Soderbergh's Solaris is beautifully Kubrickian
Seminal Johnson
in a way I rarely am seeing films anymore. The first 20 minutes or so were
not very interesting and might even be counter-productive in their seemingly
meandering and claustrophobic quality, but by the time Natascha McElhone
shows up through the end it is brilliant. Intelligent. Thoughtful.
Insightful. The most cerebral film Soderbergh's ever made and a welcome
relief from the heist, revenge, and issue-of-the-week movies he's made in
recent years. The film indirectly quotes 2001, AI, The Shining, and perhaps,
Eyes Wide Shut either in the visuals, the score, or the ideas. I almost
didn't see this because of the negative reviews, the lackluster box-office,
the Tarkovsky association, and Soderbergh's recent work (I was expecting
Erin Brokivich in space) but that would have been a sad mistake. If you've
got a thinking brain and have ever had a girlfriend, I think you will enjoy
this. It is a classic.
Philster
Phil
"Seminal Johnson" <no...@na.net> wrote in message
news:Dd8rc.59$Rx...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com...
Jan
> didn't see this because of the negative reviews, the lackluster box-office,
> the Tarkovsky association,
:-)
Jan Bielawski
Leonard F. Wheat
> I just saw Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris" and was stunned at how good it was
I am baffled and appalled by your suggestion that Soderbergh's Solaris
is "brilliant," "intelligent," "thoughtful," and "insightful." It is
the opposite, essentially a stupidly conceived ghost story that
debases the novel from which it takes its name. What is intelligent
or thoughtful, let alone brilliant, about a ghost story? You also
call the film insightful. Just what were these insights you found?
Perhaps the insight that suicide (Kelvin's)leads to happiness?
It's time to resurrect my review of Solaris. Here it is:
Calling Steven Soderbergh's film version of Stanislaw Lem's
Solaris disappointing would understate the point. The truth is, the
movie is awful. Lem's novel had a science fiction emphasis that
revolved around an intelligent, living "sentient ocean" on the planet
Solaris. Solaris was in another solar system, one with two suns. The
novel's focus was on how man would react to an intelligent being that
is not anthropomorphic and whose nature and behavior man can't
comprehend. A romantic subplot served the main plot by illustrating a
facet of the ocean's behavior--the ocean's own reaction to humans that
it, in turn, couldn't comprehend. That reaction was the ocean's acts
of creating physical replicas ("visitors") of things it perceived in
the minds of the humans. The plot's main replica was an active,
intelligent, self-aware copy of the hero's (Kris Kelvin's) dead wife,
who had committed suicide ten years earlier.
Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film version of Solaris downplayed (but kept)
the science fiction, emphasized the love story and the related
religio-philosophical idea that love heals, and created a second
subplot involving estrangement and reconciliation between Kelvin and
his father. The new subplot required a prologue, which had
considerable material not in the novel. This prologue was the
foundation for a plot twist at the end.
Lem was appalled by the liberties Tarkovsky had taken with the
novel. According to Lem, Tarkovsky "didn't make Solaris at all, he
made Crime and Punishment." The crime is Kelvin's failure to
recognize and thwart his wife's suicidal impulses; the punishment is
agonizing pangs of conscience. Lem was also turned off by the film's
visually clever but substantively corrupt ending, which he called
"just totally awful." This ending, besides reintroducing Kelvin's
father, transforms an uncomprehending ocean into its antithesis: an
entity that is comprehending, sympathetic, and supposedly helpful.
Lem: "My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet without any hope
whatsoever, while Tarkovsky created an image . . . [that is] just some
emotional sauce."
Steven Soderbergh's 2001 film virtually eliminates the science
fiction, keeping only the sci-fi setting and the "visitors." The
sentient ocean is gone; it is now the planet itself that displays
mental and physical powers. What we get in place of science fiction
is a dreary, dialogue-laden love story with a silly, sappy ending. In
effect if not literally, this ending transforms Solaris into a ghost
story, complete with a metaphorical heaven. And, as if that weren't
bad enough, Soderbergh's ending does something truly appalling: it
romanticizes suicide.
A more detailed comparison of Lem's novel, Tarkovsky's 1972 film, and
Soderbergh's 2002 remake will make my points clearer. Spoiler's
follow, so if you haven't seen the films you might want to cut out
now.
LEM'S NOVEL
The centerpiece of Lem's novel is the planet's sentient ocean. This
ocean not only has (a) sensory powers, it has (b) an incredibly high
level of mathematical intelligence (it can perform calculations
necessary to control its own orbit within a binary star system, a
system that should create orbital instability), (c) the power to
manipulate matter into physical forms, (d) the power to read (but not
truly comprehend) human minds, (d) the aforementioned the power to
alter its orbit in ways that defy natural gravitational and
centrifugal forces (a power analogous to mobility), and apparently (e)
consciousness.
Earth sends scientists to Solaris to study the planet. They live in
a space station that roams the sky above Solaris. While they sleep
the ocean reads their minds, or at least the darkest corners thereof.
From what it finds (apparently without comprehending), the ocean
creates for each scientist that "visitor"--a living replica of a
person from the scientist's past who is a source of shame or
humiliation. In Kelvin's case, the visitor is his dead wife, whose
suicide was facilitated by Kelvin's behavior. In the case of
Gibarian, a second scientist whose visitor drove him to suicide, the
visitor is an obese, bare-breasted, grass-skirted Negress. She
alternately walks the halls and lies with Gibarian's frozen corpse.
Most likely she was a sexual fetish, hence a source of profound
embarrassment--embarrassment that drove Gibarian to suicide. (The
idea behind these visitors probably comes from the 1956 sci-fi film
Forbidden Planet. That film featured "monsters from the id.")
The surviving scientists eventually find a way to get rid of the
visitors: the scientists build a "neutrino disruptor" that
destabilizes the nonatomic material structure of the visitors. But by
then the visitors have served their two purposes--illustrating the
nature and power of the ocean and giving the plot what little life it
has. The scientists then decide to return to earth. But Kelvin takes
a "flitter" craft on a last-minute exploratory flight over the planet.
What he finds changes his mind about leaving: he decides to stay
despite the absence of any real hope of ever comprehending the ocean.
Lem's novel has a lot in common with Arthur Clarke's Rendezvous with
Rama. Both novels are long on description of "scientific" finds and
short on plot. In Clarke's novel, the long descriptive passages deal
with technology. This technology is embodied in a coasting space ship
that enters the solar system, loops around the sun, and then restarts
its engines for the trip back to wherever it came from. Earth
scientists enter the spaceship and explore it before it departs. The
novel describes what they see. In Lem's novel the descriptive
passages deal with Solaris' ocean and with theories about that ocean.
The ocean is the analog of the spaceship Rama's technology. After a
while, the descriptions in both novels become boring. Both novels
need more plot.
TARKOVSKY'S 1972 FILM
Tarkovsky obviously recognized the plot limitations of Lem's novel
and set out to spice things up a bit. He did this by shoving the
science fiction into the background and spotlighting the relationship
(described partly in flashbacks) between Kelvin and wife. She had
killed herself ten years earlier but is reconstituted by the ocean as
a "visitor." Tarkovsky introduces a whole lot more pathos in the
relationship than you find in the novel. In Lem's words, "what we get
in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey
[his wife] to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience, which are
amplified by her appearance [on Solaris]." This mental agony is not at
all entertaining, and neither is it science fiction. It is simply an
abortive (in my case, at least) attempt to play on our heartstrings
with a lot of emotional drivel.
