Themes: Space Travel, Haunted By the Past, Supernatural Romance
Main Cast: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis, Ulrich Tukur
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
A therapist travels to a distant space station to treat a group of astronauts traumatized by mysterious entities -- and ends up having to deal with an entity of his own -- in this second film version of Stanislaw Lem's philosophical sci-fi novel. Solaris stars George Clooney as Chris Kelvin, a psychologist still mourning the loss of his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) when he's implored by a colleague named Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) to investigate the increasingly weird goings-on at the Prometheus space station. By the time Kelvin gets there, Gibarian has committed suicide, leaving only the cryptic, babbling Snow (Jeremy Davies) and the paranoid, guarded Gordon (Viola Davis), both of whom are holed up in their respective rooms. As Kelvin interrogates the skeleton crew, he learns that they've had unwanted "visitors," apparitions of long-dead friends, family, and loved ones who are apparently being generated by the interstellar energy source Solaris. The doctor is dubious of their claims until one night he, too, is greeted by his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone), whose death still torments him. At first skeptical of the new Rheya, Kelvin gradually becomes obsessed with her -- and with the guilt that he feels over their troubled marriage -- to the point where the others begin to fear for his sanity. Produced by James Cameron, Solaris represented director Steven Soderbergh's first screenplay credit since the independently financed Schizopolis in 1996. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
Easily the strongest of the melancholic sci-fi studio pictures to arrive in post-millennium multiplexes (see also A.I., Vanilla Sky, and Minority Report), Solaris represents yet another curve ball from jack-of-all-trades director Steven Soderbergh: a minor-key space-travel lament told with deliberate echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rather than being a show-offy attempt at a genre he's never covered, however -- "look, ma -- sci-fi!" -- Soderbergh's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's novel might be the filmmaker's most personal project. One could speculate that by shifting the focus of the source material from the mysteries of space and existence to the larger and perhaps more-baffling puzzle of love and devotion, Soderbergh is in some small way working through his own failed marriage. At the very least, it's his most passionate exploration of two pet themes that run through all of his films: memory and regret. Reigning in the potential for pop-psychological blather is George Clooney, whose passionate, carefully modulated performance requires him to call up not only his usual reserves of sex appeal and smirky charm, but also his heretofore unexploited paranoia and vulnerability. The project is a quantum leap for Soderbergh the cinematographer, too; the grungy, off-the-cuff stylist of Traffic and Full Frontal offers up a steely, black-and-blue vision of the future that's punctuated by red, hazy flashback sequences and deliberate, methodical long takes, all the while exhibiting his unerring sense of camera placement. Ponderous in the best sense of the word, the resolutely unsuspenseful project may not have served up the requisite thrills for genre fans, but that's to be expected -- Solaris has far more to say about universal human truths than it does science fiction. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Steve Arnold - Art Director, Keith P. Cunningham - Art Director, Cinesite - Animator, Michael Polaire - Co-producer, Charles V. Bender - Co-producer, Milena Canonero - Costume Designer, Greg Jacobs - First Assistant Director, Steven Soderbergh - Director, Mary Ann Bernard - Editor, Greg Jacobs - Executive Producer, Cliff Martinez - Composer (Music Score), Philip Messina - Production Designer, Peter Andrews - Cinematographer, James Cameron - Producer, Rae Sanchini - Producer, Jon Landau - Producer, Dawn Brown-Manser - Set Designer, Suzan Wexler - Set Designer, Andrea Dopaso - Set Designer, Kristen Toscano Messina - Set Designer, Easton M. Smith - Set Designer, Jeff Ozimek - Set Designer, Victor Martinez - Set Designer, Cinesite - Special Effects, Paul Ledford - Sound/Sound Designer, Steven Soderbergh - Screenwriter, Thomas J. Smith - Visual Effects Supervisor, Al Laverde - Key Grip, Larry Blake - Supervising Sound Editor, Cinesite - Visual Effects, Rhythm & Hues Studios - Visual Effects, Stanislaw Lem - Book Author
Chris Kelvin is played by George Clooney, and Rheya by Natascha McElhone. Borrowing heavily from the Tarkovsky film, this version of Solaris is a meditative psychodrama set almost entirely on a space station, adding flashbacks to the previous experiences of its main characters on Earth.
A psychiatrist still dealing with the loss of his wife, Chris Kelvin receives a disturbing video message from a friend and scientist, Gibarian, asking for Chris' help and that he must come to the enigmatic planet, Solaris. He agrees to go on the mission to Solaris as a last attempt to recover the crew. Kelvin, arriving at the space station, quickly learns that members of the crew have died (or even disappeared) under mysterious circumstances with the only two surviving members reluctant to explain the cause. After shockingly encountering his dead wife alive again, Chris discovers that Solaris has been creating physical replications of people familiar to each crew member. Up until the end, Chris struggles with the questions of Solaris' motivation, his beliefs and memories, and reconciling what was lost with an opportunity for a second chance.
Director Steven Soderbergh admits (on the DVD commentary track) that marketing was a challenge. The movie's trailer depicted a science fiction love story (or thriller) may have raised expectations among potential film-goers that were not met, grossing $15 million (against an estimated $47 million budget).[1]
The Time Out Film Guide describes this version as superior to the Tarkovsky version. However, the overall critical reception and popular votes do not share this opinion. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 64 percent fresh approval rating, which is a positive score but far from that of the Tarkovsky's adaptation, which earned a 97 percent rating. The Internet Movie Database user ratings (as of April 2008) for the two versions are 6.2 and 8.0, respectively.
Lem himself, even though he did not see the movie, called Soderbergh's film a "remake of the Tarkovsky movie", sharing the opinion of many movie-goers, and criticized it as departing far from his original intentions in writing the novel by focusing almost exclusively on the psychological relationship between the two main characters:
“
[As] Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space.
