'Solaris' blends art-house, sci-fi wonderfully

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

SOLARIS (Rated PG-13 for brief nudity, profanity) Four Stars (Excellent) Steven Soderbergh's restrained chamber piece is a subtle metaphysical romance disguised as a sci-fi tale, starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. Clooney plays a psychologist on a distant space station, shocked to find his late wife has apparently been brought back to life. FOX, 90 minutes.

The aliens in "Solaris" — if they are aliens — are the people you love. They're mysteriously recreated in a place or a time where they couldn't possibly exist.

Even if they're dead they come back to your reality — out of your dreams.

So, consider yourself warned: "Solaris" is no popcorn sci-fi adventure. If you're looking for conventional futuristic adventures and jaw-dropping horrors, rent "Alien."

Instead, "Solaris" is a deeply moving metaphysical romance set in the future and played out on a distant space station. Despite moving at the gliding pace of a dream, it is intensely involving.

The eclectic Steven Soderbergh (of "Traffic," "Erin Brockovich" and "Ocean's Eleven") has written and directed this adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's sci-fi novel and the original 1972 Russian film.

Soderbergh's version is a brilliantly constructed chamber piece, which has been filmed with an austere style and subtle performances more in line with Ingmar Bergman films than sci-fi.

George Clooney — a frequent Soderbergh collaborator — plays Chris Kelvin, a psychologist who has long mourned the death of the woman he loved.

He gets an urgent request to travel into space. Several scientist friends have been experiencing an unexplained problem while in orbit around the planet Solaris — and need his help.

Kelvin discovers havoc on the space station. Two people are dead, and two survivors (Jeremy Davies and Viola Davis) are clearly disturbed by some unnamed phenomenon.

Once Kelvin goes to sleep he discovers what's wrong. He dreams of his late wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), then awakens to discover her next to him, in the flesh.

What this means — and what is has to say about the immortality of love — is at the core of this richly affecting film.

Soderbergh's script is the very model of efficiency, using memorable images and a minimum of dialogue to tell its tale and to ask its philosophical questions. To his credit, "Solaris" doesn't come up with many answers. Like most quality art, this film allows you to participate through your interpretations.

Clooney delivers a performance that is both restrained and moving. He makes us feel his wonder, fear, passion and pain but in subtle ways that don't overpower Soderbergh's intensely close camera work.

McElhone expertly creates the emotionally scarred Rheya, introduced to us in flashbacks, as well as the slightly off-kilter alternate reality of the Rheya created from Kelvin's dreams.

"Solaris" is an original and mature motion picture, a challenge for the unsuspecting and a treat for the daring.

Rated PG-13, with brief nudity, profanity.