Throughout the history of mankind, there have been so many decisions made in the name of financial gain. Either it’s in the quest to make money, or to take down someone whose wealth has overpowered their reason. There’s no denying that we’re all chasing that financial stability and it has caused some of the most curious moments in human desperation, creating scandals that prove just how much of a wealth gap there is in America.
But who isn’t drawn in by the access that money has? We’re all entering lotteries and trying to invest in stocks that promise to make us richer. Are we really going to yell at somebody who figured out how to get away with it? Well, there are the legal ways where you roll up your sleeves and get in the dirt, or you know the shortcuts and get rich off of others due to tax loopholes. When you’re holding the briefcase and nobody’s looking, do you steal a dollar here or there out of it? Who is to know that 1% is missing? Just don’t get cocky and flaunt it in lavish purchases, or people will know that something is up.
That is the conceit of HBO’s latest movie Bad Education (2020). The film was sold as a powerhouse performance by Hugh Jackman, giving him one of his best dramatic roles to date. There is plenty of reason to buy into his charisma. After all, he was The Greatest Showman (2017), selling us on the idea that P.T. Barnum was a great and sympathetic man who loved his freaks and sang some catchy songs to fill time. How could playing a lowly superintendent be any more of a challenge? All he needs is a smile and a crowd to cheer him on and you get the magic of this role, creating a figure so familiar to America that even on a small scale embodies the deluded definition of success.
Frank Tassone (Jackman) presides over New York’s Roslyn school district, which has a lot to be proud of. It’s one of the best schools in the nation, and the opening rally plays like a victory lap. However, the dominos slowly begin to fall as the story proceeds It starts with Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) getting fired, though not without capturing the interest of journalism student Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan), who gets access to the personal files stored in the basement and begins to discover that the financial system at the school has a lot of problems.
Pam’s firing is at best suspect, and one has to wonder what else the school is covering up. If there’s any issue, it’s that Rachel is dealing with documents so detailed and belabored that her audience would never be able to understand them. She becomes passionate about the story, wanting to go deeper but finding limitations. She is just a teenager, limited in her capabilities especially at a school so powerful that they could suspend her without a second thought.
Then it becomes clear that the finances are being embezzled not for anything related to bettering the school, but to make Frank’s life richer. As he talks with Big Bob Spicer (Ray Romano), they discuss how the money was being excused as for dry-cleaning, but that it was becoming clear that it was being spent on so much more. Frank got greedy, getting better suits that made himself look better.
Suddenly it became clear that this deified figure wasn’t as great as people made him out to be. He was doing a lot of seedy things in order to take advantage of the school’s personal success. He formed a relationship with a male student as well as lied to others. Once people knew where to look for his flaws, his kingdom began to crumble.
The same could be said for Netflix’s own awards-push of a movie in The Laundromat (2019). Much like Bad Education, it is based on a true story that starts with everything seeming normal but slowly starting to fall apart. Bad Education doesn’t really have a central narrator breaking to the camera to tell us how to feel. There are moments where Jackman monologues, trying to capture the American Dream in his spirit for personal gain. However, it’s more of a conventional drama compared to what director Steven Soderbergh brought to his story about the Panama Papers.
This is more than one teacher being taken down by a student. The Panama Papers was a universal money-laundering system known infamously for having offshore bank accounts. There is a whole system that is too complicated to get into, but what needs to be known is that much like Bad Education, The Laundromat stumbles upon them in quite an unsuspecting way when one small detail causes an individual to look further into the crime, finding out that the trouble runs much deeper than the seemingly singular and straightforward issue.
The inciting incident comes when Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep) goes on a boat trip with her husband Joe (James Cromwell). Things go horribly and the boat capsizes, killing Joe and leaving Ellen with a desire to live out the rest of her life in a meaningful way. This includes buying a living space that overlooks Joe’s burial site. The only issue is that somebody else has ownership of that space. She could live in France, but the location would come with an obstructed view. No matter how much pleading she does, she can’t get them to change their mind.
Enter Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas), who have ownership of the central bank account. They also serve as the narrators of The Laundromat, finding themselves on a beach far away, laughing at Ellen as she wanders around the globe trying to find answers. Mossack and Fonseca may have been real people, but they read like flamboyant cartoon characters, living forever in a luxurious ad on some desert island with every whim being attended to. While the web grows and they shrink in stature depending on where in the story you are, they are always there in this stylized, delusional landscape where you’re meant to notice the wealth gap. It’s obnoxious in how obvious the signs are, but it’s to make Mossack and Fonseca seem less reputable even if they’re making financial speak accessible The Big Short (2015)-style.
