Sunday 8 September 2013

Solaris (2002)

Solaris is the 2002  American remake of the 1972 Russian film of the same name, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.  It's based on the 1961 science fiction novel, also of the same name, by Polish writer Stanisław Lem.  I quite like it.





Steve

8 comments:

  1. Yeah I quite like this one too, I've not read the book but this one reminded me a lot of the Tarkovsky one but without so much preamble. I did hear a rumour that the original Russian tv version has surfaced that, would be a nice treat if they released that. I do like the Tarkovsky one better, I think, it just that it worries me that it garners so much praise, cos Stalker is just so much better.

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    1. I'm in full agreement. The thing is that there's an enormous amount of stuff going on in the novel - depending on how you approach it, Solaris can be a story about love and grief, or about how one shouldn't get the things they really want, or about what the Guests are, or about science. And I'm missing a lot.

      The TV and 2002 film are about love and grief. 1972 is about #2, but yeah, Tarkovsky did it better in Stalker. The book is #4.

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  2. I remember when this one came out, and people hated on it, while it bombed at the box office, and I was clueless on the subject matter. Within one week in 2010, I read the story, watched both films, and I had to say, the 2002 is damn good film-making, haunting score, great acting, and one of the better space films done recently. The spacesuit itself I thought had a nice retro feel to it.
    Oh, my wife liked it, too...mainly because she got to GC's ass!

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  3. Hi guys.
    Film snobbery dictated that it not even be given a fare viewing but with time I think it found its audience. I really like Soderbergh's Kafka as well and that got a good kicking too.

    Would love to see the Russian TV version of Solaris, keep me posted if it does pop up.

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  4. Good movie, but an outstanding film score.

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    1. I tend not to hear the scores when I watch stuff but I will give it some attention on next viewing

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  5. Oh look what I've found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEGTBBHqgw

    Harder to track down than a shoal of kippers, haven't watched it yet so I can't verify it's all there but the running time looks on target. Released on DVD as early as 2007 it seems but only in russian.

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    1. Brilliant stuff, I'll hopefully sit down for a bit of that later tonight. Nice one.

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