley is self-assured and ironic; Wilson is intense and angry; Aaron Kurlander makes up stories about himself. These are not characters we automatically connect with. We identify with Erin Brockovich—an exception in Soderbergh’s films—because she is the underdog. More often, we watch the characters at a distance rather than being invited into an intense relationship with them. Even in Steve Gaghan’s Traffic, we watch the three main characters, Javier, Helena, and Robert, from a distance. All of these characters find themselves in a relationship dilemma that forces them to choose between their professional and personal interests. It’s not so much that we are invited to identify with these characters; rather, we are invited to watch them work out their essentially moral dilemmas. As a general principle, we tend to like Soderbergh’s characters, but we don’t readily identify with them.
The Approach to Structure
When examining the structure of Soderbergh’s films, one notices immediately that it is not necessarily linear. Indeed, Soderbergh is most experimental with the structure of his work, using anti-narrative to avoid closure, employing an unexpected mix of plot and character layers, or softening the goal-directedness of the main character.
We begin with Soderbergh’s most classic or linear film, Erin Brockovich. Here, the goal of the main character is to regain her self-esteem. This will provide a baseline for how far Soderbergh can move away from classic structure. The plot layer of the narrative is Erin’s career advancement, in spite of Erin having no formal preparation to be a paralegal. The majority of the plot focuses on building the lawsuit against the power company. It’s a medical suit based on the health damage to the residents adjacent to the power plant. The character layer explores two relationships—a personal, or love, relationship with a neighbor and a professional, or respect, relationship with the lawyer who is Erin’s employer. The structure of Erin Brockovich is such that the plot is the challenge to Erin’s goal of regaining her self-esteem. At no point does the character layer do more than humanize Erin. It does not undercut the linearity of the narrative. When we meet Erin, she is at a low point in her self-esteem; by the end she is rich and her self-esteem is secured. There is closure in as certain a manner as in a Spielberg film. Erin Brockovich is classic linear narrative. To understand Soderbergh’s penchant to challenge linearity, we now turn to his use of plot in other films.
The Role of Plot
Plot provides a classic narrative with linearity, as well as with twists and turns that make it both exciting and satisfying. To understand how Soderbergh uses plot, it’s best to look at his anti-narrative work. In this work, he undermines plot when we expect him to capitalize on it. He does this either through his approach to character or through the introduction of a greater character layer, sometimes employing the main character and/or the plot against expectations. For example, the videotaping (the plot) in sex, lies, and videotape enables rather than challenges the main character. Turning to plot-driven stories, we can see how Soderbergh challenges expectations.
Out of Sight is clearly a gangster film. In the gangster film, the career of the gangster is the plot. The main event for Jack Foley’s career in Out of Sight is the Detroit theft of uncut diamonds from a rich former fellow inmate, Richard Ripley, the Wall Street ripper. The heist will give Foley the financial freedom he has long sought. The problem is that another fellow former inmate, Mad Dog, and his gang, also have their eyes on the diamonds. Also problematic is that Jack is being pursued by the FBI and by his love interest, Federal Marshall Karen Cisco. In Out of Sight, Soderbergh subverts the plot by exploring two relationships—Jack’s loyalty to Buddy, his accomplice, a loyalty bordering on brotherhood, and his relationship with his most relentless pursuer, Karen Cisco. This adversarial relationship becomes a love relationship that keeps undermining the plot. She is his captive in Act One—they are intimately secured in the trunk of a getaway car. Are they captor and captive or are they having their first date, albeit unorthodox? In Act Two, they become lovers, and in Act Three, she captures him, shooting him in the leg to keep him alive. At the end of the film, she seems to have masterminded his escape from captivity. Essentially, the character layer takes over from the plot layer, working against genre expectations. Out of Sight becomes a character-driven gangster film.
The Limey is another example of a plot-oriented narrative that is subverted by the character layer. The Limey is essentially a revenge tale, and the plot progression is clear. The grievance or betrayal occurs in Act One, and Acts Two and Three are used to secure revenge. The more distant the target—the heads of the mob in Point Blank, the Emperor of Rome in Gladiator—the more challenging the plot to reach the source of grievance. In these narratives, the plot moves with the speed of a rushing train. In The Limey, we have the requisite distance between the main characters Wilson and Terry Valentine, so that the plot can be as forceful as needed. But instead of getting on the train and pushing the throttle, Soderbergh keeps taking us off into the character layer. Here Wilson reconnects with being a father. We see scenes from the past of his daughter Jenny growing up and recent scenes where her surrogate parent is her acting teacher. The teacher sharply chastises Wilson about his relationship with Jenny, and tells him Jenny’s perceptions of it. In effect, she fills in the missing parts. The plot layer would relegate Wilson to his role as avenger, but the character layer allows Wilson to be a father. The character layer thus subverts the power of plot in The Limey.
