Solaris" ( 2002 - James Cameron & Steven Soderberg)
by
"Michael Stone"

Both the Polish author Stanislaw Lem and Russian filmmaker Andrei Tartovsky had to create while living under the thumb of the Soviet Union back in the Cold War days. Soviet Communism, which felt it had created the perfect society, frowned on science fiction which suggested the future was going to be less than rosy. Lem's book and Tartovsky's 1972 version of "Solaris" treaded this fine line by creating a situation of great ambiguity. Years have been spent studying the liquid-covered planet Solaris without any concrete discoveries. The space station orbiting the planet is down to three researchers from its former strength of 85, and the three left have suddenly started sending back bizarre reports. Psychologist Kris Kelvin is to be sent to the station and report what's going on and whether the mission is to be abandoned completely.
When Kelvin arrives at the station, he discovers that Gibaryan, one of the three and also a friend and mentor, has committed suicide. He also finds that the two survivors are not the only beings on the station. Apparently, each of the three men were sent "visitors" by the planet; apparitions read from their minds and materialized by the planet. When Kris goes to sleep, his mind is read and when he awakes, he finds his dead wife, who committed suicide because of him, has come back to become his visitor.
Most of Tartovsky's "Solaris" is a long meditation on man and what happens when confronted with a situation without answers. The three astronauts on the station have achieved one of man's long-sought dreams - contact with an alien intelligence, but what it's done is turn that contact into a window on their souls that reveals secrets they wanted to keep hidden. Snauth's visitor is never seen but he's always bandaging his hand from destroying them, the nasty Sartorius' visitor is a rambunctious dwarf, while the dead Gibaryan apparently committed suicide because his visitor, a lovely little girl in blue panties and a negligee, revealed him as a pedophile. Only Hari, Kelvin's wife, is touched with grace, bringing Kelvin's long-dead soul back to life while wondering what her place is, since she's now aware that she's not the real Hari. Was Solaris malevolent or benevolent? Was it reading their minds for a purpose or just manifesting things it didn't understand? Even the enigmatic ending of the original film posed more questions than answers.

Much of the three hours of Tartovsky's film is devoted to quiet visual shots. The film opens in the Russian countryside with Kris looking down at water plants waving in the current. Tartovsky will look at organic and man-made motion and patterns again and again, establishing a motif that will come into play once we reach Solaris. Covered with nothing but a strange liquid, the surface is constantly roiling with strange shapes and patterns. Tartovsky also subtly contrasts the uncertainty of past and present on the station with banks of equipment shorting out and deserted corridors strewn with rubble contrasted against the library which is old-fashionly decorated with books, prints, and a candelabra.
Chopped by half, the James Cameron/Steven Soderberg remake of "Solaris" keeps the basic story outline but strips much of the philosophical content out of the film and reduces it to a psychodramatic love story. Morose George Clooney is sent to Solaris because the people left on the station have cut off contact and a rescue team sent in has vanished. When Clooney gets to the station, now a giant stainless steel set that resembles a block-long McDonald's kitchen, he finds the same setup, but Soderberg and Cameron have radically rewritten the characters. The dead Gibarian is no longer a pedophile, the nasty Sartorius is now Helen Gordon, a black woman physicist, and the philosophical Snauth has morphed into Snow, who seems to be channeling Brad Pitt's loony stoner from "12 Monkeys" and provides about as much help as asking Cheech and Chong for driving directions.
The biggest change Soderberg has made from both book and Russian film is that he's included extensive flashbacks on Clooney's and Natascha McElhone courting and marriage that I don't think really add anything to the movie. It may even hurt the film. In the original Russian film, it's made clear that the main character is emotionally closed off, and that his wife's suicide is at least partially due to that coldness. In the new version, McElhone is presented as moody and half-crazy on her own, so that the suicide seems more on her and less on Clooney. This also leads to a big change in the end of the film. In the Russian film, the psychologist is forced to confront his own emotional coldness but is given a chance by Solaris to try and work through it. In the new film though, it is Clooney and McElhone together who are given a second chance in some NeverNever Land. "Are we alive or dead?" Clooney asks, to which McElhone answers "We don't have to think like that anymore."

