Ocean’s Eleven is a film about a group of extremely charming, selfish men with a shitload of money at their disposal stealing a shitload of money from a wealthier and slightly less charming man. It’s about men with unparalleled skill in their respective domains (explosives, hacking, acrobatics, pickpocketing, dumb accents, arguing, being attractive while chewing) doing whatever they want and getting away with it. It’s a power fantasy for the already powerful, a superhero movie from before we were subject to superhero movies, a revenge story that pits the amoral against the immoral, a playground for several large personalities, and a true test of your willingness to suspend disbelief. It is perfect. It is too good to be true. It must be a dream.
Consider the pacing. We start in Atlantic City. Now we are in Las Vegas. Next, Salt Lake City. Down to Florida. Back to Vegas. Off to Chicago. Vegas again. A quick jaunt to California. Finally, again, Vegas. Never do we travel to these places; we just appear there. We are told we must build an exact replica of a high-security vault. A few cardboard boxes and some metalworking tools are conjured, Brad Pitt smiles at us, and suddenly we have built an exact replica of a high-security vault. This is the logic of dreams: “In order for this dream to continue, X must have happened, and so X has happened.”
Consider the motives and backgrounds, all implicit and vague. We trust Linus (Matt Damon) because Bobby Caldwell said he’s good. We have no idea who Bobby Caldwell is; we have never heard of him until now. People around us say names and hint at backstory so confidently that we gleefully do their bidding barely after they’ve finished explaining why we ought to do it. We speak new identities, entirely new lifetimes, into existence at will with no regard for whether we are speaking the names of others or new names for ourselves.
Consider how it all comes together so efficiently. Our plans are undeterrable, our success predetermined. So much of the dialogue in this film takes place offscreen that it’s impossible to tell to what extent things are happening and to what extent we just want them to happen. A description of events is as just as useful to us as the actual occurrence of those events.
Consider that when things do go wrong, they go wrong in ways that somehow make the experience better. An inconvenient discovery of an electrical vulnerability ultimately means we get to see this scene. Danny Ocean’s conflict of interest and subsequent ousting means we get to spend more time hanging out with a bespectacled Matt Damon. These aren’t plot developments. They’re improvised upgrades, spur-of-the-moment hotswaps of good ideas for great ideas, schoolyard escalations on top of already ridiculous hypotheticals.
Yes, Ocean’s Eleven must be a dream. But it’s not our dream — of course it’s not. This whole production is Danny Ocean’s dream, and it was never about us at all. Soderbergh tips us off to this fact in a backroom card game twenty minutes into the movie. Here we see clearly that the moment we assume he has nothing to stand on is the moment he takes control, swindling us with a quip and a grin. To call Danny Ocean’s bluff, in poker or in the middle of a heist, is to challenge his dominion over his own subconscious, and he will make you pay for it.
Ocean’s unstoppable power of will within the world of the film, then, becomes a means of expressing Steven Soderbergh’s absolute control over Ocean’s Eleven itself. It may be Danny Ocean’s wit and charm that contextualizes the jet-setting, the stunts, and the impressive breadth of comedic styles, but it is Soderbergh’s direction that executes on them. In fact, the complete silliness of watching Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Mac, et al. pull off this heist with relative ease is an incredible distraction from the many magic tricks that Soderbergh and his editor (Stephen Mirrione) pull off right in front of our eyes.
Let me repeat what I just said in a slightly different way: it is Ocean’s confidence that boldly steals $160,000,000, but it is Soderbergh’s confidence that silently steals 117 minutes from under our noses. His style is that of a stage magician, lingering on what he wants us to think about while breezing through incredibly daring shorthands and illusions. Watch this and ask yourself why such a stupid scene should be treated so seriously. Watch this and try to imagine conceiving of its impeccable blocking. In fact, watch the entire movie and tell me what’s left of your precious 180° rule after Soderbergh’s explored just about every permutation of spatial relationships among his characters.
All this is to say that Ocean’s Eleven is totally insane in more ways than I can count. Its plot falls into place with impossibly smooth choreography, its timing is relentless without being disorienting or tiring, its cast fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, its cinematography and editing are downright slippery, its score is suspenseful and empowering. Like its hero, Ocean’s Eleven pulls off a whole lot in not very much time. It really is too good to be true. It must be a dream.