Tarkovsky probably realized that he could get only so far plotwise
with the husband-and-wife subplot, so he created that second subplot.
The new subplot begins in the prologue, back on earth. Kris has a
falling out with his elderly father. The conflict is so poorly
handled by Tarkovsky that I didn't realize anything serious had
occurred until I read in a review that Kris and his father had become
estranged. The writer presumably inferred this from the ending,
because all we see in the prologue is that Kris is skeptical about a
certain detail of an account by Berton, an astronaut, of what Berton
saw on Solaris. Berton is offended. He is an old friend of Kris's
father, so when Berton takes offense, the father also takes offense.
But this conflict didn't strike me as anything more than a
run-of-the-mill disagreement. I perceived no estrangement.
The prologue also hints that the father is terminally ill. The
father says to Kelvin, who is departing for Solaris, "Are you jealous
that he [Berton], not you, will bury me?" The point here is that, if
and when Kelvin returns to earth, it will be too late to reconcile
with his father.
Skip to the ending: SPOILER COMING UP. We see Kris preparing to
leave Solaris and return to earth with the other two surviving
scientists. (Gibarian, who committed suicide, is the nonsurvivor.)
Then we see Kris, apparently back on earth, outside his father's rural
cottage. It is raining. Kris looks in through the window and sees
water from a leaky roof--a roof that was not leaky during rain in the
prologue--dripping into the room. (What sort of symbolism is this?
Is the cottage weeping?) The father comes out. Kris falls on his
knees and grasps his father. He has been given the chance to make
amends with his father, a chance that he was denied with his wife.
The camera then pulls slowly away from the scene, climbing higher and
higher into the sky. And as the visible landscape gradually expands,
we see that the farm, the cottage, and the father are on a tiny island
on Solaris. They are creations of the sentient ocean.
Any sentimental satisfaction or esthetic appreciation evoked by this
final scene disappears when you reflect on it. The father is no more
real than Kris's reconstituted wife was. If the simulated wife was
inadequate for genuine amends, why should the simulated father somehow
be adequate? Even worse, Kris is a prisoner, incarcerated on an
island. He will be devoid of human contact, apart from contact with
his artificial father, for the rest of his life. He can't visit old
friends, make new ones, or even enjoy stimulating conversations with
colleagues or strangers. No travel, no trips to town, no music or
radio, no other entertainment, no books, no scientific work. He can't
even go for a decent walk, because the island is at most a city block
in diameter. To repeat, Kris is a prisoner, confined in a tiny
compound. Tarkovsky may think this ending is uplifting, but I found
it depressing. And still a poor substitute for a genuine plot.
SODERBERGH'S 2001 FILM
Like Tarkovsky, Soderbergh recognizes that turning Lem's novel into a
film requires more plot than Lem provided. And he wants to be
original. Well, not really original, but different from Tarkovsky.
So Soderbergh almost totally abandons the science fiction and turns
the story into a three-way cross between a soap opera, a Hollywood
tear-jerker, and a ghost story embellished with an analogical heaven.
Tarkovsky's "Crime and Punishment" becomes Soderbergh's "Crime and
Reward." MORE SPOILERS COMING UP.
As in the novel and Tarkovsky's film, Gibarian has already committed
suicide before Kris' arrival; only two of the station's three
scientists greet Kris. One of them, Snow, is an irritatingly
implausible neobeatnik with a flip attitude toward just about
everything. The other, Helen Gordon, is a woman; her chief function
is to provide today's obligatory gender balance in the crew. (She
replaces a male scientist from the two earlier versions.) Soon Kris
is visited by his reconstituted dead wife. He sends her off in a
space capsule, but the planet recreates her once more. Imitating her
human progenitor, she then tries suicide (drinking liquid nitrogen),
but she is regenerated a third time. Finally, the neutrino disruptor
gets rid of her, supposedly for good.
The ending again finds Kris remaining on Solaris. But this isn't the
real Kris. This Kris is another of the ocean's replicants, a
"visitor" with no human to haunt. Soderbergh prepares us for this
revelation by introducing a second plot twist. Just before the end we
learn that Snow is really a replicant. He killed the real Snow before
Kris arrived. Thus do we learn that the ocean creates copies not only
of shame-inducing persons from the scientists' pasts (those monsters
from the id) but of the scientists themselves. And when Kris dies,
the ocean creates a new Kris.
We next see the artificial Kris with his wife, who has been recreated
a fourth time. The two replicants are going to live happily ever
after on Solaris in a physical replica of their apartment back on
earth. Kris and his wife, as mere reproductions, are the equivalent
of ghosts, reembodiments of dead persons. The star-crossed lovers are
being given a second chance--as ghosts. They have been reunited in a
metaphorical heaven. They will enjoy a happily-ever-after life beyond
the grave.
I'm sorry, Mr. Soderbergh, but ghost stories and visions of heaven
are no substitute for science fiction. A romantic subplot is not
objectionable. What is objectionable is the attempt to palm off as
science fiction an idiotic love story that is basically out of touch
with Lem's novel.
Just as objectionable is a hero who commits suicide. The "neutrino
disruptor" the scientists build to get rid of the visitors drains the
space station's power supply. The station's anti-gravity machinery
begins to fail, and the station starts falling slowly toward the
planet. Kris and the other surviving scientist, Gordon, will be
killed unless they get into their return-to-earth spacecraft and
hightail it out of there. Gordon gets in. But Kris has a last-moment
change of heart. He decides to stay behind and die. Make no mistake,
this is suicide, not some unfortunate error in judgment. Kris fully
understands that staying behind means death. He deliberately chooses
death. That is, he decides to commit suicide.
Don't be deceived by what happens next. Yes, Kris comes back as what
amounts to his ghost and is happily reunited with what amounts to his
wife's ghost. But he didn't know, and had no way of knowing, this was
going to happen. Kris had no inkling that, by staying behind, he
would be reconstituted as another artificial being. Much less did he
know that his wife would be reconstituted once more and would be there
to greet him with open arms. All Kris knew was that he was ending his
life, deliberately. He was committing suicide.
I have no admiration or empathy for heroes who commit suicide. Mind
you, we're not talking about sacrificing oneself for a cause or to
save someone else. We're talking about death for death's sake,
genuine suicide. Soderbergh may choose to glorify suicide by
pretending it leads to happiness. But don't expect me to buy that
line. There's nothing romantic about suicide. Give me a hero who has
the courage to face life, take his lumps, and uphold his professional
responsibilities.
Seminal Johnson
> > didn't see this because of the negative reviews, the lackluster
box-office,
> > the Tarkovsky association,
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> :-)
>
> Jan Bielawski
Not sure why you're smiling. What I meant by "the Tarkovsky association" was
merely that his film is considered a classic and the idea of an alternate
version is a turn off to many, though I always thought of Soderbergh's as
new adaptation of the novel rather than a sacrilegious remake of Tarkovsky's
film, but still wondered why it needed to be made. The negative reaction to
the film seemed to bolster the idea that this project was a bad idea. Now
that I've seen it it reminds me of the negative reactions to 2001 and many
other Kubrick films. Just over the heads of too many people.
