dnk

I became familiar with Chicago ten years ago. My wife had attended a Broadway show years before and she had retained a vinyl recording of it that we often enjoyed. Later, we attended locally casted showings and I became more familiar with the story line.

So my expectations may have run a bit higher than others' when we attended this early showing of the musical 2002. I was not disappointed. This production is by far the *best* musical production to film that I have ever experienced. It held me totally absorbed for the two hours it played.

Every actor provided a completely perfect rendition of their part in the production. The music is superb, the sets exquisite.

For a perfect evening, rush to the theater and expect the very best! Awesome production!

You'll find yourself moving beyond the props within this story and grappling with the complexities of love, life and what may occur with love after life. Solaris - planet, sun, raw spiritual force, and even more abstractly a bridge between the physical dimensions of life and the 'other being' dimensions after death - and the emptiness and vastness of space emphasize the loneliness of the human experience. Locked up within our mind, enjoying the fact that only 7% of what we communicate is ever understood by anyone, quietly dying in emotional rages and deserts - or living in a rampaging mind-plot millions of light-years from home within a tight cell of a space craft - the stage is the same and the teachings of this story will arouse your curiosity.

The vehicle is the same as poetry - cyclic, ethereal, fuzzy. A brown-stone in Philadelphia would have sufficed as well as the circle spinning in the sky over Solaris.

Forget the sci-fi cliche' ... it drowns the message.

If you liked ghosts, you may like Solaris.

dnk

As a white Northerner at 15, I had no idea in 1960 of what rude realities awaited me as I hitchhiked through the South that summer. In Birmingham I was thrown into the two worlds of black/white; I was escorted out of the black's bathroom at the bus station, kindly - gently - but firmly. I witnessed prayer-sayers at street corners extolling salvation and gateways leading away from oppression, people coerced to sit in the crowded back of the bus... whites throwing epitaphs at anyone black who happened to pass by... By the time I reached New Orleans, I had had a complete education in racial prejudice and hate. I was stunned.

So forty years later I watched the Intruder. It left me cold and I begin remembering that trip to the South so long ago. Sitting here in my easy chair in South Carolina today, I can say that some things have changed and some things haven't.

The movie, at least from my experience, presents a milieu that is faithfully true of the South in the early '60's. Of course, it descends from that point into the murky depths of the manipulation of fear and hatred within the human spirit. It is a raw, dramatic expose - hard to watch at times. And I can't respect enough that this movie is so cutting edge and so truly represents the attitudes and motivations of folks during those days.

For the adventurer who has a curiosity of how life was in that period, and for the psychology buff who is interested in the roots of human nature, this movie is a must.

dnk