Ticket Box

So. Solaris. As with anything in life, it wasn't to everyone's liking. Still, I'm somewhat... reticent to accept Maxine's reasons to dislike it. She finds the movie to be a tabula rasa, a blank slate where the viewer either sees what they want to see or, if they are on to the con, they realize there's nothing to see; numbing in a word. Even harder to take, the endless parade of mug shots of star George Clooney and his leading lady, Natascha McElhone. All of this wrapped up in pretty-chrome scenery and bright-light FX. Her conclusion:

What we have here, folks, is a paean to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 without the plot or the inspiration or the movie making.

No. I disagree. 2001 needs to be dragged into the conversation because both it and Solaris play similar chords and ask similar questions, e.g., Will mankind find the divine out there beyond our planet? But that's where the comparison should end. Kubrick talked about man outgrowing technology to become more than man. (That's why the most "human" character, the one we are allowed to identify with, is HAL. Man's machines are on a level with him; man's only way out is to go beyond them.) Solaris... well, I'll grant Maxine that I don't know what it is about. Is it a love story? Is it about finding God? Is it about contact with alien intelligence? All of those get thrown around but are never fully pursued and don't stick. So it is a tabula rasa, as she says. But not completely. Though she almost OD'd on all those close-ups of Clooney, and didn't seem to enjoy the focus on all other faces, I think that's what was so enjoyable about this movie. The best special effect is no effect at all: it's the human face. These are not over-kill, they're maps to be read for the emotions they graph. So maybe this is what the movie is about: emotions. The gloomminess on Clooney's scientist, the existential fear on McElhone's visitor, etc. No matter how high-tech we get, our greatest drive as a species is emotional, not rational. QED.

And if you're holding off seeing this movie... well, have it your way. I feel you're making a mistake but, hey, this is just a Soderbergh fan's opinion, don't cha know?

{Update, December 6, 2002}

Maxine further documents her opinion of Solaris, and I think her observation about it being "an art film, in wide release, and promoted as mainstream," is right on. Will it fail as she says? Probably. If it weren't because of the realities of investment and returns, I'd prefer it if the studios did the same thing more often, releasing "art films" to the multiplexes. It's the only way I'll be able to see them in this podunk town I live in.

One last observation I have to comment on:

Here is a movie that let's you wallow in George Clooney, and feel like a deep-thinking person at the same time. Kinda like buying Playboy for the articles.

Well, I didn't subscribe for the articles. But I read them. Sometimes.

{Update, December 9, 2002}

Maxine has added a 3rd part to her Solaris harangue, where she quotes from a review by David Denby ("a real movie reviewer," as she puts it). This is getting ridiculous! But, since she pulled out the heavy artillery, I'll answer in kind:

...Some of my colleagues—even those with a high tolerance for moodily protracted tracking shots—regard Soderbergh's Solaris as cinematic Valium. But I got on the movie's wavelength and stayed there. To me, it's like listening to a harrowing, minor-key piece of chamber music—a threnody for the dead set against a planet that's like an abstract painting of woe.

...

...[Soderbergh] shoots fluid sequences, but he's not afraid to nip and tuck them, to find a flashback or a flash-forward that can rupture an instant and thereby give it infinite resonance. In that way, Solaris is a kind of sequel to Soderbergh's great The Limey (1999), with its pretzeled syntax, its endless looping back to the moment in which a loved one's future death could be ordained. Kelvin relives the same kinds of moments, except that Soderbergh in Solaris can bring the past literally to life: a past that can't be buried or cast off, that is destined to rise and rise again like the curly wisps of vapor from the oceans of Solaris.
—Personal Space, David Edelstein