ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)

Whatever one’s takeaway is about the filmography of Steven Soderbergh, it can’t be denied that he’s willing to take on just about any project, regardless of its overarching tone, theme, genre, or style. He was especially busy on that front in 2000, which saw two of his films released in the same year, Traffic and Erin Brockovich. While the former conveys an epic tale of interwoven lives suffering the knock-on effects of the War on Drugs, the latter’s a legal drama biopic demonstrating how a hard-working single mother helped uncover a major contamination scandal that resulted in a giant settlement payout from the company at fault.

Erin Brockovich follows its eponymous protagonist’s attempts to stay afloat financially while juggling a career and raising her three young children. To add even more conflict to her life, this is also when she discovers attempts to cover up a major scandal that’s caused residents in the affected area to become seriously ill. Erin (Julia Roberts) is aided in this endeavour by her new boss, lawyer Ed Masry (Albert Finney), with the adversarial duo striking up an unlikely partnership in this legal battle.

Though not polar opposites, in many ways Traffic and Erin Brockovich couldn’t be more different. Of the two, there’s noticeably less tension in Erin Brockovich, not just in the most surface-level of ways, but even in how this title character treats people around her and addresses her hardships. After being fired, she simply remarks that she will find another job. This plot beat would be an excuse in most films to mine audiences’ pity for the woebegone single mother struggling to get by, but the possibility of such a sentiment is squashed in an instant. Erin is a natural fighter, but for all the responsibilities heaped upon her that she must balance, her life isn’t necessarily a series of struggles.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Susannah Grant are keen to let us know that this is not a typical feel-good story about lone individuals achieving the impossible, eschewing a pitying rags-to-riches character arc. This shines through in how easily Erin squanders opportunities, first by flying off the handle and then refusing to acknowledge her part in these minor downfalls. She does not take accountability and she does not compromise. She is prone to outbursts, is often profane, and does not care in the slightest what people think of her. In a typical biopic about an individual taking on a giant corporation, not only would there not be any acid-tongued protagonists, but oftentimes these movies’ protagonists, and the films themselves, reek of desperation in their efforts to garner viewers’ sympathy.

Where downtrodden characters in rags-to-riches stories often suffer alone, either in silence or through bitter, half-suppressed sobs, it somehow feels as if these characters rely on the audience to witness their struggles to go on. It’s a thought process that makes no logical sense, but then nothing does in moviemaking. Even when you are pitying their struggles, this sombre approach has you hoping for (and expecting) a turn in their fortune to arrive.

Erin Brockovich isn’t that kind of movie, even if its opening few minutes seem to suggest that. Plenty of misfortunes befall Erin, but she gamely picks up where she left off and always finds a way to bounce back. Though never flashy, Soderbergh still injects personality into these opening scenes, endearing us to Erin through clever editing choices in a trial where she is the defendant. Fast-paced editing speeds through her attempt to make the case for her valid claim that she was the victim of a car crash. But it all blows up in her face once her propriety is put into question, a recurring aspect of this film.

Erin won’t be taken for a fool, but even the mere suggestion of such an insult is enough for her to jeopardise everything. Nothing other than pride seems to matter in these moments; overtaken by anger, she becomes truly carefree. It’s joyous to watch, strangely enough, where all of the niceties in everyday life are suddenly shunned in favour of self-protection. It also makes this character a fighter in every sense of the word. She has been let down too many times by people—her two ex-husbands, for starters, who are nowhere to be found—to feel that she can rely on anyone but herself.

Though admirable, these scenes can also be incredibly frustrating. It’s akin to watching someone who grew up in a traumatic environment still clinging onto the survivor’s mindset they learned to adopt long ago, even when their situation has improved so much that these learned behaviours are not just unnecessary, they are destructive. A more archetypal movie would have found a way to tame Erin, likely through a romantic interest, who gets her to recognise that she can trust others and rein in her righteous indignation just a little bit.

But that doesn’t really happen here, either. By resisting such archetypes, Erin Brockovich is an unusually clever biopic, ensuring that these characters all fall like real people even when its plot beats are conventional. Turning true stories into fiction—particularly those that don’t feature anything flashy or grisly—often transform subjects into objects, where their behaviours and attitudes are so fixed that they are as lifeless as the wallpaper behind them or the streetlights above their heads. Rising steadily above the inane blandness that so often eclipses this genre, Erin Brockovich makes its true-to-life story affecting, earnest, and entertaining.

