Sometimes, when I go to see a movie, I leave dying to read the book. Usually, it's a good thing; I want to know more about the characters, what they were thinking, what their motivations were. A book has room to take you inside a character's head; in a movie, you have to rely on the actor's ability to convey his innermost thoughts and emotions, sometimes with little more than an eyebrow twitch, or a dramatic pause. Other times, I want to read the book to get the original take on the story. Directors have a tendency to change things to suit themselves, sometimes altering the entire thrust of the story, to make the movie say what they want it to say, which sometimes bears no relation to the author's intent. (Lawnmower Man anyone?)
The third reason I want to read the book is not so good; I want to find out what the heck happened! Sadly, this is the case with Solaris. The plot is pretty simple. Psychologist George Clooney goes to a space station around the planet Solaris in response to a plea from his old friend, who now runs the station. Upon arrival, he finds most of the crew dead, including his friend, and the survivors acting very strangely. Oh yeah, and when he falls asleep, his dead wife is re-incarnated on board the station. How he deals with this makes up the bulk of the movie, except that he never really deals with anything.
The most frustrating part of this movie is that it raises all kinds of interesting ideas about identity, perception, the nature of reality, love, redemption, and life and death, but it never really examines those ideas, only hinting at them, not only leaving them unresolved, but unexplored.
The movie suffers from other flaws as well. The acting is competent, but limited by the script and direction. We never even come close to caring about any of the characters. The plot is inconsistent. When doing fantasy, it is vital to achieve suspended disbelief from your audience. In order to sustain the audience's suspension of disbelief, the main conceit, i.e. re-incarnated loved ones appearing on the space station, must be presented with consistency. When you break the rules to introduce a plot twist, you lose your audiences' trust and any chance of communicating your vision. Solaris does just that, and suffers for it. I could have overlooked it if the twist had brought a new revelation, or a new direction to the movie, but it did nothing of the sort, just propelled the characters along paths they had already chosen.
Another problem was the pacing; this movie is slow. Time that could have been spent exploring some of the ideas raised by the plot is instead wasted on lingering shots of the planet, or the station, or of Clooney asleep. A movie doesn't have to have action to be entertaining, but it must provide something to grab the audience and bring them into its world. A movie without significant action must be character driven. You have to get to know and care for them. In this case, all I cared about was not spilling my coke, because it was filled too full. This is the first movie I've ever seen where the dead coming back to life is boring.
I do want to read the book, and see the original film, since the ideas raised are very intriguing and worth exploring. Unfortunately, this Solaris feels most like a Cliff's Notes version of the real thing.
I saw Solaris yesterday. I was pleased, and found myself willing to forgive the few inconsistencies, and focus on the main theme of the movie, the failed relationship between Kris and Rheya, and his chance to try and correct his past mistakes.
I found the pacing to be just right, lulling me into a calm state, feeling the rush of emotions that Kris was experiencing all the more intensely since there was little else to distract me. I found the pace and quietness of the film created an intimacy between myself and the characters.
I liked the sentiment at the sentiment at the end, that all is forgiven, and the two of them have an eternity to spend together. Of course Kris had to surrender himself to the will of Solaris to reach that state, he had to reach out to his unborn child, letting go of all the hate, guilt, and blame he associated with Rheya over the incident. He had to choose. He had to believe.
I think that each person's visitor was a reflection of that person's core being, that was why Gordon's seemed to torment her, while Snow's violence was met with violence, and why Gibarian ended up taking the way out he did.
I think the book will flesh out the characters more and explore the themes of love, loss, redemption, life, death, and faith in more detail, providing a richer experience. Over all I was satisfied with the movie, which was one of the more emotionally and intelectually stimulating I have seen in a while.
Posted by: skycry on December 9, 2002 8:58 PMSpoiler alert! If you plan on seeing the movie, don't read this until you've seen it.
