Traffick :: essays papers

Traffick This saga of the so-c wholeed contend on drugs is a masterwork of superb performance, smart writing--and, close to of all, the mark of a director who not only knows what he wants, but also simply how to make his ambitious vision a glorious reality. Unlike most multicharacter pastiches, such as the nonpareils made by Robert Altman, or Paul doubting Thomas Andersons Magnolia, the characters of Traffics three tales dont constantly crisscross, nor argon they all brought together by a big event. Intersections are rare in Traffic, and the junctions that do occur are often fleeting. Yet the stories are strongly linked by their greater thematic concern to vividly illustrate how the drug problem touches all corners of the country, all walks of life, from people on the harsh urban streets to those in sufficient upper-class neighborhoods. Soderbergh and writer Stephen Gaghan, working from the 80s British miniseries Traffik, steadfastly refuse to storm easy, comforting conclus ions from difficult and complex situations as in real life, one is left to decide for oneself who or what is right, and what it all means. While Traffic is fundamentally about the war on drugs in America, the films starting point is the almost-exclusively south-of-the-border (and nearly-completely Spanish-language) story of Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro, doing away with his annoying tics and delivering a career performance), an average Tijuana State officeholder who is given the opportunity for greater prestige by working for cosmopolitan Salazars (Tomas Milian) efforts against the drug cartels. Just north of the border in San Diego is the setting for other thread, in which very pregnant European migr Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones, her real-life condition adding a deeper layer to her role) learns that the pampered lifestyle provided by husband Carlos (Steven Bauer) comes from dabblings in drugs, not legit calling ventures. The film also travels a bit northwest to Cincinnati, the third interchange locale, where Caroline (Erika Christensen), the teenage daughter of newly-appointed U.S. drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), brings her fathers enemy oft closer to home than he could have ever imagined. Soderbergh effortlessly weaves the singular strands into a tapestry that is at once cohesive and characterized by its contrastive strains. The latter can be taken in a material sense--Soderbergh, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (his fathers name), shot the film himself, and he gave from each one part of the film its own distinct look grainy, washed-out chicken for Mexico a solemn blue sheen for Cincinnati sun-drenched full color for San Diego.