by Ben » Wed Nov 27, 2002 8:02 pm
Impressive from the outset simply because it was allowed to get made, Soderbergh's take on Solaris is a slickly, deliberately-presented trip to a strange, silky world of mystery and unknown power which has the capability of bringing a man's past back to haunt him and force him to realize what the true meaning of Christmas is about, or something like that.
In fairness, it's really quite immoral to see a movie immediately after watching critically-hailed masterpiece it is intending to remake. Particularly when said masterpiece is about ten hours long, and the remake is little longer than a "double-shot" of The Cosby Show on Nick @ Nite. But, for starters, this movie was TOO SHORT.
That being said, what scant minutes of film are here for the offering are quite good. What it lacks in memorable images (such as the original's waving underwater reeds, and of course the very last shot in the movie) it compensates for with innumerable well-done *pieces*, 30-second snippets of finely crafted celluloid which mask the fact (much as the first movie did) that this is a story which basically would take about 90 seconds for someone to describe to you fully in person.
What the film lacked, in my opinion, is the time and focus needed to convey a strong message, which the first movie excelled at. One of the original's most stirring pieces of dialogue is Professor Snouth explaining that "We don't want other worlds, we want mirrors." That same line reappears here, but as an afterthought on a background viewscreen, off to the side of the screen, out of focus.
We see Clooney go to Solaris (stop here if you absolutely want to know nothing about the plot), find his dead wife, get all googly-eyed over her, get all regretful about the past, and then get to the end of the movie, but the message coming from that whole bit ("be nice to your wife", or "call your mother", as I mentioned about the first movie) needs a little more context to make it all the more significant. To wit, the message of the first movie is, to be more exact, "call your mother instead of spending all your damn time building rocket ships to explore outer space, you simpleton." The last half of that message is unclear in this presentation.
But enough with the bad, there's more than enough good to compensate. The shots of Solaris. The quirky (if one-note) performance of Davies. The battle between present and past, as we flash back and forward to Clooney's old and new relationship with his wife. And the confounding ending, full of sound and fury, and signifying something, but we're not quite sure, as this version takes a divergent path from the well-worn, well-appreciated ending of the Tarkovsky film. Perhaps less a "remake" than a "reinterpretation".
And I can't see anything wrong with that.
NEEDS LESS CLOONEY ASS, however.
Impressive from the outset simply because it was allowed to get made, Soderbergh's take on Solaris is a slickly, deliberately-presented trip to a strange, silky world of mystery and unknown power which has the capability of bringing a man's past back to haunt him and force him to realize what the true meaning of Christmas is about, or something like that.
In fairness, it's really quite immoral to see a movie [i]immediately[/i] after watching critically-hailed masterpiece it is intending to remake. Particularly when said masterpiece is about ten hours long, and the remake is little longer than a "double-shot" of The Cosby Show on Nick @ Nite. But, for starters, this movie was TOO SHORT.
That being said, what scant minutes of film are here for the offering are quite good. What it lacks in memorable images (such as the original's waving underwater reeds, and of course the very last shot in the movie) it compensates for with innumerable well-done *pieces*, 30-second snippets of finely crafted celluloid which mask the fact (much as the first movie did) that this is a story which basically would take about 90 seconds for someone to describe to you fully in person.
What the film lacked, in my opinion, is the time and focus needed to convey a strong [i]message[/i], which the first movie excelled at. One of the original's most stirring pieces of dialogue is Professor Snouth explaining that "We don't want other worlds, we want mirrors." That same line reappears here, but as an afterthought on a background viewscreen, off to the side of the screen, out of focus.
We see Clooney go to Solaris (stop here if you absolutely want to know nothing about the plot), find his dead wife, get all googly-eyed over her, get all regretful about the past, and then get to the end of the movie, but the message coming from that whole bit ("be nice to your wife", or "call your mother", as I mentioned about the first movie) needs a little more context to make it all the more significant. To wit, the message of the first movie is, to be more exact, "call your mother instead of spending all your damn time building rocket ships to explore outer space, you simpleton." The last half of that message is unclear in this presentation.
But enough with the bad, there's more than enough good to compensate. The shots of Solaris. The quirky (if one-note) performance of Davies. The battle between present and past, as we flash back and forward to Clooney's old and new relationship with his wife. And the confounding ending, full of sound and fury, and signifying [i]something[/i], but we're not quite sure, as this version takes a divergent path from the well-worn, well-appreciated ending of the Tarkovsky film. Perhaps less a "remake" than a "reinterpretation".
And I can't see anything wrong with that.
NEEDS LESS CLOONEY ASS, however.