SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “An Arrival.” New Republic (4 September 1989): 26–27.

In the following review, Kauffmann discusses Soderbergh's preoccupation with the inexpressible in sex, lies, and videotape.

Possibly the greatest pleasure in an art work is our perception that there is more in it than what we see or read or hear. Book or music or painting, play or film, what arrests us and awes us is the realization that the inexpressible is arising from what is being expressed. Howard Moss said: “Poetry is essentially the use of words to express the nonverbal,” and the statement is easily adjusted to fit the other arts.

The greater the art work, the truer Moss's statement is—in fact, the degree of “inexpressibility” may be the measure of a work's greatness. But every good artist gives us this experience in some proportion. Among American filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, with Stranger than Paradise and Down by...