From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 3 21:36:51 1998 From: darnold@Xexecpc.com (David M. Arnold) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Solaris (1972) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 21 Mar 1998 05:59:25 GMT Organization: Exec-PC BBS Internet - Milwaukee, WI Lines: 128 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6evkvt$iqc$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer29.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 890459965 19276 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #11583 Keywords: author=arnold X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer29.u.washington.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:10739 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1813 Solaris (1972) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky As a laserdisc collector I have learnt that often it doesn't pay to be impatient. Sometimes an out-of-print disc gets re-released and becomes readily available again. Sometimes this is worth waiting for. This has happened to me with "Dune" this past winter, and it just happened again with "Solaris". When I first tried to obtain a copy of "Solaris", it was only available from the "Collectible and Out-of-print" department of my laserdisc supplier, for $150.00. As a re-release, it may now be had, new and sealed, for much, much less. Critic Penelope Houston said of "Solaris" that it was "Russia's answer to 2001: A Space Odessy". Completed in 1972, the film comes from an era in which it seemed that nearly everything done in the West resulted in (or, was the result of) a Russian response. Like "2001", "Solaris" explores the possibilities of Alien Contact. Unlike "2001", it does so with a deep emphasis on humanity. The story follows a scientist, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), who is a pecialist in space psychology. He has been assigned to get to the bottom of the peculiar goings-on at the Solaris space station. Solaris is in orbit around an alien planet that is completely covered by an ocean. The space station, designed for an expedition of 80+ people is now inhabited by only three. Kelvin views the film of a deposition made by Burton (Vladislav Dvorjetzki), a pilot who flew a rescue mission near the alien ocean's surface. The pilot reported seeing strange things, including a giant, animated statue of a boy whom he recognized as the dead son of a colleague. The prevailing view of the scientific panel that heard Burton's deposition is that Burton was suffering from overwork; there is a minority view that the alien ocean may be organic, sentient, and capable of communicating telepathically. Kelvin wraps up his terrestial affairs in a bittersweet scene with his parents, and travels to the Solaris station. There, he discovers that one of the three remaining crew members, his old buddy Gibarian (Sos Sarkisyan) has committed suicide after recording a puzzling message intended for Kelvin. The remaining two crew members Snouth (Jueri Jaervet) and Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) are secretive and shut themselves up in their labs. Kelvin becomes aware of other presences aboard the station. Snouth and Sartorius explain that the "guests" have been appearing for some time. Kelvin soon meets another guest, in the form of his dead wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) who also committed suicide several years earlier. Kelvin learns that the guests have odd physical characteristics. He tricks Hari into entering a transit capsule and blasts her into space. She reappears. He locks her in his quarters. She escapes by bashing down the door, critically lacerating herself in the process. The wounds heal before his eyes. Despite these oddities, Kelvin believes (or, wants to believe) that the soul of his dead wife inhabits the body of the "guest" that has taken on her form. Kelvin has received a rare gift: The opportunity to redress some wrongs that resulted in the loss of a loved one. Eventually, Kelvin comes to the conclusion that the guests are forms emanating from the alien ocean. Whether the ocean is capable of materializing matter, or is merely inducing perceptions in the minds of the crew is not made clear (I prefer to believe the latter), but the guests are as real to the crew as a brick wall and just as hard to ignore. The crew rig up an experiment in which they transmit Kelvin's brain waves to the planet below. The experiment nearly kills him, but when he recovers he discovers that the "guests" are gone. And, in a final scene that is beautiful, moving, and joyous, the ocean opens up to Kelvin for First Contact on a very intimate level. "Solaris" is based on Stanislaw Lem's novel of the same name. Like the best of speculative fiction, "Solaris" uses fantastic situations for observations on mundane human conditions. After so many years of anthropomorphic humanoid aliens in "Star Wars" and and on "Star Trek", it is startling to contemplate what alien intelligence might REALLY be like. The alien life form in "Solaris" is a single, global life form. Or, perhaps a global colony with a single intellect. Or, maybe something totally different. We see the Solaris crew grappling to understand this intelligence, we see them consider blasting the planet with lethal radiation (the standard, human knee-jerk reaction to the unknown). And we seem them finally reconcile themselves to it. Many science-fiction films abandon the human aspect in favor of futuristic gadgetry and fantastic settings. "Solaris" presents the deepest view of Humanity of any science-fiction film I have seen. Tarkovsky purposely puts the standard sci-fi accoutrements in the background to focus on the