As Einstein said, if you cannot explain something to a six-year-old child, you yourself do not understand it. Maybe a preschooler, after watching a new film by Steven Soderbergh, will not understand how the world of offshore companies, one-day firms and laundromats, money-laundering politicians, dishonest businessmen and drug lords works, but everyone else will definitely figure everything out. And it’s important to do so, and here’s why.
“Beneficiary”, “trust”, “money laundering”, “beneficiary”, “right to sign” are words and expressions that can scare the vast majority of viewers, except perhaps those who have an economic university diploma gathering dust in their desk drawer. And to imagine that a movie story in which these book terms appear can be fascinating is quite difficult. However, this is exactly how, fascinating and witty, caustic and instructive, and the new film by Steven Soderbergh “Laundry”, which premiered on Netflix in October 2019, turned out.
Soderbergh, who in general is no stranger to dissecting the structure of various organizations, this time follows the path of Adam McKay (“The Big Short”, “Power”), simply and clearly explaining complex concepts. It turns out more efficiently than lecturers from many universities, moreover, it is topical: the plot of the film is based on the real Panama Dossier, the case of the leak of confidential documents of a large Panamanian law firm.
“Time to act, and action begins with questions”
Starting from the story, the final point in which has not been set to this day, the director allows the audience to feel like puppets who suddenly realized that they were in the hands of skilled puppeteers. They felt the fetters on their arms and legs, and lifting their heads, they saw the curtain going up and somewhere, above it, the powers that be, for whom everyone below is puppets. A trifle, a bargaining chip.
Such puppets in the film and ordinary Americans such as retired Meryl Streep, who lost her husband while walking on the lake and is trying to buy a dream apartment with insurance payouts; and a boat company that bought insurance cheaply from what now appears to be a front company, and many others.
Traveling through the pages of this film almanac of short stories, we, the audience, can at least think about whether we really know how the world works, which we used to consider simple and understandable. Perhaps now is the “time to act, and action begins with questions.”
Three More Good Reasons to Watch Laundry Room
- Incredibly great cast: Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Meryl Streep, David Schwimmer (Friends), Jeffrey Wright (Westworld), Melissa Rausch (The Big Bang Theory) and many others.
- An opportunity to briefly get acquainted with the history of money, to understand how we got from exchanging cows for bananas to such a life, along the way, learning how the insurance market works, who the beneficiaries are, how offshores are arranged and what bearer shares are.
- Relevance: Lawyers for Mossack Fonseca, played by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas, have sued Netflix for defamation, their legal proceedings are pending and there is no verdict yet.