Author: Rose Lemon
Unbeknownst to many, before Matt Damon was dubbed the "Golden Boy of Hollywood," the crown was also worn on Soderbergh's head.
Soderbergh was born in the last year of the 1980s. The "rebellious son" of this Kochi family, although his father was the dean of the School of Education at Louisiana State University, he loved movies since he was a child, but after graduating from high school, he pursued his dream of the film circle, and with the independent film "Sex, Lies, Video" It won the Palme d'Or in Cannes, the highest artistic honor recognized by the film industry.
This is known as a milestone event for independent film, Soderbergh broke the boundary and opened the development channel of independent film - and this year, he was only 26 years old.
The filmmakers agreed that Soderbergh and Quentin, Rodriguez, Linklater, Aronofsky, Nolan... these talented directors have injected vitality into the development of films since the 1990s .
Soderbergh and Clooney have been working together since the late '90s. There was a time -- you could call it most of the 2000s -- where George Clooney's movies were almost exclusively directed by himself or the Coen brothers, but more so by Steven Soderbergh Directed by Greg. It makes sense that Clooney has worked with Soderbergh on more films than any other director (six at the moment, though he's directed and starred in nearly five). Soderbergh restarted and propelled Clooney's career on the big screen, amplifying Clooney's charisma in the film. In the long run, he turned Clooney into a star.
2001 was the year Soderbergh shined. On March 17, 2000, the feature film "Never Compromise" directed by Soderbergh was released, starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, etc. Pile of environmental scandals, the film was well received after its release. Soderbergh was nominated for Best Director at the 73rd Academy Awards and the 58th American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards; in April, he directed the drama "Drug Network", which reflected the true thoughts of drug dealers. Starring Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Dennis Quaid and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Soderbergh served as the film's cinematographer himself. The film was officially released in 2001 and was nominated for Best Picture at the 73rd Academy Awards, and Soderbergh won the Best Director Award.
With the blessing of the Olympic Awards, Soderbergh and the star Clooney teamed up to start their own film company, Section 8. The first movie they made was the star-studded Eleven, and Soderbergh met Matt Damon, who was seven years his junior.
In the years that followed, Matt Damon replaced Clooney as Soderbergh's most co-star.
Maybe Soderbergh has finally figured out that he doesn't really need star faces to sustain his film creativity, even if it can lead to a higher box office. Perhaps in his bones, he is still the young literary and artistic young man who dared to enter Hollywood and hit the Palme d'Or just with his spirit and his experience of making 16mm short films with second-hand equipment in high school.
And Matt Damon, who was already a movie star at the time, was just as young and passionate about film art.
They admire each other, coincidentally coincide, and enjoy working with each other—even though they have a large number of collaborators outside each other, the two still start working together, consciously or not.
Among these works, there is a common feature: Matt Damon's charm as a movie star is minimized.
Clooney and Soderbergh's collaboration clearly complements each other: Soderbergh presents Clooney with great sexual attraction.
But what about Damon?
In the early days of his acting career, Damon created the image of a talented, blond and handsome problem teenager in the hearts of fans with "Good Will Hunting". Less than a year later, he repeated and deepened the image in The King of Gamblers. But in the Bourneau series after that, he turned from genius to secret agent and grew into a famous action star. In between, interspersed with his Rohan trilogy with Soderbergh, in which he often appears as a comedic figure.
Linus, played by Damon in "Eleven Arhats", was actually a "Good Will" type character at the beginning. The amazingly talented little pickpocket is led by Clooney and Pitt to participate in the "big plan", playing the role of the two's little brother. He was designed and positioned to be a cute little dummy, especially in the last one, with an ugly fake nose on his face.
From this series of collaborations, Soderbergh discovered Damon's comedic talent and tried to dig out this quality in him. Few directors have done this before, despite Damon's saucy appearance in Good Will Hunting and a terrific cameo in I'm Crazy for Comedy. However, everyone seems to think of him as a "serious actor" who later became a "cold agent".
