A lo-fi heist film bolstered by dynamic and intimate camera work, director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” delights in simply seeing two people go to war. Sir Ian McKellan plays Julian Sklar, a master painter who is contemplating his legacy, having not completed a series of famed portraits (the titular Christophers). His opportunistic children, Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning), hire master forger and closeted artist, Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), to act as Julian’s housekeeper, complete the Christophers, so that they can be “discovered” upon Julian’s passing. Lori is employed by Julian easily enough, but what neither of them expects is the way their cat and mouse is the launchpad for deeper conversations around the process of making art and who gets to own our work after we pass. It often feels as though Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon are using the bickering and moments of sincerity between these characters as mouthpieces for their own musings.
For Soderbergh, one conviction he’s sure of is that, as much as people may want to imitate the style of some of his greatest hits, he hopes that a big part of his legacy can be the way in which he made his films. “Honestly, if you were to say, ‘You get to pick between your influence being the way that you work or the work itself,’ I wouldn’t hesitate to go, ‘Please be influenced by the way that I work.’ I would be happier if they took the methodology as opposed to the result,” he shared.
Soderbergh spoke with RogerEbert.com about how some of the most striking sequences in the film were born from trying to find solutions to problems, how he resists easy itemization and characterization, and how he sees a core part of his artistry involving stress testing the new technologies at his disposal.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Whether it is the “Oceans” films or “Logan Lucky,” you revel in depicting characters in the throes of process and problem-solving. Was there a “problem” you were trying to solve while making “The Christophers?”
The challenge was to keep it visually interesting without being distracting and coming from a place of insecurity. I kept reminding myself, “We have good text, we have great actors, you don’t have to tart this thing up.” I would say the most noticeable gimmick that I employed, which I hope is something the audience feels more than they know explicitly, is that as soon as you cross the threshold into Julian’s house, everything is through a handheld camera lens.
Whenever we’re outside the house, we’re in “studio mode” or in sequences where Julian is not present. That was the largest directorial concept it needed. It’s not a very overt thing, but psychologically for the viewer, it creates the same sense of instability that Lori steps into Julian’s house. Ultimately, the challenge was just to stay on point with that approach and not engage in any kind of trickery.
Speaking of trickery, it was only in reading other interviews that I learned that the interiors and exteriors for the house were different locations.
That was the goal. The other aspect was that when I was making the film and looking at cut material, I’d do minor recalibrations a couple of times a week. That “interview” scene with Lori was a sequence that we shot twice. We shot it the first time on a Friday, and then over the weekend, I talked to Ed, and I said, “Let’s do that again.” When we first shot it, the day had been structured in such a way that we’d shot all these other sequences except for that one. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when we started shooting that, and it was a bit too late in the day to start a scene of that length and significance. I wanted it to be fresher.
Ed shared at Lincoln Center that when the scene cuts away to Lori putting her face in her hands amidst Julian’s monologue was a moment that came from going through the scene again.
Yeah, I wanted to go back and make more explicit both of her wondering what she’s gotten herself into. It’s also the dropping of the mask for a moment for the audience’s benefit. That way, we see that she is really putting on a performance in the same way Julian is. Julian has a performative personality, which is why it’s so fun to see Ian playing that part, but that addition is an example of the kind of real-time calibration where, with my collaborators, we’re extracting everything that’s there in the scene to be emphasized.
You’ve offered the work of John Schlesinger, particularly “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and Peter Yates’ 1983 film “The Dresser” as some launch pad for influences. I’m curious how those manifested in “The Christophers.”
Those are both extremely well-directed movies, but not in a flashy way or in a way that a regular audience would notice. Anybody who makes films would be struck by the sense of craft and how the performances are front and center. They’re also examples of egoless direction; you can tell Yates and Schlesinger’s attitude is like “This isn’t about me. I want you to think about the characters.” So those films serve as good touchstones to remind me to stay on course.
There’s been lots of discussion around how the audience has to be engaged and therefore things need to be happening all the time. Scene to scene in “The Christophers,” there is a lot happening. You keep getting new information that makes you reassess what you’ve watched up to that point. On a narrative, emotional, and philosophical level, it’s a very active film; it just happens to be contained. I saw my role as a director to highlight the activity already there, the way Schlesinger and Yates did in those two films.
That’s interesting because I’ve heard Ian talk about how, in the way you carried the camera, you were very much like another character that he was acutely aware of. He described how, as he moved, he’d witness you react in real time, as if you were discovering the shot in that moment. Do you see yourself that way, as a third “presence” amidst this two-hander?
Well, I love that he felt that close and that the intimacy that I was trying to create with them. I have this little thing I call the butt dolly–which was built for “The Knick”–and it’s basically a cushioned stool with six roller wheels on it that allow me moment to moment to adjust to anything that the actors are doing. I think you could ask both of them, but I never ask them to hit a mark. I never said “Don’t go there” because I don’t want to break the spell of what they’re doing. I’m always trying to eliminate anything that might invade their little bubble of performance. Ultimately, I don’t want them to think about me or anybody else on set.
It’s not lost on me that Michaela is the sole person of color dealing with the spoiled and selfish white elites. Were there ever any discussions between you and Ed about the racial dynamics taking on a more central part of this story?
It was kind of built into the setup. On one layer, you have older artists going against younger artists. I think seeing this older white guy and this person of color, I felt the audience would already be aware of the other dynamics at play. You see how Julian lives, you see how she lives … you get it. Ultimately, the issues that they’re grappling with are more philosophical in a way and would exist regardless of race or even age. It’s about power and how that intertwines with being an artist. At one point, Ed and I did talk about whether there should be something more explicit about that contrast between the two characters, and Michaela was one of the people who just felt like, “I don’t think you need to say that.”
