I usually feel an aversion to movies tagged “Based on a true story”. I would be more likely to be enticed by a poster that said, “Drawn entirely from the foetid imagination of the scriptwriter”. But I must revise my position when it comes to Steven Soderbergh’s film Erin Brockovich.
Brockovich is, indeed, a real person, and this is her story. Unlike the wife of Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco-industry whistleblower in The Insider, who is sueing Disney for misrepresenting her, or those who complained of distortions in the tale of Rubin Carter in The Hurricane, the living-breathing Brockovich must be happy with the way she is presented in the film named (like Norma-Rae and Silkwood) after her, as she took the brief role of a waitress in the movie. Apparently, though, things didn’t turn out quite as happily for her in the love/family stakes as the film would seem to want us to believe.
But, whatever tweaks it may have applied to history, it sure makes a fine movie. Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is the kind of woman to whom one might apply the adjective “feisty”, except that that adjective seems sexist and patronising because it is only ever really applied to women. It is, I suppose, also used of small companies taking the David role in David-and-Goliath battles, so it is reasonably appropriate in this context.
As the film opens, this twice-divorced mother of two is struggling to find a job. Her lack of success in this respect is exacerbated by a sudden car accident; then her outspoken anger subverts her case against the person who wrecked her car and injured her neck. The odds are very much stacked against her, but she fights back; even at her most desperate, she finds a way to come through. She is indomitable.
She inveigles her way into a job with Ed Masry (Albert Finney), the lawyer who took her failed case, and soon finds herself investigating a shocking instance of corporate malfeasance. This becomes a personal crusade: Brockovich is as unwilling to see others abused as she is unwilling to take any abuse herself. A drawn-out legal war looms, one that will put an inordinate amount of pressure on her family life, her children and her hunky biker boyfriend (Aaron Eckhart).
So far, I admit, this is not sounding much more interesting than your standard “based on a true story” TV-movie – the underdog fighting back, the courtroom drama, the family suffering because of commitment to a cause (cross-ref to all those cop shows). What takes Erin Brockovich way beyond such clichés is Roberts herself and Soderbergh’s self-effacing but meticulously efficient direction.
Roberts is a joy to watch. If you thought she was good in Notting Hill because she was playing herself, it’s a treat to see her bodying forth someone so different. Brockovich is somewhat trashy and rather flashy, prepared to use her looks (especially the perked-up tits – her word – that are so prominently on display throughout the movie) if it suits, yet not limited to bimbo status.
She is also quick to exercise her sharp and sometimes obscene tongue. This is not a reference to the physical attributes of Roberts’s famous mouth, though that is of course as prominently – and impressively – on display here as her breasts are.
Finney, too, is excellent, if perhaps a little hammy. Then again, he is a lawyer. Eckhart’s biker is likeable and persuasive in his tenderness as well as his frustration. But the overall prize must go to Soderbergh, here doing his jobbing-director thing. Having made his name with the idiosyncratic sex, lies and videotape more than a decade ago, he seems now to be oscillating between the mainstream and more personal, unusual projects. See The Limey, out next month, for an example of the latter.
In Erin Brockovich, which Soderbergh brought in before deadline and under budget (and watched top the charts in the United States), he keeps his cinematic tricks to a minimum. There is nothing to bother the eye of the most conservative viewer, yet there is so much more than one gets from standard Hollywood product. Assisted by Susannah Grant’s lively script and Thomas Newman’s understated score, Soderbergh manages to illuminate and energise his material with subtle qualities of perception and sympathy that make Erin Brockovich, the film and the character, hard to resist – tits or no tits.