(dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2009)
Neat in its freewheeling mix of comedy and doom. Neat in its boppy Marvin Hamlisch score that wouldn't feel far from home as a soundtrack to a man pushing one of those giant wheels down the street with a stick. Neat in its withholding of information from different characters, plus often us, at all times, making all scenes play on two levels in retrospect. Neat in the zeal from Matt Damon (at his finest), screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, and director Steven Soderbergh, who were probably all told they had more important things to do, but attack this project with the thrill of people knowing they're trying something.
One of its neatest tricks, though, is pulling off an unreliable narrator with whom we have constant, intimate access. Damon's Mark Whiticare seems in a perpetual state of "sorta there," offering voice-over throughout the movie that rarely, if ever, comments on the action at hand, instead delving into increasingly ridiculous non sequiturs.
Are we inside his head? Always. Does this take us closer to who he is? Dear god, no. One of the many lingering fascinations of "The Informant!" is its have cake/eat too dichotomy of feeding us information that decidedly robs us of any possible information.
So where does this movie live if the big picture lingers out to sea? In the details. It lives, breathes, and thrives in the details. Its arc might be rotely familar - man makes series of self-destructive choices that send his life spiraling downward. But Soderbergh and Burns paint in the corners. They paint in the edges. They paint outside the lines. And they always do it in the boldest colors they have.
I mean that literally too. Despite staging his film in mostly drab motel rooms and fluorescent offices, Soderbergh bathes his shots in lush orange, better than any of these places deserve. At first, like the score, this feels like an ironic counterpoint to the action, mocking how ridiculous - at times sternly ridiculous - it all is.
Soderbergh has more up his sleeve. As "The Informant!" progresses and Whiticare unravels, the colors and the score cease to function as an ironic manifestation of our perspective and reveal themselves to be a sincere manifestation of Whiticare's perspective. Like any pathological liar, he lies to the point that he sincerely believes it to be true. As the narration places him light years away from his world spinning out of control, Soderbergh's techniques demonstrate he's occupying a world of nothing but sunshine and polar bear noses.
Along with varied movies like "The Social Network" and "The Master," "The Informant!" introduces a distinct character and subtly crafts a world to reflect his innerworkings.
Four years down the road, "The Informant!" stands as a work that slipped under the radar but somehow still lingers, holding firm its own little mischievous spot in my consciousness. Everything that it shouldn't pull off, it somehow pole vaults over. I saw it once in theaters, maybe three more times on TV and DVD, and it remains everything it always was. A comedy that still maintains its sense of fun. A mystery that still surprises and teases. A tragedy that remains palatable.
This movie earns its exclamation point. It's a gleefully entertaining gem.
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