--
"There's a shop on the corner that's selling papier-māché
Making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay"
Leonard F. Wheat
> > > I almost
> > > didn't see this because of the negative reviews, the lackluster
> box-office,
> > > the Tarkovsky association,
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Jan Bielawski
>
> Not sure why you're smiling. What I meant by "the Tarkovsky association" was
> merely that his film is considered a classic and the idea of an alternate
> version is a turn off to many, though I always thought of Soderbergh's as
> new adaptation of the novel rather than a sacrilegious remake of Tarkovsky's
> film, but still wondered why it needed to be made. The negative reaction to
> the film seemed to bolster the idea that this project was a bad idea. Now
> that I've seen it it reminds me of the negative reactions to 2001 and many
> other Kubrick films. Just over the heads of too many people.
Over the heads of too many people? How could such foolish, low-brow
entertainment be over the heads of anyone above, say, 11 years of age?
You insult Kubrick when you compare Solaris with 2001. The two films
are worlds apart in complexity, intellectual challenge, artistry, and
literary standing of their source material (The Odyssey and Thus Spake
Zarathustra in the case of 2001).
In your first post you described Soderbergh's film as "insightful."
Be more specific. What insights did you gain from the film?
1. Was it the insight that wives sometimes commit suicide?
2. Was it the insight that husbands sometimes become unhappy or
remorseful when their wives commit suicide?
3. Was it the insight that, as per what happened to Kris Kelvin
after his suicide, suicide can lead to happiness after death?
4. Is the insights that ghosts, even metaphorical ones, can turn a
mundane plot into one that is "brilliant" and "thoughtful."
5. Is it the insight that, in the future, travel to distant stars
will take only two or three years at most, and possibly less than a
year?
6. Is it the insight that creatures from the id (a.k.a. monsters
from the id [Forbidden Planet]) are sometimes murderous?
7. Is it the insight that, by designing and installing antigravity
machinery, we can build a space station that can hover over a planet
without orbiting?
8. Is it the insight that such a space station will fall if its
antigravity machinery loses power?
9. Is it the insight that drinking liquid nitrogen can be fatal?
10. Is it the insight that, in a mixed male-female crew, the woman
might turn out to be the most stable, emotionally balanced member of
the group?
Seminal Johnson
I'll get to a rebuttal of your lengthy review later on. You shouldn't have
mocked 11 year olds though, since your thoughts on the film are pretty
simple minded.
---
Darin Boville
> 10. Is it the insight that, in a mixed male-female crew, the woman
> might turn out to be the most stable, emotionally balanced member of
> the group?
Now, just hold on there! I like to think of this newsgroup as our own
little spaceship of sorts, with our own little crew.
The archives will show that the males here are nothing if not stable,
emotionally balanced people.
--Darin
Leonard F. Wheat
As Priscilla said, "Speak for yourself, . . ."
I think you're just trying to get a rise out of your wife. I
understand she has a delightful tendency to take seriously your tales
that you designed and built that mess of aluminum tubing called the
World Tree and painted Muro's appropriately nicknamed "Nausea at
Noon."
Mike Jackson
05/25/2004 11:11 AM:
<big ass snip>
> You may not think Solaris worthy of 2001, but your facile deconstruction can
> be applied to just about any film, and doesn't advance your argument. And
> calling Solaris "foolish" and "low-brow" is just plain wacky. 2001 was based
> on "The Odyssey"? Suuuuuure.
Now, now, Lenny is a published author after all. That makes his insights
automagically more important than those of us mere mortals.
> I happen to have liked most of Solaris. It is beautiful visually, the sets
> are carefully and gorgeously executed and the music (by Cliff Martinez) is
> exquisite. The performances are also compelling and interesting. That's
> about all I ask from a film. If I want insights, I usually find it a better
> bet to pick up a philosophy or science book.
Probably the best thing about Soderbergh's "Solaris" is the fact that it
gets people who were patient enough to sit through it and talk about it
afterwards talking about life, the Universe and everything. It's no "2001"
certainly, but at least it isn't another inane space opera shoot-em-up.
I'm sorry I didn't get to see it on the big screen but it's a nice little
movie on DVD, and often just fun to put on as background noise if nothing
else while I work during the day which keeps me from wearing out my "2001"
DVD. I'd like to see the other edit that Cameron and Soderbergh discuss on
the DVD commentary that is hinted at in the script that's on the DVD though
I think the chances of that are slim and none...
--
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first create the universe."
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Jimbo
Definately reminded me of Kubrick.
The movie overall was not spectacular but...
What I loved about it was the pace.
It was very slow.
As if to say "I'm making a good movie, if your attention span is not long
enough to follow what I'm trying to accomplish I don't really care."
Made me miss Stanley.
Seminal Johnson
news:b5f71a25.04052...@posting.google.com...
I said I would reply, and I started to a number of times, but I found your
lengthy misreading of "Solaris" so frustrating it is difficult to answer
without writing a line by line rebuttal or a book length analysis, neither
of which I'm willing to do. This is probably why you're so confident in your
opinions. You meet with little extensive opposition.
Soderbergh's "Solaris" is not a story about ghosts, extraterrestrials,
liquid nitrogen, or neutrino rays. It is about the human condition, our
desires and physical and mental limits, and the limits of science to cure
this condition.
You can mock what I consider insights, but you found a sentient ocean
insightful. Having seen the non-humanoid intelligence portrayed many times
in sci-fi it as as much a shock to me as the idea of a universe within a
grain of sand. These are nice "what if?" games for children ("Horton Hears A
Who" blew my mind as a kid) but I don't have much use for them as an adult.
I've never met a sentient ocean and not likely will. How to understand human
beings is a big enough mystery for science and philosophy to tackle.
The film is also about human communication. The need and desire to
understand one another. It is about the nature of life and living, of what
it means to be human, of mortality. of love. The film jettisons earthbound
conventions of what life is. What you call his suicide is a rebirth. A
movement toward something, not the inability to confront something.
Rheya is not a ghost or a duplication. She is only his memory of their
relationship. Unlike the original, she has no experiences of her own. She is
his perception of who his wife was. Interacting with this manifestation
reveals to Kelvin the tragic limit to our ability to understand one another.
For anyone who has been in a long term relationship only to find yourself
suddenly with someone you consider a stranger, this might resonate for you.
Then you have the tragedy of this creature being self-aware and wanting to
be more than it is (the A.I./Pinocchio connection). Is this a gift for
Kelvin? Any parent who had dreams of their children growing up to fulfill
the idealized picture of the parent's life will eventually have to confront
the fact that their creation/child has a will and mind of its own and will
not exist just to please the parent.
The film is not pro-suicide. That is ridiculous. Kelvin doesn't kill himself
(he could have done that with the liquid nitrogen) and has no way of knowing
what effect the expansion of Solaris will have on him. He is hoping it will
reunite him with his love -- he is calling her name as Solaris engulfs the
ship -- and it does. The power of Solaris is depicted as god like, right
down to the visual imitation of Michelangelo's painting of God breathing
life into Adam through a touch of the hand. By staying in Solaris' path,
Kelvin is no more attempting suicide than Bowman is in entering the unknown
of the Stargate. Both are reborn as higher level creatures. "Am I alive or
dead?" Kelvin asks. "We don't have to think like that anymore," replies
Rheya. And death shall have no dominion. Earlier When Kelvin asks Gibarian
what Solaris wants Gibarian explained that Solaris doesn't necessarily want
anything from them. That Kelvin must stop thinking that way. There are no
answers, only choices. This illustrates the human difficulty accepting ideas
outside of our finite thinking. (Beyond the infinite.) Yes, these are big
themes revealing the various dilemmas humans face in their lives and
interactions. And you dismiss all of this as a ghost story. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it is just about a smart ocean, Soderbergh is a dolt, and this movie
really is a "foolish, low-brow entertainment" for 11 year olds.
