Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Steven Soderbergh
Starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis
USA, 2002
Ever since Steven Soderbergh had a double-whammy at the 2001 Oscars with Erin Brockovich and Traffic, he’s had a strong following of mainstream viewers who look to him as the Great New Auteur, a gifted young director they can esteem in the way Hitchcock and Spielberg have been. With Solaris, he returns to his film-nerd roots and brings along frequent collaborator George Clooney for an exercise in Hollywood defiance.
Soderbergh is working with old science fiction material, once touched by the brilliant Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The original mysticism may not be fully retained, but this is a different movie, one that reaches an equilibrium between mind-boggling meditation and the romantic psychosis that draws the audience in.
Though we may have counted on sci-fi for escapism in the past, Solaris is too insular to be visually astonishing and too ponderous for an adrenaline rush. The movie locks us in a space device with four actors and, until a wonderfully edited sequence towards the end of the film, the approach is reminiscent of theater. As the cinematographer, Soderbergh’s framing makes his cast as vulnerable as they would be on a stage, and he trusts them in their space. There’s no noise to support the actors by distracting the audience; the soundtrack is spare, suggestive of Ingmar Bergman’s glacial chamber dramas.
George Clooney, one of the great presences in Hollywood movies, has been deglamorized for the role of a psychiatrist in outer space, mourning the death of his wife. The skin on his face sags slightly with age, and his forehead furrows with puppy-dog anguish. Sometimes I didn’t know whether to take him seriously; Clooney has been our Sinatra and our Clark Gable—a film personality of playful, sleazy infallibility—but now he’s droopy with regret and on the verge of insanity, mimicking the humble Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. Often he barely gets by on the audience’s respect for him as one of the few superstars taking chances at the box office.
The real marvel is Natascha McElhone, who defies expectations as a performer of strong, emotional physicality. Her large saucer eyes make up for Soderbergh’s European-film affectations. There are times when Solaris lets you down, when the dialogue sinks to soap opera lows and the thematic demands stretch beyond Soderbergh’s capabilities. It certainly can’t match A.I., Minority Report, or even 1997’s underrated Contact for complex genre entertainment. But however derivative the languorous mood is, the movie manages to leave an impression and a sense of cinematic permanence.
By Andrew Chan [NOVEMBER 30, 2002; ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER]