In Motion #55 - Ocean's Eleven

It's never about the money, not really...

I’m not sure about the exact numbers, but if I had to guess, I would say that the city of Las Vegas contains more mirrors than it does windows. And yeah: Vegas has a lot of windows. I don’t know any city that treats its hotels like historic, culturally important landmarks. But when I last walked the strip, I saw a lot more of myself in it than I expected to. At first it was normal: the hotel room my dad and I shared had a mirror in the bathroom (obviously), along with a taller one next to the TV for anyone who needed to double-check their outfit. But the more I looked, the more mirrors I saw. And in increasingly strange places: take the back lobby of the Park MGM, a fine place that is among the few hotels in Vegas not defined by how much its carpeting stinks of cigerettes. Next to the concierge desk, I saw a pillar with a completely random mirror inside of it, intended for no one but people as stupidly vain as I am. I thought it was strange…but I also used it.

Located near the Cosmopolitan, there is a venue known as the “Arte Musuem”, a so-called “immersive experience” that can hardly be considered an actual museum. It’s more of a high-end selfie factory, every stage you enter based around an LED gimmick you can pose next to: a room where CGI waterfalls are projected at every angle, a grand chamber filled with giant digital recreations of Van Gogh paintings, a maze in which the walls and floors are covered in perpetually falling AI-generated flower petals. Two entire volumes were dedicated to just making you stare at a wall; the first containing a fake wave crashing against fake glass, the second an imitation of a tide-hugged beach, the space above taken up by a beautiful aurora. I couldn’t help but notice that, in the beach room, I was pretty much the only person who hadn’t come with a plus-one to hug as the fake water washed up onto my very real legs (note: my dad was busy hitting the slots at the Tropicana, and frankly he wasn’t the kind of person I had in mind anyway). The museum was constantly reminding me of my lonely status, because for a place seemingly dedicated to “art”, or at least some Korean tech company’s idea of “art”, there were so many mirrors.

I’m very lucky that I’ve never been to Las Vegas alone. There’s a great, very tangible emptiness to the place; even though my recent trip was during the day leading up to the New Year, with everybody still very much in the holiday spirit and the crowds bloating by the day, I couldn’t help but notice that emptiness. There didn’t seem to be a single TV in the entire city that wasn’t tuned to sports, all movies and TV shows and news channels trashed in favor of yet another thing to gamble on. Everything was exclusive and expensive, yet (outside of food and event tickets) the only thing I found worth buying there was a pair of sunglasses. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of fun, non-sleazy things you can do in Vegas: my dad and I both had wonderful times seeing Penn & Teller and Cirque De Soliel, and it was nice to be able to take the credit when my friend J.J. Tolibao made a profit playing digital blackjack after I told him to walk away (let me know if I’m remembering it wrong, JJ). But, in my mind, I keep going back to that “Arte Muesum”, and how all anybody seemed to do there was take pictures of themselves standing next to things that weren’t even real.

The first thing you hear in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven is not a jazzy needle-drop, or the pleasing clings and clanks of a slot machine, but the sound of prison bars sliding open. And then the first thing you see in the film is an inmate, hair high and goatee growing, talking to some unseen parole board about why he should be released from prison. He’s kinda far away, looks a little tired, and answers every question in a bored monotone. It’s only when his freedom is guaranteed, and he’s already on his way out the door and into the world outside, that the music begins to play. We then cut to Atlantic City, cut again to the inside of a casino, and watch George Clooney, clean-shaven and impossibly stylish, rise up an escalator.

Each of the three members of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Trilogy, all featuring George Clooney as the titular Danny Ocean as he leads a murderer’s row of famous co-stars in the pursuit of pulling-off increasingly elaborate, increasingly ridiculous heists, are among the most life-affirming pieces of art I’ve ever seen. They’ve become a strange mixture of “mainstream” and “cult movie”, made with the scale and talent of a normal studio blockbuster, but beloved for their visual playfulness, strange sense of humor, and generally being just a little bit cooler than any other movie anybody’s ever seen. They’re all great, but since I’ve written about the sequel Ocean’s Twelve before and I’m probably going to write about Ocean’s Thirteen at some point down the road, today I’m going to focus on the first one. And, besides, like my friend Cameron Colon says, you have to start the story at the beginning…

Danny Ocean seems to only have three talents: dressing well, making friends, and stealing things. So he doesn’t waste any time before he starts recruiting for his next plan: knocking over three different Vegas casinos in a single night for over $150 million. Of course, they all happened to be owned by the ruthless, Andy Garcia-shaped Terry Benedict, who would most certainly cut out the middle-man and kill Danny himself if he even smelled a heist. Good thing Danny’s good at shaking hands: when your team consists of Bernie Mac, Elliot Gould, Qin Shaobo, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Eddie Jemison, Carl Reiner, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt…what can go wrong?

