The director Steven Soderbergh called a “constant source of inspiration”
Plenty of filmmakers have announced an extended sabbatical or retirement from the industry before returning, but few have done a worse job than Steven Soderbergh.
After announcing his plans to retire from the profession that made him a household name in favour of focusing his creative energies on painting – before clarifying a few weeks later that he was only planning to take plenty of time off – the 2013 double-whammy of Side Effects and Behind the Candelabra was intended to draw a line under his association with cinema for the time being.
However, before Logan Lucky heralded a full-blown return after a four-year hiatus, Soderbergh couldn’t help himself from embarking upon one of the busiest periods of his career, one that saw him dive headlong into multiple film-related projects while technically not reneging on his self-imposed exile from helming a narrative feature.
During that period he’d direct the entirety of TV series The Knick, oversee Broadway play The Library, re-edit the infamous Heaven’s Gate to his own satisfaction, curate a black-and-white silent version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, produce the small screen adaptation of The Girlfriend Experience, develop interactive murder mystery Mosaic, shoot second unit on The Hunger Games, and act as the cinematographer, editor, and camera operator of Magic Mike XXL.
Of course, Soderbergh has always been every bit as prolific as he has been determined to push the boundaries of filmmaking technology, so nobody was genuinely surprised that he had his hands full during the time off when he was supposed to be pursuing his ambitions to become a painter.
Regardless of the innovations that have repeatedly defined his work, though, there’s always one indelible name in the history of the moving image that he looks towards whenever he’s mounting his latest endeavour. “Godard is a constant source of inspiration,” he said, per The Guardian. “Before I do anything, I go back and look at as many of his films as I can, as a reminder of what’s possible.”
Even though he’s gained a reputation for experimentation and a willingness to adopt technological advances and give them a whirl, he remained adamant that everything applicable to the artform had already been done at least once before, and Jean-Luc Godard was the person to have done it.
“Everything had been done long before I started making movies. I mean, there’s nothing that Godard hasn’t already done,” he opined. “You can’t do a single thing that Godard hasn’t already thought of. And so you struggle to do something that is not predictable.”
Soderbergh’s career trajectory has been far from predictable, and based on his assessment of Godard, trying to conjure something the famed auteur never managed to do appears to have been one of his major driving forces in taking so many swings.
