Steven Soderbergh, the Colors of Money

Steven Soderbergh's new film "The Christophers" (2025) is a sharp, chamber-piece drama about art, inheritance, and money. The story follows Julian Skar, a former art superstar from the 1970s now living in seclusion and earning a living by caricaturing himself on social media. His children, Barnaby and Sally, eager to maximize their future inheritance, hire a repentant forger named Lori Butler to secretly complete Julian's unfinished masterpiece, an eight-portrait series titled "The Christophers." The film explores the complex relationships that develop between the four characters in a labyrinthine London house, written in the style of a lively theatrical play.

The film matters because it offers a critical examination of how market value distorts family bonds and artists' identities, raising provocative questions about who owns a work of art and whether an artist has the right to destroy their own creation. Soderbergh, who has spent his career exploring the nature of money, uses this story to critique a generation of artists who, like Julian Skar, turned their lives into spectacle and now struggle to distinguish between fame and talent. The film also highlights the disillusionment of those on the margins of the art world, like the forger Lori, who have cultivated degraded self-images and cynical worldviews. Ultimately, "The Christophers" is a meditation on the blinding tyranny of money that robs us of a just measure of things, people, and our own worth.