Deviant in its distortions of preconceived expectations attributed to science-fiction films Steven Soderbergh’s abstruse Solaris is opaquely intellectual and emotionally ubiquitous, warping any kind of sci-fi familiarity. Duality in abundance, the ambience is of gorgeous poetry and the delicate prose lavishly understated with equal emulation in performance. Almost a complete departure from the impudently irritating self-and-projected-deprecation of his (film from earlier 2002) Full Frontal’s celebrity masturbation, this ruminates quite a bit on similar subjects touched heavily in Full Frontal minus the pompous bemoaning. In fact, Solaris’ discreet philosophical reflections are giftedly exemplified in such inscrutable lines as the aforementioned above, in Soderbergh’s hallucinogenic direction, as well as in George Clooney’s agreeably underplayed psychologist, indeed baring a (needlessly) much-talked-of backside.
A worthy candidate for 2001: A Space Odyssey successor and a masterful remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 rendition (a powerful, hallucinatory film, if a bit overlong) of the Stanislaw Lem novel, this Solaris is wisely (and refreshingly) oblivious to the standard future element quotient, which requires inordinate portions of post-apocalyptical edifices, leather gang hostilities, implausible doom countdowns, and/or sleek technological devices. In lieu of those rudiments Solaris presents a Kubrickian study of disconnection, minimalism, dislocation and redemption. Irreverent to hand-feeding the viewers with many answers has resulted in much perplexity and rage over the film’s esoteric quality. Analogously to Michael Haneke it captures the minimum on its visual tableaux and still provokes the viewer with sufficient stimuli, rightly appealing that they think for themselves.
Uniquely scored to wonderfully omnipresent ambient work by Cliff Martinez, taking on a Brian Eno fashion, Solaris materializes a culmination of post-modern and aftertime impressionism, manifesting a haunted, disquieting operatic emanation. This Soderbergh ideological treatise is, this time around, assiduously cerebral probing, undertaking the metaphysical and spiritual, finally resolving itself with much more depth than the simple Ghost-esque resolution that “love triumphs over death”, which is ever in attendance admittedly. Though this may stink a bit of sentimental hokum the desolateness of Clooney’s character and Soderbergh’s hesitantly stable pace and structure pronounces a labyrinth of emotional disconcerted catastrophe. Even brief moments of a psychology session and that imagery suggests genius’ crescendo and cool composure, hailing Soderbergh with the much-deserved title: Renaissance Man.
When the crew of a space research station that’s orbiting the titular ocean planet Solaris sends transmissions telling of dead team members and other bizarre happenings the lonely and depressed psychologist, Chris Kelvin (Clooney), is sent to investigate. Kelvin, whose wife Rheya (saucer-eyed Natascha McElhone) committed suicide a few years previous, arrives on board to the remaining crew, a rather loony young man called Snow (Jeremy Davies, delectable as always) and a slightly more stable but paranoid Helen Gordon (Viola Davis). Kelvin learns that the other two members have died under mysterious conditions and that something is very off-putting about the survivors’ manner and lack-of explanations:
’’I could tell you what’s happening here, but that wouldn’t really tell you what’s happening.’’
Snow attempts to relate the ship’s rhetoric calamity through soft-spoken mouthfuls of gum wads. It becomes apparent that the fatal curse placed upon the crew involves Solaris’ colorful effluvium which triggers the creation of a phantom facsimile of a character from a person’s memory. In Kelvin’s case the emission fabricates the very-tangible-Rheya and the psychologist becomes torn between facing the reality of what she is and fulfilling what seems to be a second chance.
Almost Nouvelle Vague in its persistence of semiotics and blatant metaphorical but eccentric odyssey (perhaps even more so if weren’t for Lem being Polish as opposed to French, but then again...) mixed of Godard, Kubrick and Philip K. Dick, the film is not only deeply imaginative and hallucinatory but visibly symbolic. In one rather audacious finale moment Soderbergh almost screams a suggestion of divine of intervention as Kelvin nears his journey’s end, with peculiar homage to the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. It views the Christ-like with a keen eye and supposes Kelvin’s mien as a complex ridden with sorrows and fateful complications. Beautifully it marvels upon a heavenly ascent through what-have-you is pure romanticism.
The composed delicateness of the production may be construed as artistic pretense or (to a certain justifiable extent) boredom but the immeasurable, stimulating brilliance of the provocative material seems to negate any potential vapidity it might contain. The beauty seems to lie within this calm composure, highly admirable in these tepid days of hyperactive editing, as well as in Soderbergh’s emphasis on disassociation via medium character shots blurring out any superfluous background. Lurid lighting materializes the tenebrous spirit of the film, meanwhile virtually no futuristic CGI landscape populates Solaris suggesting, again like Haneke, to only capture what is essential. What seems fundamental to Solaris remains, not a concretely readable story arc but, the study of tragic happenstance and eventually embodying Soderbergh’s memorable Waking Life anecdote on Wilder and Malle as ’’sort of a dream within a dream.’’