Review of Solaris (2002) by Amal H — 26 Oct 2011

Seems like the idea of being a remake( or rather reimagination ) of a masterpiece have affected few movies like it affected steven soderberg's Solaris. While Tarkovsky's solyaris and soderberg's solaris both shares Stanislaw Lem's novel as source material , it feels like both directors were inspired by the book to create something truly cinematic rather than just end up illustrating the text.

On Stanislaw Lem's has admitted in his personal website, the true intention of the book was to to propound what an Encounter with something truly Alien might be like. But both Soderberg and tarkovsky seems to have drawn in to the human drama attached to the work and movies works largely as psychological drama rather than a science fiction( which is more than often what true science aims to achieve). Soderberg's solaris is a self aware work of art, somewhat similar to works like begman's persona(I am not comparing the stylisitc aspects of the films here but the rather the overall effect). Inexplicable scenarios happens yet the audience and the movie accepts them without questions, because we are hooked more to the metaphors implied by the construct rather than the construct itself.

Solaris builds up a similar form like many of the great works of scence fiction. It uses the liberties of a science fiction universe to conjure up a situation completely alien to humanity and then introduces normal human beings into this world, testing their humanity, constantly questioning aspects of our psyche that makes us human. The science fiction universe in solaris the movie is spent mostly in a spacecraft inspecting a planet named solaris. Solaris differs from a normal planet in one aspect-It observes the minds of the humans close to it, finds what is it they have lost or missed most and materializes the loss back to them, which is almost always another human close to us taken away by death. The person who we miss most, brought back to us in flesh and blood, perfect in everyway we imagined them to be. It seems almost like a dream come true as a possibility , but the moment a human is put in the situation it feels like the materialization of a nightmare. The entire movie is about the way different crew members within the ship responds to this, almost like the way characters in bergman's sevent seal confronts and responds to the materialization of death. Once we get past the initial fear of the materialization, what happens next is a desperate urge to protect it, to realise whatever it is that we regret by losing them an turning life back to the way it was supposed to be. And then just as we start finding joy in the illusion we grow conscious about the nature materialisation; it can never be the person that has been lost to us. Because whatever has been created is just an image of the person, everything that we know about a person and this draws a parallel to the way human reationship works in the real world- we never actually understands a person in true sense. The film explores the limit of human empathy like no other at this point, how well could you know or empathise even the person whom you love most in this world. Could we ever really know what or how another person feels at any point of our lives? All we does is imagine us in their position and think how we may have felt if we were them and all that we know about a person is in real whatever we want to see in them. The question of the others the movie poses to us at this point is revelatory enough to drive us paranoid on knowledge of the self and therein lies the genius of the film. The film starts by questioning what we know about everything beyond our self and ends by confirming our hopelessness in the knowledge of the self.

Soderberg has always been a director who explores the more styistic aspects of storytelling in cinema and I have always felt he would have been acknowledged a greater filmmaker had he belonged to another generation like the new wave where style was accepted as the content.But this one like many great masterpieces has confirms the notion that storytelling indiscernibly aiding the story is what makes a movie truly great. There are moments in with the present juxtaposed with the past again justaposed with fantasy, all so carefully wrapped up by clever editing where the whole sequence goes brings out meaning beyond the sum of the images. Soderberds choice of images, the detached quality of the visuals and the music all places the viewer in a meditative state but the movie at the same time is very legible, uncompromising and committed to the storytelling that one doesnâ(TM)t need to be a very committed cinephile to be seduced by it. I think itâ(TM)s a masterpiece without doubt,though imdb rating disagrees with me.