Damn, there is so much more to this film that I haven't even touched on.
You are the kind of person it is no fun to argue or discuss with because
most of your argument is imagined, superfluous, factually incorrect or based
on an incorrect premise that you just run away with to the point of
absurdity. And by the way, having a published book about "2001" does not
validate any of your misreadings. That film is not "BASED ON" Homer's
Odyssey anymore than "Star Wars," "Meet John Doe," or any other myth form
movies are. And TMA-1 (one) does not decode as "No Meat." Man, that's FUNNY.
Leonard F. Wheat
> I'll get to a rebuttal of your lengthy review later on.
Last night (May 29) your long awaited "rebuttal" appeared briefly on
this thread, but today it is gone. The same thing happened to an
earlier post by an unknown party. I didn't see the other post, but an
unsnipped portion of it can be found in Mike Jackson's post:
> I happen to have liked most of Solaris. It is beautiful visually, the sets
> are carefully and gorgeously executed and the music (by Cliff Martinez) is
> exquisite. The performances are also compelling and interesting. That's
> about all I ask from a film. If I want insights, I usually find it a better
> bet to pick up a philosophy or science book.
This chap is apparently speaking to me but should have addressed his
comments to you. You, not I, are the one who looks to films for
insights.
I don't know what is causing posts to appear and then disappear, but
I'll try to respond to what I can remember of what you wrote
yesterday. I'll probably go astray on a few details, but I do
remember the basics.
My original post challenged your claim that Solaris is "insightful."
I asked you to identify some specific insights you gained from the
film. You falsely reply that I myself have acknowledged a
Solaris-based insight having to do with the existence of a sentient
planet. (Here you were vague about the details of what I supposedly
acknowledged.) Although I actually acknowledged no insights
whatsoever in the film, your rebuttal makes it clear that you found
the existence of a sentient planet, as well as some of the planet's
attributes, "insightful."
Good grief! Can't you tell fact from fiction? Solaris doesn't even
exist. Neither do we have any reason to believe that any other
sentient planet exists in the universe. Your claim that Solaris
provides insights about planetary sentience is on par with
hypothetical claims that Dracula films provide insights about
vampires, the Ring Trilogy provides insights about elves and wizards,
and Snow White provides insights about poison apples.
Perhaps you don't understand what an insight is. Insights involve
truths.
Your rebuttal next challenges my criticism that Solaris amounts to a
ghost story rather than science fiction. You deny that the ending, in
which Solaris produces rational, conscious replicas of the dead Kris
and his dead wife, features ghosts. But I didn't say they were
literally ghosts. I said they were "the EQUIVALENT of ghosts,
reembodiments of dead persons." I also said "Kris comes back as WHAT
AMOUNTS TO HIS ghost and is happily reunited with WHAT AMOUNTS to his
wife's ghost."
A ghost is a rational recreation or reembodiment of a dead person.
The replicas of Kris and his wife are just that --- rational (and
emotional) reembodiments of dead persons. Perhaps you think a ghost
has to be a semiamorphous specter or that it must be invisible. If
so, you need to brush up on your Shakespeare and your Dickens. Some
of fiction's ghosts are anthropomorphic and visible.
You also argue that the two replicas cannot amount to ghosts because
they lack complete memories. Here you are confused, because what you
say is true only of Kris's wife. Solaris can recreate whatever is in
a person's mind. Kris has all his memories in his mind, from which
Solaris gets its raw material. The planet's knowledge of his wife is
second-hand, taken from Kris's mind, and therefore lacks most of her
memories, although second-hand memories will be present.
In any case, memories are not the essence of ghosts. Though not
literally ghosts, the replicas are essentially similar to my namesake
Sam Wheat from the movie Ghost. They amount to ghosts. The movie
makes it clear that they have the capacity to love and to interact in
the manner of humans. (The ghost of Sam Wheat had the capacity to
love his former wife or sweetheart.) Kris and his wife are going to
live happily ever after in an afterlife. They will live in a replica
of their apartment back on earth.
The only other point in your rebuttal is that Kris does not, as I
contend, commit suicide. You say that Kris knew he would be
recreated. Now you are being absurd. Kris had no such knowledge.
Neither did he have any reason to believe that his wife would again be
recreated. Solaris creates replicas only for the purpose of providing
"visitors" for the living. Once the living are gone, Solaris has no
reason to provide visitors.
Kris knew that the space station had lost most of its power, that it
was falling, and that anyone who remained on board would die. Even a
gentle landing (improbable) would leave any occupant without a life
support system and without a breathable atmosphere. Kris knew he
would die if he stayed with the space stations. Yet he elected to
die. The female scientist also knew this and, for this reason,
elected to return to earth. She was not willing to die; she was not
despondent about a dead spouse. Kris's decision to stay was a
decision to commit suicide.
Which leads an important criticism of the film. By providing a happy
reunion between Kris and his wife, the film glorifies suicide. That
is despicable.
Your rebuttal has one other argument, the sort of argument that people
use when they cannot rebut what their opponent has said. This is the
"straw man" argument. A straw man is something created by the
rebutter, not by his opponent, because a straw man is easily knocked
down. The rebutter chooses to knock down a straw man (phoney
argument) because the opponent's real argument cannot be knocked down.
In other words, a straw man argument is one that rebuts a foolish,
easily refuted point that was never made in the first place.
You claim that I am posing as an authority and that my criticism of
Solaris rests not on any substance in what I wrote but on my having
written a book about another science fiction film. Your straw man
argument is both foolish and dishonest. My critique of Solaris said
nothing about my being an author. Neither did it make any other
appeal to personal authority. My case against Solaris rests 100
percent on the views and arguments presented in my review. Your
resort to attacking a straw man amounts to an admission that you
cannot handle my real arguments.
M4RV1N
writes, in part:
>Soderbergh's "Solaris" is not a story about ghosts, extraterrestrials,
>liquid nitrogen, or neutrino rays.
No, it's not. Since you're objecting to Wheat's objections, I'm going to offer
some of my own objections (though they're not precisely
objection-objection-objections). Actually, I agree with your general points on
how one should value the film:
> It is about the human condition, our
>desires and physical and mental limits, and the limits of science to cure
>this condition.
I think ideally the film should also be about examining the limits of our
conventional conceptual framework of the mind, rather than science. The most
profound issue is that of the relationship between form and content in the
individual personality, and form/content in the complex process that creates
it. The narrative demands clarity on this, and both Tarkovsky and Soderbergh
play a bit fast and loose with the issue. Basically both directors can't
commit on what depth we can assign to the content of the minds of Solaris's
creations.
>You can mock what I consider insights, but you found a sentient ocean
>insightful. Having seen the non-humanoid intelligence portrayed many times
>in sci-fi it as as much a shock to me as the idea of a universe within a
>grain of sand. These are nice "what if?" games for children ("Horton Hears A
>Who" blew my mind as a kid) but I don't have much use for them as an adult.
