Solaris

Rating:
Summary: Totally Bizarre
Review: I enjoy science fiction movies. I have always like George Clooney's acting ability. I thought this movie was going to be great. After all, George Clooney is in it. While my friends fell asleep, I stopped myself from falling asleep because it has to get better because George Clooney is in the movie. It never does get better. I dont know even though how to begin to describe this movie. It was the most bizarre movie I have ever seen in my life. When my friends woke up, they asked me about the ending. I told them that I dont even know how to begin to describe it. I asked them if they wanted me to rewind it. They all say at the same time, never mind. I should have rented Ocean's Eleven. He was good in that.

Rating:
Summary: Solaris - A relatively disappointing Sci-Fi flick!
Review: "Solaris" is a conceptually idealistic love story couched in a Science Fiction film that is highly reminiscent of Sc-Fi films and novels in the fifties and sixties. That being said, it does accomplish that to a certain degree but the overall outcome of the film is a less than spectacular film that leaves one looking at their watch as the DVD plays on.

One of the most surprising aspects of this film is that one of its primary producers is James Cameron himself. Typically, if his name is stamped on a project it is destined for success but that unfortunately doesn't happen here. Perhaps had he taken the director's chair for this film it might've been a touch better.

Performance wise, all of the actors involved did a good job with their respective roles, the script not withstanding. To date, I would have to say that George Clooney's departure from the small screen to big screen has been a more or less lesson in hit and miss, with this film scoring as a miss.

Director Steve Soderbergh, best known for films such as "Erin Brokovich" and "Ocean's Eleven" more or less stepped outside of his comfort zone with this film and the seeming end result of his traveling in the Science Fiction lane leaves one to the conclusion that he probably won't travel in it again.

The Premise:

George Clooney plays Chris Kelvin who is a company psychologist sent to a space station orbiting an extremely mysterious planet. He's sent there after the crew stops responding to hails from the company and one of those crew members sends a message specifically asking for him. Upon his arrival he finds that some of the crew is dead and he too starts experiencing the same problems that everyone else had. A few years prior, his wife had died and now, in the middle of his first night on the station she shows up in his room with him...

What follows from there is a story that is quite different in and of its self where the primary characters are trying to cope with these mysterious characters from their pasts showing up.

Overall, I'd recommend this film primarily as a rental to most movie watchers. Of no doubt is that there are some out there who would find an appreciation for this films approach unfortunately, I'm not one of them. {ssintrepid}

Special Features:

-Full length audio commentary by Director Steven Soderbergh and Producer James Cameron
-HBO "Making Of" Special
-"Solaris: Behind the Planet" Featurette
-Original Screenplay
-Theatrical Teaser and Trailer

Rating:
Summary: Visitors from Memory Ask What is Life?
Review: When I read Stanislaw Lem's book many years ago I remember Solaris as a living ocean with peculiar qualities. The planet somehow managed an unstable orbit between two stars. This is what caught earth's scientist's attention in the first place. Part of the search for intelligent life in the cosmos. Lem's intelligent life is wonderfully baffling. He looks at the human need to personify and communicate. But to communicate something you have to have some common ground. Lem's stunning premise was to look at an attempt at human-alien communication very uncompromisingly.

Soderburg focusses the movie on the question, "How do we perceive ourselves and others and how vital is this to the communication process?" Lem and Soderburg both see the story from the eys of Psychiatrist Kelvin [Clooney]. Soderburg's opening scenes stress this man's grief and attempts to recover from his wife's suicide. He's soon asked by a long time astronaut friend for help with a delicate situation on a space station orbiting Solaris. Wham! In no time Clooney is totally befuddled at the mysteries he sees as he boards the space station. There is almost no dialogue, revealing camera shots period. Two surviving astronauts offer cryptic advice. Snow says "I can tell you what is going on, but that really wouldn't tell you what is going on" Gordon says "Until it happens to you, there is really no point in discussing it". Not much help from our director there. What "happens" is the living ocean presents each astronaut with a dreadful gift.