characters' humanity. And, the interpersonal relationships between the characters are more complex, more complete, and have more depth of feeling that is standard for the science fiction genre. And, speaking of humanity, the film is a revelation to me on another level. I had grown up with the usual Cold War propaganda about the Evil Empire behind the Iron Curtain. Now, I view this film, and I see ordinary people dealing with ordinary human issues of love, death, fear, and understanding: This drives home to me how wrong that propaganda was. Our government, our System, was preparing us for conflict with the Soviet Union using traditional techniques to dehumanize the enemy in our eyes. This film reinforces how universal the human condition is, despite political boundaries or nationalities. It's ironic that this film, from the peak of the Cold War, can be such a powerful bridge between cultures. Andrei Tarkovsky was a brilliant, visual filmmaker. His shots are composed with layer upon layer of meaning. "Solaris" features Tarkovsky's trademark of switching between color and black-and-white. More than one critic has called him a "visual poet". The scenes of the alien ocean are breathtakingly beautiful. However, anyone expecting a science-fiction adventure will be disappointed. This film is reflective, it is contemplative. And, the science-fiction setting is merely a backdrop for a film for which the primary emphasis is speculation on deeper human issues. Image Entertainment's laserdisc of Solaris is letterboxed, in Russian with English subtitles. (This is one foreign-language film I wish had been dubbed. I know enough French and German to pick up dialogue in these languages with the help of subtitles, and I enjoyed listening to the musical, tonal Vietnamese language in "Scent of Green Papaya". But, the Russian language is inscrutable to me and not all that pretty to listen to. Subtitles miss nuances of dialogue and distract from Tarkovsky's wonderful images.) Image has re-relased the disc in their "Lasers for Less" category: Collectors should be advised to get it while they can. Review copyright (C) 1998 David M. Arnold. All rights reserved. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- David M. Arnold darnold@Xexecpc.com To reply via EMail, replace "Xexecpc" with "execpc" in the address above. -------------------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 26 14:48:45 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!wn3feed!135.173.83.25!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Ted Prigge" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Solaris (1972) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 22 May 1998 21:39:07 GMT Organization: None Lines: 128 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6k4r9r$eb1$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer33.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 895873147 14689 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12534 Keywords: author=prigge X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer33.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:11700 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1914 SOLARIS (1972) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge Director: Andrei Tarkovsky Writers: Friederich Gorenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky (based on the novel by Stainislaw Lem) Starring: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Jüri Järvet, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Sos Sarkissian, Vladislav Dvorjetzki Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" was advertised as "Russia's answer to '2001'" when it first came out in 1972, bringing many people to believe that this was the film that held the answers to the film, that expanded and made sense out of it. This is completely untrue once you see the film, although one could see that the two films have many things in common: they're both, what some people call, "cinematic poems;" both deal with space and alien intelligence in more reserved and complex fashions; and both are leisurely paced with long periods of silence and little going on in terms of action. But this is where the films' similarities end. After all, "2001" dealt with the dehumanization of man; "Solaris" takes the opposite view, showing the humanity of man. Instead of dealing with the way technology has crippled evolution, and turned us into inhuman droids, "Solaris" takes on an independent from "2001" theme: the way that memories haunt us, and the way that human contact is only a form of perception. The film doesn't try to be a "Russian '2001'"; it tries to be a completely different film. "Solaris," based on a science fiction novel by Stainislaw Lem, deals with what would probably be a trite episode of "Star Trek" (pick a version): a space station hovers over a planet called Solaris that is filled completely with an ocean. It is believed that the ocean is the brain of the planet, and that the ocean is basically the alien lifeform. But some people who have come back from the station claim that they saw visions that materialized and haunted them, and all but three scientists remain there when the story begins. In the film's opening scene, we are introduced to Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), a psychologist/cosmonaut who has been chosen to go to the space station to discover what has happened and make a decision to either continue working at Solaris or leave (which means they may destroy the planet). After a 40 minute introduction to Kris, the plot, and to his family, including his dying father (Nikolai Grinko), Kris gives a heart-felt goodbye, and he's off to the station. Upon arriving there, he discovers