To be fair, Cameron and Soderberg say although their "Solaris" has elements of the Russian film, it should be judged apart from it. That's fair, but you can still make comparisons about how the ideas are approached and whether they work or not. In the original Russian film, the scientists act like scientists, quickly accepting their circumstances and trying to understand how Solaris has done what it's done and why. In contrast, the Soderberg "Solaris" radically changes the characters. Viola Davis, who is supposed to be a physicist, acts like anything but, even with all her babble about "Higgs bosons", Jeremy Davis' Snow we've already mentioned, and George Clooney, I'm sad to say because I like George, may not have been the best choice either. George Clooney is good at being George Clooney, but I'm not sure he's good at being an intellectual trying to solve an intellectual puzzle. I applaud his courage in trying the role, but I think it's an awkward and not very consistent performance. Natascha McElhone character may be hurt the worst by the reduction of running time. The long running time of the original gave Natalya Bondarchuk's character time to shift gradually into the pain and awareness of what she is. I just watched "Solaris" again this weekend on the big screen here in Los Angeles and I still think Bondarchuk's performance is one of the most glowing and graceful in science fiction. McElhone, on the other hand, has little time in the movie to shift so her character has to change very quickly and it's an abrupt shift of mood that feels harsh compared to the earlier film. It's not entirely their fault though. Soderberg has said he's worked nearly until the last minute trying to find the right emotional pitch of the story, and I think this uncertainty shows in the inconsistent tone of the film.

Ultimately, I think Soderberg's "Solaris" falls in the "Interesting Failure" category last visited by "A.I." It's a handsome production with good performances, but I'm not sure they're the right performances towards the right direction. I'm not of the same mind as my friend, who referring to the reception before the movie, said "is it my imagination, or did this movie get more boring as I sobered up?" but I think the attempt to inject tension and suspense into the film doesn't really work either. One of the reasons most people find the original film so dull is that it's a quiet film about ideas, most of which are barely touched on in this version. Considering Soderberg is such a Geek, I'm puzzled why he tried to inflate this into a shouting, breastbeating, buttbaring love story. By doing so, they've created a love story which isn't very believable, and lost most of the ideas which made the original so interesting. Perhaps Soderberg and Clooney needed to do this to evolve, and I hope they do, but as far as cinema goes, their version of "Solaris" is a stillborn dead end while the decidedly old-fashioned Tartovsky film is still an enigmatic and thoughtful treasure of science fiction humanism.
In concert with the Soderberg "Solaris" release, Criterion has released a new two-disk set of the Tartovsky film which hopefully will finally bring this film the much wider audience it deserves. The first disk is a new transfer of the movie with a much-improved set of subtitles, while the second is a set of supplements never before available to American audiences, including about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, interviews with Tartovsky's art director and cameraman, a cryptic and brief interview with Lem, who butted heads with Tartovsky over the film, and most poignantly, a half-hour interview with Natalya Bondarchuk talking about working with the nervous and melancholy director. Bondarchuk, the daughter of one of the Soviet Union's most famous directors, initially was rejected for the role as too young against the older Donatas Banionis, but was given another role in another film, sight unseen, on Tartovsky's recommendation of her. Months later with the role still uncast, Tartovsky looked at Bondarchuk's footage in the other film and realized that despite the age difference, she was Hari and the movie was begun. Today, desky looked at Bondarchuk's footage in the other film and realized that despite the age difference, she was Hari and the movie was begun. Today, despite having been in dozens of movies and become a director herself, she says "Solaris" is still her favorite film and one she's traveled around the world with to appear at screenings. It's not hard to understand why...