PRESENCE. I wouldn’t want to testify to it, but I would be willing to bet Steven Soderbergh has made more movies after falsely — but probably sincerely, at the time — announcing his retirement from that very pursuit than before. Just as I can’t say exactly when he issued that dire dictum, I would not try to speak to the inner struggles that led to it.
From the nosebleed perspective of a fan, though, it tracks that one of the original festival/indie darlings (Sex, Lies and Videotape, 1989) who, having been given a shot at the Big Time (Out of Sight, 1998) and proven himself to be very much made of whatever it takes, all the while building a body of work so iconoclastic, so widely varied, challenging and unpredictable as to be unparalleled in mainstream American movies, would be uniquely suited to anticipate changes in the landscape of art-as-business and the expectations of an audience increasingly groomed to take what its given. And, in so doing, such an artist might be tempted to call it a day, quit the game and occupy oneself with less demanding pursuits than fighting for modest budgets and answering to corporate overlords. So when Soderbergh did just that, throwing up his hands in creative frustration, I was disappointed but not surprised. Moreover, I was happy that a person whose art I have so long admired might be able to excise some of the more painful, quotidian “business” aspects of the business from his creative life and burrow down into the life of the mind.
Which would have been fine but would not have been a full representation of Soderbergh as he moves through the world. Instead of quitting the business, he made it quit behaving like it seemed to for everyone else and created his own little bailiwick, a move born as much of creative frustration, I would guess, as of determination, contrarianism and a boundless desire to keep making things, innovating.
The second half(-ish) of the man’s career has not been larded with awards hardware and major box office returns as was the late part of his first act, but he has found a way to navigate the vicissitudes of an industry that can’t quite seem to get its bearings, and to do so to his own great advantage. Constantly experimenting with new technology, signing on with streaming services to get spending bread to invest, he carries himself just as his cohort of ’90s rebel oddballs did all those years ago. He gets after it, nonstop, both under his own flag as director, and as director of photography/camera operator Peter Andrews and editor Mary Ann Bernard: He’s the trickster king of a Hollywood who doesn’t really exist anymore and everything he makes merits our attention.
In the present case, Soderbergh has gotten together with David Koepp (a screenwriter who has also managed to hang on to a multi-decade career) to make a ghost story/haunted house horror, call it what you will. As always, the result is something entirely in keeping with the “rules” of its genre but also something far more cerebral and, in its modest way, ambitious.
Shot entirely from the perspective of an unseen presence, the movie details the purchase and habitation of a lovely family home by mom Rebekah (Lucy Liu), dad Chris (Chris Sullivan), older son Tyler (Eddy Maday) and younger daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). The family, on balance, seems like most upwardly mobile, home-buying units, with a few rough edges in need of attention. Tyler, the athlete golden child, might be shaping up into a malignant misogynist. Chloe is haunted by the overdose deaths of two friends. Rebekah may be in some legal trouble at work and Chris is just trying to keep it together. As Soderbergh’s camera (and the disembodied identity it represents) floats almost timidly through the daily struggles of the family, doing what it can to exert some positive influence when these get too sideways, the tension inside the beautiful home ratchets up, building toward an inevitable but rather surprising climax.
As he always does, Soderbergh makes sure his core story and characters are locked in and then begins his experimentation, in this case using his camera as the eyes of a character we may or may not ever see or know. His trademark honeyed interior lighting becomes a languid backdrop, foregrounding the family as a collective, but also a collection of individuals in their own intimate distress.
There’s probably a precedent for the way Presence is constructed but I have yet to see it. Once again, Soderbergh has passed the thread of cinema art through the needle-eye of big business to produce an independent-feeling film we have the privilege of seeing in theaters. R. 85M. BROADWAY.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Enter the Papaya Lounge.