Solaris
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Stanislaw Lem (novel), Steven Soderbergh (screenplay)
Starring: George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies

I still remember seeing a teaser trailer for this movie sometime last year. It was so vague and yet so intriguing, with the names Steven Soderbergh, James Cameron and George Clooney appearing over a slow shot of a space station floating in orbit. It didn’t say at all what this movie was about and yet it said more than enough to get people talking. As the release date approached, some of the new trailers and advertising began to showcase a romance angle, which only made things more puzzling. For a sci-fi movie, they sure weren’t giving us the usual assault of special effects and action sequences.

The truth of the matter is, although Solaris is based in a slightly futuristic setting and takes place aboard a space station, there is apparently little to no science-fiction at work in the movie at all. Solaris, a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film of the same name, is a psychological study plain and simple, a movie that examines human emotions and weaknesses through a painstaking exploration of character. Then again, many people would tell you that is exactly what the best science-fiction stories are all about.

Hollywood has definitely been dipping a little too often into the remake barrel as of late, but do not let this deter you — Solaris is a worthy film nonetheless. Director Steven Soderbergh has already proven with Ocean’s 11 that he can improve upon and breathe new life into his source material; with Solaris he seems to show great reverance for the original, yet does not let that stop him from injecting his own unique vision.

George Clooney is a psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin, who gets a mysterious call from an old friend working on a space station requesting his help. When Kelvin arrives, he finds some of the crew members dead, and others on edge, for reasons he cannot explain. Before long however, he is shocked to find his dead wife (Natascha McElhone) apparently alive and well on the station with them. This leads him to question whether or not what he is seeing is real or imagined, and what he would give to have a second chance in life. The idea is not unlike a pair of somewhat recent movies, Sphere and Event Horizon (which probably borrowed their own ideas from the original Solaris), but in execution this movie more closely resembles Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

With Soderbergh at the helm, you can rest assured that this movie is a beautiful thing to watch. The cinematography is dreamy and surreal, with a lot of flashback sequences slowly unravelling Chris Kelvin’s life in front of us. Soderbergh really likes to take his time immersing us in the story and putting us in Kelvin’s head, and there are more than a few moments of quiet reflection as the camera basks in the overwhelming spectacle of outer space. The tense yet mesmerizing score by Cliff Martinez also deserves credit for pulling the viewer into this movie and setting the atmosphere.

The acting is really where this movie shines however. The actors all give amazing, yet subtle performances, and the movie depends on them to keep it from spinning off into pretentiousness. Jeremy Davies brings a typical understated performance to the screen as the spaced-out engineer Snow, whose quirky mannerisms bring the only hint of comic relief to the sombre production.

George Clooney really carries the entire movie, however, and his charisma and talents successfully bring the human elements out of the story. Again and again, Clooney has chosen to step out and take risks with his career, and this is another example of the man’s keen eye for high quality projects (and his fondness for working with Steven Soderbergh.)

In the end, Solaris leaves much open to interpretation, and never once spells anything out for its audience. The end result is a movie that will be a masterpiece to some, and a snoozefest for others. Although I enjoyed Solaris, I do think that a fairly simple story was stretched out a little too long and a little too far here. I felt a need for more plot twists and more heightened suspense to drive it along. Then again, maybe these were just superficial expectations on my part. Soderbergh’s version of Solaris is much more compact than the original, and he should be commended simply for finding a way to make this movie more accessible without resorting to cheap thrills and gunfights. — Sean