Review

Review Date: 1-December-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Solaris (2002)

Most of the advance buzz on "Solaris" revolved around Steven Soderbergh's battle with the MPAA, who wanted to give the film an "R" rating because of a brief shot of George Clooney's naked buttocks. After having sat through this strange, dreamy, sci-fi/psychological film, I have to say that Soderbergh ought to be grateful to the MPAA, because there isn't really much else to buzz about.

"Solaris" is based on a 1961 novel that was previously made into a movie by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Set in the not-too-distant future, it concerns a psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin (Clooney) who is summoned to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. There he finds not only the two spooked-out survivors of the station's decimated crew (Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis), but also someone or something that appears to be his wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), who died on Earth a couple of years earlier. Refusing to believe his eyes at first, Kelvin tries to rid himself of his returned wife, but she reappears, forcing him to deal with a slew of confusing desires, fears, hopes, and regrets (confusing to us and to him). In flashbacks seen through both her eyes and his, we learn of the Kelvins' courtship, how she was plagued by mental illness, and why they fought on the fatal night when he threatened to leave her and she subsequently killed herself. Orbiting Solaris, Chris and Rheya (if Rheya she is) have to decide what to do with the second chance that they have been given (or that Chris has invented in his mind). What they choose, exactly, is open to interpretation.

"Solaris" is a slow, dark, rather unnerving movie (as I guess pictures set in space ought to be), and I am not exactly sure what it's about. Clooney gives his best performance to date as the bereaved widower, and British actress McElhone is well cast mostly because she's so creepy looking. But what does their tragic romance and potential opportunity for making it right really amount to? At the beginning of the film, someone says that humans don't go into space looking for new worlds, they go looking to find a mirror by which to understand themselves. In that light, the movie can be seen as a journey of Chris Kelvin's mind and heart alone, in which he tries to come to terms with not only losing his wife, but being in part the cause of her death. However, the film depicts the Rheya he finds on the space station as truly alive, a sentient, bodily creature of some kind, and not a figment of his imagination. In this respect, space is more than a mirror, more than a new world; it is heaven, where all things are forgiven (as, in fact, Rheya tells Chris at the end) and mistakes and the pain they caused can be erased. Though some may find this comforting, I frankly find it a disturbing, unpleasant thought, as well as an intensely narcissistic one. It does not stand to reason that the entire cosmos is calibrated to make each and every one of us feel happy, loved, and free of guilt; the wondrous potential of outer space should not be narrowed down to the scope of our own failings and disappointments; the universe is not an Etch a Sketch where, if we mess something up in one instance, we can erase and try again in another. I didn't buy that crap when Carl Sagan and Jodie Foster dished it out in "Contact," and I'm not buying it here (although this is a better movie than that veritable asteroid of unadulterated doo doo).

In all fairness, though, I cannot say whether the original author of the story or Soderbergh has this notion in mind with "Solaris;" it could be a movie about the enduring power of love or a film that we're supposed to feel but not understand. As I said in last week's Spotlight, Steven Soderbergh is an artist whose work varies wildly in content and quality. Once more, I am reminded that I don't have a firm sense of what he's all about, and for that I admire him. Still, when it comes to his latest offering, I have to say the thing I will most remember about "Solaris" is George Clooney's nicely lit, firmly rounded butt.

Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.