Erin Brockovich (2000) opens with a job interview in which a man questions a beautiful woman who reveals inappropriate details of her personal life. Intentionally or otherwise, the scene strongly echoes Steven Soderbergh’s first iconic film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. As such, it functions as a kind of prefatory signature before the main event.
The signature is notable because in other respects there’s nothing particularly Soderbergh-esque about Erin Brockovich. The two films I reviewed before this in the Soderbergh series—Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Schizopolos—are individual works that reflect on sex, lies, and videotape. But Erin Brockovich largely leaves those themes, not to mention those small budgets behind. It’s a straightforward Oscar-bait star melodrama, which hits its genre beats with predictability, from the difficult-but-passionate lead who reveals hidden depths right through to the tearful denouement and gratuitous reciprocal rightful recognition of virtue.
Oscar-bait isn’t my favorite genre, but it can be done better or worse, and Soderbergh does it better. He gets a huge boost from Julia Roberts who’s marvelous as the (real life) title character, a single mother struggling to make ends meet who accidentally discovers her life’s work as a legal researcher on a case of environmental poisoning. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has been leaking deadly chromium into the groundwater of Hinkley, CA, causing devastating health problems from nosebleeds to leukemia. Foul-mouthed, short-tempered Erin in her sexed-up outfits has a genius for following paper trails and making Hinckley residents feel at ease, and she drags smalltime lawyer Ed Masry (a charmingly mugging Albert Finney) into the case of his career.
Off to the side, Erin falls in sort-of-love with her biker neighbor, George (Aaron Eckhart), who ends up taking care of her three kids as Erin works. The gender reversal, and the problems it causes are handled with a sure hand and subtlety. George’s resentment is understandable (no one of any gender likes being told they’re second to their partner’s job) and rooted in masculine anxiety and misogyny, and Soderberg sympathizes with him without letting him off the hook. You could see Soderbergh, the indie darling, making a whole movie about this relationship.
But the movie’s not about the relationship; it’s about Julia Roberts delivering an Oscar performance. As such, it’s a clear step on Soderbergh’s path from auteur to reliable Hollywood hand. This isn’t the first example of the director’s willingness to take a backseat to big budget demands—1998’s Out of Sight is an entertaining sexy crime caper which is a star vehicle for George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez well ahead of being a Steven Soderbergh picture.
Soderbergh’s made these kinds of movies for decades, and so it’s easy to feel that this career path was inevitable. But it wasn’t. The Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and David Lynch are directors who started out making idiosyncratic films and then went on to make bigger-budget idiosyncratic films. As a result all of them are always the biggest names on their own marquees.
Soderbergh has remained a bankable director with a strong reputation and numerous fans. But he doesn’t make Soderbergh films the way Tarantino (for better and worse) makes Tarantino films, nor the way David Lynch made David Lynch films. It’s hard to imagine anyone but the Coen Brothers creating No Country But Old Men. But lots of directors could’ve helmed Erin Brockovich. They might have done a somewhat better or worse job, but the final product wouldn’t have been radically different—and Julia Roberts would probably still have won that Best Actress Oscar.
I liked Roberts’ performance, and don’t begrudge her the award. At the same time, I can see why Time critic Richard Corliss called the film “slick, grating, and false.” The movie’s about the little guy taking on the big corporation—and yet, its existence is built on that little guy Steven Soderbergh giving up most of his individuality, personality, and interests for a corporate drone.
Directing for money in this manner isn’t equivalent to poisoning hundreds of people with chromium. It is sad in a small way, though. Much of Erin Brockovich’s appeal is supposed to be that she’s unpolished and authentic. But Erin Brockovich is Hollywood glitz made by a guy who we know can be more real than that—but has decided at many points in his career not to bother.