The alien's "gift" to the earthling's was to generate in near perfect [to atomic detail], the flesh and blood of whatever life was preoccupying the dreams of the astronauts. Kelvin's visitor is his ex-wife Rheya. Clooney does a great job portraying Kelvin's repulsive reaction at first. He banishes the mysterious woman, who couldn't be anything but a monster. When she soon reappears, he opens his mind and begins dialogue with this person, played with wonderful grace and style by McElhone. The physicist on board is obsessed with figuring out how Solaris achieved these creatures and is hell bent on physically destroying them. Snow's visitor disappeared long back. And Kelvin approaches hs wife at first as a kind of grief therapy and then is slowly drawn into admiring and actually loving her all over again. In consistent professional style, he tries to figure out how his memories of Rheya were manifest by Solaris. Both he and Rheya look at who she is, and who she is becoming. And how she is changing him.

What happens when reality becomes memory, and then memory is slowly warped and faded? And who am I anyway? How well do I know my wife of many many years? And if I leave my kids for four years will I be able to enter their lives as a loving father based on our mutual memories of our past relationship?

The end makes you think about life and death. Intergalactic mixed-species communication is intense and complex. The soundtrack fits. The art draws Solaris as a beautiful floating blue nerve bundle. This movie, like the book, is very imaginative, lively, challenging and original. It casually dances between the spiritual and metaphysical and physical. Not for everybody but this really isn't science fiction. It's something else.

Rating:
Summary: An Overlooked Classic
Review: Seems like this movie has divided reviewers between "boring" and "superb". I fall into the latter category. I think Solaris is the best movie I've seen all year - and this has been a year when I've watched an average of 4 a week as I catch up on years of not seeing any.

Solaris is not, strictly, SF. It's a deeply affecting humanist story set (mostly) in space. It has more layers than a wedding cake and the performaces are mostly excellent, particluarly Clooney and McElhone. (Although I did find Jeremy Davies kind of annoyingly affected.)

I kept waiting for Solaris to let me down with some kind of Hollywood cliche and was almost dreading the ending being just that. But it just kept getting better. The chemistry between Clooney and McElhone is amazing and the dialogue in Solaris - especially between these two - is faultless.

So forget the SF bit (despite the amazing sets and photography) and enjoy Solaris for what it is - an incredibly involving and thoughtful look at the human condition : regret, longing, religion, the afterlife, etc., etc.

PS I have never written a review before but this movie needs the balance of opinion adjusted here at Amazon - I'd hate for you to miss it. I think it will become a classic.

Rating:
Summary: "Solaris" Intellectual Sci-Fi
Review: Solaris" tells the story of a planet that reads minds, and obliges its visitors by devising and providing people they have lost, and miss. The Catch-22 is that the planet knows no more than its visitors know about these absent people. As the film opens, two astronauts have died in a space station circling the planet, and the survivors have sent back alarming messages. A psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent to the station, and when he awakens after his first night on board, his wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), is in bed with him. Some time earlier on earth, she had committed suicide.

"She's not human," Kelvin is warned by Dr. Helen Gordon (Viola Davis), one of the surviving crew members. Kelvin knows this materialization cannot be his wife, yet is confronted with a person who seems palpably real, shares memories with him and is flesh and blood. The other survivor, the goofy Snow (Jeremy Davies), asks, "I wonder if they can get pregnant?"

This story originated with a Polish novel by Stanislaw Lem that is considered one of the major adornments of science fiction. It was made into a 1972 movie of the same name by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky. Now Steven Soderbergh has retold it in the kind of smart film that has people arguing about it on their way out of the theater.

The movie needs science fiction to supply the planet and the space station, which furnish the premise and concentrate the action, but it is essentially a psychological drama. When Kelvin arrives on the space station, he finds the survivors seriously spooked. Soderbergh directs Jeremy Davies to escalate his usual style of tics and stutters, to the point where a word can hardly be uttered without his hands waving to evoke it from the air.

