In the interest of balance (a.k.a., covering my ass in case you see Solaris based on my recommendation and hate it), I’ll tell you that quite a lot of people walked out in the middle of the movie (one quitter boomed heartily while still halfway up the aisle, “I never thought I’d walk out of a free movie!”, and half the audience applauded). Even many of the people who stayed for the whole thing hated the film – they came out of the movie sounding like me after I saw Vanilla Sky. However, it’s only fair to note that, based on the conversations I heard before and after the movie, many people in this audience were morons. (And some of them smelled bad, too.)
Now – I’m not completely recommending Solaris, either. It’s intriguing, mournful, emotional; it kept me engaged and off balance (I mean that in a good way) most of the time, and yet… I don’t know that I’m 100% on board with it. It’s a profound, poignant story that would have played a lot better as a small indie movie; its attempts to draw in a larger audience hurt it and clearly don’t win over the masses. But enough of the contemplative and evocative aspects survive to make an affecting film and an interesting effort. The more I think about it, the deeper it settles in me. I’m fairly sure that only a select group of people will enjoy the movie, and I think it would help to be a sensitive, empathetic, and maybe somewhat brooding person yourself, in just the right state of mind, and a real bonus would be if you’ve lost someone you love deeply, whether through death or emotional abandonment.
Another cover-my-ass disclaimer here: if you think this review is confused and unhelpful, you should have seen my first drafts. Here is how I would sum up my cognitive process while trying to write this review: “I liked it… well, I kind of liked it… but I can see why people might hate it… but now I’m really liking it… well…” Maybe the best thing I can say is that, if you like having to think about whether or not you liked a movie before you can even think about the movie, you’ll probably like Solaris. Truly, though, you don’t think about this movie; you feel it.
This is about the closest I’ll get to articulating how I feel about the movie, so let’s move on to George Clooney’s ass, about which I am unequivocal.
What I had heard mostly about Solaris up to now was Soderbergh’s stand-off with the MPAA ratings board, which wanted him to cut two George Clooney nude scenes for a PG-13 rating. You can imagine my relief – no, wait, what’s the word… ecstasy when the board caved and let him keep the scenes. Honestly, I try not to slobber too much anymore after being taken to task for it by a few of you, but Clooney is almost distractingly gorgeous in this movie. (Although, surprisingly, the gold lamé spacesuit with a silver codpiece doesn’t do much for him.) Oh, right, and he’s, like, good and stuff – seriously, he’s very affecting in his haunted, blunted character who slowly recaptures a glimmer of the passion he used to have. And he has a nice ass, too.
Clooney plays a psychologist (and we all know how distracting a dazzlingly handsome psychologist can be… or maybe only I do) sent to investigate strange things afoot at a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. As in many other sci-fi movies, our hero arrives to find a nearly deserted ship with unsettling hints of violent death and a few jittery survivors reluctant to talk about what happened (including Jeremy Davies in a first irritating, then endearing performance as a spacy crew member – he offers help like, “I could tell you what’s happening, but I don’t know if that’d tell you what’s happening”).
Soderbergh isn’t interested in how things got to be the way they are on the ship – he offers no real explanation of what Solaris is or does or what’s happened to the rest of the crew and the team sent to save them – and he skips basic narrative details. They aren’t relevant to his goal, and anyway, the audience is smart enough to fill in the blanks (bad assumption, Steven). Instead, he immerses us in Clooney’s emotional reactions. I’ll try not to give anything away, but the planet – or something – brings back to life dead loved ones of the people aboard the ship. Clooney sees this as his chance to undo a mistake he made years ago, which has haunted him ever since – but of course, it’s not that simple.
Soderbergh uses his talent for shifting quickly and smoothly between past and present to illustrate the powerful emotions at work, and – even though I couldn’t help remembering he did the exact same thing, down to nearly identical shots, in The Limey and Out of Sight – it’s an effective tactic for making us feel the fluidity of memory. Even with the distinct palettes he uses for past and present, you can’t tell sometimes if you’re seeing a memory, a dream, or reality – if “reality” even exists. (Some people may not have much patience for this nonlinear, often hazy stream of subconsciousness; if you’re one of them, you’d best not see this movie.) The melancholy atmosphere that suffuses these sequences is deeply affecting; even if you can’t tell what’s true and what’s imagined, the emotion is painfully clear. Most moving, to me, was the dispassionate, hollow speech Clooney gives near the end of the movie that ends, with sudden yet fiercely restrained emotion, in a bitterly self-reproachful line that lingers with me.
I’ve worked
on this review over several days, and I’m not getting any
closer to what I mean to say. Partly, that’s because any real
discussion
of the film would mean giving away plot points, which I don’t want to
do,
but partly, it’s the squishy, personal nature of emotions – I can’t
explain
how I feel about the movie, nor do I really want to. So I’ll just
leave it at my conditional recommendation: if you want to feel a
film rather than think about it, if you don’t mind liberties being
taken
with narrative flow and logic, if you are as interested in your
reaction
to the movie as in the movie itself, then give Solaris a
try.
And hey, the odds seem pretty good that the theater will be completely
empty, if not at the beginning of the film, then by the end.
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