Solaris

A short while back, I found a list of what were, supposedly, the 10 best sci-fi movies ever, and naturally, I put those I hadn’t seen in my Netflix queue.  One of them, was 1972’s Solaris, remade unimpressively by Steven Soderbergh in 2002 with George Clooney in the starring role.

While I usually disparage the studios for constantly remaking past movies instead of creating original content (as if there were no good new ideas floating around), I have to say that lackluster as the remake was, it was light years better than the original.

Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed and also incredulous.  I actually couldn’t believe how lame, boring, and tiring this pompous celluloid stinker was.  Tiring yes, because with a cardiac arrest inducing runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes, it took me at least 4 hours to watch it since I kept falling asleep.  I have occasionally experienced falling asleep watching a movie, but this was way worse.  No matter how early in the evening and how rested I was, in the span of 10 minutes I was already in the thralls of a drug-like stupor, and staying awake took real effort.

You can only imagine my shock when I went to check what grade this crap had gotten on Rotten Tomatoes and I saw a big, fat 97!!  I couldn’t believe it.  97!!  One of the highest rated movies on the site and I couldn’t even watch it without constantly falling asleep because I found it boring and inept?!?!

I skimmed through some of the reviews and they all rave about how visionary Andrei Tarkovsky was and adjectives like brilliant, ravishingly beautiful, smart, and unique are lavished like candies on Halloween, and yet, the only reviewer I found myself agreeing with was the one that wrote: “Tarkovsky's camera lingers oppressively on things that mean absolutely nothing.”

A couple examples to this point:

1. The main character is talking about the meaning of life and such, and the camera starts closing in on him, more and more, until the screen is filled only by his ear.  HIS EAR!!  Why?  No reason.  Or at least none that I could fathom.
2. The main character has made a decision on what to do and is talking to another crew member; the conversation is over but the camera lingers on, to the point where it starts to feel awkward.  Then, it slowly pans over to a small plant on a shelf, closing in until it, again, has filled the screen.  Nothing the characters said or that is coming up in the following scene has anything to do with that plant or plants in general.  Nothing.

I expected so much and was so disappointed by this movie, it ended up being the worst I saw in 2009.  It had a potentially good amount of things to say, but they all got lost among countless pretentious camera movements, a glacial pace that was unnerving, a screenplay that could have been whittled down to a bare 20 minutes, and acting so theatrical is was jolting and distressing.

Skip it.

Grade: 2