Solaris
Well, Steven Soderbergh has finally lost me. I saw Full Frontal, though no review has yet been written because it gave me writer’s block; but while I was watching it I was open-minded and giving him the benefit of the doubt. It was an interesting experiment. I fear that after his Academy-adored one-two punch of Traffic and Erin Brockovich, the Actor’s Director has forgotten how to be the Audience’s Director. I am not saying that our cinema auteurs need to pander to the lowest common denominator, but I am saying that story is still important. While Traffic was not my thing, I could still respect it as a film, and I did enjoy Erin Brockovich, and some of his earlier work, but this movie has officially crossed him off my list.
I was interested in seeing Solaris because the book by Stanislaw Lem seemed to have an interesting idea, though neither myself nor my boyfriend, whose copy I borrowed, could really get through it. Since the book was vexing, I had hoped the film would transcend the difficulties of internal narration and show rather than tell the story. Soderbergh decided to do neither. I could tell by the previews that the studio didn’t know how to market it, since they pushed it like the greatest love story ever told. I gave it Catch it on HBO so at least you can see the nudity and then discuss how annoying the film is.
I don’t want to be one of those critics to is afraid to say I didn’t like something just because it was too confusing to enjoy; I think enjoyment is key to a film. You can enjoy the challenge of picking a narrative out of a mess of non-sequiturs (as in Full Frontal) and you can enjoy seeing George Clooney naked, but that kind of enjoyment is usually secondary to the actual enjoyability of the film as a whole. I did not enjoy Solaris. As a friend wisely described it, “I don’t know whether that was good or not, and I don’t want to see it again to find out.”
Did I enjoy anything? Actually, yes – Jeremy Davies played an extremely engaging and interesting character, one that was great fun to watch and elicited quite a few laughs from the audience. He wasn’t cracking jokes, his character was just incredibly amusing and interesting to watch. The less time spent with Davies is the film’s disadvantage – the rest can’t decide between being a cosmic wrestle (with the quandaries of memory or misremembrance or unforgotten guilt who knows) or being a sci fi thriller. The sole other passenger on the craft orbiting Solaris (Viola Davis, from Far From Heaven) is wide eyed with dire urgency from some sense of dread, but we never get a taste of what is so dreadful.
I saw a pre-release screener, and honestly, I thought they had put the reels up in the wrong order. The film leapt into footage (and nicely shot footage) of this and that, a lone star on a bed with a voiceover. Mountains of information were withheld, as well as explanation why a therapist would be the best choice to save a space station filled with death, and when Dr. Clooney arrives, no answers are given. We eventually figure out that Solaris is the planet around which the station is orbiting. It’s pretty. The only sense of danger is from bloody handprints here and there and one crew member’s total agoraphobia. Yet we are aboard one of the most benevolent ships of death I have ever seen. I don’t mind having to work for it, but I want my work to come to something by the time the credits roll. Call me dense, call me lazy about discovering the story, but don’t call me when you see it and don’t like it.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 11/27/02
Time in minutes 120
Director Steven Soderbergh
Studio 20th Century Fox
