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'Traffic'
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Traffic. Openings of films are usually indicative of where the rest of the film will take us. In this case there is no exceptions. It starts out in a minimalist style. There is no opening credits to the actors or filmmakers, simply a seven letter word in the bottom left hand corner that expresses the essence of the film. In this case it is the trafficking of drugs in America that is being explored. Steven Soderbergh endeavours to orchestrate several distinct interweaving story lines that convey the enormity of the drug trade and it's effects on all those from the bottom to the top of the supply chain. He uses a pastiche of styles and techniques to convey the otherwise confusing narrative and as a result reveals it's themes and perspective. The most obvious example of how Soderbergh achieves this is through different coloured filters and lights he applies to various scenes. He does this to help separate the stories and to immediately locate and familiarize ourselves with whose story we are dealing with. The stories are unravelled side by side, but they are never integrated into each other, except through location or overlapping editing. They aren't linked at all through plot, only through theme - the macro world of drugs. As far as it is apparent the colours are there to place us in a location, they are not linked to character, as the characters move freely through different colour schemes. For example Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) the U.S. President’s newly appointed drug czar, travels from the cool detached blue of the north states down to the over-saturated glossed up California and further down into the tobacco filth of Mexico. They also do not appear to be linked to plot or emotion as they do not change when there is a dramatic high point. There is however an inconsistency to the colours that make the film very irritating and difficult to follow. There are times when, for no apparent reason, Soderbergh will change the colour scheme. Suddenly the north states of Washington DC and Ohio aren't blue anymore and the the preppy school kids are overdosing in a saturated colour - bled mess instead of the sterile blue that we have previously been conditioned to associate them with. Or Mexico will suddenly be alive with disco colours as Tijuana State policeman Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) finds a unique way to bring to justice a gay assassin.
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