The worst war you can wage is the war against yourself. It's a battle that puts the WW1 trench warfare to shame. There is no sweetness to victory. There is every guarantee of defeat. You are just as clever and tenacious as you are. No matter what approach, what tactic you use, you're prepared and waiting for it. It's an exercise in self-inflicted torture. What is the outcome? Where is the gain? You struggle and struggle, clinging to the ephemeral hope that there is something beyond your own awareness, or capacity to concieve, that will prove to be true. Something beyond you that you reach for like one drowning reaches for anything that will grand one last breath.
It's that reaching into the unknown, the inky void of hope, that is either the carrot that gets my mule to move, or just tantalizes and taunts as I draw breath.
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.
I suspect the whole world is laughing at me. Consequently, I will be moving forward with my plans to detonate the earths core using nothing but unwatched copies of Godfather Part III DVDs.
Maybe the problem is that I am trying to find truth outside of myself. Maybe my perceptions are not as honest as they seem. Seems? Nay, I know not seems. It is in fact a strange wandering between what I see and what is seen.
I'm Mr. Fucking Untouchable-Touchable. I cruise from spot to spot with my dick hanging out and a smile on my face. I show my weakness and dare you to score a hit. I'm the slap you would be offended about if you weren't so busy being aroused. I'm the stink you can't stop sniffing, trying to find a parking spot in your memory for. I'm the best you'll find and I'm the reason for despair. It doesn't get better than this, but it can sure as fuck be a lot worse. I score an "E" for effort, a "F" for achievement, and a "F-U" for comfort. I wear my world like a layer of thermal underwear I'm afraid to take off not because it's too cold but because it's so soaked with my sweat and stink that it would be killing my hollow twin to take it off. I'm too soft for prime time, and too hard for late night with Conan. I'm searching and searching for something to touch, too obsessed to notice my perpetual self-caress. It's got to be out there. It's got to be.
The vista and vision of the midwest is a perpetual fantasy. The scope of tangible perspective has always been a siren call for tangled thoughts. That quiet and wide open desert. The sleeptaking whisper of the sands comforting as they quietly unchain me from the overbearing assault of endless thoughts. The silence of dusts whirling. The scratch of toads. The drum of my chest and sliding breaths rhythmic and pacifying.
God damn I'm annoying.
I'm offered stars and glowing gems and wonder and I just shrink from it. I cannot stand the glare. The brightness burns me and forces me to scurry into safer holes. Dark holes.
I used to think that I could subdue the demons that plagued me and chain them to my will. I'd just chain them and have their passion and drive without being controlled by them. The passion for pain and suffering. The endless unsatisfaction for destruction and consuming hunger. I think I was wrong. I think I have made a terrible mistake. The chains around their necks are unimportant to them. They notice the cold steel as much as I would notice my hair. They live with chains wrapped around them from the beginning of time and my folly was thinking that adding to their bonds would affect them. By chaining them, I have only ensured that I would never be free from them. I think of the broken smiles they had when I first choked them with my fists and shudder with fear in the knowledge that they weren't afraid at all, they were pitying me. They knew what I was attempting. They knew the schedule of my destruction. They knew my name.
Now I can only look with irony on my plans of strength and laugh at how naieve they were. Superiority assaults me. Depravity snipes me. My very will is an opponent clothed and fed by my own vanity. The cloaked figure that I am is more scars tissue than innocent flesh. His blades are soaked with infernal blood and his fatigue is nearly all that feeds him. His oilskin hat is drenched in my blood. His blades are more trained on himself than they are on anything outside him. Little is left on his face but the grimace of conflict and a gaze whose sight reaches no further than the next strike.
I walk down the street each day with each footstep on a different path.
One path holds unrestrained violence. The unaware bystander is walking enroute to morning coffee, completely devoid of fear. My fingertips, long and razorpointed, would sink so smoothly into their flesh. The scrape of their bones against my blood hot fingers would draw them to me. My caress draws them close enough for me to feel the heat of their blood and fear and life and breath. I know the immense satisfaction of their thick life flowing down my throat after my jaws have locked on their desparately taut neck. The simple certainty and terror in their eyes mirrors my own. I cannot imagine anything more intimate and sexual then their final struggle as I absorb their life. Where our beginnings and ends lie are a simultaneous mystery. A heated bath of conversion occurs in our jerking, gurgling, hot fuck of death.
