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From Academy Award Winners®
James Cameron and Steven Soderbergh
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SYNOPSIS:
SOLARIS is a love story rich with emotion and
mystery, set within a science fiction framework. The story,
which takes place sometime in the future, opens as Dr. Chris
Kelvin is asked to investigate the unexplained behavior of a
small group of scientists aboard the space station Prometheus,
who have cut off all communication with Earth.
Kelvin undertakes the journey after watching a communiqué
from his close friend Gibarian, the mission’s commander,
who seeks Kelvin’s help aboard the Prometheus for reasons
Gibarian is unwilling – or unable – to explain.
Keenly aware that his opinion will decide the fate of the orbital
station, Kelvin is shocked by what he finds upon his arrival:
Gibarian has committed suicide and the two remaining scientists
are exhibiting signs of extreme stress and paranoia, seemingly
caused by the results of their examination of the planet Solaris.
Kelvin , too, becomes entrapped in the unique world’s
mysteries. Solaris, somehow, presents him with a second chance
at love – to change the course of a past relationship
that has caused him overwhelming guilt and remorse. But can
he really revisit and alter the past? Or is he fated to repeat
its mistakes?
George Clooney stars as Chris Kelvin, a psychologist who is
faced with seemingly answerable questions following his arrival
at a remote space station; Natascha McElhone portrays his beloved
and troubled wife Rheya, whose untimely death years earlier
continues to haunt Kelvin – in ways he never could have
imagined.
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ABOUT THE STORY
In crafting his screenplay for
SOLARIS, Soderbergh used material from the book, elements from
the Tarkovsky film, and many of his own ideas. He explains:
“The biggest difference between this incarnation of SOLARIS
and the previous film and the novel is that our film details
the past relationship between Kelvin and his wife—what
happened to them on Earth years before. That’s what I
really wanted to get into. I felt if you were going to explore
this idea of whether or not you’re doomed to play out
a relationship the same way every time with the same person,
then you had to see what happened to them before.”
Soderbergh was uninterested in making a standard science fiction
epic with the requisite space battles, malevolent aliens and
roller coaster pacing. “This movie is not an action film
and people need to know that going in,” states Cameron.
“This is science fiction the way science fiction used
to be back in the fifties and sixties when it was a fiction
of ideas, a fiction of people.
“This film takes you to the farthest reaches of the universe,
and what you find there is yourself. Kelvin is confronted with
his own memory, a replay of the things he’s gone through,
his guilt, his culpability, the mistakes that he made. And he
gets the opportunity to change it, or maybe not.”
Kelvin’s choices are inextricably interwoven with his
relationship with Rheya. In his novel, Stanislaw Lem conceived
the complex, passionate and troubling romance between Kelvin
and Rheya, which became the core of the new film. Indeed, Steven
Soderbergh’s SOLARIS is a love story.
Says producer Jon Landau: “Steven’s film combines
many different genres in a classic love story. Movies are ultimately
about themes and the theme of SOLARIS is having a second chance
at love. And when Kelvin is presented with that opportunity,
he’s forced to challenge himself, to see if he’s
going to make the same decisions that he made in the past.”
“The theme of predestination is crucial,” adds Soderbergh.
“Kelvin and Rheya’s relationship had ended very
badly. When she appears on the Prometheus, they both struggle
with the idea of the relationship traveling the same path it
did before. Those issues of memory, guilt, potential redemption
and the opportunity to do something again and maybe do it differently,
appealed to me. As one character says at a certain point in
the film, ‘There are no answers, only choices.’
And it really does come down to that.”
SOLARIS also presents a mystery, one which brings Chris Kelvin
to the space station orbiting the titular planet. The company
funding the exploration of Solaris has become concerned because
the scientists aboard the Prometheus are no longer communicating
with Earth. They don’t know if they’re dead, if
they’re injured, if they’ve all gone crazy, or are
under attack. Kelvin knows the mission commander, so he is sent
to solve the mystery.
“From the moment Kelvin enters the space station, you
know that there is great jeopardy there,” says Cameron.
