Solaris (2002)

You could probably make about ten starkly different movies from Lem's original novel, and this one focuses a lot more on the idea of connection and regret, almost completely sidelining the critique of science and the hubris of man to a few off-hand remarks from a videoscreen that the film treats as the ramblings of a madman. Soderbergh's interpretation of Lem's "Man needs man" is more along the lines that we need other (real, non-reconstructed) humans, rather than a rejoinder to the idea that man is "pursuing a goal we fear and that we really don't need". On the other hand, Soderbergh seems to be suggesting that the end of life is not necessarily the end of love, foregrounding an idea that is made literal in Lem's novel, albeit in Latin.

This adaptation is certainly an improvement of sorts regarding the lack of agency granted to Rheya/Hari in Tarkovsky's version. How much agency can be granted to the reconstructed Rheya/Hari is of course a difficult question. Soderbergh tidily updates the reason for Chris' guilt. Recall that in Tarkovsky's 1974 adaptation, Kris feels guilty as he let his masculine pride prevent him from checking up on Hari after leaving her alone, post-breakup, in his house with deadly poisons in the fridge. Today, that strikes us as rather more damning than in the 1970s, and no doubt it was slightly more ambivalent behaviour in its day. (And certainly more ambivalent to Tarkovsky, a now famously avowed misogynist who only grudgingly admitted that he found women's subjectivity "difficult to deny".) So, updating the reason to that of Chris storming out of the house after hearing that Rheya has terminated a pregnancy mostly restores that ambivalence, especially for a film made in Bush-era 2002. This is actually an important update, for both the original book and Tarkovsky's adaptation take the (somewhat controversial) view that grief is inherently egocentric, at least insofar as it is more about those who have survived who feel guilty that they cannot now be forgiven, rather than feeling inherently bad for any actions they might have done (or for the deceased themselves). This update is also canny as it plays on the notion of abortion as a 'life denied' or at least a life prevented, thus suggesting that Rheya is a sort of inevitable post-Jurassic Park "life finds a way". Still, in some sense, this 'change' is not a deviation from the original, but rather entirely necessary update lest Lem's novel stops using the future to talk about the present and begins to be a discourse entirely on the morals of the past. (On some semantic level, then, this isn't a 'change' at all.)

Visually, Solaris a mashup of 2001 and Blade Runner, yet this might be more of a reflection that these have long been the default—if not required—aesthetics for Euro-American science fiction films since their releases. Similarly, the political economy of Soderbergh's world is implied to be something along the lines of the Alien franchise, with public-private megacorporations who now 'own' the planet Solaris after buying it from NASA. It's all a far cry from Tarkovsky's Soviet censors who wanted to know whether his world of the future was socialist, communist or capitalist. (Or, hilariously, that they "remove the concept of God".)

I loved the twist with Snow at the end. I was not expecting that, and I believe it solves a narrative/atmosphere/logic problem with Tarkovsky's version. Anyway, two decades on, there will likely not be another adaptation for another twenty years. But can you imagine if, say, David Lynch's final film was a version of Solaris?

I tried to imagine if the film would be irrevocably altered by a change of setting [e.g. to Eetht[ , and I think the answer is, damningly, no—for a film titled Solaris, the planet is strikingly irrelevant to most of the action, to the themes that Soderbergh wants to explore. I almost laughed when, at the very end, the title dramatically appears onscreen: it seems like a non sequitur considering how little importance is given to the planet, how little the implications of Solaris’ existence are explored. It’s not a film about Solaris, it’s a film about a man who misses his dead wife, and who falls in love all over again with her doppelganger.

[…]

There’s a reason that even most of the aliens in our fantasies and sci-fi tend to be humanoid or at least demonstrate recognizable human behaviors and motivations. It’s rare that our science fiction features a truly unfathomable creation like Solaris; instead, our imaginations keep devising endless variations on ourselves, disguised and reworked. Even in books and movies, we travel halfway across the universe to encounter a mirror. It’s thus ironic but not especially surprising that both directors who have adapted Solaris, in very different cultural and commercial contexts, have responded by psychologizing the central problem, making it about human emotions and reactions rather than the humbling encounter with an impenetrable alien intelligence. This only proves Lem’s point: we humans are extraordinarily skittish in confronting that which is truly outside us.

— Ed Howard (Slant Magazine)

In the mid-1990s, James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment pursued the rights to Lem’s novel, as the director of The Terminator (1984) was interested in tackling a new adaptation. When Cameron became immersed in other projects (several post-Titanic undersea documentaries and the TV series Dark Angel), he sought another filmmaker to take the helm.

[…]

To call Soderbergh’s adaptation different than Tarkovsky’s would be an understatement. Soderbergh concentrates on the story and its emotions. His efficient writing and scenes do not linger; his camerawork is intimate; he cuts through the same narrative material as Tarkovsky’s 165-minute epic, using a mere 98 minutes to deliver a more accessible, but not less complicated story. Tarkovsky never embraced the story and its genre. He used the material to continue his formal examination of how time and memory can be represented with the cinematic apparatus.

— Brian Eggert (Deep Focus Review)

[Steven Soderbergh's] ending is pure cinema at its most marvelous and moving; it brings Kelvin full circle and renders irrelevant all questions about where he is, whether he's alive or dead, whether he's with Rheya or alone. He's in a movie, after all, and if that's not immortality it's about the closest thing we've got.

— Andrew O'Hehir (Salon)

[Kelvin] naturally craves his lost love, and we can appreciate why he would desire some sort of redemption from her, but of course Rheya is not actually in a position to forgive Kelvin for his earlier abandonment of Rheya, and while at some level he clearly knows this, he doesn’t seem to care—an imitation of forgiveness, from an imitation of Rheya, has come to seem acceptable to him.

[…]

We should resist the temptation to see Solaris as presenting an unambiguously happy ending and instead consider that the ending of this film is actually fairly disturbing once we reflect on the possibility that the “reunion” we see is, in fact, the coming together of two newly created creatures who possess merely apparent memories derived from the genuine memories of a real human who has perished.

— Christopher Grau: Love, Loss, and Identity in Solaris (2014)