Looking at your career as a whole, you’ve shared how you never want to make the same movie twice. Yet recently, you’ve reflected on this notion that “I’ve never done anything first.” How are you reconciling those ideas?
I’ve come to a place of trying to articulate some of these ideas only because I think it’s important for a creative person to know who and what they are. Early in my career in the mid ’90s, I was going through a period of trying to figure out what kind of filmmaker I was, and I came to several sorts of realizations, one of which was that while I have written, I am not a writer by my definition. I also am a synthesist and not an originator. There’s a real freedom in that because it allows me to shape shift, and as opposed to having a style that I apply to each film and therefore seek out material that fits with that song. I can just go to material that I’m interested in and then determine what kind of filmmaker I want to be to present that material in its best form. So for me, it allows for endless reinvention of myself, which keeps things lively.
The issue of assessing how you’re doing objectively is important and difficult. I think it’s important to know how you’re doing and to have some sort of sense of how successful your work is creatively on its own terms. I don’t think it’s a bad or a dangerous thing for me to look back on things that I’ve done and say, “I think certain things are better than other things” and to see if I can extract from the things that I think either don’t work at all or don’t work as well as they should and carry those right lessons into my future work. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be objective at all about your own work, but I do believe that there’s a way of working and a process that you can engage with or establish that gives you the best possible chance of an objectively good creative outcome. That’s what I’m stress testing all the time: the process that I can control.
One line that resonates with me was when Julian was lamenting that upon his death, his life would be immediately “itemized,” that he would become “Julian Sklar … the spreadsheet.” It’s made me reflect on how people try to itemize us to make sense of our presence and passing. I know you’ve tried to resist easy characterization, but has working on this film made you reflect or make some peace with the ways people might try to make “Steven Soderbergh the spreadsheet”
Luckily, and I think it was because of the way I was raised, I don’t imbue objects with the kind of emotions and meanings that I think some people do. As a result, the good part of that is it kind of also leads to me not being bothered by setbacks or criticism or anything like that. It doesn’t throw me off because I’m more focused. I’m able to control. I’m very good at letting go of what I can’t control. At the same time, I do think everybody who makes things hopes that they will be seen, first of all, and then thought of as living on in the minds of others.
What you’re saying is making me think about the recent news that was shared about how even under the new leadership regime at Lucasfilm, “The Hunt for Ben Solo” won’t be moving forward. Despite putting in years of your life into making it, you seem to have mastered the art of making peace with setbacks like that. I imagine it’s difficult not to hold your art so preciously.
I have zero regrets about my time working on that project because that was time in the creative gym. I’ve just sort of reframed it for myself, in thinking the goal here was to get a great script, and we did that. So the rest of it, once you’ve reached that point, those other parts were things I couldn’t control. I can only shape things up until a certain point. I’m not going to burn calories on anything other than what’s coming.
I know you wanted to capture their performances more naturally, but I love the organic embellishments they would bring to a given moment. Ian’s little “Wee!” and his dances come to mind. Were those directed, or was that the result of his freestyle?
There are lots of things that come to mind when I think about that scene. We showed everything leading up to Julian walking over and picking up the canvas and getting paint on his hands. We cut, then when we started up again, we saw him put everything on the easel all the way to the end of him excoriating Lori and her leaving. That was going to be a take; we had two cameras running, and we did four or five versions of it with me changing the angles each time to give myself coverage and options. I did a first assembly of it using a lot of those different angles, and as Ed and I were looking at it, we mutually decided that the first take was just the best take. With all of the other angles, I had to be careful I didn’t show the canvas. The film was best served by the very first take, and that was a moment where, rather than try to control some of Ian’s movements to get the desired effect, I just went with what felt right.
I also think about the ways you shot the Art Fight sequences; were there different ways you thought about portraying that scene before landing on showcasing the actors from the back?
That was a solution to a problem, the problem being that those scenes were all supposed to be fifteen years earlier. We had two choices: we do a VFX de-aging thing, which is not cheap, or we just try to wing it without that and see if there’s a way through performance and costuming to kind of make people believe fifteen years ago. That felt kind of sub-optimal. As I was watching the scene rehearse and imagining these versions, I thought, well, I know one way to solve this, which is to shoot the scene from the back of their head.
So that was a practical decision, but it also makes you think about what’s being said differently than if we shot that scene straight on. As a viewer, you provide the emotion that you imagine is being displayed. It’s a more active image.
I’m curious if you can share more about the lessons about adaptation you’ve learned through the years. You’ve previously described yourself as trying to be a “cockroach” in the industry, and I’m wondering how you discern the line between adaptability and rootedness.
Everything flows from the best possible result for the viewer, period. I worked back from that. I think what I owe the audience is the best version of the thing. So I want to know about every available tool to get the best result. It’s a complex issue that we’re all facing, not just in the creative space, but in the larger sociopolitical space of what technology is doing to us. It’s something I think about a lot. I think sometimes people’s legitimate anxiety and displeasure about technology in the non-creative space bleeds and infects the conversation at large. For me, disengagement is not an option.
I want to know as fast as we can what place all this technology is going to have on us. We’re right at the beginning in a lot of ways. I have no clue what level of integration we’re going to be looking at. The only way to find out is to sort of experiment. It’s an open question as to what the ultimate value or use of certain technologies will be. And the more people that engage with it, the faster we’ll figure that out. When the general perception is that somebody has, quote unquote, gone too far, I’m like, “Well, that’s good news.” Sometimes you need to know where the line is.
“The Christophers” is in select theaters via NEON.