“You don’t understand the nature of the danger right
away. You think that it could be anything -- there could be
a monster there, a murderer. It turns out the jeopardy is to
one’s sanity.”
The planet itself is central to the mystery. As Kelvin discovers,
Solaris is much more than a celestial body revolving around
a sun; it is an organism with a powerful, near god-like intelligence.
While scientists are studying Solaris, it is studying them.
Solaris latches onto the strongest images in their minds and
uses that information to create physical, biologically real
constructions of people who have been important to them.
“These people believe that they’re real, but they
also know that they’re not the person they used to be,”
Cameron explains. “You can analyze them down to their
molecular level, down to their DNA and they’re human.
Kelvin’s strongest image is of his wife who died several
years earlier. So Solaris in a sense sets the stage for a playing
out of this relationship beyond her death, which is a pretty
dramatic conceit.”
“The dilemma they’re all confronting is that Solaris
seems to know more about you than you do and therefore it’s
very difficult to outthink and outsmart it,” says Soderbergh.
“At first, Kelvin wants to solve this problem and get
everybody safely back home. He is then caught up in the mystery
and not sure what to do about it.”
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CASTING THE CREW OF THE PROMETHEUS...
From the beginning, Soderbergh felt
that George Clooney should play Chris Kelvin.
The challenges of portraying the emotionally complex psychologist
who, light years away from home, faces the return of someone he
loved and thought long dead, were formidable. “I knew George
had the capability as an actor to play the role,” says the
director. “I just wasn’t sure if he felt he was ready.
It’s so unlike anything George has ever done and it’s
such a demanding part. The role requires difficult, abstract emotions
and actions that are hard to pull off.”
Clooney, who had starred in two earlier Soderbergh films –
“Out of Sight” and “Ocean’s Eleven,”
and who is partnered with the filmmaker in the production company
Section Eight – jumped at the chance to tackle the role
of Chris Kelvin. “I actually lobbied for this job,”
laughs Clooney. “After I read the script, I sent Steven
a letter and said ‘I don’t know if I can do it, but
I’d like to take a crack at it.’
“This is really an actor’s piece and it’s the
most difficult and scariest thing I’ve ever done by far,”
continues Clooney. “As an actor, if you’re going to
go way out on a limb, you’re going to want to do that with
Steven. He’s good at being very specific, which is what
good directors do; there’s always a point of view.”
Clooney immersed himself in the role, bringing unexpected dimension
to Chris Kelvin. “When you see somebody that you know well
and that you’ve worked with do something that surprises
you almost every day, it’s pretty thrilling,” says
Soderbergh. “George would keep pushing his performance and
taking it further. I live for working with actors, so watching
that was incredibly exciting. His complete willingness to jump
off a cliff every day was inspiring.”
Like his director, Clooney embraced the story’s themes.
“What makes SOLARIS relevant today,” he states, “is
that it deals with the basic issues we constantly question and
wonder about: love, death, after-life. The things we don’t
have any answers to. We want to define things and those things
we can’t define, terrify us. We want to know how high is
up, how old is eternity. Everything we know as humans has limits
– a beginning, middle and an end. No one in this story has
answers, they just have really good, smart questions.”
The film’s small ensemble – there are only five characters
– presented casting challenges. “The trick was to
find people who are distinctive and strong,” Soderbergh
notes. “You have to feel the tension because the characters
are at loggerheads about what they think is going on in the space
station and what to do about it. And if the actors interacting
with George aren’t as strong as he is, then you don’t
have a movie.”
Kelvin’s wife Rheya, whose suicide had
torn Kelvin’s life apart, somehow has turned up on Prometheus.
As the story unfolds, she undergoes a journey of self-discovery,
evolving from a woman brought into the world of the Prometheus
without any real history or memories that she’s certain
are her own.
When it came time to cast the role, which demanded an inherent
intelligence mixed with the vulnerability, Soderbergh remembered
the performance of Natascha McElhone in the 1996
film “Surviving Picasso.” “She reminded me of
the great European actresses of the sixties and seventies, like
Jeanne Moreau and Dominique Sanda,” says Soderbergh. “They
were smart, sexy, complicated women. Not girls – women.”