Even scarier is Gordon, the scientist played by Viola Davis, who has seen whatever catastrophe overtook the station and does not consider Kelvin part of the solution. In his gullibility will he believe his wife has somehow really been resurrected? And ... what does the planet want? Why does it do this? As a favor, or as a way of luring us into accepting manifestations of its own ego and need? Will the human race eventually be replaced by the Solaris version?

Clooney has successfully survived being named People magazine's sexiest man alive by deliberately choosing projects that ignore that image. His alliance with Soderbergh, both as an actor and co-producer, shows a taste for challenge. Here, as Kelvin, he is intelligent, withdrawn, sad, puzzled. Certain this seems to be his wife, and although he knows intellectually that she is not, still--to destroy her would be ... inhuman. The screenplay develops a painful paradox out of that reality.

The genius of Lem's underlying idea is that the duplicates, or replicants, or whatever we choose to call them, are self-conscious and seem to carry on with free will from the moment they are evoked by the planet. Rheya, for example, says, "I'm not the person I remember. I don't remember experiencing these things." And later, "I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me."

In other words, Kelvin gets back not his dead wife, but a being who incorporates all he knows about his dead wife, and nothing else, and starts over from there. She has no secrets because he did not know her secrets. If she is suicidal, it is because he thought she was. The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them.

At a time when many American movies pump up every fugitive emotion into a clanging assault on the audience, Soderbergh's "Solaris" is quiet and introspective. There are some shocks and surprises, but this is not "Alien." It is a workshop for a discussion of human identity. It considers not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others--so that a completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed away into its billions of separate containers, or "people."

When I saw Tarkovsky's original film, I felt absorbed in it, as if it were a sponge. It was slow, mysterious, confusing, and I have never forgotten it. Soderbergh's version is more clean and spare, more easily readable, but it pays full attention to the ideas and doesn't compromise. Tarkovsky was a genius, but one who demanded great patience from his audience as he ponderously marched toward his goals. The Soderbergh version is like the same story freed from the weight of Tarkovsky's solemnity. And it evokes one of the rarest of movie emotions, ironic regret.

Rating:
Summary: Movie is a Travesty
Review: As a fan of the book, I would like to say at the outset that I don't expect movies to be like the book, but should be judged by themselvs.

That said, the book is one of my favorites, and is an exciting, mind-bending journey into the nature of consciousness and an incredible 'what-if' of a sentient planet.

This stupid movie tried to turn that into a love story.

Yes, the apparition that looks and 'thinks' she is his wife, and unaware that 'she' is dead is a psycological shock, but turning it into a romance simply had nothing to do with the book. A different story entirely.

There are so many opportunites for excitement, special effects available in the book. (Helicopter rides into transient foaming structures, historical replays of previous expiditions, etc.)

I often envisioned an exciting dramatic movie--without losing any of the intellect. I also was very excited about this movie until I had to found myself nodding off--something I NEVER do in a movie.

If you are interested in a good movie adaptation, check out the original directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. There is an excellent DVD produced by Criterion Collection. (Just skip the boring highway scene in the beginning, and you have a great movie.)

Better still--read the book-- two or three times. It's well worth it!

Rating:
Summary: Solaris - A relatively disappointing Sci-Fi flick!
Review: "Solaris" is a conceptually idealistic love story couched in a Science Fiction film that is highly reminiscent of Sc-Fi films and novels in the fifties and sixties. That being said, it does accomplish that to a certain degree but the overall outcome of the film is a less than spectacular film that leaves one looking at their watch as the DVD plays on.

One of the most surprising aspects of this film is that one of its primary producers is James Cameron himself. Typically, if his name is stamped on a project it is destined for success but that unfortunately doesn't happen here. Perhaps had he taken the director's chair for this film it might've been a touch better.