Soderbergh shot Damon for The Whistleblower. Damon plays Mark Whitaker, a real-life company executive who exposes the company's price-fixing practices, only to be exposed as a public embezzler. Whitaker hopes that once the misconduct is exposed, he can move up the ranks at the company. The theme of the story is realistic, but Soderbergh wants Damon to perform in a comic exaggerated form, even at the expense of fattening and bearding the handsome Damon, making it "ridiculous".
It seems that Soderbergh thinks Damon, well-dressed, can be in any movie that needs a star face, but he wants Damon to jump out of this "comfort zone" and star in more dramas. He did not stop "reforming" Damon, and in the next "Contagion", he let Damon play an ordinary husband.
Yes, without dyed blond hair, without a strong figure, dressed in ordinary clothes, more like an "ordinary person". The man lost his wife at the beginning of the film, and he didn't fully accept the scene at the time, which played out "real heartbreak."
Damon's way of expressing his grief in this brief scene—shocked, helpless—remains throughout the film, although he does not become the focal point. The director tried to use group images to show this battered and crumbling society. Off topic, today in 2020, the social scene shown in this film obviously has more avant-garde significance.
Perhaps Damon's role and performance are still not too subversive, but Soderbergh once again made Damon downplay his star charm. He made Damon's performance more convincing. Essentially, it's training Damon to complete a thriller without any Bourne-esque heroism, giving Damon a taste for how to represent the nuances of the characters.
But if we look at Soderbergh's films after this, other non-Matt Damon films, he seems to have returned to simply showing "beautiful bodies", "Girlfriend On Call", "Magic" Mike is fine too. Certainly excluding his documentary Che Guevara, which Soderbergh showed him the original "Behind the Candelabra" just when Matt Damon came to make a cameo appearance in the film.
It wasn't until "Behind the Candelabra" came out a few years later that Soderbergh said that when I handed over the original to Damon, I was already imagining what it would be like when we were shooting.
He single-handedly directed, photographed and edited "Behind the Candelabra". Every frame is hand-crafted by him - Damon's most over-the-top film ever.
Soderbergh described the film as Michael Douglas and Matt Damon "jumping off a cliff hand in hand".
In "Behind the Candelabra", Soderbergh once again meticulously styled Matt Damon, with a fake nose, fake blond hair, heavy makeup under the dim light... He took Damon from the "glamour movie" again and again. The star" became "another person".
After breaking away from Soderbergh's lens, or rather, after Soderbergh gave up his "film experiment" with Damon, Damon, in a way, returned to himself with one foot on serious art field, another step in the post-Bourne era star field. He shot a variety of action blockbusters, "Green Zone", "Elysium", "Bourne Bourne 5", cameo "Interstellar", and then starred in the sci-fi film "The Martian."
"The Martian" was a hit at the box office and earned Damon an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the first time since "Good Will Hunting." In "The Martian," Damon is blunt about his charisma—warm, funny, likable, and no gimmicks.
Maybe many people can play the trapped astronaut Watney, but only Matt Damon, who is completely relaxed, can resonate with people. It may also be that after Soderbergh punctured the "vanity of movie stars" again and again, he returned to the basics and performed perfectly.
Movie star vanity builds up over the years, making actors arrogant, arrogant, or fearful of losing their hard-earned audience. So Damon's stellar performance in "The Martian" may be partly due to his collaboration with Soderbergh, which keeps him from getting overly obsessed with his stardom and stripping him of his personality like an amnesiac spy come out.
Soderbergh didn't turn Matt Damon into a movie star the way he did with Clooney. Quite the contrary, he is fighting it all over the course of the collaboration, and Damon is his willing co-conspirator against his potential golden image.
But maybe Damon spends enough time breaking down his stardom and performing well in Soderbergh's subtle attempts to gain enough comfort for the role.
In a sense, Soderbergh has also recast Matt Damon's acting career.
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