Solaris: Another View

nellardo writes "Solaris is Steven Soderbergh's newest film and ostensibly a major departure for him -- it's a science-fiction film, a remake of the earlier Tarkovsky film of the even earlier Stansilaw Lem novel. Soderbergh is known for his many introspective, character-oriented art house films. His more recent work has been moving towards more marketable Elmore-Leonard-style "thrillers" (including Out of Sight, which is in fact based on a Leonard book, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven). So a "science fiction film" seems like an inventive departure. Sadly, it isn't - it's more of Soderbergh's usual schtick." Read on for more of nellardo's review.

Fundamentally, it's about a man (George Clooney) mourning about his suicide wife (Natascha McElhone, best known from the incomparably better Ronin). The science fiction is there only to provide a mirror for Clooney's moping about his lost love. It could have been done with drugs, dreams, insanity, spirits, reincarnation, or any number of other conceits (and in other movies, it has been done, with all of those), but Solaris does it with a huge sentient planet capable of reading minds and reforming matter at subatomic levels. What does this stupendous cosmic power do? Create replicas of whoever the people on the nearby space station dream about. Like Clooney's dead wife.

This is a bit like using a Jedi Knight and her light saber to get at a can of soup.

The Jedi Knight and the light saber will definitely get the can, and get it open in a jiffy. But the contents are a mess. And one never seems to have a light saber around when one needs one. Much less a light saber attached to a willing Jedi Knight -- "Follow our mandate from the Jedi Council, we must! Mmmm!"

Like the light saber and the soup can, Solaris the sentient planet mostly just gets in the way of the real substance of the film. Solaris the planet looks pretty on the screen, but so does iTunes when you turn on the visualizations -- they've got about the same level of emotional content. We need clumsy faux-jargon exposition: "Are you or are you not made of sub-atomic particles?" (of course -- everything is made of subatomic particles, usually organized in the form of atoms, duh) -- to even know that Solaris the planet has anything to do with what is going on.

Comparisons with Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey are as inevitable as they are inaccurate. Both films are set in space. And both films have a slow pace, driven largely by beautifully shot scenes of some space-scape. But that's the extent of the similarity. If this is Soderbergh's tribute to Kubrick, it falls short. Thematically, they have little to do with each other. Kubrick's long space shots establish tone and realism for a film shot before the Apollo moon walks. They are always placed to make a point relevant to the plot, whether it is the mind-numbing isolation of a long space journey or a parallel between the first bone weapons of proto-humans and the incomparably more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction of the near future. Soderbergh's long space shots show off some very pretty particle system effects and convince us, over and over again, that, despite all indications to the contrary, this film is taking place in a Strange Place.

What interesting shots Soderbergh does come up with tend to be film-studenty tricks like a dream-like tracking shot that suggests that there might be more than one replica of a particular character. Of course, by the point we start seeing these kinds of shots, we've already seen multiple replicas of the same character come and go. And he never goes anywhere with it. Even the supposedly trick ending is as obvious as the end of The Sixth Sense ("I see dead people" -- well, duh, we can see what the end is right there). Soderbergh brings this loaded gun on stage and never really fires it. The science fiction conceit of this super-powerful planet never goes anywhere.

Which just brings us back to the fact that this isn't really a science fiction movie. It's a character study. Unfortunately, I don't think Clooney's a good enough actor to really pull that off. He's got tremendous charisma and screen presence. But he doesn't do emotional depth well, and when he does, it either comes across as lust (the problem with his role in Out of Sight) or as bad melodrama (which is his problem here). The other actors are decent -- Jeremy Davies is good in a truly neurotic and twitchy role, but saying Jeremy Davies is good at playing neurotic is like saying that Jack Nicholson is good at playing crazy macho -- they can sleep through the role and still do it. McElhone is suitably cryptic, but again, it's something she does well. Viola Davis strikes me as perhaps the best of the lot, but I'm unfamiliar with her work, so she may be similarly snoozing through the role.

Soderbergh started his film career with a bit of sexual obsession, in the highly-regarded sex, lies, and videotape (yes, the title is all in lowercase -- never seen a satisfactory explanation for that little bit of conceit either). In the end, Solaris comes across much the same. Clooney sees McElhone on a train, they play a little eye footsie, and end up going to the same party at the home of a mutual friend. Breathy lines and bare butts soon ensue. Eventually, McElhone kills herself over a misunderstanding (Clooney walks out in a snit and she thinks he's not coming back). This is barely sexual obsession, and more like a pretentious drama student trying to redo the tragedies of Shakespeare. It just isn't compelling, and Clooney getting emotional distraught over it was silly (the New York audience I was with broke out into laughter -- maybe that's just New York cynicism, but I don't think so).

So in the end, what are we left with? Some pretty pictures of a purple planet. George Clooney's angst-ridden mug. A "trick" ending that is broadcast throughout the movie. And a conceit somewhat larger than a fully grown blue whale, lying in the middle of the movie doing nothing.

I wanted to like it, really I did. Soderbergh has done better, and we sure can use better directors on science fiction films than we usually get. Alas, this ain't it.

Slashdot welcomes reader-submitted features and reviews. Thanks to nellardo for this one!

Comments

Not again...

[Inazuma]

God, why does all of slashdot seem to hate a really good movie? I mean, it's not like I come to /. for movie reviews, and I sure won't now, but really...