Performance wise, all of the actors involved did a good job with their respective roles, the script not withstanding. To date, I would have to say that George Clooney's departure from the small screen to big screen has been a more or less lesson in hit and miss, with this film scoring as a miss.

Director Steve Soderbergh, best known for films such as "Erin Brokovich" and "Ocean's Eleven" more or less stepped outside of his comfort zone with this film and the seeming end result of his traveling in the Science Fiction lane leaves one to the conclusion that he probably won't travel in it again.

The Premise:

George Clooney plays Chris Kelvin who is a company psychologist sent to a space station orbiting an extremely mysterious planet. He's sent there after the crew stops responding to hails from the company and one of those crew members sends a message specifically asking for him. Upon his arrival he finds that some of the crew is dead and he too starts experiencing the same problems that everyone else had. A few years prior, his wife had died and now, in the middle of his first night on the station she shows up in his room with him...

What follows from there is a story that is quite different in and of its self where the primary characters are trying to cope with these mysterious characters from their pasts showing up.

Overall, I'd recommend this film primarily as a rental to most movie watchers. Of no doubt is that there are some out there who would find an appreciation for this films approach unfortunately, I'm not one of them. {ssintrepid}

Special Features:

-Full length audio commentary by Director Steven Soderbergh and Producer James Cameron
-HBO "Making Of" Special
-"Solaris: Behind the Planet" Featurette
-Original Screenplay
-Theatrical Teaser and Trailer

Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Beautiful
Review: Perhaps those reviewers who found this film to be a disappointment were not as haunted by it as I was. This film was superbly acted and directed, with a fantastic and fitting score to boot. I was completely swept away and carried into the psyche of those on the ship, as intrigued and beguiled by Solaris as the characters (sans disturbing 'visitors'). This film ranks among one of my favorites--it's a great Sci-fi film without teetering toward cheesy, as many tend to do. Leaning more toward the 'psychological thriller' genre, 'Solaris' effortlessly captures the imagination, leaving the viewer to think about the fate of 'Kris' and 'Rheya' well beyond the end of the film.
One caveat: If you're the type that enjoys mindless Hollywood drivel in which every aspect of the plot is explained ad nauseum, underestimating the intelligence of the viewer, then this film is NOT for you.

Rating:
Summary: Emotionally stirring and surreal
Review: Beyond being extraordinarily visually appealing, this movie reached a place in me.... and lingered in my mind for days.
Imagine that the one person in your life, someone you deeply love, passes away tragically. Just because they are gone does not mean you stop making memories of them. What you remember of them is only a part of who they really are, however, and your memories grow and change shape as the years go by.
This movie explores questions of love, how love can go wrong, how it leaves a void when it's over, and mostly, how our memories of someone are not the same as who that person really was. These questions are never directly present, but hidden in the dialogue between Chris and Rheya.
Anyone looking for a Sci-Fi flick will be dissappointed at the methodical, calm pace of the movie. Someone looking for a love story will be dissappointed by the personal boundaries in Chris and Rheya's relationship. But some people, maybe those who have been touched by the death of someone who has had a profound effect on their life, may find that this film takes them to a place that others either cannot go to, or choose to avoid.

Rating:
Summary: George is Lost in the Jungle of His Own Mind
Review: Clooney does a fine job with pretty sparse material here. He is completely convincing as he gives a calm, smart, measured performance. The main problem lies in the fact that he's being asked to carry far too much of the film's weight. Davies and McElhone are not up to the task. Davies seems to be trying to copy Brad Pitt's 12 Monkey's performance and the result should have been considered for a Razzie. McElhone clearly does not understand the purpose of the project at hand. Soderbergh's script is filled with selfish vacuous navel gazing and he utilizes only the lightest of hands in the film's direction. safe to say, he has done much better work. Did he even read the book? Did he bother to watch the original and far superior Russian Solaris? This version is almost completely lacking in beauty and insight.