Soderbergh blazes another trail with camera phone, ‘Unsane’
It may not be intentional, but Steven Soderbergh can really make other people feel lazy.
In 2013, he announced his retirement from filmmaking and promptly began work on “The Knick” for Cinemax; he directed all 20 episodes of the show’s critically acclaimed two-season run.
Last year, he returned to features with the heist comedy “Logan Lucky.” He also recently made “Mosaic,” a murder mystery available as a series on HBO and also as a branching narrative via an app.
With retirement now firmly in the rearview mirror, his latest film, “Unsane,” opened Friday. Shot mostly with an iPhone for a budget of about $1.2 million — Soderbergh noted it’s the same amount as his 1989 debut, “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” — the film features “The Crown” star Claire Foy as a woman who has recently relocated to escape a long-term stalker. After seeing a new therapist, she is committed to a mental institution for issues that may or may not be real.
The film also stars Joshua Leonard, Juno Temple, Jay Pharaoh and Amy Irving.
Question: You stepped away from filmmaking for a time, and after coming back with “The Knick,” you’ve been as productive as ever. What was reignited within you?
A: I think I’d made a mistake in associating my frustration over the way the movie business was working with the job of directing. And when I read “The Knick,” I realized I wanted to do that and actually went back to work. I was sitting there thinking, “Oh, I actually like this job a lot; it was just the business part of the movie business that was making me crazy.” So I became reactivated in a way by doing that show. And I guess that was just a lesson I needed to learn, which was not to conflate the environment with the job.
Q: With regard to “Unsane,” did you want to make a movie with a camera phone and found a story to fit, or did this story present itself to be told in this way?
A: It would be hard to parse all of those elements, because a couple of things happened around the same time that if either of them had happened on their own might not have resulted in “Unsane.” But it turned out they did all happen in very close proximity, and it began to feel to me like some planets were lining up.
Q: You cast Claire Foy largely after seeing her Golden Globes acceptance speech for “The Crown.” What about that moment struck you?
A: Well, that’s her. That was my first exposure to her, literally. I hadn’t even seen her show at that point. And I just thought, “Wow, I like her, whoever that is. She seems really cool.” And then I watched the show and thought, “Wow, that is not her at all.” This role she is playing in the show is so not her. When I went to meet her in London, that was confirmed — Queen Elizabeth couldn’t be further from Claire. Claire is a very sort of gregarious, open, friendly, tactile person. And so it was really fun — like the last time I had to look at “Unsane” for technical reasons, I’ll catch myself forgetting that it’s her.
Q: You seem incredibly open to change, from being an early adopter of digital filmmaking to your recent shifts in storytelling, along with experiments in financing and distribution. Why is that?
A: I’m constantly asking myself or the people around me, what should change and what can be retained? ... Whenever I confront a situation in which somebody’s response is “because that’s the way we’ve always done it,” that activates me.