McElhone clinched the part during a reading with Clooney and an
improvisation with the director. Remembers Soderbergh: “I
asked Natascha questions in character about her relationship with
her husband, what had happened. She had no idea that I was going
to ask her any of this, and she was not only quick, she was consistent
and thorough. Here answers were well thought out and interesting.
I felt she had a real handle on the character.”
Rheya is full of anxiety and sadness, the origins of which are
explored through a series of flashbacks centering on her passionate
but troubled relationship with Kelvin. “They meet at a party
and sparks fly; they’re clearly attracted to one another,”
McElhone explains. “Then it spirals downward. Without meaning
to, and despite Kelvin’s efforts to keep them together,
Rheya manages to rip their relationship apart.
“There are elements to their love story that are very beautiful
and there are elements which are very destructive,” adds
the actress. “It’s very real in so many ways.”
In addition to trying to comprehend the sudden reappearance of
his wife, Kelvin must also solve the mystery behind the strange
behavior of the crew of the Prometheus. Among them is a brilliant
young scientist, Snow, played by Jeremy Davies.
Soderbergh admits to having had a tough time picturing Snow when
he was writing the role. “There were many ways I could go
and it was our casting director, Debra Zane who said one day,
‘I’ve been thinking of Jeremy Davies.’ As soon
as she said that I thought, ‘There you go.’
Snow’s counterpart and fellow scientist is Dr. Helen
Gordon. Soderbergh was intent on casting a woman in the
role. “I didn’t want this to be a movie where these
issues and discussions and situations were only being dealt with
by guys,” he says. “I felt it was important that there
be a woman in the midst of this. The world has long had female
astronauts, and I thought casting a woman as Gordon would be a
way of keeping SOLARIS from being a boy’s club.”
The impetus for Kelvin’s voyage to the Prometheus is a video
journal in which his good friend Gibarian, the
mission’s commander, appears distracted, frightened and
distraught. Later, Kelvin discovers a series of video tapes in
which Gibarian cryptically “explains” what has been
happening on the space station.
The fact that the character is delineated largely through videotaped
messages, led Soderbergh to ask german actor Ulrich Tukur
for an audition tape. Soderbergh was both startled and impressed
by Tukur’s audition. “What I saw was Ulrich sitting
at a piano looking at the camera,” recalls Soderbergh. “He
started his monologue while accompanying himself on the piano.
His second monologue was a close-up of his dog listening to him
talk with a really odd expression on his face. It was so bizarre.
Just the way Ulrich’s mind worked sold me on him. There
was a danger that Gibarian was going to become a very heavy, lethargic
character because of his long monologues. The character was almost
dry on the page and needed a twinkle, which is what Ulrich gives
him.
“Because Ulrich’s tapes were so interesting,”
continues Soderbergh, “I literally turned him loose with
the camera in Gibarian’s room and said ‘I’m
not going to come in and direct you. You have your own thing going,
so just go in and start.’ Every time Gibarian appears in
these video journal entries, it was just Ulrich alone in Gibarian’s
room doing these monologues to a video camera.”
Although Gibarian has died under strange circumstances prior to
Kelvin’s arrival on the Prometheus, the character is integral
to the story, and Soderbergh’s vision for the film gave
the actor a lot to work with. “Steven has created a spooky,
eerie, everything-devouring atmosphere without many digital or
technical effects,” says Tukur. “You feel a constant
threat and the action is very suspenseful so the audience will
be pulled fully into this really bizarre love story.”
TRAILER AND OFFICIAL SITE
The official movie trailer and more:
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USER
REVIEWS
A poet and fiction writer living in NYC, Amy
Holman teaches writers how to navigate the literary marketplace,
and directs the Publishing Seminars at Poets & Writers, Inc.
She has work in many print and electronic journals and anthologies,
including CrossConnect, Night Train, and The Best American Poetry
1999. Her essay, “Where Will An Agent Take You” is
forthcoming in “The Artist’s Toolbox” on the
National Endowment for the Arts web site.