>I've never met a sentient ocean and not likely will. How to understand human
>beings is a big enough mystery for science and philosophy to tackle.
Fair point, but what science fiction does well (what it *can* do well) is
provoke new thoughts on the human condition by measuring it against what
science portends in the way of the remainder of this universe and the remainder
of our future in it. This is what Lem's work does brilliantly.
>The film is also about human communication. The need and desire to
>understand one another. It is about the nature of life and living, of what
>it means to be human, of mortality. of love. The film jettisons earthbound
>conventions of what life is. What you call his suicide is a rebirth. A
>movement toward something, not the inability to confront something.
Right.
>Rheya is not a ghost or a duplication. >She is only his memory of their
relationship.
I think the intent is that the memory of her is a starting point; it inflates
this into sentience by either diverting part of itself into the being, or by
tapping into the actual thought pattern and placing it in a newly constructed
consciousness. Rheya definitely lives "again," but different is not less. If
this is confusing I'll take another shot at the idea shortly.
>Unlike the original, she has no experiences of her own. She is
>his perception of who his wife was.
But her ability to speak, to interact at all, demands experiential ability. A
person with amnesia is a full person with experiential content. What matters,
after all, is the content of *now* in consciousness.
Interacting with this manifestation
>reveals to Kelvin the tragic limit to our ability to understand one another.
>For anyone who has been in a long term relationship only to find yourself
>suddenly with someone you consider a stranger, this might resonate for you.
Excellent and important point. All we actually have access to are the
constructions our brain makes of the outside world, including people we are
closest to. A point made quite effectively in "Eyes Wide Shut" when Bill must
adjust his perception of his wife after her confession.
>Then you have the tragedy of this creature being self-aware and wanting to
>be more than it is (the A.I./Pinocchio connection). Is this a gift for
>Kelvin? Any parent who had dreams of their children growing up to fulfill
>the idealized picture of the parent's life will eventually have to confront
>the fact that their creation/child has a will and mind of its own and will
>not exist just to please the parent.
This is where the films (both) are muddled and give short shrift to the
philosophical and scientific issues. What Solaris creates are arbitrarily
conscious and self-directed and then at other times like puppets giving a
performance. This undermines the premise that is so rich. It is possible to
imagine that Solaris scans the brain and reads far more sophisticated modelling
of Rheya than Kelvin could ever articulate. It may be that this model *is
sufficient* to serve as a conscious entity given the right substance (brain,
silicon processer, energy, or whatever), even though it's inferior in memory or
other qualities. This is the interesting endpoint, and it has nothing to do
with ghosts or an "afterlife." Has Morevac has written brilliantly on these
ideas, BTW.
>The film is not pro-suicide. That is ridiculous. Kelvin doesn't kill himself
>(he could have done that with the liquid nitrogen) and has no way of knowing
>what effect the expansion of Solaris will have on him. He is hoping it will
>reunite him with his love -- he is calling her name as Solaris engulfs the
>ship -- and it does. The power of Solaris is depicted as god like, right
>down to the visual imitation of Michelangelo's painting of God breathing
>life into Adam through a touch of the hand. By staying in Solaris' path,
>Kelvin is no more attempting suicide than Bowman is in entering the unknown
>of the Stargate. Both are reborn as higher level creatures. "Am I alive or
>dead?" Kelvin asks. "We don't have to think like that anymore," replies
>Rheya.
That they both could be, could have become, creations of Solaris does not imply
death, it implies some continuity of content and a change of form. There is no
necessity for continuity of *all* content.
And death shall have no dominion. Earlier When Kelvin asks Gibarian
>what Solaris wants Gibarian explained that Solaris doesn't necessarily want
>anything from them. That Kelvin must stop thinking that way. There are no
>answers, only choices. This illustrates the human difficulty accepting ideas
>outside of our finite thinking. (Beyond the infinite.)
Good point, and what Kubrick said about the ETI in "2001" would apply: their
motives would be ungraspable. So with the motives of Solaris.
Yes, these are big
>themes revealing the various dilemmas humans face in their lives and
>interactions. And you dismiss all of this as a ghost story.
Ghosts have no more to do with the creations of Solaris than HAL is a ghost.
Maybe I'm wrong.
>Maybe it is just about a smart ocean, Soderbergh is a dolt, and this movie
>really is a "foolish, low-brow entertainment" for 11 year olds.
>You are the kind of person it is no fun to argue or discuss with because
>most of your argument is imagined, superfluous, factually incorrect or based
>on an incorrect premise that you just run away with to the point of
>absurdity. And by the way, having a published book about "2001" does not
>validate any of your misreadings. That film is not "BASED ON" Homer's
>Odyssey anymore than "Star Wars," "Meet John Doe," or any other myth form
>movies are. And TMA-1 (one) does not decode as "No Meat." Man, that's FUNNY.
Primary magnetic anomaly at the crater Tycho. Less funny. Protein rich.
Mark Ervin
Seminal Johnson
> "Seminal Johnson" <no...@na.net> wrote in message
news:<AJurc.19643$kD4....@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com>...
>
>
> > I'll get to a rebuttal of your lengthy review later on.
>
> Last night (May 29) your long awaited "rebuttal" appeared briefly on
> this thread, but today it is gone. The same thing happened to an
> earlier post by an unknown party.
Learn how to use your newsreader. Plus the posts are still archived on
Google. It's convenient to claim you have to reference when what you really
have is no argument.
> I didn't see the other post, but an
> unsnipped portion of it can be found in Mike Jackson's post:
>
> > I happen to have liked most of Solaris. It is beautiful visually, the
sets
> > are carefully and gorgeously executed and the music (by Cliff Martinez)
is
> > exquisite. The performances are also compelling and interesting.
That's
> > about all I ask from a film. If I want insights, I usually find it a
better
> > bet to pick up a philosophy or science book.
>
> This chap is apparently speaking to me but should have addressed his
> comments to you. You, not I, are the one who looks to films for
> insights.
>
> I don't know what is causing posts to appear and then disappear, but
> I'll try to respond to what I can remember of what you wrote
> yesterday. I'll probably go astray on a few details, but I do
> remember the basics.
>
> My original post challenged your claim that Solaris is "insightful."
> I asked you to identify some specific insights you gained from the
> film.
Which I did, referring to the human relationships in the film, the
importance of which went over your head because you apparently wanted a more
conventional science-fiction story, as in your statement "I'm sorry, Mr.
Soderbergh, but ghost stories and visions of heaven are no substitute for
science fiction." Funny, but the effect of science in 2001 is on about the
same level as in Solaris. It's not about gadgets but intervention by an
advanced intelligence that evolves human beings to a new plane of existence.
Rather than seeing Kris and Rheya as transformed you prefer them as corpses
in ghost heaven. Maybe if they looked more like Star Children, or the
advanced Mechas in A.I. you wouldn't have such a problem.
>You falsely reply that I myself have acknowledged a
> Solaris-based insight having to do with the existence of a sentient
> planet. (Here you were vague about the details of what I supposedly
> acknowledged.) Although I actually acknowledged no insights
> whatsoever in the film,
I was vague? I thought you would be familiar with your own review. Here is a
quote from it:
"Lem's novel had a science fiction emphasis that
revolved around an intelligent, living "sentient ocean" on the planet
Solaris. .... The novel's focus was on how man would react to an
intelligent being that
is not anthropomorphic and whose nature and behavior man can't
comprehend."