The other opens myself to accepting absorbsion. I eagerly offer my belly for their sharp fingertips to find in me the core I lack. My burst of flesh and fluid covers their mask of hunger and washes over it, revealing the innocent look of simple satisfaction underneath. I feel the pressure and snap of bone as clearly as the pierce and pop of meat as their teeth consume me. I can see in their eyes the natural hunger of one who feeds as hungrily as I am horrified to be consumed. To be shattered into dissolution and gorged upon as pulsating sustinance. To cling to scraps of consciousness long enough to see the knowing look of neccessary murder in their eyes. My final sigh is an epilogue for a story so old it shames cliches.
I keep trying to do the right thing.
"Hey mookie"
"WHAT?"
"always do the right thing."
"I got it - I'm GONE."
That's it. Who knew it would be so hard? Who knew something that seems and seemed so natural could prove so difficult? I love you. I don't. I want to explore. I want to hide. I see the truth. I see lies. Help me. Let me help you. All the time I'm restraining myself. All the time I'm trying to maneuver the pieces on the board to benefit the most possible players. All the time I want - and when I get it, it's changes and it's not what I want.
OK, I"m still going to update "the ugly" part of my bigass party.
Where are you? WHERE? I'm all alone and I'm trying to figure out what to do and where are you? All I want to do is the right thing and no matter which direction I go in, it's still the same painful mess. It's still the I-don't-know-what-I-should-do miasma that makes me paralyzed and afraid. Where are you? I see verdant hills over there, and I see peaks of hopefull mountains over there. I see possibilities and potentials besieging me from all sides. Which is the right way to go? What is the right thing to do? Where are you???
We are the champions that are here to show everyone how it should be - no matter how much it isn't. I am the hero who wages constant war on myself without the satisfaction of conclusion or resolution. I am the lost. I cannot do this alone. I need you. I need help. Pick me up and weild me as I was meant to be held and used. I can't do this alone. I can't.
I love you.
So the party is over. The debrief follows, with likely edits as I remember more things.
The Good:
My dad and sister showed up - and were rockstar all night long. Dave "El Crusho" Beltran-del-Rio took a last minute flight and made it out and we got to talk. It had been about 8 years, so that was a huge plus. Karen Eng and Ian (hubby) showed up. Rose was my fucking fairy godmother for days on end - it was almost surreal how helpful and cool she was. I got all the food and drink together in time for Diego to get it on UFC-style with the Master Chef action. Diego kicked ass bigtime. The DJ's who made it and played - Delon, Dylan, Ed, and ... the Viagra fella at the end of the night. John and Joel getting the sound system set up and broke down perfectly. Nicole's breakfast. Fred's epic adventure getting mixers. The Chiminea that warmed up the die-hards at the end of the night. Everyone that said they would show up - and did.
The Bad:
Halloween on Thursday tapped me out, and consequently screwed up my energy levels and timing for the party setup. The poor selection of map (my fault) and lack of clear directions (my fault again) made finding the party a chore for everyone. Realizing there were absolutely NO lights just after the sun went down - and having to quickly tool out and get some and bring them back. Not being able to shower or change clothes for the party itself. Not getting hardly any of the food, partially because of my being busy and partially because I was no longer hungry due to stress and fatigue. Jim's total failure to plan out the DJ's and worse failure to let me know that it wasn't going to happen. The DJ situation was a total fiasco and if it wasn't for Rose pulling my ass out of the fire we would have been listening to crickets all night. People who called my cellphone and left messages without their name or number and expected me to get back to them ASAP. My total exhaustion by nights end. The fog machine messing up a lot of the photos of the party. Waiting for people to show up who said they would be there and never showed or called.
The Ugly:
... later.