SOLARIS (Steven Soderbergh, 2002) R

Reviewed: January 2nd, 2003

Not sure how I let this Solaris review slip through the cracks for so long; might have something to do with me wanting to see Andrei Tarkovsky's version first, which (heresy warning!) I never have, and alas, still haven't. Also might have something to do with pathetic fatalism: twenty minutes into my first viewing of the film, after a few people had already walked out, I knew Solaris was gonna die the swift box office death it subsequently has and there was nothing I nor anyone else could to do to prevent its painfully undeserved fate (like there ever is anymore, right?). This is a faulty, defeatist justification but I just couldn't bring myself to mount an impassioned defense of Solaris against all of its soon-to-be naysayers when I could sense my fervor would inevitably fall on deaf ears. I knew people (the few people, that is, who would even bother going to see the movie at all) were gonna whine about how slow and boring and cruelly sterile and pointless and pretentious Solaris is, how nothing happens, how Tarkovsky's Solaris is the true vision while Soderbergh's version is just a cheap, leaner knock-off. Me, I wanted to step back, put my head down, bask in Solaris' pleasures via seeing the movie a few more times and remove myself from the fray for awhile.

Why all the Solaris rancor? Because it's tuned into a galactic wavelength far, far away from that which most audiences are accustomed to watching movies at. Not light FM, not classic rock, instead a calmly ominous frequency which is disconcerting in the way its placidity can be jolted awake by sharp bursts of piercing sound. As I write this review I'm listening to Cliff Martinez's spookily pretty score, keyed so precisely into Soderbergh's cold, but soft vision in the way it varies between lilting and clanging (much the way the film seamlessly alternates between eerily tender flashbacks to Chris Kelvin and real-Rheya's earthbound courtship/breakup and Dr. Kelvin [George Clooney] and pseudo-Rheya's [Natascha McElhone] frigid, spacebound dealings). In a pristine series of tableaux, the initial sequences set on Earth establish Kelvin (a lonely psychologist) in a snap, formulating the model of economic storytelling Soderbergh will employ for the duration of his 98 minute film. Soderbergh also establishes his somber, aching temperament in these non-celestial scenes, complete with their constant patter of rainfall and their warm, reddish, startlingly stimulating hues. We're bearing witness to a man at the pinnacle of his craft here: Soderbergh wrote, directed, photographed and edited Solaris, and his gorgeous lighting/compositions and effortless cuts seem to me emerging from a primal place (I still can't get that shot of Clooney moving across a sea of umbrella-clutching wanderers out of my head). Soderbergh is necessarily unyielding in his unhurried approach, insidious in the way he lulls us into the middle of a complicated ethical dilemma (can we love a faux version of a formerly loved one? can we love an entity entirely, and thus erroneously, constructed from our own memories?) without ever shortchanging its complexity. This is a defiantly demanding film and the sad truth is most moviegoers today have neither the patience nor the intellect to broach its questions.

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