OK, I'll bury this in a lot of words to prevent it from catching the unwary eye. The premise, at least of this movie, is that your visitor is a dead loved one. Gibarian sees his dead son, Kris his dead wife. We don't know who Gordon's visitor is, but how is Snow's visitor himself? It breaks the chain needed to sustain belief. The worst part of it is that it was totally uneeded. it does nothing to advance either the story, or the ideas behind the story.
I guess I was dissapointed mostly because I saw the potential of the film, potential that wasn't realized. I agree with you though, that the book should fulfill what the movie only hints at. I will be reading it soon.
Posted by: rich on December 9, 2002 10:38 PMI haven't seen the movie. But, I always like to read the book first. That way I can use my imagination to create the scenes and people in my head. If I see the movie first, all I can see is the director's vision, which to me is more interesting to analyze after reading the book to see what he/she thought was significant and how he/she imagined it.
Posted by: SK Bubba on December 10, 2002 9:26 AMIt wasn't Gibarian's son, it was Kris'. Snow's visitor was his twin brother. Kris couldn't go into the light (Solaris) until he had forgiven his wife for killing their unborn child. This unforgiveness had caused her suicide. He couldn't forgive himself for that. Hasn't anyone wandered if Kris was dead the whole time? Was Solaris God or heaven? Hmmm...
Posted by: Rex Mundi on December 10, 2002 3:46 PMis that from the book? Or just your ideas? Why would Snow say that the kid was Gibarian's son if it were Kris's? Although he could represent kris's son symbolically as Kris was falling into Solaris there at the end. Solaris certainly seemed to be representing God throughout the film, which makes Gordon's abject fear more puzzling. What was she guilty of that her visitor was so frightening?
I got the whole redemption through forgiveness thing at the end; I just didn't like the way Soderbergh got there. Snow's visitor being his twin brother would resolve the "cheating" issue, but I wish they would have made that clearer in the movie.
As for Kris being dead the entire time, that was hinted at in his final dream sequence, where his cut finger healed. It also dovetails with his spotty memory, but it leaves the question of who dreamt him wide open.
I like a movie that makes me think; I like it better when it thinks along with me.
Posted by: rich on December 10, 2002 8:24 PMThe Gibarian manifestation claimed "that's not my son". Snow lied because Snow wasn't Snow. He was the manifestation of Snow's brother. He was lying from the get go, trying to cover the murder or murders he'd already commited. Gordon's visitor may well have been someone she'd killed in the past. She seemed pretty gung-ho about killing the manifestations, so hmmmm...
Posted by: Rex Mundi on December 13, 2002 4:39 PMThe book by Stanislaw Lem is an interesting read, partly as an example of somewhat old-fashioned sci-fi, partly as the foundation for the films of the book by Tarkovsky and Soderbergh, and partly for the ideas etc. The characters have been renamed in the movie, but I will use their names to describe the book as well for convenience.
You might think that the films don't have much dialogue and must have left out much of the book. This is only partially true, as the book spends a large amount of the time describing Kelvin's reflections on the 100+ years of scientific research that has been done on the planet Solaris, and what the current manifestations might mean. There isn't an enormous amount of dialogue, and both films really distil what's there. Some elements of the book are: the apparitions started to appear when the station conducted illegal xray experiments on Solaris; Snow wasn't a Solaris copy; Snow and Gordon's apparitions are never seen but seem to terrify the two of them, particularly Gordon; there is no child; the apparitions can become frenzied when separated from their human stimulus, beating down doors etc; the copies appear to be human down to their blood cells, but have a neutrino rather than atom-based sub-structure; and Gibrarian's speech to Kelvin is a dream.
Other interesting info in the book is that Solaris is an ocean planet orbiting a binary sun; where the ocean appears to be a gigantic sentient organism in its own right that has the ability to create shapes on the ocean's surface (organic computing constructs?) and also manipulate the orbit of the planet itself. The question is partly about evolution - is the ocean the end of an evolutionary process where a myriad of lifeforms became one, or simply an example of a process that skipped the stages of human evolution to go from the 'proto-ocean' (from which all life evolved) fairly directly to the sentient ocean.
Bruce
Posted by: Bruce on March 30, 2003 7:09 PM