SOLARIS
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Viola Davis, Jeremy
Davies and Ulrich Tukur
Review by Amy Holman
I have shared with poet
friends my belief that poems would make good films, that the compact
language, deft images, and emotional experience could translate
to movies. It seemed I was talking into the wind, and no one wanted
to know what I meant. Now I say, go see Steven Soderbergh’s
SOLARIS, which uses a Dylan Thomas poem as the metaphoric map
of the movie.
Looking back, we know where Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) was
headed because lines from “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”
told us. Having not read Stanislaw Lem’s slim science fiction
novel, nor seen the original, long Russian film, I can only report
on this beautiful, intellectual Section Eight production. Soderbergh
has already proven himself to be a literary filmmaker, editing
out of sequence his richly revealing scenes -- like single lines
of poetry -- to create mood and suspense. In SOLARIS, he uses
the poem to infiltrate the love life of the characters, but also
to retrieve us from all the philosophical questions that seem
to pile up without answer, by answering the one for the characters
we care about the most. The story is still the story a widowed
psychiatrist is drawn by his best friend to visit a space station
orbiting the oceanic planet SOLARIS to ascertain what treachery
is aboard, and is drawn into its dark, psychological whirlpool
but Thomas’ poem is the reason the story works in
Soderbergh’s version.
“Though they go mad they shall be sane/Though they sink
through the sea they shall rise again;/Though lovers be lost love
shall not;/And death shall have no dominion” wrote the Welsh
poet, Dylan Thomas, no better guide for the melancholic. Through
his friend, Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), Chris meets, courts and convinces
Rheya (Natascha McElhone), a beautiful, witty writer with some
kind of grief lodged deep within her, to marry him, only to end
up navigating the rough waters of her recurring depression and
being indelibly hurt when she dies. Rheya’s favorite poet
is Thomas, and her courtship with Chris includes his poetry, lines
recited at different junctures. All this is tangible existence
of the poem in the film, but given that SOLARIS is also a futuristic
sci-fi film, the poem goes underground to support the story. The
alien element is within and the oceanic planet is the subconscious.
When people visit SOLARIS, they meet up with their worst, buried
experiences. Although it is troublesome that we do not really
get to know specifically what visits the other characters, we
do have haunting interpretations by the actors, Viola Davis, Jeremy
Davies and Ulrich Tukur.
In perfect slivers of scene, Soderbergh treats us to the psychiatric
practice of Chris, seen in group therapy with the depressed, leaving
a telephone message for a new patient, and reassuring some fragile
soul on the other end of the line that he or she is not as bad
as perceived. It’s tough for the fans of Clooney’s
rascal characters to bear seeing him so serious and tormented,
but it proves he has not wasted the vulnerability he exuded in
the messed-up, sexy pediatrician he played for five years on television’s
“E.R.” Gibarian is in space where his colleagues are
losing their grip on reality, so he gets the government to approve
and train his friend to come for a visit. When Chris arrives,
he finds the place almost deserted, with some people mysteriously
dead. The reasons are scampering down hallways or crashing and
screaming behind doors.
Clooney has played the authority before, most recently in charge
of a troupe of thieves (Ocean’s Eleven) on a spectacular
heist to win back his wife, and he does it with quiet voice and
a fixed gaze. He can be humorous and good natured, or deliver
a calculating coldness. In SOLARIS he is the voice of reason,
unafraid to confront and dispel the supernatural, but he is also
the healer who must heal himself. He has to win the battle of
uncertainty that everyone around him has lost, and he succeeds
because he remains true to himself instead of earthbound reason.
Clooney is distinctly different as Chris than his public image
because he is serious while being tender, rather than funny or
forgivably irresponsible. He is steady when he courts the commitment-shy
Rheya, and he is her intellectual match. Natascha McElhone is
subtle and intense, exuding the complexities of a woman knows
herself too well. She captures the artistic struggle to overcome
the despair that feeds the art, and Rheya’s urge to shield
both the man she loves from her darkness and her darkness from
his shedding light. Furthermore, McElhone really has two roles
to play lovely distant Rheya and sweet, clinging Rheya
with enough similarities to distort perception.
