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Solaris: Another View
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!
You know that feeling you get, when you start to read a review of something, and then you encounter a statement that is so nonsensical that you read it 3 times, looking for the irony/joke/sarcasm? And it isn't there?
Yeah. Ronin. Oooookay. Move along kids, nothing to see here.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I don't think LOTR had as many posts about it. What is the big deal with this film?
As any time I see something over advertised and the salesman yelling "Please, please, just take a look, oh PLEASE take a look, I BEG YOU", I run the other way, and FAST.
Subliminal advertising? OSDN invested in the film? Someone knows someone, and is trying to "help" spread the word? Whatever the case, it is too much hype for me.
It's turned me off. Sort of like when you see the same commercial 10 times in an hour TV show. It is usually the last time I buy that product (if I ever did).
sigh. looking at it from a sci fi perspective you're going to be disappointed. the sci fi element is just a vehicle for the philosophical questions the movie raises (and then doesn't really answer, leaving me pretty confused at the end as to the point.)
the film was an interesting "journey", but not one with a very defined destination. i don't think it needs to get rocked as badly as it has in these slashdot reviews
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Any takers?
My biggest disappointments with the Soderbergh version are the lackluster script, and an overall failure in cinematography. Tarkovsky fills in his sparse scripts with a mastery of the camera that is truly breathtaking - he practically paints the screen with the camera, and it's that visual poetry that makes his films effective, with relatively little dialogue or exposition. Soderbergh just tried to hold a camera still at certain points to create a feeling of profundity, misunderstanding completely both Kubrick's and Tarkovsky's technique. I was almost embarassed for him.
The new version wasn't a total failure. The acting was effective, the dialogue acceptable. It's still better than 90% of the so-called science fiction cinema out there. But compared to the master it was really hoping to compete with, it fell short.
The criticism of the premise could as well apply to Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and every other episode of Star Trek. In fact, the characters explicitly question why Solaris would be doing what it is doing, why if it has such capabilities it didn't just destroy the space station or choose some other way to engage the characters. They are eventually left with the conclusion that there may not be an answer that they can understand, though they continue to struggle for understanding. That process of trying to understand is exactly the human dilemma that the film as art is trying to explore.
The role was a gutsy move for George Clooney and the subject matter itself was not the kind of thing someone would expect from a major director who is undoubtedly under pressure from the studios to provide the world with action-packed blockbusters. If you enjoy movies such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Being There" in which the subject matter and pacing is more about intellectual and artistic achievement than maximizing profits, you will enjoy this movie.
I think the reviewer entirely missed the point and recommend this film to anyone who enjoys thoughtful, provocative films.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
This is a bit like using a Jedi Knight and her light saber to get at a can of soup.
The best Science Fiction, IMO, puts the familiar against a backdrop of the strange. How can we possibly understand the motivations of a planetary intelligence with this cosmic power? Maybe it's Solaris' idea of an experiment, or perhaps entertainment of some sort. I suppose our pets wonder why we use our cosmic powers to eat celery or watch TV. No, our pets are more sensible than amateur movie reviewers and don't bother to wonder at things they can't understand.
What is happening here is strange in the extreme and is just a given. What's interesting is how the characters deal with it.
Gee, maybe it's both a science fiction movie AND a character study? Are they necessarily mutually exclusive? What's the problem? Not the requisite lack of depth in the characters for a science fiction movie?
now, any seti grinder would tell you that one of the most intriguing aspects of space exploration is the possibility of encountering beings totally Other than ourselves. the book and the tarkovsky film ask whether we can really understand anyone or anything. it goes without saying that kelvin and the others have failed to understand and communicate with solaris. moreover, kelvin has failed to understand his wife in either incarnation. because he has failed in that most basic task, he loses his own moorings. in this sense, the psychological bits are absolutely central to the science fiction.
perhaps this sort of philosophical science fiction has more in common with other genres than more familiar science fiction tends to have. even if that's true, that's not a bad thing. how many times can you watch star wars? (which is just a recycled western anyway?)
nor does it mean that it's unlike other science fiction. look at 2001. in some way, all of the stories deal with human encounters with the non-human. there's a nietzschean thread running through 2001, but there's also a pessimism about the encounter with the Other. kubrick seems to be saying that when we do have that first encounter, we'll deal with it in the same way we deal with everything else: we'll send bureaucrats. in essense, kubrick is still operating in the satirical mode, and that is what makes 2001 most different from solaris.
Well thank god we have another pretentious reviewer bragging about how the ending of the Sixth Sense was so obvious. His analytical mind is clearly far superior! I bow before his massive intellect.
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.
"McBane to base: Under attack by Commie Nazis!" -the Simpsons
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.
Dammit man, a lightsaber is an elegant and simple way to open a can - not as clumsy or as random as, say, a blaster!!
Perhaps YOUR lightsaber skills are not up to snuff when opening a can of Campbells finest. But a REAL Jedi Knight can open a can, shave his face, or pick YOUR nose without you even noticing using his/her lightsaber!
Disgrunted Jedi everywhere blow you a big rasperry, sir.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
nonsensical
Not only that, it's just plain WRONG.
Fundamentally, it's about a man mourning about his suicide wife
No; it's not. The film is about IDENTITY. How we perceive ourselves and others. The vehicle is their relationship.
Anybody who missed that shouldn't be writing a review. Then again, I'm not surprised; most of the people in the theater were too distracted by what they thought the movie was about (ooh! Clooney!).
Don't get me wrong, this movie isn't great, but the concept is interesting. It requires a bit of thought OUTSIDE what's on the celluloid. People, I've discovered, are wholly incapable of that.
Sorry for the rant, I am.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
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.
Are you confirming that it's Kubrick who made the moon walks clips?