Solaris

Having read the book before I saw this I though it was a huge disappointment. They completely missed the point of the story, which was philosophical rather than emotional. Basically, the movie took an awe-inspiring "what if" thought experiment - of finding a very advanced non-human intelligence (which, surprise surprise, doesn't have two arms, two legs, a body and a head) and the problems of trying to communicate with such a radically different being, especially when it doesn't seem interested in communication, and how we can relate to it with our own limited human experience, and squeezed out all the juicy intellectual bits. Solaris was supposed to be the real star of the story and the screenplay instead turned it into background wallpaper. All that was left then, was a sappy love story set in space. It is frustrating to think about the potential that was wasted. Mr. Soderbergh could have made a classic sci-fi film here, if only he'd made an honest attempt.

The funny thing is, if I hadn't read the book I would have liked the film, because it is well directed and has a nice atmospheric mood. There's nothing inherently wrong with love stories either. Just.. call it something other than Solaris, give the characters different names, don't do anything to remind me of the original story and I'd say it is a good movie. But as it is, it's an extreme disappointment.

I always find it interesting to approach a movie that has people so polarized - in this case "it was sooooo slow" vs. "uplifting and incredible." That seems to go for the critics as well. My reaction was neither.

I am predisposed to like this kind of science fiction - the low key and wonderful "Gattaca" comes to mind. I found the story very intriguing and atmospheric and it held my interest - at the same time I felt something was missing and it just wasn't as rich, complex and good as it should have been.

I am not sure why, I think the key for me is that I was not able to really get emotionally involved with the love story - and this is first and foremost a love story. I have trouble with most love stories, due to my own particular biases, so there has to be a lot there to really identify with it. I think the problem here was the casting and acting - it could have been a lot better. The woman playing Gordon was rather flat as well.

Also the script was a little too obvious.

All in all, an interesting film that I am glad I saw, but I can't really get worked up about it.

Story Something is wrong on the space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris, so Chris Kelvin (Clooney) goes there, all alone, to find out what's going on and to persuade the crew to come home. Turns out, when one is near Solaris, one tends to see dead people--or duplicates thereof. In Kelvin's case, this would be a doppelganger of his deceased wife, Rheya (McElhone), which seems to have Rheya's personality traits and memories.

I had heard that Solaris was excruciatingly slow and, consequently, unbearably boring, but I didn't quite agree. I understood that many shots were included or extended to set the mood, and to illustrate thought and memory, and it was all visually interesting. I could see, for example, where Soderbergh showed his love for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey with lingering shots of Clooney in an astronaut's helmet, patterns of light reflected on its glass. However I would have traded the extra hour of atmospherics for a deeper exploration of the intriguing questions the premise raised. When we say we love someone, are we saying we love the sum of the person's characteristics? Were we to lose our loved one, would a twin with the same likes, dislikes, and quirks be a suitable replacement? Would you want to live on in the memories of your friends and family or, as Woody Allen prefers, to live on in your apartment? This film seems less interested in delving into these mysteries than it is in portraying grief and subjective memory. Valid objectives, but Solaris left me wanting to see an episode of the similarly themed Caprica (of which I've only seen the pilot movie).

Why you should see it You never got over that crush you developed on Clooney during his tenure on ER. You're in the mood for a visual poem of love and loss. You enjoy any movie set in outer space. You're the founder of Jeremy Davies/Dr. Faraday Fan Club.

Why you should avoid it Star Trek: The Next Generation was set in outer space too. Pick an episode and it will lead you through a debate of life's big questions, in half the time.

--from my review at www.1man365movies.com

SOLARIS, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and starring George Clooney, is one of those pointless remakes Hollywood has been making these past decades that adds almost nothing to the original classic. The movie itself is good. Not great or even close to being bad or a misfire, just good. Soderbergh basically boiled down the complex and epic story, as seen in the Russian film, into a simple MINIMALISTIC love story. Which made me wonder why did they even bother remaking the movie if all the science-fiction and metaphysical elements were thrown out? The story could have easily taken place entirely on earth. And instead of Solaris, the story could have been set in a mystical setting, like a haunted castle or an ancient archeological find. If you're going to set in space, might as well give the outer space aspect some sort of meaning to it. The minimalistic approach is interesting but the result is pointless. Having Rheya come back from the dead, sort of speaking, and her problems adjusting to her new reality reminded me a lot of the replicants' plight in BLADE RUNNER, which is what I think Soderbergh tried to do here. Who's reality is it?

