Directed by: Steven Soderbergh; Starring: George Clooney, Ulrich Tukur, Jeremy Davis, Viola Davis, and Natascha McElhone; Rated PG-13. New on DVD
Steven Soderbergh’s film SOLARIS is an experience I fear only the sophisticated viewer would enjoy, even cherish; the viewer who enjoys reading the meaning between the lines or in facial expressions, or who appreciates thinking about the meaning of what is said or done. SOLARIS, written by Stanislaw Lem, is truly an exercise of personal introspection–how we get hung up on choices and wanting to solve every problem; and how we perceive others, to name a few.
Soderbergh’s vision of SOLARIS is very Kubrickian. I was reminded of Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, in which the plot developed slowly and existed on two or three convergent levels; and, in which there were long sequences of nothing more than images and music. In fact, SOLARIS plays like a dream–scenes are broken up into minute breaks, as if we are present and blinking our eye every few seconds. This method of editing puts us off center; it makes us fill in the void with our own imagination.
Also, Soderbergh placed dispersed conversations from the past in with the future; the effect allows us to be on the same page as the protagonist. We learn as he learns; we react and see if our reactions correlate with his.
Chris Kelvin is a Lonely Man
SOLARIS is about a lonely man, Chris Kelvin (George Clooney). He lives in a lonely apartment–the walls and furniture are devoid of decorations and colored in cold shades of white and metal; there are no pictures or paintings; there’s no color; there are no plants; there is no life. Kelvin also works a seemingly lonely job as a psychiatrist. His patients talk to him. He listens. But we only hear him speak when he is leaving a message on a patient’s answering machine.
As we see Chris going about his everyday activities, we sense that he is simply going through the motions, a shell of a man. He seems sad, as if he has lost someone close to him and has yet been able to fill that void. This void is manifested in the environments that surround him. He’s as empty as the large empty spaces hanging above the group therapy session, as empty as his apartment (lacking color, photographs, or warmth), or as empty as the empty windows that peer into his office from the high-rise across the way. Even the distance between he and his patients attending group therapy seem to accentuate this void and his loneliness.
Message from a Lost Friend
One day, Chris is visited by representatives of a private space program. They play the last communication they received from his best friend, Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), who directs the exploration team around the planet Solaris.
Chris is confronted with a digital representation of Gibarian, larger-than-life, looking down on him from the monstrous LCD screen the size of his wall. (Remember the description of the walls in Fahrenheit 451.) Gibarian, who appears ragged, a bit wild-eyed and mysterious, tells Chris that he needs to come to Solaris right away. Some unexplainable and amazing events are occurring to them, things that Chris would only understand if he came. Chris would be the only person that could rescue his team, because of his experience. For the sake of his friend, Gibarian, Chris agrees to go.
What meets Chris when he arrives at the Solaris space station is disturbing, in more ways than one. Blood stained hand and foot prints lead to the station’s morgue. Two crew members have died; a third crew member vanished; and the security team that was sent to retrieve them was nowhere to be found. Chris found two survivors-- a seemingly deranged recluse by the name of Snow (Jeremy Davis) and the level-headed but mysterious Helen Gordon (Viola Davis). Chris quickly learns that things aren’t right. They are not alone. Snow warns him to lock himself in his room when he goes to sleep. He finds a young boy peering out at him from the main hallway; he chases the boy into Gibarian’s room, only to find that the boy is nowhere to be found. He just disappeared.
And when he attempts to talk to Gordon, she opens the door just wide enough to see him. We hear strange, disquieting sounds coming from within. When he asks if she would like to talk about what is going on, she cries in despair: "There’s no use discussing it with you until it starts happening to you."
What unfolds when Chris goes to bed and starts dreaming is nearly beyond belief and comprehension.
The Mystery of the Planet Solaris
The planet Solaris is masterfully created. It not only holds our interest but it demands it as well. We’re mystified, struck by its cool, luminescent blue glow and its surface that shifts around in crazy currents. Sometimes, it seems just like our basic weather patterns--clouds flow along the current of the jet stream, swirling in and about high and low air-pressure regions. Other times, however, the currents mimic that of a lava lamp, in which the viscous oil-like fluid collides with other oil-like fluid. Solaris is so unique and beautiful that it effects the characters in the film. Snow monitors its changes incessantly on a computer screen; he reacts to it as if it were a living being. And the character Rheya gazes at it, speaking of it as if it is a god–"Surely it must know how I feel."
Solaris is cognizant of the crew. More specifically, it knows the people they dream about, the people they miss, need, or have even been haunted by. It resurrects these people. For Snow, his brother suddenly showed up. For Gibarian, it was his child, Michael. For Chris, he dreams of his fiancé, Rheya, and suddenly she is there.
