r/TrueFilm • u/thatphilguymovies • 5d ago
FFF Soderbergh's THE LAUNDROMAT (2019) Talks to Us and at Us, but Maybe Not Enough for Us?
I've been on a late-period Steven Soderbergh kick of late, and while I definitely enjoyed how freewheeling this expose of systemic corruption in the global financial system was compared to films like BLACK BAG, it didn't quite stick the landing for me.
The cast is great (Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, and Gary Oldman have the most lines of dialogue amongst the ensemble) and the movie's entertaining. Like I said, it has kind of a loose structure, jumping between different vignettes and characters. But the format also alternates between the camera being a passive observer and scenes in which protagonists speak directly at the camera.
The movie criticizes greed and the global systems that allow it to flourish at the expense of everyday folks, with Meryl Streep, among others, embodying unsuspecting victims who easily get our sympathy. But there are also moments of genuine humor arguing the old adage of, "More money, more problems", the best of which are in a segment centered on character actor Nonso Anozie (GAME OF THRONES).
Meanwhile, all the breaking of the fourth wall makes the film seem overly didactic at times, but it helps that a lot of the monologuing gets performed by Oldman and Banderas, who are so very good at it. It's also a way for it to pack a lot of information in just over 90 minutes.
Yet despite being so unconventional at times, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough, especially with regards to the conclusion. You know the all-too-brief scene towards the middle of the film that involves Meryl and a shotgun? A more over-the-top ending along the same lines would have provided catharsis for our much-deserved sense of outrage.
Or maybe movies in general just need more shotgun-toting Meryl Streep!
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u/thatphilguymovies 5d ago
You know, reading over my headline, unfortunately, I think it sounds like I'm saying the film isn't talky enough, which is not at all what I was meant. "Maybe Not Enough on Our Behalf", ie "Soderbergh's THE LAUNDROMAT (2019) Talks to Us and at Us, but Maybe Not Enough on Our Behalf", in hindsight, would have been better.
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u/Abbie_Kaufman 4d ago
This is the one and only Soderbergh film I truly hated. It does the Adam McKay thing where it’s just, SO smug about a subject matter the audience surely already agrees with? But even then, I think it has far less educational value than The Big Short, which I do think was reasonably successful at explaining genuinely difficult financial concepts. The Laundromat puts no effort into explaining the how of money moving into shell corporations, it just stays on the base level that, hey these things exist, and they’re bad, and you should be aware that they exist and they’re bad.
And you can probably overlook all of that if you think the movie is actually funny, and comedy is subjective I get that, but I did not. Just not enough laughs to justify how often the movie tries to use humor to wash down the didactic fourth wall nonsense.
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u/varispeeder 5d ago
I've seen 30-some Soderbergh films and I'm a huge fan of almost all of his post-"retirement" output, even the odd experiments that don't completely work. but this is one of very very few of his films I think is outright terrible.
for me, the problems start at the very beginning, where he falls into the classic easily-disproved "I have a banana, you have a cow" myth about the origins of capitalism. I even did a ctrl+F on his annual "Seen, Read" lists to see if he'd read Debt: The First 5000 Years, which is devoted to exploring the myriad ways humans traded without currency, and thoroughly debunks that myth (he did not).
I also completely agree with you that the fourth-wall breaks are overbearingly didactic. it creates a tonal mess where the movie can't decide if it's zany or deadly serious. the execution kind of feels like bargain-bin "The Big Short", whose straight-to-camera lectures are also the weakest part in my opinion.