FEST2003

Solaris
Steven Soderbergh, director  

 Review by Rada Djurica   

Spoiler Warning: The follow review reveals details about the plot.

"James Cameron really understands how to set up and pay off a story. I would meet with him about Solaris, and we would have three-hour conversations about the story, about technology, about what the future is going to be like, about space travel, and issues like isolation and sensory deprivation, because he studied all of it. I would tape record our conversations and transcribe them and highlight things that I thought could find their way into the film, whether it was a sentence or an idea, anything I thought might stick." - Steven Soderbergh

"On the fifteenth day I woke up earlier than usual, exhausted by the previous night's dreams. All my limbs were numb, as if from the effects of a powerful narcotic. The first rays of the red sun shone through the window, a blanket of red flame rippled over the ocean, and I realized that the vast expanse which had not been disturbed by the slightest movement in the past four days was beginning to stir. The dark ocean was abruptly covered by a thin veil of mist which seemed at the same time to have a very palpable consistency. Here and there the mist shook, and tremors spread out to the horizon in all directions. Now the ocean disappeared altogether beneath thick, corrugated membranes with pink swellings and pearly depressions, and these strange waves suspended above the ocean swirled suddenly and coalesced into great balls of blue-green foam. A tempest of wind hurled them upwards to the height of the Station, and wherever I looked, immense membranous wings were soaring in the red sky as if the ocean were mutating, or shedding an old scaly skin. Wings of foam planed all around me, only a few yards from the window, and one swooped to rub against the window pane like a silken scarf. As the ocean went on giving birth to these fantastic birds, the first flights were already dissipating high above, decomposing at their zenith into transparent filaments. "

"Solaris" is a love story with emotion and mystery, in a science fiction environment. The story takes place in the future, when Dr. Chris Kelvin is asked to investigate the unexplained behaviour of a small group of scientists on the space ship. After the arrival on the ship, one of them, Giberian, has committed suicide. The two remaining scientists are exhibiting signs of extreme stress and paranoia, caused by the result of their examination of the planet Solaris. What is this new Rheya, exactly? A vision? A ghost? Is she a figment of the imagination? And what are the other beings who are living between the bloodstained corridors, among them Giberian's little son? Answers aren't forthcoming from the two other scientists on board. They obviously came out of the living oceans of Solaris, which seem to be reaching out to the people on the orbiting station. But does the planet have designs on them, for good or ill? Or is it just trying blindly to fill a sort of spiritual vacuum?

Steven Soderbergh's new James Cameron-produced sci-fi picture, "Solaris," has a handmade quality, fully formed from a single artistic consciousness and good acting, instead of out of high tech computers. Since the novel's publication was translated from the French, not the Polish, the themes of "Solaris" have turned up in the long sci-fi scenarios, from the plots of Michael Crichton's novel "Sphere" to its first cinematic adaptation, in 1972, by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.

In his years on television, George Clooney cultivated an aura of self-sufficiency that made him madly attractive but of course limited his range. Meanwhile, he went on from his TV soap doctor role to become a decent caliber high budget actor.

Soderbergh has the knack for bringing together old school Hollywood and indie production values. Soderbergh knows what he needs: even if Clooney doesn't have the plastic or histrionic resources of a major actor, there's something eloquent in the absence of that ready steady response, and of his well-known twinkle. He doesn't go catatonic because the oceans are alive beneath the thick clouds, and it proves the quality of Clooney's acting. Even when Soderbergh flashes back to their first meeting, where his loving wife looks very alive, there is something vital hidden away. She was a phantom even before she was a phantom, and he, with the power and desire to have her back, created her with the help of Solaris. Now she looks so frighteningly alive. Indeed, the human mind can create and make people alive. But Clooney might not be a figure of someone's imagination, and that's mostly a good thing.

Soderbergh shoots fluid sequences, but he's not afraid to add a flashback or a flash-forward that can rupture an instant and thereby give it infinite resonance. Hmm! Here we have George Clooney in a hundred positions. Interesting! Soderbergh started his career with "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and now he goes further with Tarkovsky's "Solaris." After "Traffic" and "Ocean's Eleven," it's certainly an interesting choice. Knowing what the previous version was like, I completely understand the reason why he took George Clooney for this part.

Soderbergh in "Solaris" can bring the past literally to life: a past that can't be buried or cast off, that is destined to rise and rise again like the vapour from the oceans of Solaris. Clooney really seemed "on" in this movie, and damn good. Soderbergh's very good with staging and framing against Clooney's physical size and appeal: sometimes using the lens to squeeze him dry. Maybe on purpose Clooney brings a focus and presence to his role that made me forget his other work. The movie itself is a draft of a truly good film. I'm not happy with the end. It needs to be felt with at least as much conviction as the plot that showed Clooney plead with the Solarian to stay with him, because that was all the life that they really had.