Solaris

danbert

Does anybody know what the f*ck that was all about?????

Saruman

Saw lit last night on DVD.. mind numbing to say the least.. the whole room slowed down and my bro's Girlfriend talking on the phone was in slow motion... weird stuff... this movie was one to avoid unless your pumped full of caffeine (dont drink it) and watched in the afternoon or morning when you are wide awake.

SweetBirdOfTruth

is more style than substance (but not without substance – more anon), reading like a superior episode of star trek (take, say, that tng episode where they find a 'world' created by a sentient life-force for a crashed astronaut, but it's all fake, based on a novel they found in his pocket, the falsity of memory being the ‘moral’).

couldn't help but take the religious reading of this (well, it's there in the dinner party, them dressed as priests, he mr rational god-is-a-figment-of-man's-imagination, she ms emotional, man-is-a-figment-of-god's-imagination. the throw-away line about the pope being a woman grated, for some reason. such an unnecessary line when you consider how economical the rest of the script tries to be).

so in that reading then, solaris is heaven, a repository (souls are us?) for the souls of the dead (for death shall have no dominion, as the poet kept saying) who can be brought back to ‘life’ by contact with the memory of another (actually, that's not so religious really, more humanist, that we are what others remember us to have been, after we have gone, all we leave behind are memories, everything else decays into dust). but that’s an old sci-fi staple anyway, innit? the idea of mental man, we are creatures of the mind, not corporeal, our bodies just bind us to the earth, we will only ever be free when we are free of them (and then we can live life everlasting happy in an ikea kitchen – deadly cool, i’m so looking forward to that. i take it that hell is fight club then – or is that just purgatory?).

not sure about his own suicide though (when he takes the red pills (it was blue pills he gave to her, no? which would you choose?) and has the delirium of her talking to the kid when she was actually talking to gordon, of there being three of her (or was that just odd editing, like when there seemed to be two of the other fella?), when he sees the gun-shots on the cabin walls) – well it shows the error of my reading for who thought him back to life?

anyway, possibility <irony>(just a hint of a soupcon) </irony> of a depth to it but there's a possibility of depth to the final act of ai (back to sentient beings ‘creating’ a world again) and i'm no fan of spielberg's sci-fi lite and soderberg sails too close to hollywood for my tastes (look at the attention to detail in the technology (loved the phone – and the swivel of the pda’s screen/cover) and fashion) even if he is cleverer than average (the opening psyche session showed that, i liked the way it (could have) referenced 9/11, liked (a liddle) the clear placement of a muslim woman in the group).

initially was thinking of alien(s), but then, that’s what you get when you put totally the wrong man in space (it’s like in armageddon, you know, the world is going to be crushed by an asteroid so you phone red adaire – you’ve got a problem in space so you send a shrink - hello?). by the middle i was thinking orpheus decending into the underworld, or dante chasing after beatrice (and if solaris exponentially expanded as far as earth (it was only about two days beard growth away), well, would we be awed by the numbers brought back - so many, i had not thought death had undone so many? (i’m trying to think of where i read that, a story in which the souls of the dead come back to life – is it gaiman’s sandman stuff? hardly an original/unique idea though, i guess, probly read it in dozens of places.)

anyway. so that's me. soderberg's solaris as a religious film, all about the souls of the dead.

Smeg

Saw it a couple of days ago. First impressions was that the film was seriously boring and long winded. Second impressions were however that the film was really interesting and thought provoking.

This is def. not a film for a lazy night in. You would really need to be awake and attentive while watching.

It is a very good film.

bombidol

spoiler tags you dopes

_CreeD_

I thought it was pretty good, slow and definitely not a popcorn-muncher but it kept you wondering. That said I wouldn't watch it again for a long long time methinks.

simu

Have not seen the film (or the earlier version made in the 70's - reputedly better) but i would advise anyone who likes sci-fi/philosophy to read the book on which it is based by Stanislav Lem. Judging from what ppl have written above tho', seems the film director didn't really "get" what Lem was writing about at all.

Most definitely not a religious book - more about the anthropocentric nature of human thought, our inability to conceive of anything outside our own particular modes of thought.

Fidelis

I rented out Solaris over the weekend & just read some views on it from various threads here on boards and it's quite obvious that most people found it boring.

Must say that I was glued to the screen for the entirety of it. I didn't find that it dragged at all, quite the opposite actually. Whenever the minimalist dialogue stopped, the score was there to keep you company. Terrific music throughout, lovely set & visuals. I thought the acting was great too, especially from Davies & Clooney. I liked the whole story as well, the ending was nice.

vasch_ro

I heartily second everything fidelis wrote
good movie enjoyed it a lot

skipn_easy

I'd agree with fidelis and vasch-ro ... great film. I really enjoyed it the whole way through - stunning visuals, great score, thought-provoking, interesting, and I never felt bored at all during it. That said it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea as I've talked to a lot of people that thought it was utter ****e.

Jimi-Spandex

I thought this was a great film, not boring in the least, in fact I thought it flew by, perhaps a little short even.

I watched the original Tarkovsky version the day before watching this one and if you found this boring or hard to watch don't go near the original. They are both based on the same Stanislaw Lem novel but take different views of it. The Soderbergh version goes for a more emotional view of things, he seems more pre occupied with kelvins relationship with hari(or whatever she's called in the new one) whereas Tarkovsky cares more about the philosophical ramifications of whole Solaris scenario.

I personally prefer the original, I recommend it to anyone who likes 2001 or the remake of Solaris and is willing to pay attention to a film for three hours. The original doesn't spell things out quite as obviously as the remake, be prepared to work at it.

I have been using the word remake referring to the Soderbergh version but this is wrong, it is not a remake. It is just based on the same novel.

Mutz

Your One in it is a Lash! Haven't seen the film.