The Role of the Character Layer
Film noir is dominated by a character layer in which the main character is victimized by the very relationship explored in the film. Michael, in The Underneath, pursues his ex-girlfriend Rachel throughout the story, and it is because of Rachel that he comes up with the plot to rob an armored truck as it makes a pickup at a bank (he is the driver of the armored truck). Although Rachel is implicitly the femme fatale who leads to his destruction, Soderbergh subverts the expectation that she alone destroys him. Instead, Michael is his own antagonist, in the sense that he knows he can’t resist going back to her, just as he knows his gambling and his poor judgment contribute to his fate. It’s as if Michael is no good and knows he is no good. That awareness makes him his own antagonist rather than the classic film noir character, a victim of his love interest. In fact, numerous relationships are explored here—Michael’s Cain/Abel relationship with his brother, his favored son relationship with his mother, his parasitic relationship with his new stepfather, and his parasitic relationship with the female bank employee. A second structural incursion into the nature of the character layer is to use the plot—robbery and its aftermath—as a sign of the moral corruption of the main character. Because of the plot, the implication is that Michael deserves his fate, again an unusual characteristic in film noir.
King of the Hill offers another example of the subversion of expectations. The narrative is essentially a melodrama, a character-driven genre about a powerless character trying to gain power. Generally, this is undertaken through relationships. Not so in King of the Hill. Here, plot replaces the character layer. The plot is Aaron Kurlander’s efforts to master the behavior needed to deal with the personal effects of the Depression. This means pretending to be someone he is not and trying to earn the money his father has such great difficulty earning. Aaron will fail in these endeavors, but, paradoxically, the very fact that he attempted them keeps his spirit from being crushed. As a result, he does survive the Depression. The plot enables Aaron to cope, and the fact that he coped prepares him for the successful future that surely awaits this character. In King of the Hill, the use of plot alters the experience of the melodrama and energizes the narrative.
Working Against Linearity
Steve Gaghan’s Traffic is an excellent example of how Soderbergh subverts linearity. Traffic is three stories with three main characters. Although each story follows the arc of its characters, what links the three stories together is the traffic in drugs.
The first story focuses on Mexican police officer Javier Rodriguez. The choices for Javier are to be an honest cop or a corrupt one. The majority of this story takes place in Mexico. The second story focuses on Robert Wakefield, an Ohio State Supreme Court justice who is appointed by the President to be the new anti-drug czar. The choices for Robert are to be an effective professional or to be an effective father. The complication in this story is that his daughter Caroline, a high-achieving privileged teenager, becomes addicted to cocaine and heroin. The majority of this story takes place in Ohio. The third story focuses on Helena Ayala, a pregnant California housewife, whose husband Carlos is arrested on drug trafficking charges. If he is convicted, Helena’s lifestyle will change dramatically. The choices for Helena are to be a docile housewife or to do what she has to do to protect her family. The majority of this story takes place in southern California.
Although there is plot in each of these three stories, Soderbergh focuses on the character arc rather than on following the plot to its resolution. By following character, the drive of the plot is undermined. If the three stories were about plot, there would be more emphasis on the flow of the drugs. In Traffic, the emphasis is on the choices made by the characters. The middle story illustrates the point. Although Robert is the drug czar, in the end he resigns, primarily because he feels the battle he has to win is a battle to restore his relationship with his daughter and to save her from being destroyed by drugs. Robert himself chooses character over plot (the drug czar versus the drug story). Also, because the character arc is more critical than the plot arc, we get the feeling that the drug culture will carry on as it did. Helena has succeeded in getting Carlos freed. She has affiliated with Carlos’s boss in Mexico and has killed Edouardo, the main witness against Carlos. She has saved her family, but the drug war will continue and Carlos may yet land in jail. There is in this sense no real closure. What we have experienced is an episode in the drug wars.
In addition, these three stories have a code of survivalism that overshadows the morality of the drug issue. In the Mexican story, Javier’s relationship with his partner Manolo, who becomes corrupted, and the consequent sense of responsibility Javier has toward Manolo’s widow far outweigh his career moves in importance. Just as Helena does what she has to do to survive, and just as Robert does what he has to do to help his family survive, Javier acts to save a corner of dignity in his life. The progress of the drug trade proceeds. There are no heroes in Traffic—that would require more use of plot; here, there are only human beings whom we watch affirm their humanness. The result is that Traffic is far from a linear experience.