My only criticism about the movie is the use of dreams and flashbacks. In the film, the Solaris planet takes a person's main dream while they're sleeping (there's even silly close-up shots of Clooney's cranium). These dreams are seen as "flashback" in the movie. Dreams are rarely that linear. One doesn't dream about one specific thing or person (in this case Kelvin dreaming about Rheya) all the time. And dreams are impressions of reality. So when Rheya comes back, looking exactly like Kelvin's wife, for me this points out to an obvious weakness in the whole concept of the Solaris planet going into a person's mind and grabbing their version of reality. If this was the case, the reincarnated Rheya should have looked slightly different that the Rheya on earth. Oddly enough, the way Soderbergh approached the idea of a planet reincarnating a long lost loved one into flesh reminded me of the SPACE 1999 episode, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, more than the Tarkovsky movie. But I find that the SPACE 1999 episode, even with all its faults, was more epic and poignant than Soderbergh's version of the Stanislaw Lem's story. There's just something anal retentive about Soderbergh's direction which prevents any kind of emotions to seep to the surface.

Unlike most people though, I wasn't bored at all with SOLARIS. In fact, movies like ARMAGEDDON, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK 2 or THE CORE were a thousand times more boring than this flick. It's just that the film's outcome is so predictable and that the script and filmmaker did nothing to alleviate this predictability that the pointlessness of the whole project comes to the fore. Good beginning. Predictable and flat ending.

And then there's another odd point about Soderbergh's SOLARIS: where did the money go? The film reportedly cost $80 to $100 million to make. The cast is tiny (four or five actors). There are very few special effects and the sets look like your standard spaceship sets you see on a TV show like STAR TREK VOYAGER. Why spend that huge amount of money on a simple, predictable love story? The film should have cost $30 to $40 million, not $100.

I love the Russian film a lot. But I can't say that Soderbergh create a disaster here or disservice to the Russian version or the book. It is a typically Soderbergh flick, which, on this aspect alone, sets it apart from the Russian movie. And like I've said, the film by itself is good. But in the end, it looks more like an episode of SPACE 1999 or THE TWILIGHT ZONE than a real movie.

My two favorite examples of Hollywood utterly destroying GREAT foreign films are Vanilla Sky and City of Angels, which were abominations of two of my favorite films - Open Your Eyes and Wings of Desire. If you've seen Tarkovsky's brilliant "Solyaris" this film will seem more like an Americanized tribute than a Hollywoodization of a great piece of Soviet cinema. Some will likely ask why Soderbergh bothered to make this film if he couldn't improve on the original. Personally, I could not care less. This is a great film, and shows that it is possible for Americans to remake classic non-American films sensitively, intelligently and well.

To cut to the chase - if you like sci-fi with a soul,which stretches the boundaries of imagination, explores the uncharted realms of the human condition as much as the unknown realities of the universe, and swims upstream against the currents of ethics, physics, and even metaphysics, you will probably enjoy this moody, slow, multi-leveled and heavily textured film. If you're looking for light entertainment, stay away from this. This is a slow, intense film - dominated by dialog - and there is no action to speak of. Also, you need to let this movie pour into you slowly, so if you're not in the right frame of mind to pay attention and be receptive, you should save it for another occasion.

The cast is exceptionally good. This is unequivocally the best performance I have seen out of George Clooney, but the supporting cast and the female lead all blew me away. Soderbergh does have a talent for making actor's look good, even mediocre actors, but there is nothing mediocre about any of the performances in this film.

Though I recognize his talent, Soderberg's dialogical technique has worn particularly thin with me. The once fresh fast-paced, rapid-fire cuts and close-ups with the low-toned exchange of sentence fragments, and the myriad Soderberg imitators, particularly in television crime drama, have really gotten on my nerves. Solaris, however, is a bit different. There are only a few "Soderbergh moments" in this rich remake of the classic bit of 1970s soviet SciFi "Solyaris". Both films are based on a novella by the brilliant Stanislaw Lem. This film, perhaps even more than Tarkovsky's 1972 edgy, dark, and intense original, will appeal to exactly the sort of movie-goer that Lem's writing appeals to. Neither film captures Lem's quirky sense of humor. I am quite glad that Soderbergh chose to make Solaris with very much the same atmospheric eeriness, plot, and intellectual and emotional depth as the original. It is a tribute to his artistic integrity that he recognizes the brilliance of the original work, and imitates it wherever he can do no better, adding subtle and appropriate nuances and embellishments to make it his own. Some examples are the wonderfully minimalistic soundtrack, and the very Soderbergh symbolic use of lighting and color saturation to shift from the retrospective to the live-action shot. Perhaps the best tribute I can give this film is the fact that I am going to watch the original again in a few days for comparative purposes.

In other words, this isn't going to be for everybody, nor, even, for most. I am hardly surprised by the very low (in my opinion) ratings received by this film here on IMDb. Solaris is a love story, a story of exploring the fringes of sanity, and of questioning the very nature of reality, and much more. Enjoy it!