Solaris – 3 out of 5
I kinda/sorta remember Solaris coming out in 2002 when I was
halfway through my college career. I
don’t remember seeing a trailer and I never really knew what it was about—hell,
I didn’t even know till recently that it was based on a book. My knowledge of it was pretty limited. Recently, I was going through the filmography
of Steven Soderbergh and was reminded of this film’s existence when I realized
that he directed it. So, I decided to
give it a shot…it was okay.
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| It's like 2001 but not as confusingly good. (Anyone who tells you that they understood that movie after less than a dozen viewings is lying.) |
Dr. Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is a psychologist who is
approached by a corporation that has a research space station orbiting a planet
named Solaris and they ask for his help after a cryptic message is sent by one
of their scientists; Dr. Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur). Kelvin takes a solo mission to the station
and learns that there are only two surviving members of the crew; Snow (Jeremy
Davies) and Dr. Gordon (Viola Davis), after the rest of the crew died or
committed suicide. That night, Kelvin
learns the horrifying truth of what is happening at the station as he wakes up
to find that his deceased wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) is alive and somehow
on the station.
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| "Our station has hit a tremendous tragedy...someone ate my leftovers I was saving out of the fridge." |
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| Your wife suddenly returns from the dead and she smiles at you like this...not comforting. |
Solaris has a really cool concept and Soderbergh takes a
slow and methodical approach to how the story and its internal mystery unfolds. The film is never doing anything outright
awful or missing any potential hits that are coming its way but it did feel
like it wasn’t embracing it potential or exploring some of the characters deep
enough. The story asks some interesting
questions about how we perceive the ones we love and how our memories can
ultimately shape how we see them and that is definitely the film’s strongest
aspect but the whole tale focuses mostly on Clooney’s character and that starts
to grow thin. I wanted to see more of
the additional characters explored and see what happened to them teased
out. Chris Kelvin’s story is interesting
and thought-provoking but there felt like there was so much more that could
have been shown and explored around him and things that could have given the tale more depth and dimension.
 |
| Is there a genre that Clooney isn't great in? Oh yeah, the superhero action genre. |
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| Jeremy Davies being very Jeremy Davies in this one. |
My disappointments aside, the film is fantastically put
together. It’s a sci-fi film that never
feels too “science fiction-y” so those who aren’t into that genre can get into
it and the cast is great. Clooney does a
great job of leading the charge and the supporting players of Davis and Davies
(sounds like a comedy duo) are tremendous to watch (which is another reason why
I wanted to see more of them). The
overall tone is great but I admitted was hoping for a little more ambiguity
from the story because it definitely, at times, feels too obvious.
 |
| Remember when Suicide Squad was in production and all we heard about was the stupid shit Jared Leto did to get into "character" and the movie came out and he became the worst Joker ever and Viola Davis, who we heard nothing about during production, acted circles around him? My point is Leto sucks and Viola is great. |
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