This brings me to the metaphor that has been lighting the road
all the way. Chris makes a decision at the end that is inscribed
in the lines I quote from Thomas, just as the return of Rheya
is, and how she returns. She is not mad, she is sane. Chris has
tried to banish what must be the replica of Rheya, but she rises
through the oceanic planet, again, until they deal with why. She
reminds him of their erotic love, but that reminds him that her
death divides them. She can’t linger in his memory of her
pain, anymore than she could live with her own. For death not
to rule over them, he has to make a decision.
Dylan Thomas is not in the sci-fi section of your local bookstore,
yet his poem’s dark heartbreak is applicable to Stanislaw
Lem’s story. It’s clear proof of one of the ways a
poem can inspire a director and nourish a movie, and how movies
could popularize poetry. Alas, my wishful thinking has gotten
the better of me: SOLARIS was pulled from the theatres so fast
I’m afraid the genre’s reputation in the marketplace
may be to blame.
From: Aimee-Marie Dore, London, England:
I have to admit, one of the main reasons I was so keen to go see
this movie was the fact that you get to see George's bum, and
don't get me wrong, the bum was very good! But setting that aside,
I was astounded by this movie. If, like me, you are sick of going
to the cinema and sitting there like a zombie, left to passively
inhale some film, that by the time the credits are rolling, you've
forgotten about it already, you will Love this movie. It was so
nice to be treated like a fairly intelligent movie-goer for once.
What was so great about it was the fact that nothing is laid on
a plate for you to believe-you have to make your own mind up about
what Solaris is all about, which at first can be frustrating but
in the long run very refreshing. I still can't make up my mind
what Solaris is...hope, regret, God, relationships, love, choices,
fate...just a few of the categories that have entered my head.
But that is the great thing...I saw Solaris about 4 weeks ago,
and I am still thinking about it. That is the beauty of it. It
really gets you thinking. Plus, I was blown away by the rapport
between the two main characters, played by George and Natascha
McElhone. Really great acting from them both.This film solidfies
a belief I have had for a long time that George, as an actor,
is far more than just a pretty face.And Steven Soderberg's directing,
is, as ever, beautifully arranged and conveys a wonderfully eerie,
haunting atmosphere. And in regards to the poor box office earnings
all I have to say is quality is far more superior to quantity.
Who cares if it didn't earn much money...It is a brilliant movie
and that, in my opinion is all that counts. I recommend going
to see this film immensely...you'd be missing out on a true filmic
experience.I give it 11 out of 10!
From Nicola Cutcher, England. She is 17 and
wants to become a journalist. Her following revew has bene printed
in the local newspaper of her town:
For many ‘science fiction’ may be a dirty word when
it comes to films, but Solaris uses the genre as a minimalist
tool to isolate and explore human emotion and philosophy.
George Clooney plays psychologist Chris Kelvin who goes to space
by the request of a crew member at Solaris. Weird things are happening
beyond the crew’s understanding, but even Kelvin finds himself
out of depth when he is confronted with the reincarnation of his
deceased wife, played by the stunning Natascha McElhone. The couple’s
relationship is explored within the movie, both before and after
death.
It seems less relevant to discuss the story, as the film is not
linear or simple in any conventional form. The story is there
to ask us important questions. Suggestions are constantly being
made that we choose our own reality, interpret our surroundings,
and manifest our own memories. The film examines grief, our mortality
and the point of our very existence. One line for me captures
it all – "there are no answers, only choices".
Director Steven Soderbergh delivers the gorgeous cinematography
for which he is renowned, and beautifully creates a film that
is slow, moving, and unafraid of silence.
Solaris allows the audience much time for personal contemplation,
set to a subtle soundtrack that is moody and atmospheric.
Clooney is magnificant – treating audiences to his usual
charisma in the flashback scenes, while playing agonising grief
to less flattering camera work.
This is meditative, intelligent, science fiction. Solaris is
not light entertainment, but with patience and an open mind it
certainly provides a memorable experience at the cinema. Definately
a film to be savoured on the big screen – 2003 has just
delived the new 2001 Space Odessey.
These Hollywood Heavyweights are using their power for cinematic
good, pushing the boundaries to create something truly different.
Are audiences up to the challenge?
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