Review of Solaris (2002) by I Don't Know W — 16 Oct 2011

Thursday, September 29, 2011.

(2002) Solaris.

SCIENCE FICTION.

(Contain Plot Spoliers).

Says that it's based on Stanislaw Lem book, but it looks like Soderbergh's new version upon watching Andrey Tarkovskiy's 1972 version of the same name. The movie starts off when George Clooney as Chris Kelvin has just lost his wife, Natascha McElhone as Rheya and is in the stages of getting over it. He receives a message from old associates about an assignment of being sent to a space station orbiting close to a planet called Solaris! Within' an hour later and seeing illusions of his wife created by Solaris, we soon learned that the reason she commited suicide was because she was expecting, and Chris wanted this to be discussed with him first before any decisions can be made motivating him to abandon her and upon coming back to see her, she was already dead, taking her own life!

As radical as Soderburg wanted to become, he decides to take liberty and somehow change the ending into the beginning. Assuming that theirs a rotation happening! After director Soderburgh made successes out of remaking Traffick from the UK mini-series Traffik, and of course Ocean's 11, it'd make sense to him attempting to do this again. By watching this, you can tell Clooney had a say in this film too, since he doesn't advocate any children in his personal life including marriage. And I knew I didn't like this movie, but I couldn't figure out why this is nothing more than a poor cheap reproduction of the 1972 original, whereas the movie assumes viewers are well aware about "Solaris's" functions way before Chris accepted this kind of mission, it was never properly explained about Solaris's capabilities until his illusioned wife became appearent, with viewers asking more questions than viewers receiving answers, such as "What is Solaris's main intention?" or "Is he ever sorry for leaving Rheya in an extremely delicate situation?", and the other question, "Is Chris's decision to remain on the Space Station, was that to justify his actions before Rheya took her own life". It was those questions as well as more that have viewers scratching their heads, and not worth going to the movies for, rather looking like a tv movie special than anything!

2 out of 4.