We need to appreciate the greats while they are still with us…

In what is seemingly turning into his ‘British’ period, Steven Soderbergh is back with The Christophers is a smart and deft dramedy that is anchored by a performance from one of our greatest living actors today.

Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) was once a star of London’s 1960’s and 70’s pop art explosion, but he hasn’t painted in decades and has been broke for years. His two estranged children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning), desperate for an inheritance, hire Lori, an art restorer and former forger (Michaela Coel), to pose as a prospective assistant in order to access 8 unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in storage. Her plan is to complete them, then return them to storage, where they are to be “discovered” upon Julian’s death.

The Christophers is a powerful reminder that cinema can be epic, even when it’s just two people in a room talking.

Working off of a script by occasional collaborator Ed Solomon, Steven Soderbergh is a smart enough filmmaker to know when to just frame a scene and let his actors simply cook.  It’s dialogue heavy but psychologically fascinating to see an enigmatic artist at the end of his career go toe to toe with one who never got out of the blocks to make something of themselves.  Meticulous production design and masterful direction make this feel like an Eric Rohmer film that is just dripping in glorious sarcasm.  He simply pits two actors against one another and lets them tell a story using their words.

This movie is so effortless, it would be easy to call Soderbergh a master of the craft, but the reality is that he probably thinks of himself as anything but.  While he and his actors and peeling back this multi-layered onion at its core we get a very relatable and humanistic story about throwing yourself into a profession, a vocation and sometimes even a person with such abandon that when it ultimately doesn’t love you back, you are emotionally lost in ways that are hard to describe, and so much of that comes down to the caliber of the actors.

Quite simply Ian McKellen is one of those pure treasures that we’re going to miss when he’s gone.  As the enigmatic Julian brimming with sarcasm and self-effacing wit to the point that we just want to see him monologue for the 100 min run time of the movie.  Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon don’t litter this movie with cuts and multiple locations, but rather allows these characters to marinate in the crumbling empire of an iconic artist who thrust himself into seclusion.  Michael Coel matches him note for note as the spurned burgeoning artist turned restorer who McKellen sent down a different career rabbit hole after a casually cruel encounter years earlier.  They bounce dialogue off of each other effortlessly as we slowly learns she’s not all that invested in revenge and he’s not nearly the cranky bastard he thinks he is….even though he’s still pretty cranky.

Ultimately, The Christophers is part dry comedy, part chamber drama about the creative process and the emotional swings it can take you on.  No matter how you interpret it though it’s all gold and a gem in the Steven Soderbergh canon that while not flashy is just as brilliant as some of his more obvious pieces.  If he wants to stay in London shooting movies like this…we’re all for it.