that his one friend who worked there, Gibarian (Sos Sarkissian), has committed suicide, and has left him a bizarre video message that sort of explain his actions. He also finds the other two scientists - Snauth and Sartorious (Jüri Järvet and Anatoli Solonitsyn, respectively) - acting really weird and reclusive. Soon enough, Kris sees weird images, such as his wife from years ago, Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk), who committed suicide years ago, who then materializes and tries to live life with him like it was before. Of course, she's not the real Khari as much as it is a materialization thereof. The fake Khari is unable to recall any memories that the real Khari had, and merely looks just like her and perhaps even acts a bit like her. However, she is only able to live when she is in his presence, or else she dies or commits suicide, only to come back to life shortly afterwards. She soon becomes Kris' second chance, and he soon begins to think of her as an entirely different person than the real Khari, given a chance to love again. The film deeply explores these themes, and actually goes beyond the realm of being merely a cool sci-fi flick, becoming an existential exploration of humanity and the ways that memories can be frightening and painful, but also can be soothing and warming. Watching Kris lie with his dead wife's fake "guest" all day while the other scientists complain that he isn't doing anything is one of the saddest and unnerving things in cinema because after all, don't we have a point in our lives we wish we could re-live so that we could take as much advantage of it? It's the fact that this film evokes universal deep emotions and does it without insulting our intelligence that makes this a truly haunting experience. Tarkovsky has been called a "cinematic poet" by so many critics that I won't even try and be original by saying that he is. But I will say that he is definitely one of the best directors of mise-en-scene and shot development that I have ever seen, up there with Kubrick, Welles, Ophuls, and Bergman. Shots aren't there to just show the story but are crafted to evoke deep feelings, and give a sense of hypnotic mysticism. The opening shot of the reeds flowing in the water is a gorgeously simple shot, and it's the simplicity that really makes the shots the most effective. In fact, everything else has a very minimalistic yet extremely deep feel to them, noted as early on in the simple opening credits with Bach's "F Minor Choral Prelude" playing somberly in the background, giving the film its unique feel. Tarkovsky also tells his story at a very leisurely pace, much like, say, Kurbick. I imagine that the story by Lem is perhaps 100 pages, if that, but Tarkovsky turns it into a 167-minute film, filled with long shots, extremely long scenes of very little going on, and various other techniques to make everything last longer than a typical director would allow. Yet all of these never result in boredom, and the entire film has a hypnotic feel to it. You know the kind of long scenes where very little happens, and the actors speak in long, hushed tones, and you just sit there, staring at it, afraid to breathe, waiting for the director to screw up and ruin the experience? These kinds of shots, filled with all sorts of complex layering that requires complete audience attention, seem to be Tarkovsky's forte. While the science fiction and special effects take a back-seat to the themes and ideas postulated by the film, this film nevertheless is really cool to look at. The space station itself is a pretty atmospheric locale, and the white background of Kris's chambers creates a cool-looking and almost lonely feeling for the disturbed character. We never see much of the technology though (it works here), and we only get glimpses of the planet they're on, seeing that everything is a gorgeously wavy ocean. The cinematogaphy is absolutely gorgeous, perfectly accenting Tarkovsky's complex shots, and making this just one of the better-looking films in film history. The final shot of "Solaris" is one of the most haunting final shots in film history, bringing the film's themes and ideas to a dramatic and poignant close, and also allowing some very heart-felt emotion to pour in. It's the fact that we can all (probably, I hope) identify with Kris's connection to the past that makes "Solaris" a real experience, not only in the cinematic sense of the word, but also in the emotional one. We all have done something that we regretted afterwards, and there's at least one moment we wish we could live over again with the knowledge we have today. That's what "Solaris" is about. I'm not knocking other sci-fi films that deal with general fear and horror (like the "Alien" series), but because "Solaris" dives deep into the questions of humanity, and puts that focus in the forefront, it is, along with "2001," the best science fiction film ever made. MY RATING (out of 4): **** Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 18 22:55:41 2003 From: Bob Bloom Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Solaris (2002) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:01:00 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 35469 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 817061 X-RT-TitleID: 1118327 X-RT-SourceID: 872 X-RT-AuthorID: 1363 Summary: r.a.m.r. #35469 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 47 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!newsfeed1.eu.ignite.net!newsr1.ipcore.viaginterkom.de!newsfeed.stueberl.