Traffic (18)
On general release. Written by Stephen Gaghan. Directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Robert Wakefield: Michael Douglas
Javier Rodriguez: Benicio Del Toro
Montel Gordon: Don Cheadle
Ray Castro: Luis Guzman
Caroline Wakefield: Erika Christensen
Arnie Metzger: Dennis Quaid
Helena Ayala: Catherine Zeta Jones
There are many streams in Traffic. Two cops are waiting in the desert. A plane lands. They wait some more. Eventually a truck comes toward them and they raid it. It’s hard to tell at this point if they’re hijacking or arresting. They find what they’re looking for, arrest the driver and impound the truck. Returning home, they are overtaken by a fleet of paramilitary vehicles, and forced to give up their prisoners and bounty. Michael Douglas paces through Washington, gathering hangers on, opinions, and praise, while saying very little as the new drug tsar. The FBI stake out a cocaine deal, not entirely successfully. Catherine Zeta Jones lunches at a golf club, where her son is learning to play. When she returns home, her husband is arrested.
Soderberg’s strength is that these do not drag, even though most of the narratives are slow. There is a feeling of something building, even if the Douglas scenes, particularly, feel very routine. Perhaps Traffic’s biggest gamble, and its greatest failing is that these never quite meet. Sometime after Zeta Jones’ and Douglas’ marriage they appear in a film where their characters never meet. Traffic is a polemic of sorts, and some of these stories begin to tie up. Some of them don’t: the audience is invited to close the gaps.
A lot of the story is told from a God’s eye view, as if the cameras just take in everything. Cutting and camera-work keep you fom wondering ‘Why are they telling us this?’ too often. The Mexico scenes are couched in a mock documentary style, with wobbly steadicam. This is where my patience started to wear. Real documentary is continual explanation — voice over or talking to camera. Traffic is a conventional film pretending to be something more.
There is an almost complete absence of music. An effect of this is an emotional muteness, appropriate if there were an argument. But this is fiction. We don’t believe that a man can fly because one does in the movies; why should we trust that the drug war is futile?
Despite these failings, and they’re not minor, much of Traffic is brave and new. Douglas’s silence, and his generosity in allowing others to hold scenes, are impressive. Visually, some of it is magnificent. Soderberg could well be the director’s director of the next decade.
Traffic has an excellent script too — in many respects. Dialogue covers character development, light handed explanation, and explosive speechifying. Different registers and timbres are sounded throughout. We should expect films to be implausible, but Traffic only fails through its ambition. Michael Douglas scenes only last from his appointment as drug tsar to his first speech. Only, what a few weeks, two months? Somehow he overlaps the Mexico story, which sees Benicio Del Toro evolve from street cop to sports jacketed FBI liaison man, surely a process of several years. Even with the constant legal stalling, the trial which yokes Zeta Jones and Don Cheadle, must be shorter than the second, if longer than the first.
This carping feels bad. Traffic is set to be one of the best films of the year. It has faults, but in this case, they add character.
Perhaps the script is too clever. What seem like lacunae in the plot, may be implicit in the argument. One scene sees two Mexican assassins trailing the FBI. Unlikely perhaps, but also, perhaps intended to convey the ease which narcotics, guns, and coruption seep over the border. Zeta Jones changes from a helpless homemaker into a hardened drug baron in less time than St Paul spent on the road to Damascus. This isn’t about character, but the invisible hand of economics making and unmaking souls. Traffic may still be fresh in 10 years time. Sadly, it will probably still be relevant.