The Approach to Tone/Voice
As stated earlier, genre films unfold within expected tonal parameters. Do Soderbergh’s films unfold within tonal expectations? Melodramas such as Erin Brockovich or sex, lies, and videotape unfold in a realistic tone. And for the most part, these two films exhibit the expected realistic tone. Traffic actually uses three genres. The Mexican story unfolds as a police story with a large character layer. The Ohio story devolves into a melodrama, although it has a thriller’s devotion to using plot to discover the threat. The third story unfolds as a crime story revolving around Helena’s becoming “the criminal.” Again, there is plot, but there is a stronger character layer. All of these genres are realistic and thus proceed realistically. Meanwhile, film noir is expected to unfold with an overheated expressionism, and The Underneath has that heated, literary character we affiliate with the genre.
Although Soderbergh works within genre expectations, he breaks them just as often. It is to these examples that we now turn. Although Soderbergh has a preference to move to the intense nightmare dimension in his work, we don’t expect this quality in a melodrama. Nevertheless, Soderbergh uses this tone in King of the Hill. If Act One is a romanticized view of real life, Acts Two and Three gradually move into the subjective nightmare sense of the Depression. In King of the Hill, Soderbergh is experimenting with a tone he had more elaborately explored in Lem Dobbs’s Kafka. Ostensibly, Kafka is a story about a writer who is also employed in insurance. The character looks first into the disappearance of a friend and his death, and then into the disappearance of a second friend, both of whom had worked with him. He feels that somehow the key to the disappearances lies in the Castle, the center of power, the seat of the bureaucracy. The time is 1919, the place is Prague. Kafka infiltrates the castle, clashes with the head of medical records, and is pursued by the two men who recently became his assistants at the insurance company. Whether his experiences are real or just a paranoid dream isn’t made clear. What is critical is the tone of paranoia, dream, possibility. The atmosphere and feeling are more important than the plot. In a sense, it’s an experimental narrative about an important writer’s state of mind. It is important that Kafka’s inner state is effectively created. If we feel his anxiety, his dread, as our own, Soderbergh has achieved his narrative intention. Plot here is an excuse rather than an informing narrative strategy.
Another example of a tonal shift away from expectation is Scott Frank’s Out of Sight. Gangster films tend to proceed realistically. Out of Sight is not a situation comedy in the vein of Midnight Run; rather, it is a genre film in the vein of the Coen brothers’ Fargo, and it veers between comedy and realism as Robert Benton and David Newman’s Bonnie and Clyde did. Whether the ironic tone originated with the novel by Elmore Leonard or not, Out of Sight surprises us. The structured choice of focusing on the character layer over the plot, along with the self-reflective and wry Jack Foley, together create a space for a tone that keeps shifting away from genre expectation.
The Approach to Genre
Steven Soderbergh has a clear preference for genre films—melodrama, above all—but he is equally attracted to the police story, gangster film, and film noir. As we have mentioned, Soderbergh is interested in stretching genre, or, at the very least, in reversing the expected course. Consequently, The Limey begins to look more like a melodrama than a crime film, and Traffic, a police/melodrama/crime film, has powerful overtones of melodrama. Likewise, Out of Sight could be framed as a romantic comedy-cum-gangster film, with the romantic comedy more prominent. Only Erin Brockovich comes off as a straightforward melodrama.
All of this suggests that Soderbergh is as interested in elevating his voice via the experience of narrative as he is in telling the story. In this sense, the rise of Soderbergh as a storyteller is very much in line with the ascent of voice in film storytelling. His approach to genre consequently plays an important role in his anti-narrative experimentation.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we looked at two different storytellers. Each approaches character, structure, story form, and tone from a different perspective. Steven Spielberg has an optimistic, romantic perspective and a desire to engage his audience in a direct, powerful connection with his narrative. He prefers the classic linear narrative, from critical moment to resolution to closure.
At the other extreme, we find Steven Soderbergh using what we have termed anti-narrative. In his very different approach to character, structure, form, and tone, Soderbergh is restless and experimental. At times, this can result in a more distant or open experience. Our temptation may be to suggest that Soderbergh is consciously seeking to be creative or is more interested in the medium than in its audience. Whatever the reason, he has opted for a more open-minded approach to narrative, and the mix of strategies he deploys is more idiosyncratic than is the work of Steven Spielberg. But when they work, such narratives are surprising and fresh.
The two Stevens represent two narrative impulses at opposite ends of the spectrum. Spielberg invites us to enter into a relationship with his main characters, while Soderbergh keeps his main characters a bit distant from us. This is where the divergence of their paths begins. To understand this more fully we now turn to a discussion of genre, and in later chapters, a full discussion of character and voice. Each of these chapters will yield a deeper understanding of why the two Stevens represent the opposite creative polarities for the screenwriter.
References
1. Dancyger, Ken. The Ascent of Voice, Global Scriptwriting. Boston: Focal Press, 2001.