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USA 2002
Directed by
Steven Soderbergh
99 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2 stars

Solaris (2002)

 Synopsis: Psychologist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent to a space station to report on strange goings-on.

There’s a memorable line in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) that crew member Snout addresses to the spinning-out-of-control Kelvin as he tries to understand what is going on with his unearthly wife: "Don’t turn a scientific problem into a bedroom farce". If only Soderbergh had paid attention to that advice!

Tarkovsky’s film, like Kubrick’s 2001, to which it was at the time regularly considered as a response, took on board, so to speak, metaphysical questions of the strange, apparently arbitrary nature of our place in the Universe and the meaning that we give to it through our relationships, Soderbergh does not jettison these questions but his variant constrains them within the conventions of the Hollywood romance (James "Titanic" Cameron co-produced this).

Whilst Soderburgh understandably omits the over-long first half of Tarkovsky's film, not all the other changes are such improvements. Snout is renamed Snow (understandably so) and turned into a gum-chewing hipster dufus (Jeremy Davies) who, ya know, like is … a real idiot. What his character would be doing on a space mission, unless they were out of monkeys (indeed Davies appears to have based his performance on that of Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys,1995), is anyone’s guess. And the remaining crew member is a chunky pissed-off black woman (Viola Davis) who does nothing but grumble and glare with blood-shots orbs at all and sundry. (This casting choice may have been intended to cover that black demographic but if so a sympathetic character would have helped). Most irritating, but only because she gets so much screen time with no end of to-the-camera close ups is Natascha McElhone as Kelvin's wife, Rheya, who with her whiny voice, staring eyes and anoxeric’s cheek-bones has none of the vulnerability of Natalya Bondarchuk in the original film. This is compounded by the fact that there is no warmth between she and Clooney.

Soderbergh is a polished film-maker and what he has taken from Tarkovsky in terms of form is good (including his ever-present rain) and in many cases better, especially when it comes to production values and art direction. Also the sound design and Cliff Martinez’s original score are very effective – but that’s principally about money. But what he has contributed himself is painful. The worst aspect in this respect is Soderbergh’s script which is risibly banal and could be relocated holus-bolus to any sticky relationship drama complete with flashbacks prominently featuring Clooney’s buttocks, .

Thus, when Snow (who has already uttered such lapidary statements as "I could tell you what’s going on, but I don’t know if that’d tell you what’s going on"), like, you know, tells Klein his garbled plan to save their asses and asks him "What do you think?", I fully expected Clooney, pausing for a second, to say:"That you’re an idiot". But no, he actually takes him seriously and the plan becomes a plot element. And when Rheya finds out that Chris had already jettisoned an earlier version of her in a space-pod, she clasps her face in her hands and cries "Oh, my God, Oh, my God, Don't touch me".

Soderbergh did well to jettison the first part of Tarkovsky's film and concentrate on the second part where the real interest lies but in the process he has lost the multi-faceted richness which even if the effect was awkward by Hollywood standards make that director's film so rewarding (he also loses the significant coda to Tarkovsky's film).  One can understand his attraction to re-making what is a flawed film, but he's also managed to make it a far less interesting one,

 

 

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