SOLARIS (2002) Review

SOLARIS is going to be a firestorm of disagreements, discussions and one of those films that will instantly polarize different film fans. You will hear people call this film boring shit. You will hear people call this film brilliant and you will have to make up your own mind and then consider, rationally, the reactions of others.

For me, I come down on the side that SOLARIS is brilliant. This isn’t an easy film for those that love it. In fact, in a lot of ways I’m dreading writing this review, because this film touches on some feelings and emotions I’ve been dealing with, off the site, and asked me what I’d be willing to do to change that? What would you do if you had the opportunity to make something right? To live something anew? To move forward as though the past had no meaning?

This is a film about losing a unique thing. This movie is about losing your own personal human ROSEBUD, finding it again after it was burned and realizing you’re not the same person that once loved it, or are you?

What is the dearest thing in your life? A parent, a sibling, your lover or betrothed? They die tomorrow. At the ends of the universe, around a planet that makes no sense, you find them. What do you do?

There were all those unsaid things to say, but just because they’re now in front of you, do you say them? Are the unsaid things best left unsaid? Losing someone you love, that you believe you could never ever replace. That soul mate, that person you know, for a fact, is the person that completes you. Losing them to your own stupidity, to chance, to weakness, illness… whatever the separation, this is the sort of loss that takes months, years and lifetimes to try to move past. You wake up one day believing you’re finished with the anxiety, the morose mornings and the hurt, only to find that something as silly and wonderful as Cab Calloway singing is tearing apart your soul because of a conversation you had with them one day that attached a dear memory… then, like a tidal wave of remorse, it floods over you, till you get better. It’s one foot in front of the other, your life becomes a routine and you tolerate living in this routine hoping, dreaming, wishing for the pain to flow out of you.

You wake up one day to a message. A friend needs your help on the other side of the universe, a respite… a voyage away from all the familiar. A friend. Company at the other end of eternity. You go. Once there, she, he, they, them… The lost are again found. They’ve been reconstructed from your memory, they become real and living beings. The beings that exist in your fondest memories.

Now – Science Fiction has dealt with lost and found issues before. Reanimated Corpses, Time Machines, Love potions, etc. Here’s the thing though… I don’t believe any film has ever been as intelligent in its pursuit of the reality of the situation and the loss.

Ok, now we all know how wonderful the original SOLARIS was, we also know that Stanislaw Lem’ novel was genius. I’m not going to do the compare and contrast, that cheapens this film and this viewing experience.

This is Soderbergh’s very best film in my opinion. It is simply beautiful. Not in scale or scope. Not in majestic space vistas or designs. It is beautiful for what it says about the place for love after it is lost.

Once, I wrote that you know you are in love truly when you stare at a blank page with a pen in your hand and you can see only one unwritten name. Hers. When you’ve lost that love, it means you still see that name, only… tears hit the blank page instead of ink and you find you can't write that name, because if you do it'll drive you insane. You spend nights and hours trying to solve the riddle of how to recapture that love, but you eventually come to a realization that love isn’t captured, it is given. If it is lost, it can only come back on its own free will.

This is what this film is about. Clooney plays a recovering love sick victim. Somebody carrying a great deal of regret in his heart for what happened to end his love. What he said and did that morning. You can see the joyless look in his face, the going through the motions behavior his life has taken on.

As the trailer tells you, when he goes to SOLARIS he wakes to find her in his life again, as if nothing had happened. Its as if she just stepped out of his dreams. However, she is self-aware. She can think, she remembers only what he had dreamed before. She knows she loves him, but is confused and scared about what is going on. How she got here. Instead of it just being a blissful reunion, it’s horror for both. Both feel manipulated, both feel vulnerable. Both are happy to be with each other, but both think there’s something wrong.

He wants her to forget the how and why she came to be, and just live from this moment forward, don’t worry about the past or what happened. That’s typical denial. That is manipulative and completely selfish, it is also natural. As human beings we want things to be the way we want them. Naturally we feel if it is best for us, it is best for them.

Now where this film goes, that most attempts at science-fiction falter is that it realizes HER too. She knows that she’s created from his memory, but his memory is flawed. Does he remember her correctly or as he wishes to remember her. Could you exist being only the pieces that your loved one held onto. Missing the parts that led you to be the person they loved. Could you exist as an incomplete person cognizant of the fact that you were missing the very elements necessary to deal with the emotions and feelings you were going through?