None of this would be possible without Roberts’ commanding leading performance. Though Erin is by no means subdued, in some ways this role is. Roberts turns in a deceptively complex portrayal, never underselling or leaning too aggressively into comedy or drama, anger or self-pity. It is a consistently multi-faceted portrayal, offering our protagonist (and the real person behind this avatar) the respect she deserves. In every scene, she’s unmistakably Erin, a quality for which she and Grant should be lauded, with the latter’s perceptive dialogue ensuring that despite her flaws, Erin is never boring or unsympathetic. Finney is also a comic delight, with this film taking on an odd couple approach with these two unlikely professional partners. Though Ed and Erin are often at loggerheads, it is endearing to watch the former’s gradual understanding and appreciation of who Erin is, until by the end of the movie he is struggling not to grin at her outbursts or crass comments.

Erin shows up in his life as a victim: a client seeking damages for being wrongfully harmed. She then becomes a screw-up, sharpening her personality to her near-stranger lawyer, before slowly earning his respect even as he finds himself exasperated with her behaviour. It is a beautifully understated relationship that, while smart enough not to make these characters too chummy with one another, would have been even more impactful with just one frank scene between the pair outside of the bounds of their place of work. One can easily imagine a night-time conversation between the pair in a seedy bar, where Erin and Ed knock back beers and wearily reflect on how dismal their case is looking. Ed would be the more downtrodden one, of course, while the pragmatic yet hopeful Erin wouldn’t just see the light at the end of this tunnel, but would allow him to glimpse it for a moment, too.

But this is a fairly typical scene for movies of this sort, and Erin Brockovich continually resists those. Much like its eponymous protagonist’s unrefined moments, the film is admirable yet frustrating, where its well-crafted plotting and characterisation make for an entertaining but slight result. It might have very few flaws, but it also lacks powerful scenes that will stick out in one’s memory. There are tough moments that confront the lives of those who have been severely affected by the groundwater contamination at the heart of this legal battle, but they don’t come close to being heart-breaking, either.

Although this movie largely breaks away from cliché, it still requires a love interest, a role fulfilled by George (Aaron Eckhart), a biker and Erin’s next-door neighbour. George is unusually kind and accommodating, an endearing presence who seems like he should not be at first, with Eckhart playing both aspects of this character sublimely. Though Erin assumes George would be uninterested in pursuing her romantically if he knew she was a single mother, he surprises her by effectively becoming a childminder for her three young children, looking after them whenever she is at work. Understandably, she’s too drained from her competing responsibilities to offer anything in the way of affection, just as it is entirely reasonable from George’s perspective that this relationship is entirely one-sided in terms of effort and generosity.

Erin is incredibly headstrong and does not like the thought of people helping her out, yet when she finds a quintessentially perfect boyfriend, she thinks nothing of allowing him to devote much of his time and effort towards her children, just as she never considers to demonstrate any appreciation for this. It sets up interesting inner and outer conflicts that still feel incomplete by the film’s conclusion.

More damning are some of the movie’s technical elements, like Erin Brockovich’s colour grading. Highlighting yellow and brown colours, many scenes are aglow with an ugly yellow hue, making old furniture look ancient. Nothing is really enhanced by this technique, whether that’s regarding these characters or the world around them. The film also features repetitive music choices from composer Thomas Newman, none of which are very inspired. They are at their most damning in short scenes when Erin is travelling in her car from Point A to Point B, and back again. These snippets of scenes feature compositions akin to sitcom music, with their accompanying visuals giving the effect of near-identical loading screens in a video game, which viewers must sit through roughly half a dozen times throughout Erin Brockovich.

In general, the film is well-directed, even if it’s rarely visually distinctive. It may seem as though several other filmmakers could have produced similar results if they were helming this project, but there’s an earnestness embedded in this film that would be very difficult to access for directors who don’t possess Soderbergh’s keen talent (which is almost all of them). The filmmaker’s creative vision was a necessity in portraying this very human protagonist and story. While a legal thriller based on true events that doesn’t even feature a trial sounds like a colossal waste of time, Erin Brockovich does the near-impossible and succeeds.

For all its smarts, the film is never gripping, and isn’t likely to linger in one’s mind after it’s over, nor is it a movie that has one clamouring to rewatch it. But it’s so damn charming that by the end of it, it’s hard not to be won over by Erin Brockovich the person, and Erin Brockovich the movie.

USA | 2000 | 130 MINUTES |1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast and Crew

director: Steven Soderbergh.
writer: Susannah Grant.
starring: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart, Marg Helgenberger, Peter Coyote, Tracey Walter, Cherry Jones & Conchata Ferrell.