The Open Matt Project

from a review on aint-it-coool-news:

from a review on aint-it-coool-news:

SOLARIS (2002) Review
SOLARIS is going to be a firestorm of disagreements, discussions and one of those films that will instantly polarize different film fans. You will hear people call this film boring shit. You will hear people call this film brilliant and you will have to make up your own mind and then consider, rationally, the reactions of others.
For me, I come down on the side that SOLARIS is brilliant. This isn’t an easy film for those that love it. In fact, in a lot of ways I’m dreading writing this review, because this film touches on some feelings and emotions I’ve been dealing with, off the site, and asked me what I’d be willing to do to change that? What would you do if you had the opportunity to make something right? To live something anew? To move forward as though the past had no meaning?
This is a film about losing a unique thing. This movie is about losing your own personal human ROSEBUD, finding it again after it was burned and realizing you’re not the same person that once loved it, or are you?
What is the dearest thing in your life? A parent, a sibling, your lover or betrothed? They die tomorrow. At the ends of the universe, around a planet that makes no sense, you find them. What do you do?
There were all those unsaid things to say, but just because they’re now in front of you, do you say them? Are the unsaid things best left unsaid? Losing someone you love, that you believe you could never ever replace. That soul mate, that person you know, for a fact, is the person that completes you. Losing them to your own stupidity, to chance, to weakness, illness… whatever the separation, this is the sort of loss that takes months, years and lifetimes to try to move past. You wake up one day believing you’re finished with the anxiety, the morose mornings and the hurt, only to find that something as silly and wonderful as Cab Calloway singing is tearing apart your soul because of a conversation you had with them one day that attached a dear memory… then, like a tidal wave of remorse, it floods over you, till you get better. It’s one foot in front of the other, your life becomes a routine and you tolerate living in this routine hoping, dreaming, wishing for the pain to flow out of you.
You wake up one day to a message. A friend needs your help on the other side of the universe, a respite… a voyage away from all the familiar. A friend. Company at the other end of eternity. You go. Once there, she, he, they, them… The lost are again found. They’ve been reconstructed from your memory, they become real and living beings. The beings that exist in your fondest memories.
Now – Science Fiction has dealt with lost and found issues before. Reanimated Corpses, Time Machines, Love potions, etc. Here’s the thing though… I don’t believe any film has ever been as intelligent in its pursuit of the reality of the situation and the loss.
Ok, now we all know how wonderful the original SOLARIS was, we also know that Stanislaw Lem’ novel was genius. I’m not going to do the compare and contrast, that cheapens this film and this viewing experience.
This is Soderbergh’s very best film in my opinion. It is simply beautiful. Not in scale or scope. Not in majestic space vistas or designs. It is beautiful for what it says about the place for love after it is lost.
Once, I wrote that you know you are in love truly when you stare at a blank page with a pen in your hand and you can see only one unwritten name. Hers. When you’ve lost that love, it means you still see that name, only… tears hit the blank page instead of ink and you find you can't write that name, because if you do it'll drive you insane. You spend nights and hours trying to solve the riddle of how to recapture that love, but you eventually come to a realization that love isn’t captured, it is given. If it is lost, it can only come back on its own free will.
This is what this film is about. Clooney plays a recovering love sick victim. Somebody carrying a great deal of regret in his heart for what happened to end his love. What he said and did that morning. You can see the joyless look in his face, the going through the motions behavior his life has taken on.
As the trailer tells you, when he goes to SOLARIS he wakes to find her in his life again, as if nothing had happened. Its as if she just stepped out of his dreams. However, she is self-aware. She can think, she remembers only what he had dreamed before. She knows she loves him, but is confused and scared about what is going on. How she got here. Instead of it just being a blissful reunion, it’s horror for both. Both feel manipulated, both feel vulnerable. Both are happy to be with each other, but both think there’s something wrong.
He wants her to forget the how and why she came to be, and just live from this moment forward, don’t worry about the past or what happened. That’s typical denial. That is manipulative and completely selfish, it is also natural. As human beings we want things to be the way we want them. Naturally we feel if it is best for us, it is best for them.
Now where this film goes, that most attempts at science-fiction falter is that it realizes HER too. She knows that she’s created from his memory, but his memory is flawed. Does he remember her correctly or as he wishes to remember her. Could you exist being only the pieces that your loved one held onto. Missing the parts that led you to be the person they loved. Could you exist as an incomplete person cognizant of the fact that you were missing the very elements necessary to deal with the emotions and feelings you were going through?
Think about your own memories of love, I know for me, I focus on the good. I want things to be right, to be good, to work out. If in the love that I lost, if it was recreated from my memory… that wouldn’t be the person I fell in love with that could surprise me, shock me, confound, hurt and confuse me. I don’t want the fantasy. I don’t want to go back in time and change things. I don’t want a planet to create a physical facsimile for me. I want the original, but only if the original wants me.
That’s the lesson that I came to in my life, but it’s the same in the film. A character in a dream tells Clooney to not try and find the answer, but to choose a path and move forward. That there are no answers, only choices. This is true.

Maybe I'm just drunk, but. Yes.

Posted by Matt at November 24, 2002 05:00 PM