Kimi
HBOMAXSteven Soderbergh may be the most prolific high-profile director working today. He has directed 35 feature films in a 33-year span, so there is rarely a year that goes by where he does not release a film. And except for a few blips here and there, his output is consistently entertaining and inspiring. Despite his efficient work schedule and voracious appetite, he puts care into his work, and his films are usually worth checking out for one reason or another. His latest, Kimi, released on HBO Max, is no exception, and is one of Soderbergh’s best in recent years.
The timely story follows Angela (Zoë Kravitz), an agoraphobic woman working from home for a giant tech company, similar to either Google or Amazon. Soderbergh taps into his audience’s deepest fears about devices – like the former’s Echo or the latter’s Alexa – as Angela is one of the tech workers assigned to monitor conversations with an Alexa-like device where there is miscommunication. Similar to some of the great thrillers of the past, like The Conversation or Rear Window, she stumbles across something she should not have, and things only get more dangerous and chilling from there.
In this compact (89 minutes), fast-paced thriller, Soderbergh is in full control of the cinematic arsenal at his disposal. While many of the devices he uses, such as canted angles to show Angela’s discomfort with being outside or a birds-eye shot to show Angela being tracked, might be conventional, they are executed with such finesse and simplicity that they work astoundingly well. Soderbergh has a firm command of cinematography and editing, and it shows here; every shot feels intentional and the fat is entirely trimmed. It feels like he could have directed this in his sleep, but that is in no way a criticism. He does not miss a beat, and every frame feels important, while every scene pushes the story forward. This is exceptionally entertaining content.
David Koepp, the film’s screenwriter, deserves his fair share of credit as well. He knows that audiences will catch on to the general gist of the story quickly and see where it is going, so he keeps it simple, choosing not to over-explain anything and having faith in the audience that they will be able to fill in some of the gaps – of which there really are not many. There is thankfully little exposition, or at least the exposition that does exist is delivered in subtle ways, either visually or elsewise that does not make it feel like an expository dump.
The score, composed by frequent Soderbergh collaborator Cliff Martinez, goes in a different direction than one might expect. His Soderbergh scores, such as the one for Contagion, usually sound electronic or synth-esque, and one would expect that to be the case again here with such a tech-based film. But Martinez instead goes more old-school, opting for something that sounds mysterious, but also almost romantic, akin to Jerry Goldsmith’s legendary Chinatown score or something even older like a film noir from the 40’s. This serves to build a bridge between the conspiracy thrillers of yesteryear and the very modern sensibilities of Kimi, making it feel more timeless than it otherwise would have been.
Perhaps most importantly for contemporary audiences, Koepp cleverly plays with the world of the Covid-19 pandemic. At least up to this point, Kimi might be the film that best tackles the challenges of the pandemic and integrates them into the storyline. In fact, it might not be fair to call them challenges because this story seems to almost be built around exploiting the unique shooting conditions of a global pandemic.
Angela is, of course, agoraphobic, and she’s working from home. There’s a Rear Window-esque feeling to the film’s first half hour, with her looking into apartment windows across from hers and the camera staying inside her home. The pandemic environment perfectly suits this story. But Koepp never lingers on this connection too long, choosing not to hammer audiences over the head with the pandemic but opting instead to display it through mere costume choices of people wearing masks. And he even subtly draws parallels between the arc of the pandemic and the arc of the story with his ending, when the characters stop wearing masks – hopefully the real world is headed that way soon as well.
There is one person who ties everything together and brings heart to this kinetic thriller, and that person is Zoë Kravitz. Her performance here should go down as one of the greats of the innocent-person-caught-up-in-conspiracy subgenre. She balances all the complexities of her sometimes-frustrating character with ease, and every moment when she is in peril – which are many – becomes unimaginably tense. It’s impossible not to root for her from the outset until the cathartic end.
