"Solaris" lite

By Noel Vera

You could say Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris" remake is a brave
project to undertake. You can imagine this to be his attempt to pay
homage to what may well be Andrei Tarkovsky's best-known work, a
massive adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's classic science-fiction novel,
and a science-fiction film classic in its own right.

You also imagine that not a little hubris was involved--"Let's try
outdo Tarkovsky..." you can hear the filmmakers saying, "...and make
some decent box-office on the side!"

Lem's novel--about scientists on a space station orbiting a planet
named Solaris with a possibly sentient ocean--was crammed with
articles and notes on various physical phenomena observed (such as
enormous human figures forming and melting away on the ocean's
surface). A central image in the novel is of the station's huge
library of Solaris lore--volumes upon volumes of theories and facts
and figures accumulated through the years, moldering away and
apparently useless. Lem's "Solaris" is a rich brew of philosophical
themes and psychological details, but the one thing that stayed with
me was the sense Lem gave of the ocean's absolute mystery--of the
impossibility of learning anything meaningful about it, despite some
tantalizing clues, despite the time and effort spent. Solaris, in
effect, represented the limits of human knowledge, of our ultimately
puny attempts to comprehend the universe and, in so doing, conquer
it.

Tarkovsky jettisons most of the novel's intellectual baggage,
inserting a mere sample in the opening scenes of the film, in
recorded lectures listened to by therapist Kris Kelvin (Donatas
Banionis) preparatory to his departure for the space station. While
much of the novel is spent on depicting Solaris' fantastical shapes,
turning the ocean into a major character (THE major character, you
can't help but think) Tarkovsky focuses on Kelvin's relationships
with people--with his father, in whose country home Kelvin lives;
and with his wife, who committed suicide. In lieu of the pervasive
physical presence of the ocean in the novel, you get the pervasive
physical presence of the station above the ocean--oppressively dull
walls, eerily silent corridors, and litter, plenty of litter--
apparently, the scientist manning the station are too preoccupied
with their problems to do much housekeeping.

Haunting images appropriate for a haunted space station--and, in
fact, Solaris has been tormenting the people onboard with "ghosts,"
figures taken from their innermost memories and brought to
unsettling life. Tarkovsky offers us glimpses of some of
these "ghosts," one of them a dwarf; for Kelvin it's the resurrected
figure of Khari, his dead wife (Natalya Bondarchuk). Kelvin's
attempts to deal with Solaris' gift to him takes up the remainder of
both book and film.

Soderbergh's remake is, if anything, a simplification of Tarkovsky's
simplification, from a bloated 165 minutes (fifteen minutes shy of
three hours) to a more manageable 99 minutes. Gone is the sketch of
Kelvin's relationship with his father, and most--practically all,
I'd say--of Lem's speculations on the nature of Solaris. Gone also,
unfortunately, is the atmosphere--from Haunted Space Station to
Futuristic Industrial Chic (post-James Cameron--who also produced
this film--style), with nary a piece of litter in sight. Replacing
all that is a greater emphasis on the failed relationship between
Chris (George Clooney) and wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) Kelvin--to
the point that you suspect Solaris to be some kind of therapy
session created to help bring estranged couples together for a
minimal fee (resurrecting suicides an extra).

Tarkovsky was never in favor of commercial success; "Solaris" is one
of the rare films in science-fiction cinema that actively reflects
this materialist disdain. Soderbergh compensates for the
commercialism of his remake somewhat by retaining some of the
original's contemplative spirit (hence the term some critics used to
describe the film as an example of "Cinema of Contemplation"--which
in my nastier, more ambivalent moods I like to call "Cinema of the
Comatose"). You wonder, though, at all the hand-held footage
(Soderbergh reportedly acted as his own cameraman, under a
pseudonym), pieced together with jump-cuts; Tarkovsky's film is
undoubtedly a vision, but one with a style that rarely calls
attention to itself (except for a few bravura tracking shots);
Soderbergh's remake, in comparison, feels restless, full of neurotic
tics and mannerisms.

As for the ending (skip this paragraph if you haven't already read
the book, seen the original, or sat through the remake), it comes in
varying degrees of optimism: Lem's is perhaps the bleakest, since he
only raises the possibility that Solaris is sentient enough to feel
compassion for Kline's predicament. Tarkovsky holds out a measure
of hope--he strands his hero on an island meant to look like his
parents' country home, in the middle of Solaris itself.
Soderbergh's is the most cheerful--an explicit rejection of reality
in favor of an idealized life, where even fingertips are immune to
carelessly held kitchen knives.

Soderbergh's remake isn't really a bad film--it's intelligently
directed, sensitively acted, and handsomely produced, with a look
that owes little to the original. Yet I prefer Tarkovsky's version--
the way its narrative obtuseness and immense sense of mystery
eventually comes to represent the limits of our understanding as
well. Lem's novel may be the stubbornly intellectual original, but
Tarkovsky's is the more emotional visual equivalent--not a mere
distillation, but an equal, with its own unique strengths.
Soderbergh's version, after all is said and done, feels more like an
afterthought.

(First printed in Businessworld, 4.11.03)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)