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7300 rec.arts.sf.reviews:631 SOLARIS (Fox Home Entertainment): This American remake of the classic Soviet science fiction epic, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, drew mixed reaction when released in 2002. People either loved it or failed to grasp or appreciate it. Available now on DVD, you get a second chance to experience this cerebral undertaking, written and directed by Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh, and starring George Clooney. The close confines of the space station and the intimacy of the story are amplified when watching from the more confined space of a home than a movie theater. The extras are few, an HBO "Making of ..." special plus a featurette entitled, "Solaris: Behind the Planet," which features Soderbergh and Clooney. Also in the package is the original screenplay, which was altered during production. One of the more interesting extras is the commentary track by Soderbergh and producer James Cameron. It is a most informative and interesting to listen to two intellectual filmmakers discuss how — and why — this version of Solaris is so short and sparse. In fact, if you've seen the movie, watch it first with the commentary track. If not, and you have the time, first watch Solaris, then go back and rerun it but with the track. It will increase your appreciation for this overlooked gem. Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bbloom@journalandcourier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on movies. Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom ========== X-RAMR-ID: 35469 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 817061 X-RT-TitleID: 1118327 X-RT-SourceID: 872 X-RT-AuthorID: 1363 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Sep 18 22:55:43 2003 Path: news.island.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!feed.news.nacamar.de!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.news2me.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-04!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: John Ulmer Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Solaris (2002) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 21:49:18 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 35552 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1188683 X-RT-TitleID: 1118327 X-RT-SourceID: 1382 X-RT-AuthorID: 6769 X-RT-RatingText: 1/5 Summary: r.a.m.r. #35552 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 70 Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7377 rec.arts.sf.reviews:637 SOLARIS Rating: 1 out of 5 REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER I don't think anyone can say that Steven Soderbergh hasn't broadened his range of directorial efforts. We've had horror ("Out of Sight"), drama ("Erin Brockovich"), gritty realism ("Traffic"), comedy ("Ocean's Eleven"), and now romance in "Solaris," a film that blew me out of the water - in terms of I was so surprised it sucked. I think this may be the very first film that Steven Soderbergh made that is bad - followed by that stinky "Collinwood" movie. It is a nod towards Stanley Kubrick, but most of the film - especially sequences like the docking ship - just seem like hopeless rip-offs. James Cameron was originally going to write and direct this film, but then Soderbergh jumped on board so Cameron produced it. I wish they had let him write and direct it. Not only would it have been much more...hmm...how should I put it...INTERESTING, it would also be about ten times more meaningful than this sorry mess. The film (based upon a novel and previous film titled "Solaryis") takes place sometime in the future, when a pshrink named Chris Klein (George Clooney) is sent to a space station on the planet Solaris to rescue a crew of space explorers. Once there, he realizes why no one wants to leave. Chris' dead wife comes back to him in the space station - she looks real, she feels real, she acts real - but she is undoubtedly an image from his memory, extracted by the mysterious planet. Soon he realizes that he cannot take her back to earth, and he must cope with the fact that she must be destroyed. But she seems so real he refuses to do so. Oh my, the suspense, the suspense. What an intriguing idea we have, completely wasted with an incompetent script and style of direction. The characters act weird throughout. For example, when Chris first arrives at the space station and finds people dead, he also finds a survivor named Snow. Chris doesn't seem to ask many questions. He asks what happened, and the Snow character (who is also very weird) doesn't answer correctly. Chris just kind of walks away, and finds another survivor. Once again, he gets no answers. So what does he do? He goes to sleep. Everyone in this movie just acts weird. I can't describe it in words - they just don't act right. Even the humans. This may very well be George Clooney's most washed-out performance to date. And the actor who played Snow, Jeremy Davies, is one of the worst actors I have ever seen. He plays the exact same characters (notice the similarities to his character in "The Million Dollar Hotel" to his character in "Solaris"). In fact, "Solaris" is a lot like "The Million Dollar Hotel." I hated that movie with a personal vengeance. On the DVD commentary track for "Solaris," James Cameron said, "If I had made it there would be a lot more car chases, more gunfights." Quite honestly, I wish there were. Cameron would have made this film interesting, with or without violence and extravagant special effects, even. Soderbergh simply makes a melodramatic snoozer that is as boring as it is odd and ridiculous. Copyright, 2003, John Ulmer ========== X-RAMR-ID: 35552 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1188683 X-RT-TitleID: 1118327 X-RT-SourceID: 1382 X-RT-AuthorID: 6769 X-RT-RatingText: 1/5