Solaris 2002
This is a movie that was always on my list of movies to watch, but that I never got around to seeing. I remember some negative reviews, but I think there were also positive reviews. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh who was maybe a little past his peak, but still one of the best out there at the time. It also stars George Clooney who had teamed so well with Soderbergh in Out of Sight, one of my favorite movies, and they had just finished Ocean’s Eleven which was not too shabby either.
Solaris is a psychological science fiction movie, with a lot of unknowns, set on a space station where Clooney’s character, a psychologist, has been sent to investigate some extremeley odd crew behavior in hopes of salvaging the mission, or to just bring what is left of the crew back to earth. There is a lot of mystery and many people didn’t like the movie because so many things remained mysteries all the way to the ambiguous ending. I like it when everything ties up neatly at the end, but, like The X Files sometimes the answer just stays out there. And it does have the feeling of something like that or maybe a long and very expensive episode of The Twilight Zone. That works for me. And the movie is beautiful to look at, not just because of the leads, George Clooney and Natascha McElhone, but the lighting, atmosphere, cool space station, gorgeous plasma lamp of a planet below, etc. The movie just looks great. And sounds great with cool atmospheric music. Maybe a lot of it doesn’t make any sense and we will never know why things happen a certain way, but I really enjoyed the journey, even if maybe the ending could not possibly pay off the way we want.
Written: 30 Oct 2016
Owned on: Digital