Simply A Masterpiece

Good movie but grossly overrated

Awesome Movie

As Good As It Gets

Solaris(2002) is a rare example of a remake being every bit as good as it's predecessor, and in some areas exceeding Tarkovsky's 1972 version. Solaris is adapted from Polish author Stanislaw Lems novel. The film centres around Chris Kelvin(George Clooney) a troubled psychologist sent to a distant research space station, orbiting a peculiar planet called Solaris. He's sent there to investigate strange occurrences going on with the crew, as they're experiencing possible delusions of people they loved who've passed away, coming back to life.Steven Soderbergh writes and directs this adaption, which helps give the film a singular vision. Where I feel this film improves upon Tarkovsky's version, is that it explores the emotional isolation and instability of the main character in more detail. Through the duration of the film, you see the toll it takes on Chris mentally and physically, in a way that i never got from the original film. Another aspect I really liked was the cold, strange detachedness that all the characters exhibited. The long pauses during mid conversation, the empty glances, all help to sell the eerie, uncanny atmosphere of the film, at some-points during the film it felt like it was directed by David Lynch.Something the screenplay also does that i found impressive, was that it gave the characters legitimate reasons for their actions. This is something rare in genre films, usually someone does something stupid or unrealistic to further the plot along. Here the characters motives are fully realised, and you can understand and even empathise the choices they make, even if they have negative consequences.Everybody in the film gives fantastic performances. George Clooney has never better. He gives genuine emotional intensity, especially in scenes with Natascha McElhone, who plays his on screen wife Rheya, that has somehow reincarnated aboard the space station. She gives a fantastic, unsettling performance of someone who's unsure of who they really are. Is she a living, breathing organism or a ghost living through someones memories. Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis round out the cast as two survivors aboard the station. They both give outstanding supporting performances, and their their opposing view points act as counter weights to Chris's emotional contradictions.At 1 hour 40 minutes the film is a whole hour shorter then the original film. Whilst this helps to streamline the pacing, it does end up losing some of the more deep philosophical depth Tarkovsky brought to the original. The original film also had better cinematography and set design, the space station felt generic and bland in this film. Where-as Tarkovsky's version was dirty, rundown and felt lived in. These are only a couple of minor gripes that I had with this film. Over-all Solaris(2002) met and exceed my expectations. Solaris is one of the best remakes around. It's a film that has it's own singular vision, that also adds upon the original, rather then just replicating it.

I have both this and Tarkovsky's version of Stanislaw Lem's novel. I found both of them to be somewhat of a trial, although for slightly different reasons. Both are slow, and unless you are easily confused and generally clueless, they don't actually have much of a mystery to them because the secret of the "mystery" is kind of obvious very early on. Where this one fails compared to the 1972 version is that the science fiction is merely a shallow vehicle for a rather stodgy and slow treatment of a doomed romance. There's no actual science in the story at all. It's full of rather obvious logical flaws which distract from the story. There's also little to no science fiction in this version, since it revolves almost entirely about a lonely man's inability to deal with the loss of the difficult and rather fay woman he loved; the science fiction, such as it is, merely provides a pretty backdrop and an excuse for a series of dull flashbacks to the highlights of their relationship. Where the modern remake scores over Tarkovsky's film is that it's about an hour shorter, which means you can get it over and done with that much quicker. On the balance I found the modern take to be more accessible, the only problem being the lack of interest in what you are able to access.To sum up: if you're a science fiction fan rather than a fan of romantic drama, don't bother. If you're a fan of slow, dense, intense romantic dramas with troubled characters who sit staring into space for unreasonable amounts of time, and with stories which have pretensions of being intellectual, then you will probably enjoy this.The seven points I'm giving it are for a good cast who put in decent performances despite the stodgy material, and for fairly decent production values. I feel like I'm being overly generous and it actually doesn't deserve more than 6 points, but what the hell. At least they tried hard.

There are some interesting themes in the film - and in many ways, this is an outer space version of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind with a few Vanilla Sky time-line distortions mixed in for good measure. Each of these three films was exploring similar ideas at around the same time.Who hasn't butchered a fantastic relationship and wished there was a way to go back and make better decisions?Solaris resonated with me in that I found it to be about second chances with a love that went from perfect to tragic, and the idea that what may have accelerated the deterioration may have as much to do with people's perceptions of one another as much as the situation itself.As for the suggestions that there are too many unexplained occurrences throughout the movie, such is life.Peace Richard

One of the most boring movies I've ever tried to watch. I initially put it on mid-afternoon one day and found myself asleep within 17 minutes. In fact, it was so tedious and exhausting that I slept for the next 12 hours straight and still I awoke feeling groggy and disoriented. I tried watching it again the next day and was unable to pay attention to the story or the characters. That's the key problem of this film, the entire cast could suddenly die and it still wouldn't matter. It's just a horribly boring film with boring, undeveloped characters and nothing going on. I made it about 40 minutes through and then had to turn it off.