Think about your own memories of love, I know for me, I focus on the good. I want things to be right, to be good, to work out. If in the love that I lost, if it was recreated from my memory… that wouldn’t be the person I fell in love with that could surprise me, shock me, confound, hurt and confuse me. I don’t want the fantasy. I don’t want to go back in time and change things. I don’t want a planet to create a physical facsimile for me. I want the original, but only if the original wants me.

That’s the lesson that I came to in my life, but it’s the same in the film. A character in a dream tells Clooney to not try and find the answer, but to choose a path and move forward. That there are no answers, only choices. This is true.

Now, it seems to me that folks are going to be debating over what happened there at the end of the film. For me, it is very clear.

However, that is a conversation in person and is of course, to me, my answer. To tell you that, is to rob you of coming to your own answer. See the movie and if ever our paths are to cross, you can ask me. It is a rather nice conversation.

Is this movie like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY?

No. The only common element is that they are both deliberate and smart. Kubrick made space magical and poetic. Soderbergh ignores the fetishizing of space, and instead focuses on that which he did know about… the people in the ships. How characters would react to given situations, how we would react to the impossible, to our dreams realized and to isolation. Soderbergh is very much concerned with human beings in this film, not the gadgets and the negative-charged doohickey.

Soderbergh has made a science-fiction film that remembers that just because it is in space, doesn’t mean it goes BANG.

For a key to the type of film this is… this isn’t a science-fiction film necessarily. Watch the end credits and see who Soderbergh thanks. First name on the list is MIKE LEIGH. SOLARIS has more to do with SECRETS & LIES than it has to do with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. If you walk into this film with SCIENCE FICTION and what that has come to be known as in your mind, prepare to be disappointed and filled with dissatisfaction. BUT – if you walk into this movie thinking about a Mike Leigh flick. A film about personal interactions and the way we beings react to each other and the situations presented to us. Well then, you’ve got a movie coming.

You see that poster for SOLARIS. Notice how there are no science fiction elements on that poster? EXACTLY!

Notice how the trailer in theaters focuses entirely on the relationship aspects, but how the internet trailer focuses on the SCIENCE FICTION elements? The theatrical trailer is correct. This is a film about personal issues, lost love and facing eternity alone.

If you’re in the mood for that type of movie, then you’ll be thrilled and charged by SOLARIS. The film has 4 sterling performances delivered by actors on a science fiction set being asked to be HUMAN BEINGS faced with the impossible and to react FOR REAL to it.

Clooney isn’t just being a charmer here, in fact, his charm is off in the film. He’s vulnerable, hurt and needing to be healed. He’s confused, shocked, elated. When he vows not to sleep and is taking pill after pill after pill to stay focused, to stay awake, the tension is more real, more threatening than any Krueger flick. The beads of sweat, the wired anxiety, the fear… palpable and dripping off of him. Yes, George Clooney’s ass is magnificent and a genetic miracle. All will be obsessed with it, and unfortunately it did not swirl.

The next performance I want to highlight is Jeremy Davies’ Snow. Davies has had a damn fine run of films recently. He was great in CQ, wonderful in the SECRETARY, and in SOLARIS, he’s just perfect. At first he comes across as one of those James Cameron characters that we love. A character filled with quirks like Private Hudson from ALIENS or Hippy from ABYSS or Faisil from TRUE LIES. He’s a bundle of nerves and quirks. However, his character has so much more time to do more than those characters that he becomes quite endearing on screen. A perfect dash of levity and sadness. I really can’t wait to watch Davies continue his career.

Viola Davis is great in this film. I love that I never find out who her visitor is. Instead, she is someone coming to terms with her own personal demons. Someone that knows it is fake, that it isn’t real, that it must be destroyed or it could possibly be something horrifyingly detrimental to mankind. Imagine if everybody’s fondest dreams came true. What that would do for the world?

Lastly, Natascha McElhone. I saw her earlier this year in one of the worst films of the year… FearDotCom… She’s been quite good in SURVIVING PICASSO, THE TRUMAN SHOW and RONIN. In SOLARIS she plays someone that made a mistake. Paid dearly for it. Then paid again and again. Her part is fearless and wonderful. The scenes of her figuring herself out. Working things out. They’re agonizing as they are true.

Now, for Mr Soderbergh… This is a very complete film. It has the courage to be the movie it wants to be. It has the intelligence to complete that. This film is simply haunting and beautiful and painful and true. Soderbergh listened to one of the simple truths of storytelling, keep it simple stupid. As complex as many would make this out to be, it is in reality a very simple story about losing everything you ever cared about, finding it again and then facing eternity alone.

It isn’t a story for everyone, it is a story about everyone, whether they want to face that or not is up to them.