And later:
"TARKOVSKY'S 1972 FILM
"And as the visible landscape gradually expands,
we see that the farm, the cottage, and the father are on a tiny island
on Solaris. They are creations of the sentient ocean."
> your rebuttal makes it clear that you found
> the existence of a sentient planet, as well as some of the planet's
> attributes, "insightful."
No, I DIDN'T. I dismissed it as kids' stuff. "Horton Hears a Who."
Remember?
I also didn't say you saw a sentient ocean in Soderbergh's film. But you
clearly see the sentient ocean as the main point of Lem's story as quoted
above. You also misstate that I claimed it was a sentient planet and not the
ocean on the planet. I was referring to Lem's novel, not Soderbergh's film
which doesn't even describe Solaris as a planet necessarily.
> Good grief! Can't you tell fact from fiction? Solaris doesn't even
> exist. Neither do we have any reason to believe that any other
> sentient planet exists in the universe. Your claim that Solaris
> provides insights about planetary sentience is on par with
> hypothetical claims that Dracula films provide insights about
> vampires, the Ring Trilogy provides insights about elves and wizards,
> and Snow White provides insights about poison apples.
Wow, you are grasping at straws now. Now I supposedly don't know Solaris
isn't real?
> Perhaps you don't understand what an insight is. Insights involve
> truths.
Insight (noun)
"The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of
perceiving in an intuitive manner."
The idea that a intelligent being need not be anthropomorphic can be
considered an insight. Since you dismiss the importance of the human
interaction in Solaris, all you are left with is the science fiction. Yes, I
am claiming you found the idea of a sentient ocean to be an insight. A
sentient ocean need actually exist for this to happen. Religion, philosophy,
psychology are often insightful even if they deal with intangible things
like resurrections or dreams.
> Your rebuttal next challenges my criticism that Solaris amounts to a
> ghost story rather than science fiction. You deny that the ending, in
> which Solaris produces rational, conscious replicas of the dead Kris
> and his dead wife, features ghosts. But I didn't say they were
> literally ghosts. I said they were "the EQUIVALENT of ghosts,
> reembodiments of dead persons."
Actually, you said :
"I am baffled and appalled by your suggestion that Soderbergh's Solaris
is "brilliant," "intelligent," "thoughtful," and "insightful." It is
the opposite, essentially a stupidly conceived ghost story that
debases the novel from which it takes its name. What is intelligent
or thoughtful, let alone brilliant, about a ghost story? "
> You also argue that the two replicas cannot amount to ghosts because
> they lack complete memories.
No, I DIDN'T. I also never said they were Ghosts in the first place. I said
they were not replications of the actual person, only Kris's memory of
Rheya. The visitors lack their own memories and experiences apart from those
held by the human thinking of them. Interestingly, the one time Solaris
created a duplicate of a crew member, Snow, who could contain all of the
memories and experiences of the original, Snow tried to kill it.
Then you go on to argue about the definition of ghosts, which I've snipped.
You are loosing the argument so you change the focus or definition of the
subject. Then you later accuse ME of strawman arguments.
> The only other point in your rebuttal is that Kris does not, as I
> contend, commit suicide. You say that Kris knew he would be
> recreated.
No, I DIDN'T.
> Now you are being absurd. Kris had no such knowledge.
> Neither did he have any reason to believe that his wife would again be
> recreated.
As Solaris was engulfing the space station, Kris was running down the
corridor calling out Rheya's name, he was searching for her.
> Solaris creates replicas only for the purpose of providing
> "visitors" for the living. Once the living are gone, Solaris has no
> reason to provide visitors.
This is not explained anywhere in the film.
> Kris knew that the space station had lost most of its power, that it
> was falling, and that anyone who remained on board would die. Even a
> gentle landing (improbable) would leave any occupant without a life
> support system and without a breathable atmosphere. Kris knew he
> would die if he stayed with the space stations. Yet he elected to
> die. The female scientist also knew this and, for this reason,
> elected to return to earth. She was not willing to die; she was not
> despondent about a dead spouse. Kris's decision to stay was a
> decision to commit suicide.
>
> Which leads an important criticism of the film. By providing a happy
> reunion between Kris and his wife, the film glorifies suicide. That
> is despicable.
You clearly have a bug up your ass about suicide. At the moment of deciding
to go back or stay, Kris either imagines his life back on Earth (or is
genuinely back on Earth courtesy of the power of Solaris). He is living an
empty existence there. No life at all. He decides to remain at Solaris. When
he is reunited with Rheya it is in the same world that he
"imagined/experienced" back on Earth, except that now they are together and
happy. She tells him they don't have to think in terms of life or death
anymore. It couldn't be any clearer that this has nothing to do with the
Earthbound convention of suicide, life, or death. What is the quote they
keep repeating? "And Death Shall Have no Dominion!"
> Your rebuttal has one other argument, the sort of argument that people
> use when they cannot rebut what their opponent has said. This is the
> "straw man" argument. A straw man is something created by the
> rebutter, not by his opponent, because a straw man is easily knocked
> down.
> The rebutter chooses to knock down a straw man (phony
> argument) because the opponent's real argument cannot be knocked down.
> In other words, a straw man argument is one that rebuts a foolish,
> easily refuted point that was never made in the first place.
You just did this yourself. Look at the "NO, I DIDN'T" instances above
where you claim I said something I, in fact, didn't. There are others, but
as I said in the earlier reply, I am not going to go through a line by line
rebuttal and point out all of the mistakes and imagined mistakes you have
made. I'm sure you have been accused of the strawman argument many times
which is why you are so familiar with the term. Let's just look as some of
the things your imagination attributes to me so that you could "win" the
argument, shall we. I guess you thought these were so absured that none of
them could be disputed.
> In your first post you described Soderbergh's film as "insightful."
> Be more specific. What insights did you gain from the film?
>
> 1. Was it the insight that wives sometimes commit suicide?
>
> 2. Was it the insight that husbands sometimes become unhappy or
> remorseful when their wives commit suicide?
These are so childish as to not merit comment. Actually, they all are, but
on we go.
> 3. Was it the insight that, as per what happened to Kris Kelvin
> after his suicide, suicide can lead to happiness after death?
Suicide, resurrection, or transformation?
> 4. Is the insights that ghosts, even metaphorical ones, can turn a
> mundane plot into one that is "brilliant" and "thoughtful."
This isn't something that exists in the film, it's just your negative
review.
> 5. Is it the insight that, in the future, travel to distant stars
> will take only two or three years at most, and possibly less than a
> year?
The location of Solaris is never explained in the film. It could be a newly
arrived gas formation off Jupiter for all you know.
> 6. Is it the insight that creatures from the id (a.k.a. monsters
> from the id [Forbidden Planet]) are sometimes murderous?
Now that IS a pretty good insight. Good enough for Freud.
> 7. Is it the insight that, by designing and installing antigravity
> machinery, we can build a space station that can hover over a planet
> without orbiting?
Never heard of stationary orbit? Who said Solaris is a planet in
Soderbergh's film?
> 8. Is it the insight that such a space station will fall if its
> antigravity machinery loses power?
Fall where? They prepare to leave because Solaris is expanding, not because
they are falling into it.
> 9. Is it the insight that drinking liquid nitrogen can be fatal?
