and death shall have no dominion.

[intertribal]

"Where have you been?" 
"Away from those fucking people."

SOLARIS (2002):  Many people will tell you that this movie is, quite simply, boring.  Dull.  A waste of time and space.  I've seen reviewers give it half a star out of five.  Of course, those same people probably gave Eragon two stars.  One of the reviewers say that if you find this movie boring, you will be told that you just aren't smart enough to understand it.  I won't say that.  But I will say that maybe you came into it expecting something else. 

Some background.  The plot is sort of simple, I guess.  George Clooney is a shrink with a dead wife and goes to a space station orbiting a planet, Solaris, to help the small crew with the psychological breakdown they suffered when they neared Solaris.  They tell him until "it" starts "happening" to him, there's no use talking.  But "it happens" soon enough - his dead wife appears, flesh and blood.  He frantically shoves the first one out into deep space through the airlock chamber, but she comes back as soon as he dreams about her again.  Turns out they all have these "visitors" - visitors who don't die, and don't go away.  They are facsimiles of the original deceased person created by the planet, and they go insane along with the astronauts. 

The 1972 version based on the book was originally billed Russia's answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is very interesting.  I definitely saw that this movie could have been subtitled:  This is Why We in Russia Don't Go to Church.  While this movie definitely, definitely is not an atheistic kind of movie - there are great and complex forces at work here that are never understood - it has Cormac McCarthy's religious style: shaking your fist at God.  To me the most poignant point of the movie was George Clooney's wife, Rheya-Bot Version 2.0, saying as she looks at Solaris, "I don't understand... It made me but I can't talk to it.  But it must hear me.  I can't live like this.  Not understanding."   She's talking about God - her God is Solaris.  It reminded me of the part I remember most about Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - when they discover that the evil company has been infusing robot dolls with souls of little girls, the human cop says, "Poor girls", but Batou, the android cop, says, "What about the dolls?  Did they ask to have souls?"  I mean, this movie is dealing with really, really serious issues fundamental to humanity and consciousness and identity, and doing so in a very quiet, subtle way.

It is a slow movie, but it's the kind of movie you just have to have the patience to sink into, like a good leather couch.  Let yourself be immersed in it.  It's absolutely beautifully done - the cinematography and the music are stunning - and it's quite interesting to watch what happens to the characters.  One character, in particular, reacts with extreme hostility to her visitor (whom we never see), saying of these visitors, "They aren't human.  And I want humans to win, don't you?  Whose side are you on?"  She also says that she does not want to go home yet because she wants to destroy the visitors, "because that means I'm smarter than it is."  Her name is Gordon, she's a physicist who's sent to assess Solaris' economic potential, and I think she represents how many Americans look at space movies.  They want Star Wars or Starship Troopers or Apollo 13 - it's the same heroics of Earth, just in space suits - they may tolerate Alien, but only for the gore, not for the desolation.  If Americans want philosophical aliens, they'll take an E.T. - deal with it on the home turf, you know.  But out there, in the quiet silence of space, miles from Earth?  Nasty.  The only way we are prepared to deal with space is if it's in mechanical or war terms - the Mars rover; colonization; space race; satellites.  When we discuss the prospect of intelligent life, all we say is, "bacteria."  And we would probably blast that bacteria with a thousand laser guns as soon as we found it.  In my opinion, NASA is not imaginative enough.  If you really are religious, if you really do think there is a God, why do you limit yourself to space as an economic prospect, should we completely destroy Earth?  If space is really the final frontier, do you think that a bunch of dead rocks floating around - with possibly some toxic gigantic bugs and Wookies here and there - is all there could be, in the entire universe?  Do you think it's going to come in the form of explosions? 

So, they will say that this movie is boring.  I won't say they aren't clever enough, but I will say perhaps they, like the astronauts, are just not ready for what Solaris has to say.  In Contact (which this movie is quite similar to), the aliens tell Jodie Foster that when Earth is ready, someone else will be sent out in the space ship and make contact - but not until we are ready.  Maybe the movie should be rewatched in 200, or 2000, years. - Highly Recommended. 

"Depression along with bouts of hypomania and primary insomnia, suggestions of agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, shock, fatigue, denial."
"None of which is unusual, given the circumstances."



"Or maybe you're my puppet.  But like all puppets you think you're actually human.  It's the puppet's dream, being normal."


"I survived the first thirty seconds of this 'life'... whatever you want to call it... by killing someone.  And oh, ah, by killing someone who happens to be me."


"We are in a situation that is beyond morality."


"If you keep thinking there is a solution, you'll die here."


"But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything."


"We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything - solitude, hardship, exhaustion, death.  We're proud of outselves.  But when you think about it, our enthusiasm's a sham.  We don't want other worlds; we want mirrors."