The notion of things being recreated or brought back to life is something that happens in Stephen King or in horror films. Stanislaw Lem uses these resurrections not to haunt but for philosophical, moral, and ethical purposes. Are these recreations/resurrections real flesh and blood? Are they the same people we knew them to be when they were alive? What is our responsibility towards them? Is their existence a problem or a blessing? Where do they come from? Why are they here?
Without revealing the ending, Chris, Gordon, and Snow are forced to ask these questions.
If our Perceptions of People Took Shape
The Rabbi David Cooper wrote about resurrection, saying that it "is the heralding of a new era, a transformation into a consciousness previously unknown in which reality undergoes a profound change" (page 294, God is a Verb).
Years ago, I lost a friend to leukemia. He was an active 27 year-old. He lifted weights and ate well. He survived through three bouts of the cancer, going in and out of remission twice, before it finally took him. When he went one Saturday morning, he was a skeleton of a man. About a year-and-a-half later, I found myself talking to him in a dream. Since we had attended the Sundance Film Festival, we were standing around in our black clothes. Our wives were sitting on the couch, also conversing. It was a wonderful experience. It was so very good to see him again. What I recall most about his visit was that he looked like he was before becoming ill. Also, we never spoke of his illness or how much his passing affected us. It was as though he was not dead, so why mourn.
That very next day, his wife called me at work. I hadn’t spoken to her since the funeral. As soon as I heard her voice, I replied how amazing it was that she called because I had just dreamt about her husband. She immediately asked: "How did he look?"
I feel that our perceptions of people become our reality of them–we can’t see them any other way even if they might have changed. We tend to judge people solely on what we see on the surface–what they say and how they say it; how they treat others; how they carry themselves; how they deal with situations; etc. But the key is this–we only know them as well as what we see. (Could this be a reason why holy writ encourages us not to judge?)
SOLARIS is an excellent study in what would happen if our perceptions of someone took shape. When Chris goes to sleep and dreams of his fiancee, Rheya, Solaris resurrects her. But this is not the same Rheya. This is Rheya as she existed in Chris’ consciousness; in his memories. There is a scene in which, shortly after he discovers her in his bed, Chris excuses himself to leave the room. Rheya becomes hysterical, begging him not to leave. Chris asks her why she is acting this way. She replies that she doesn’t know why. She just knows that she’s supposed to feel that way.
As we learn more about their past relationship, we see that because Chris perceived Rheya as suicidal, her resurrected self was suicidal. And even though Rheya longs to be her own person throughout the remainder of the movie, she can’t. She’s trapped with the qualities and psychological make-up Chris has granted her. The only memories she has of her life are his. The longer she lives, the more trapped she feels. Finally, she confides in him that she cannot live like this because it is not her; her life is not her choice.
There are only Choices
One of the scenes I love is when Gibarian appears to Chris late at night in his room. "Don't turn on the light," Gibarian commands him as he reaches for the light switch. I was reminded of the visitation of the ghost of King Hamlet, coming back to utter secrets. Though Gibarian was not there to reveal foul deeds, he did offer Chris incredible wisdom-- "There are no solutions; there are just choices."
The thoughtful Deepak Chopra, in his book titled How to Know God, he writes that "...one cannot be certain about...reality. There are no definite events, no river of time that flows from past to present to future. What exists in its place is a rich matrix of possible outcomes. There are infinite choices within every event, and we determine which select few are going to manifest. At the depths of the mind field. where all things exist in seed form as virtual events, it hardly matters which ones eventually sprout. They are no more real than the seeds that didn’t" (page 262).
When Rheya is resurrected, Chris wants to find the answers, even though that goes against the purpose of his mission, as laid down by his friend. Gibarian’s visitation, thus, is a wake up call and leaves Chris with another choice, whether or not he continues trying to solve Rheya’s existence. Maybe Gibarian was alluding to the fact that Rheya choice to exist was not her own but Chris’. And is that right?
What matters, according to Chopra, is that no matter the choice we select, we accept that decision and take responsibility for it. In SOLARIS, it’s interesting that each of the remaining characters are forced to make a final decision. And like human beings are, they act based on the situation at hand and for their own personal need or security–Gordon bases her final decision on the social mores of American culture; Snow bases his on the present–Solaris is all he knows (it is home); and Chris bases his last action on the hope that the journey into the future will forgive him of his past mistakes and heal his present hurt.
In and out of the cacophony of images and conversations of Soderbergh’s SOLARIS weaves a thoughtful and mesmerizing tale about life and death; redemption; the freedom of choice; and the implications of how we perceive one another.