Umm.. it wasn't fatal, was it?
> 10. Is it the insight that, in a mixed male-female crew, the woman
> might turn out to be the most stable, emotionally balanced member of
> the group?
That would only be an insight to someone who thinks it's a PC statement to
have a woman on board in the first place. You
"forgot" to mention she's black too. Sadly, for your argument, you single
out as "the most stable, emotionally balanced " the character who describes
herself with a long list of maladies: agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive
disorder, depression, paranoia, etc. Good call!
Not that ANY of those things or my sanswers to them were what *I* found
insightful in the film.
> You claim that I am posing as an authority and that my criticism of
> Solaris rests not on any substance in what I wrote but on my having
> written a book about another science fiction film. Your straw man
> argument is both foolish and dishonest. My critique of Solaris said
> nothing about my being an author. Neither did it make any other
> appeal to personal authority. My case against Solaris rests 100
> percent on the views and arguments presented in my review. Your
> resort to attacking a straw man amounts to an admission that you
> cannot handle my real arguments.
No, I mentioned your book on 2001 both because you brought up 2001 in your
review of Solaris and because your arguments in your book suffer the same
flaws as in your review of Solaris and your criticisms of my personally
positive reaction to Soderbergh's films. Once again, you are accusing me of
something you are imagining so that you can be "right."
You must be frustrating to know in real life.
Cheers!
Seminal Johnson
"goFab.com" <tpl...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:c8vr7...@drn.newsguy.com...
> On 21 May 2004 11:26:00 -0700, in article
> <b5f71a25.04052...@posting.google.com>, Leonard F. Wheat
stated:
> What is the insight you gained from 2001?
>
> Is it the insight that:
>
> 1. human evolution was due to intervention by aliens?
>
> 2. space exploration will be commercialized?
>
> 3. computers will go evil and turn on their masters?
>
> 4. pens float in space?
>
> 5. futuristic computers will be controlled with lucite rods and
screwdrivers?
>
> 6. to kill the astronauts, the computer would have to chase after one of
them,
> Keystone cops style, with an arm-waving pod, rather than just dumping the
main
> ship's oxygen or other more efficient approach?
>
> 7. the outer reaches of space look just like earth except with trendy
> psychedelic color substitution?
>
> 8. "extremely powerful" radio transmissions can be "aimed at" Jupiter?
>
> 9. liquids fall down in a straw after a dining spaceship passenger stops
> sucking, even in the absence of gravity?
>
>
> You may not think Solaris worthy of 2001, but your facile deconstruction
can be
> applied to just about any film, and doesn't advance your argument. And
calling
> Solaris "foolish" and "low-brow" is just plain wacky. 2001 was based on
"The
> Odyssey"? Suuuuuure.
>
Mike Jackson
m4r...@aol.com wrote on 05/30/2004 11:29 PM:
>> Seminal Johnson writes, in part:
>> Soderbergh's "Solaris" is not a story about ghosts, extraterrestrials, liquid
>> nitrogen, or neutrino rays.
> No, it's not. Since you're objecting to Wheat's objections, I'm going to
> offer some of my own objections (though they're not precisely
> objection-objection-objections). Actually, I agree with your general points
> on how one should value the film:
Since I liked this film a lot you guys mind if I join in here?
>> It is about the human condition, our desires and physical and mental limits,
>> and the limits of science to cure this condition.
> I think ideally the film should also be about examining the limits of our
> conventional conceptual framework of the mind, rather than science. The most
> profound issue is that of the relationship between form and content in the
> individual personality, and form/content in the complex process that creates
> it. The narrative demands clarity on this, and both Tarkovsky and Soderbergh
> play a bit fast and loose with the issue. Basically both directors can't
> commit on what depth we can assign to the content of the minds of Solaris's
> creations.
I think the closest they get is three key scenes; one where Rheya claims she
can't communicate with Solaris once she seems to understand that she isn't
the 'real' Rheya, when Gilbarian may or may not appear as a construct of
Solaris but rather a dream where Kelvin's own doubts are speaking to him and
in the end where Snow seems to be acting to give them either the choice to
leave immediately or stay permanently and see what happens.
The last one seems closest to being telling. Snow isn't the real Snow after
all - he might just be a crazed, incomplete copy of an already rather
disturbed human, but he does seem to indeed grasp what's going on far more
than he should unless he's able to access Kelvin and Gordon's minds or is
really a puppet for Solaris.
His actions at the end seem to indicate that he isn't the completely self
absorbed floater after all, more that he's been watching and formulating the
entire time, though why he didn't toss the real Snow's body out the airlock
is a bit of a mystery unless he didn't care much about being eventually
found out.
>> You can mock what I consider insights, but you found a sentient ocean
>> insightful. Having seen the non-humanoid intelligence portrayed many times in
>> sci-fi it as as much a shock to me as the idea of a universe within a grain
>> of sand. These are nice "what if?" games for children ("Horton Hears A Who"
>> blew my mind as a kid) but I don't have much use for them as an adult. I've
>> never met a sentient ocean and not likely will. How to understand human
>> beings is a big enough mystery for science and philosophy to tackle.
> Fair point, but what science fiction does well (what it *can* do well) is
> provoke new thoughts on the human condition by measuring it against what
> science portends in the way of the remainder of this universe and the
> remainder of our future in it. This is what Lem's work does brilliantly.
Like "2001" it asks what will happen when you come up against an alien
intelligence whose motives and ideas you can't begin to comprehend. Here
though every second they stay with the 'visitors' they are feeding
information on themselves to Solaris possibly while making no attempts to
address Solaris through these constructs.
Even in lesser pop sci-fi like Trek I couldn't imagine say Captain Picard
not realizing this and trying to address Solaris through these creations.
Dramatically such an attempt could never reveal an answer but it's
interesting the crew of Prometheus never even tries.
>> The film is also about human communication. The need and desire to understand
>> one another. It is about the nature of life and living, of what it means to
>> be human, of mortality. of love. The film jettisons earthbound conventions of
>> what life is. What you call his suicide is a rebirth. A movement toward
>> something, not the inability to confront something.
> Right.
It's more than a a possibly suicidal act though. It's Kelvin's realization
that going home means getting no answers to what it's all about, going back
to his lonely life and just eventually getting old and dying like everyone
else. With an alien intelligence that might hold answers to questions he
can't even think to ask, going home would be more like suicide- passing up a
chance that may never come again. I don't think he stays because he wants to
die or maybe even make things right with the Rheya substitute, but rather to
ultimately know more.
>> Rheya is not a ghost or a duplication. She is only his memory of their
>> relationship.
> I think the intent is that the memory of her is a starting point; it inflates
> this into sentience by either diverting part of itself into the being, or by
> tapping into the actual thought pattern and placing it in a newly constructed
> consciousness. Rheya definitely lives "again," but different is not less. If
> this is confusing I'll take another shot at the idea shortly.
One of the things that does bother me about the movie is Kelvin's inability
to see her as an alien construct. He only relates to her as if she were
Rheya and never seems to understand that he could potentially address the
alien intelligence that is or is on Solaris. I think only in the last few
minutes is it debatable that he makes that leap.
I've never read the book so I don't know if they are trying to stay faithful
to it on this point. It bothers me too that Gordon's strength in standing up
to the illusion doesn't seem as though she's ever made the leap either, but
whatever it is she's hiding in her quarters hints at a life none too
pleasant up to that point!
