Solaris (2002)
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Reviews Counted: 202
Fresh: 133 | Rotten: 69
Slow-moving, cerebral, and ambiguous, Solaris is not a movie for everyone, but it offers intriguing issues to ponder.
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Critic Reviews: 41
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 12
Slow-moving, cerebral, and ambiguous, Solaris is not a movie for everyone, but it offers intriguing issues to ponder.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 46,346
My Rating
Movie Info
A therapist travels to a distant space station to treat a group of astronauts traumatized by mysterious entities -- and ends up having to deal with an entity of his own -- in this second film version of Stanislaw Lem's philosophical sci-fi novel. Solaris stars George Clooney as Chris Kelvin, a psychologist still mourning the loss of his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) when he's implored by a colleague named Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur) to investigate the increasingly weird goings-on at the Prometheus
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Cast
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George Clooney
Dr. Chris Kelvin -
Natascha McElhone
Rheya -
Jeremy Davies
Snow -
Viola Davis
Dr. Helen Gordon -
Ulrich Tukur
Gibarian -
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All Critics (203) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (142) | Rotten (70) | DVD (47)
Scripted, shot, directed and edited by Soderbergh with his customary intelligence and assurance, this is perhaps the most ambiguous and cerebrally sophisticated Hollywood movie in nearly three decades.
Top CriticFiasco of infuriating pretentiousness and numbing incoherence.
I prefer Soderbergh's concentration on his two lovers over Tarkovsky's mostly male, mostly patriarchal debating societies.
A hushed, haunted tone poem about love and loss.
[Soderbergh] tends to place most of the psychological and philosophical material in italics rather than trust an audience's intelligence, and he creates an overall sense of brusqueness.
A solemn, splintered meditation on lost love: a movie about personal space, in space.
...it remains a fascinating work and its deep questioning of what makes us human when faced with simulacrums feels if anything more relevant today than when it was made.
Steven Soderbergh prunes Andrei Tartovsky?s 1972 film (based on Stanislaw Lem?s novel) to the clarity and concision of a great short story ? a forlorn, philosophical sci-fi romance treading the terrain of "Blade Runner?s" metaphysical melancholy.
A thought provoking, fascinating and heart breaking glimpse into characters that must come to grips with their past.
Steven Soderbergh's extremely sedate, Spartan science-fiction thriller and love story pits man's common sense and perceptions of a higher power against his own dreams and desires.
It's an unusual challenge for a Hollywood film with a major star, but worth the effort.
While Mr. Soderbergh's direction is always compelling, the whole film does not always equal the sum of its parts.
fascinating, despite its flaws
Soderbergh's Solaris is a gorgeous and deceptively minimalist cinematic tone poem.
Soderbergh's latest may well leave Stanislaw Lem grumbling. My bet is virtually everyone else will be blown away.
The images are crisp and the pacing faultless, as you'd expect with Soderbergh, and the soundtrack (with music by Cliff Martinez) is an environment in itself.
Many will justifiably find [it] a heady experience akin to 90 minutes of watching paint dry. Others will see that paint forming something close to a masterpiece.
Based on Stanislaw Lem's novel and Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi epic, Soderbergh's Solaris is drastically abridged and the most sentimental of the three.
It remains as remote as Pluto from the audience.
An unoriginal piece of originality. Move on.
...Tarkovsky Lite, with George Clooney's naked posterior bringing up the rear.
Sure Solaris is ambitious. Even audacious. But too many plot points are left to the audience's imagination without any explanation whatsoever.
Audience Reviews for Solaris
Super Reviewer
There is this sense of cold isolation and grief that remotely reminds me of the work of Stanley Kubrick here, but at the heart it is still pure Soderbergh with non-linear storytelling, use of handheld camera and that unique visual palette which only Soderbergh can create.
It may be Sci-Fi from the surface, but from the inside it is a heartbreaking story of a man who surprisingly gets a second chance with his lost love. It is not often to see scenes this heartwrenching or touching. Soderberh makes a perfect use of poet Dylan Thomas in his story of a doomed love and is beautifully hinting that love is a everlasting emotion that never dies, though we humans do.
George Clooney and Natascha McElhone perfectly captures their characters and make you care about their story. There are even moments between them that reminds me of acting technique in Ingmar Bergman's films.
Solaris is a truly haunting film with excellent score by Cliff Martinez.. It might not be the most accessible film or without it's flaws, but it is clearly a film that comes straight from the soul of it's maker.
Super Reviewer
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- Gibarian: If you think that there is a solution, you'll die here.
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- Dr. Chris Kelvin: And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon. When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone they shall have stars at elbow and foot. 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.
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Latest News on Solaris
July 20, 2007:
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Foreign Titles
- Solaris (2002) (UK)
This is the second film based off of an old novel, and, while it is cliche to say this, I liked the first version better. That would be Tarkovsky's 1972 opus also called Solaris.
That might be the grander, more important film, but this one is significantly shorter, and not quite as pretentious. It's still quite slow and quiet however.
It's a film big on ideas, and yes, while it does drag, it's a great mood piece. If you have insomnia, this or the '72 film would be great to put on. That's not quite a knock, either.
Patience is key with appreciating this movie, but I think it's worth it, and Soderbergh is the perfect person for a remake like this.
Clooney is good, as you'd expect, and Viola Davis is decent, too. I also liked Jeremy Davies, whose "out there"-ness really brought a bit of levity, while also helping to get the mood right.
The plot could be a bit stronger, but overall, this is an alright film that fits somewhere in the upper middle of Soderbergh's oeuvre.