Deep ideas in Solaris’ ocean world

Editor’s note:
Thanks to a holiday scheduling snafu, we here present another review of Solaris. Yes, this does mean the film is extra good.

            Some students of science fiction
prefer to call the genre speculative fiction, an appropriate term for works
that can encourage responses of a greater complexity than the entertainment and
escapism of their ostensible subjects. Books and films that deal with all the
familiar stuff of science fiction — robots, the future, alien encounters,
travel through space and time — frequently suggest other possibilities in
those subjects, which serve as metaphors for some larger and loftier themes and
ideas. Throughout their histories, the literature and cinema of science fiction
have examined their contemporary contexts, their own time and space, under the
guise of some fantastic adventure, the exploration of some distant planet, or a
battle with a bug-eyed monster

            The genre most often confronts the
dominant, and often opposed, themes of politics and religion. While Fritz
Lang’s silent masterpiece, Metropolis,
deals with both, political and social concerns have motivated films such as the
classic Things to Come (1936) and just
about all the memorable flicks of science fiction’s Golden Age of the 1950s —
works as different as The Thing From
Another World, The Day the Earth
Stood Still, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, Them, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Since around the time Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey appeared, theological or philosophical speculation has also
influenced science fiction film, as demonstrated in such works as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Alien tetralogy, Blade Runner, and even the Star
Wars and Star Trek series.

            In the new remake of Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), an
adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem novel, Steven Soderbergh naturally considers the
same issues as the book and the previous movie. Since his version runs a little
more than half the length of Tarkovsky’s film — one reason for gratitude —
it compresses much of the talk and action of the original, though generally
retains its force and spirit.

            Advertisements for the film loudly
trumpet the presence of the popular, handsome George Clooney in the starring
role, however, audiences expecting some action-adventure flick, complete with
rocket ships, aliens, and a virile hero in a space suit, may find themselves
somewhat disappointed. (The pre-release publicity even made much of some
purported dispute with the MPAA ratings board about the baring of the Clooney
posterior. In a bold move for art, the offending scene remains in the film,
though it’s hard to believe that any eroticism or shock attaches to the sight
— darkly lit, in the middle distance — of the entirely uninteresting
buttocks in question.)

            While picking up the lumbering pace
and cutting through some of the dense talkiness of Tarkovsky’s film,
Soderbergh’s movie faithfully adheres to the intellectual questions and
quandaries that preoccupy both the director and the novelist. The science fiction
situation provides the foundation — or, perhaps, the excuse — for a good
deal of philosophical, even theological discussion, particularly of such
matters as identity, reality, existence, death, and resurrection. It’s the sort
of stuff that often occurs in the more orthodox contexts of metaphysics,
ontology, cosmology, eschatology, and so forth — heavy matter for the average
sci-fi flick.

            Clooney plays a psychologist in some
unspecified and very dark future, a future that exhibits almost no
distinguishing features, other than that it rains all the time. A message from
a scientist friend about some mysterious difficulties on a space station
orbiting the planet Solaris summons him to investigate. When he arrives — the
actual journey to the Solaris satellite barely appears, a sure indication that
science fiction itself takes a back seat to other interests — he finds blood
stains all over the place, two dead people in the morgue, and a decidedly
agitated pair of survivors (played by Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis), who
provide little information, but suggest deeper mysteries.

            Perhaps appropriately, Clooney
begins to learn the truth in his dreams, in which he recalls his dead wife.
Those dreams, in effect, resurrect his wife (Natascha McElhone), who returns
from death to be with him again (her return, of course, accounts for the famous
buttock baring). Clooney gradually discovers that Solaris somehow reconstitutes
loved and lost individuals from the fabric of one’s memories (for one crew
member, his brother; for another, his dead, young son) as real people, living,
breathing, loving, and able to remember the past they shared with the survivor.
Although the film never hints at any process or cause for the events, the
result naturally engenders considerably mixed emotions in Clooney, an odd
combination of anguish, guilt, disbelief, even fear.

            After some desperate measures to rid
himself of his “visitor” (as the crew calls the returned individuals), Clooney
and the cast conduct a sort of philosophical inquiry into the nature of their
uninvited guests, which leads the protagonist into a dark labyrinth of doubt.
He raises some profound questions about life and death, the nature of memory,
the basis of existence and identity, and the composition of reality itself. As
the picture demonstrates, journeys into the vastness of the universe, even
Einstein’s universe, inevitably inspire questions about infinity. Exploring the
cosmos leads to speculation about the cosmic; physics leads, ultimately, to
metaphysics; and the encounter with an alien presence can turn into a
confrontation with the self.

            Although talky and abstract, rather
than action-filled and exciting, Solaris fulfills some of the historic intellectual promises of science fiction, which
probably means it will delight many reviewers and please few fans of the form.

Solaris, starring
George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis, Ulrich Tukur;
based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem; written and directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Hoyts Greece Ridge; Loews Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal Culver Ridge;
Regal Eastview; Regal Henrietta.

You
can hear George and his movie reviews on WXXI-FM 91.5 Fridays at 7:15 a.m.;
rerun on Saturdays at 11:15 a.m.

This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2002.