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| Natascha McElhone and George Clooney look very much in love on this poster for Steven Soderbergh's Solaris |
Based on Pole Stanislaw Lem's (Man from Mars (1946)) 1961 novel that was also adapted with the same title by Russian master director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972, American master filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Haywire (2011)) here sprinkles the mysterious space tale with his own modern sense of style. - He has both written, directed, photographed and edited the film.
Through most of Solaris, audiences are made to suffer in ignorance with depressed or otherwise mentally ill characters. Slowly we gather that the male and female leads, who mysteriously encounter each other in a lost space station near the planet called Solaris, SPOILER have previously lost a child together, and that she has since committed suicide. It follows that she is actually a nonhuman clone, but later it seems that so is he.
- It's all very mysterious, and one of the problems of Solaris is that the film revels too much in its own mysteriousness and incomprehensibility. By hearing Soderbergh talk about the film, - not having read the novel, - I understand that the woman is a reflection caused by the mysterious Solaris planet. This I never got from the film itself.
Apart from George Clooney (The Descendants (2011)), who seems to journey through Solaris in perpetual suffering, Viola Davis (The Help (2011)) plays a depressed co-passenger, while Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan (1998)) impressed me with his acting skills as a mentally deranged person, perhaps, I suspect, inspired by observations of real schizophrenics. The female lead is played by British Natascha McElhone (Californication (2007-14)), and she poses another big problem for me in Solaris. She plays all she can, I believe, but remains an anonymous hair-model like figure in Solaris for me, regrettably.
Far from engaging, Solaris does have some nice cinematography, as is usually the case with Soderbergh's films, where he - as here - is most often his own cinematographer. And the score by Cliff Martinez (Drive (2011)) is withheld but noteworthy.
This unassuming romance space riddle cost an astounding 47 mil. $ to produce and didn't turn in more than 30 mil. $, - which in hindsight doesn't seem that unpredictable, considering its hermetic, incomprehensible romance 'allure'.
It didn't affect Soderbergh professionally, I surmise. He is easily one of the most steadily working feature directors in Hollywood today. I am looking forward to seeing his latest, Behind the Candelabra (2013), which is a Liberace biopic that couples Matt Damon with Michael Douglas!
Related posts:
Steven Soderbergh: Magic Mike XXL (2015) - Lots of fun and skin but still no gay as Mike goes to the convention (cinematographer, editor, producer)
Side Effects (2013) - Modern people screw up in excellent thriller
Behind the Candelabra (2013) - Restraint and extravagance
Magic Mike (2012) - Soderbergh and Tatum score big with cheeky male strip romp
Haywire (2011) - Soderbergh's taut, stylish ensemble actioner is a masterpiece
Contagion (2011) - Soderbergh's global pandemic creep-out
Che Part One - The Argentine (2008) - Soderbergh's sober depiction of the Cuban revolution
Ironically, the people behind Solaris blamed this trailer (among other things) for the film's flop. But truthfully the trailer is only guilty of promising way more excitement than the film actually contains
Cost: 47 mil. $
Box office: 30 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.63 times the cost)
[Solaris premiered 19 November (Los Angeles, California) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place in Nevada, Arizona, Chicago, Illinois and in Los Angeles, California, ending in May 2002. The team behind it struggled with the MPAA, who had first slapped an R rating on it due to Clooney's bared bottom in the film (!), but they succeeded in getting it lowered to a PG-13. The film opened #7 to a 6.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it only declined from there and grossed a paltry 14.9 mil. $ (49.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 2.9 mil. $ (9.7 %) and France with 2.1 mil. $ (7%). Soderbergh returned with K Street (2003., TV-series), Eros (2004, segment) and all by himself with Ocean's Twelve (2004). Clooney returned in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002). Solaris is fresh at 66 % with a 6.5/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
How do you like Soderbergh's Solaris?
Did I miss the point of it?
Or do you also like Tarkovsky's version better?
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