Fourteen people walked out on Solaris when I
saw it. The people all around me were muttering and
sighing and grunting, and when people left some
started laughing and tittering like they were ten
years old and someone just passed gas. These were not
teenagers mind you; without exception, these were men
and women in their 40s through their 70s. They were
the ones walking out and not paying attention and
asking their neighbors, “Wait, this movie is a
science fiction picture?” Oy.
Now, I’m not calling Solaris a classic,
but it certainly deserves a little more respect, or at
least some patience. Unlike so many movies, this is
one that does not pander to an audience or pad its
running time with lavish special effects and stunts.
Yes old lady who sat next to me, this is a science
fiction picture, but it is surprisingly quiet and
moody. Most of the real technical stuff is in the
background; we never, for example, learn the year or
the location of the planet Solaris, or anything like
that. Solaris is about emotions not technical
jargon.
George Clooney, in another strong performance,
stars as Chris Kelvin, a psychiatrist who is sent to
investigate strange happenings on a space station
orbiting the planet Solaris. When he arrives (and
after he pays homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey),
he finds only two crewmembers alive: Snow (Jeremy
Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis). Before he can fully
understand what has happened on Solaris, Chris is
visited by his wife Rhea (Natasha McElhone). It is
strange that she appears on the space station far from
earth, and even stranger since she died years ago.
I will not reveal why or how Rhea has appeared.
Still, the plot is largely irrelevant to Solaris,
as director and screenwriter Steven Soderbergh is more
interested with ideas like regret and guilt than in
conventions like conflict or action. Soderbergh, who
has directed Ocean's Eleven and Full Frontal
in the last twelve months, proves that he is one of
our most daring directors, moving from crime to
experimental video to austere science fiction. Love or
hate his films, you have to admire his variety, and
also his ability to get films he wants made onto the
screen. Solaris is difficult and strange, and
if did not have his name on it (along with that of
producer James Cameron), I doubt we’d ever see it in
this form in multiplexes around the country.
Still, I am not ready to call Solaris a
great film. First, I’d like to see if a few more
times just to really wrap my brain around the thing,
and even then I believe I’d still have some problems
with it. While I admire Soderbergh’s choice of
topics, there are other films that have dealt with
obsessive guilt in smarter and more compelling ways
(Most significantly, Hitchcock’s Vertigo).
Primary amongst Solaris’ problems is that its
excess of style seems to get in the way of fully
understanding and appreciating its focal love story.
We glimpse at Chris and Rhea’s life together, but
not enough, and never in a way that surpasses generic
overly-cutsey couples stuff. I was far more moved by
the love story in the recent Punch-Drunk Love.
Clooney lets his emotions simmer beneath the surface
and then boil over in well-placed bursts of rage, but
for all the show I felt surprisingly distant.
Some might argue that this is, to a degree, the
point of Solaris. It makes a lot of the
fallacies of memory and the trappings of perspective.
But wouldn’t Solaris be even more fascinating
if we could see what Chris doesn’t and why? The
choice of point of view and the hour-and-a-half
running time are perfectly fine, but we need more
richness and emotion and character. And yet, I’m
glad I saw Solaris and glad it was made. For
ninety minutes I got to think about my life and ponder
some of its meaning. There is a time and place for
snowboarders fighting terrorists, but there is also a
time for using your brain. Certain members of the
audience would be wise to remember that.