Luckily, the answer to that question is “not much”. I think one of the biggest reasons this movie was such a hit, and why it’s become such a classic, is how comforting it is. Nobody carries a gun. Despite Andy Garcia’s clenched fists and whispered threats, nobody ever dies. Nobody even bleeds. Everybody talks in the same quick, witty language, uses the same nonsensical codenames, walks with the same care-free slouch. Everything looks pretty, everything sounds smooth, and the whole thing just glides like it was skating on ice. The films have a rhythm, almost like musicals, a slinky, upbeat tempo provided by musician/DJ David Holmes and his jazzy, ear-worm scores. Watching an Ocean’s movie is enormously fun, every single time, no matter how many times you’ve seen any of them. Sometimes, it’s even more fun than Vegas.

Almost the entirety of Ocean’s Eleven exists within the city limits of Las Vegas. Much like everything else about these films, it’s a fantasy that’s aware of reality…but still prefers being a fantasy. Steven Soderbergh’s version of Vegas is almost entirely surface pleasures, all glitter and glam, a constant commercial for visiting and gambling at the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, the Mirage…but everybody seems acutely aware of how strangely shallow the whole place is. Sometimes the evidence is in the jokes, like when Brad Pitt’s Rusty Ryan tells a stripper: “Say hi to you mom for me”, and she responds: “Say it yourself, she’ll be on stage in five minutes.” But there are other, less fun hints towards the city’s faults, all revolving around Garcia’s Terry Benedict. The reason Elliot Gould’s character, fellow millionaire Reuben Tiskoff, decides to back Danny & Rusty’s plan is because Benedict bought him out of his own casino. Late in the film, an entire scene is dedicated to watching Reuben’s building fall to the ground in a dusty heap, just so it can be replaced by another building another, greedier man can stamp his name on. And in the casinos Benedict already owns, the film makes a point of repeatedly noting that there are cameras everywhere, a pleasure palace where the pleasure is supervised, recorded, and tracked. In his own words: “I know everything that’s happening in my hotels.”

But of course, the main reason we hate Terry Benedict and his world so much is because he’s with Tess. Julia Roberts is in this movie too, playing Danny’s ex-wife who left him, quite justifiably, after realizing that he was actually a career criminal instead of just some guy who looked like George Clooney. It’s the one element of Eleven that Twelve and Thirteen, however lovely they are, lack: a strain of total seriousness. Danny wants to be with Tess again, or at least he wants her not to be with Terry, the epitome of not just Las Vegas, but a newer & scarier Las Vegas that will become civilized at the cost of actually being civilized. It’s not the most feminist subplot, with the woman being wrong about not listening to the charming man, and with the charming man being totally right about the woman being with him in the end…but it still works. Everything about Ocean’s Eleven works, because it knows what it is. It knows that it’s stylish, and it enjoys it. It knows it stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, and it enjoys it. It enjoys itself, but never too much so that there’s no room left for us to enjoy it. There’s plenty of room, always.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love Las Vegas. There’s too much there that isn’t real, that isn’t tangible. The streets might be filled with people, but nearly all of them are either buying or selling something. CD’s, photos, pamphlets, Jesus, tickets to the latest, hottest, sexiest nightclub. The museums are filled with mirrors, the hotel rooms are filled with mirrors, the lobbies are filled with mirrors. Even the slot machines lining the casino floors reflect the faces that stare into them; all you can see is yourself, nothing beneath, behind or inside. Of course, like so many of life’s problems, those things go away if you’re not alone. I think that if Ocean’s Eleven was actually Ocean’s One: The Story of Danny Ocean, and just followed George Clooney as he wandered around Las Vegas trying to knock over a casino by himself, that movie would be a lot sadder. Doesn’t matter how cool it would look, doesn’t matter how smooth the music would be; it would be sad, simply because Danny would be alone in a town that pretends alone doesn’t exist. Thank God that isn’t what this is. Ocean’s Eleven is a tribute to everything great in life. Fun, friendship, style, humor, lightness, love. Don’t let the heist fool you: it’s not about money, not really. No good thing, or place, ever is.

(Ocean’s Eleven is currently streaming on Peacock)