The web in Bad Education is comparatively less impressive, but that just means that it becomes more of a personal story with the central figures. The school feels more vulnerable, and you understand clearly why the entire community wants to turn on Frank at a moment’s notice. He isn’t a cartoon character revealing all of his truths. He has to have his teeth pulled to get all of the answers out before finally accepting his fate. He isn’t far away, but in the principal’s office down the hallway, being confronted by all school officials in hopes that they can work through this situation in a way that doesn’t make everyone else look bad.
One can argue that Bad Education also has more compelling supporting characters. We’re allowed into the homes of these characters, revealing that Rachel believes in this fight at the expense of writing a more conventional and less controversial narrative. There’s Pam trying to find ways to get her job back. There is a better understanding of how a school operates, bringing these factors that are more accessible with nothing more than a brief conversation that shows how much humanity needs order.
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| Meryl Streep in The Laundromat |
The Laundromat is also a study of order, but it’s one of Soderbergh’s most experimental films to date. It has its heart rooted in a real story, with Streep’s sequences shot like a documentary. However, the Mossack and Fonseca sequences are designed to be fantasy, as an advertisement for wealth’s value. In their opening scene, Soderbergh shoots a long take of the duo walking from a landscape of human evolution until they end up in a night club, crowded with vivacious activity. Already the realism is being questioned, asking if we can actually believe our eyes. It just happens to be placed alongside a novel commentary on humanity's reliance on greed.
That is what The Laundromat’s biggest asset is in telling its story. Whether or not you understand offshore bank accounts, you can understand the idea of crimes hiding in plain sight, creating some of the most perplexing moments in the film. This is designed as a call to action, wearing its agenda on its sleeve as it asks the embezzlers to stand up for their crimes.
The subtext becomes surface-level in the film’s closing sequence. The narrative has been completed and Ellen has had her say. Justice has been served, and it’s time for everyone to go home. In what is one of the strangest, boldest moves in Soderbergh’s career, he has the actors wander from the realm of film and onto a film set where they’re pretty much themselves. Considering that this is a story about deception, it makes sense to see actors ripping apart their costumes to reveal the “truth” underneath. Sometimes it’s just a wig or make-up, but every monologue has some disassembling.
The most notorious comes at the very end. Earlier in the film, there is a character named Elena, whom you wouldn’t think twice about. As she enters the sound stage, she begins to pull off her entire costume to reveal that it was Streep this entire time. In an era where appropriation is decried, the decision is controversial and many likely will miss the deeper point. It isn’t that Soderbergh’s gimmicks probably went too far and distracted from the story, but that looks can be deceiving. As Streep, now herself, finishes the film, she calls for audiences to rise up and notice the injustices in the world. Look behind the veil and see for yourself how safe it is. You know, the generic activism chant.
The Laundromat ended up not being one of Netflix’s biggest hits. In fact, it was one of the few to miss out on Oscar nominations for 2020 in general. Still, it was so full of detail and style that everything clashed in confusing manners. Was there really any focus?
Sure, Bad Education had some style to it, but this was a human drama first and foremost. There wasn’t going to be a gimmick meant to heighten the importance of any one event. The story was going to be a search for each character’s soul. That is more interesting and allows for the emotional complexity to make Jackman’s performance into what it is. While he is a showman who puts on a triumphant voice when he steps out in public, there is a vulnerability underneath that makes you understand the weight of his mistakes. You don’t get that in The Laundromat. What you get are two flamboyant men complaining that they got caught.
On one hand, it’s unfair to compare the small financial crimes of a school to the Panama Papers. There are massive amounts of differences. However, if you look at the bigger picture they’re both examples of human greed in a quest to better one’s lives. They were foiled by one little mistake, trickling down to a person curious enough to keep looking. The Laundromat may have more facts jammed into the shorter running time, but there’s so much else that keeps any of it from feeling like we’re watching a creative art project. Bad Education goes for the internal struggle of a school system, asking us what we expect from our educators. Even without outwardly saying it, Bad Education’s thesis is much more complicated and interesting.
The sad part is that humanity will always be greedy and we’ll keep finding ways to get that extra dollar. These are only two examples of people cheating the system and getting caught. Whereas The Laundromat bombed, I do hope that Bad Education leads to a great awards push because it really was one of the best films of 2020 so far, capturing evidence that Jackman’s post-X-Men career has more legs than we thought. It’s also an example of telling a story so personal that we all can relate to it. While most of us may have more investment (no pun intended) with The Laundromat, it has too much on its mind to ever bring all of its threads together in the end. It tries, but it’s also a cartoon refusing to find any pathos underneath the facts that would remind us of our human desires.
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