Ok, so what's your point? That Solaris isn't "science-fictiony" enough? That the planet doesn't do anything cool? Um...ok. We could, I suppose, get into some kind of argument about this, but if you don't see why that's a really, really stupid point to make to begin with, I'm not gonna bother.

There are, surprisingly, some good points made against the movie (though they're probably accidentally made). Such as: Clooney's a bad actor. You mention the scene wherein Clooney has a really, really corny set of lines, and might I add, it's the only one where he doesn't really seem believable. Most of the time, he does fine. Not great, but fine. Jeremy Davies, on the other hand, is just kind of annoying, laying it on with a forklift where really, a knife would be more appropriate.

You compare the movie to 2001, and then basically argue that they're different, only because of the cinematography. Ok...2001 is about man's hubris finally catching up with him: he (pardon the gendered language) goes too far, and eventually, his creations bring about his demise. Not all of man's demise, but the point is made. Solaris is, on some level, also about the failure of man in the face of his presumed greatness: why is the station out by Solaris? To see if it can be used as an energy source. Just getting there, and building the station, are remarkable acts of engineering skill, but we can't handle what happens to us when we get there. Just like in 2001, we're smart enough to build it, but not smart enough to ask whether or not we should, and not smart enough to know what to do when something happens.

Moving back to your review, you finally get that it's not really a science-fiction movie, but a character study. Good job. You do, however, make fun of the relationship between Clooney and McElhone. Well, ok. But whether or not it "works" is really more up to the viewer. If the viewer can't realize what's going on, though, namely that they are in love, and that the object of Clooney's love just killed herself because of him, well... You also cite the laughter of the audience as, implicitly, a reason not to see the movie. I have noticed that audiences laugh at this movie, and that there are a number of people who walk out of it. Both of these, to me, are indications that people go to Solaris expecting a "George Clooney movie", and thank God, that's not what they get. The American movie-going public being what it is, however, and giving millions upon millions of dollars to Harry Potter and other similarly bad studio productions while sneering derisively at the incomparably better foreign films that are lucky to find an art-house release, I'd say that if the audience thinks a movie's bad, odds are it's good, and if an American public thinks a movie is stupid, well, by God, if Rob Schneider can keep making movies, I want to see what they consider a "stupid" movie.

Re:Not again...

[Lemmy Caution]

Well, this movie is pretty much going to get it from both sides. The space-opera fan-boys are going to hate it from the get-go: it's trying to be a pensive, philosophical art-piece, there's no special effects, the science-fiction diagesis that they want isn't coming to them, and all in all it's not the kind of movie they are looking for. Those of us on the other side of the equation are disappointed with the movie, though: as a pensive, philosophical art-piece, it's not successful. The camera work doesn't provide the visual poetry necessary to make a movie like this work. Clooney was fine here, I have no qualms with his performance. But the script was thin - the dialogue was fine, but the film failed to explore enough topics. The questions about the motivations for being at Solaris were touched upon but not explored or expanded - it's as if Soderbergh lost the nerve to go there.

For the fan-boys, the film didn't provide enough answers. For the cinephiles, it didn't ask enough questions.

And it's true that the Clooney + spaceships formula attracted a lot of people who normally wouldn't come to a philosophical art-piece, and that is possibly a good thing. It would have been more effective, however, to give them a better movie, even if it was even farther away from their expectations.

Soderberg's recent work.

[Gumber]

It might be a nit, but saying that Soderberg has lately been focusing more on Elmore Lenoard style thrillers as a departure from his earlier character driven work is just silly.

As evidence for this assertion, three movies are listed.
1. Out of Sight
2. Traffic
3. Oceans 11

Never mind that most of these more caper-flicks than thrillers. They are also only about half of his output over the last 5 years, and, in the case of out of sight, have strong introspective character driven components.

But please, don't forget Erin Brockovitch, The Limey & Full Frontal, all released since Out of Sight. Taken togeather, think it is hard to charactarize his recent output according to some simple trend.

If anything, you might say that he seems to alternate between more commercial and more artistically focused efforts, but even this breaks down.

Out of Sight might fit as a commercial film, but really only in retrospect. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez weren't big stars when it was made, and its complex narrative structure would seem at odds with the success it enjoyed.

Erin Brokovich looks like a play to make a commercial picture, what with it featuring an established star, but Soderberg's subsequent engangeent with Clooney and Roberts looks more motivated by friendship or artistic interests than simple commerce.

Re:Why is everyone pushing this film?

[cicho]

Maybe because as Tolkien was probably the most gifed 'fantasy' writer, so Lem is arguably the greatest artist science-fiction has ever had. (PKD's probably the only other contender, but PKD also produced more dreck than Lem has.)

But judging from the reviews I've seen of the movie, it does no justice to the book. Not that it's easy; Solaris is not a very cinematic novel; it is all about memory and knowledge and science and emotion. Really not a good candidate for Hollywood treatment; they should have picked "The Invincible" instead, which has a comparable philosophical payload and the added bonus of cool gear and kick-ass alien-battling (they win, we lose), including an interesting vision of a totally automated nuclear war machine. It also has a classic, direct storyline, on the premise of "Let's land on this planet and see who offed our guys.", which gets answered in a very innovative, unexpected way like you've never seen in an S-F movie yet.

Solaris? I say skip the flick and read the book.