She wants to make it STOP, she doesn't want the visitors to follow them back
to Earth, but then how could she hope to stop them? If Solaris has such easy
access to her mind, in the end she realizes Snow isn't the real Snow, well
how could she trust Kelvin to really be Kelvin? How could she know that
however Solaris is manifesting this trick won't follow her back to Earth
anyway, even if she goes alone or only thinks she does?
(What a fantastic performance by Viola Davis BTW as Gordon!)
Gordon just wants off the station, it's all more than she ever imagined
bargaining for and doesn't seem to follow these thoughts to their logical
conclusion. She will ALWAYS be at the mercy of Solaris until she tries to
confront it, not run away from communicate with it. Kelvin seems to get that
in the end.
I suppose I ask myself if I were in the situation visited by people I knew
to be irrefutably dead could I make that leap and I think I could. In a way
as viewers we may be luckier because through the very act of watching movies
like "2001" or reading sci-fi we are inoculating ourselves for facing the
bizarre.
The thing is can we imagine things bizarre as what we REALLY will encounter?
Perhaps looking on Gordon's need to escape in an unfavorable light is hubris
itself.
>> Unlike the original, she has no experiences of her own. She is his perception
>> of who his wife was.
> But her ability to speak, to interact at all, demands experiential ability. A
> person with amnesia is a full person with experiential content. What matters,
> after all, is the content of *now* in consciousness.
The fact that the constructs DO act like the people they are supposed to be
means the alien influence does seem to have a pretty good grasp of these
puppets. But then it begs the question are these constructs like virtual
ventriloquist dummies for a remote alien intelligence or are they drone
automatons that are acting independently, feeding off the memories of the
people they latched onto?
It would be an important distinction, as Rheya claims she can't communicate
with Solaris but whether or not that's true we can only take her word for.
Snow's bizarre behavior tends to lend credence to that idea since he seems
adrift, a shadow of what was already a pretty eccentric guy to begin with.
But then he seems to have been plotting all along in the end against Kelvin
and Gordon.
Perhaps Snow is merely projecting their own fears and plots right back at
them, subconsciously Snow is the puppet of Kelvin and Gordon. He does what
Gordon wants, he stays put. He provides them with the urgency to leave and
seems to invite Kelvin to do what he wants most, a reason to stay.
Is Kelvin seeing the pointlessness of going home at the end of his ordinary
life and the reason to stay not just to keep Rheya but to get a peek at the
big show? I mean is he seeing that for himself or is Snow and/or Solaris
showing him that? I guess it depends on whether or not one thinks Kelvin is
smart enough to have grasped that on his own.
I think Kelvin's dilemma is deeper than Dave's at the end of "2001" because
Dave's choice was to lie down and die in a dying spacecraft or go forward
and find out what if anything was waiting for him. Kelvin seems free to
leave. Solaris doesn't seem interested one way or another, as though it is
patient enough to wait for the next human to come along to it's spider web
as not.
>> Interacting with this manifestation reveals to Kelvin the tragic limit to our
>> ability to understand one another. For anyone who has been in a long term
>> relationship only to find yourself suddenly with someone you consider a
>> stranger, this might resonate for you.
> Excellent and important point. All we actually have access to are the
> constructions our brain makes of the outside world, including people we are
> closest to. A point made quite effectively in "Eyes Wide Shut" when Bill must
> adjust his perception of his wife after her confession.
But Bill acts in rather juvenile fashion as if he simply can't fathom that
Alice would ever have a sexual fantasy about someone other than him. Most of
us men I'm afraid have that kind of ridiculous idea about women and their
desires or capacity to be tempted yet most men seem proud that they still
look at other women but it's okay that they don't act on it.
I always wonder if it might have been too arch if Kubrick could have snagged
say Brad Pitt to play the naval officer in Bill's fantasy about what Alice
NEVER did? Humorously Bill and Alice being embodied by then über-beautiful
couple Tom and Nicole - well who would Tom imagine as a guy more tempting
than himself after all? Jealousy and Vanity ain't just kissin' cousins, they
are making out like randy monkeys in Vegas.
Dr. Bill should have read a little more Raymond Chandler. There is no trap
deadlier than the ones we set for ourselves.
>> Then you have the tragedy of this creature being self-aware and wanting to be
>> more than it is (the A.I./Pinocchio connection). Is this a gift for Kelvin?
>> Any parent who had dreams of their children growing up to fulfill the
>> idealized picture of the parent's life will eventually have to confront the
>> fact that their creation/child has a will and mind of its own and will not
>> exist just to please the parent.
> This is where the films (both) are muddled and give short shrift to the
> philosophical and scientific issues. What Solaris creates are arbitrarily
> conscious and self-directed and then at other times like puppets giving a
> performance. This undermines the premise that is so rich. It is possible to
> imagine that Solaris scans the brain and reads far more sophisticated
> modelling of Rheya than Kelvin could ever articulate. It may be that this
> model *is sufficient* to serve as a conscious entity given the right substance
> (brain, silicon processer, energy, or whatever), even though it's inferior in
> memory or other qualities. This is the interesting endpoint, and it has
> nothing to do with ghosts or an "afterlife." Has Morevac has written
> brilliantly on these ideas, BTW.
Well, the problem in the story is that if the constructs, these 'visitors'
are MORE than some automaton construct designed to harvest and act on the
memories of the person they are paired to - if they are indeed basically
ventriloquist puppets that the alien intelligences on Solaris are
communicating through then any storyteller is left with the dilemma that
Kubrick sidestepped brilliantly in "2001".
Solaris is like the Monolith aliens, so advanced they are indistinguishable
from a god. And what words can you put in a gods mouth without sounding like
a televangelist pulling it all cravenly out of your ass?
It's also possible that they are BOTH automaton gathering data from memories
and puppeteered when Solaris needs to know more.
It comes close to this territory when Gilbarian appears and tells Kelvin if
he looks for answers he will die there. It's a fudge because it appears that
Kelvin might not be talking to a construct of Solaris after all, but rather
an ordinary dream of Gilbarian voicing his subconscious' terrible
realization that he is in grave danger there.
The terrible part is not being able to tell where your dreams leave off and
the alien begins; the old 'evil genius' from that boring Philosophy 101 has
reared his ugly head at last! Is a dream dreaming us? Whoa, dude! Mister
Wizard, get me the hell out of here!
>> The film is not pro-suicide. That is ridiculous. Kelvin doesn't kill himself
>> (he could have done that with the liquid nitrogen) and has no way of knowing
>> what effect the expansion of Solaris will have on him. He is hoping it will
>> reunite him with his love -- he is calling her name as Solaris engulfs the
>> ship -- and it does. The power of Solaris is depicted as god like, right down
>> to the visual imitation of Michelangelo's painting of God breathing life into
>> Adam through a touch of the hand. By staying in Solaris' path, Kelvin is no
>> more attempting suicide than Bowman is in entering the unknown of the
>> Stargate. Both are reborn as higher level creatures. "Am I alive or dead?"
>> Kelvin asks. "We don't have to think like that anymore," replies Rheya.
> That they both could be, could have become, creations of Solaris does not
> imply death, it implies some continuity of content and a change of form.
> There is no necessity for continuity of *all* content.
One of the things I found interesting in the screenplay included on the DVD
is that in that draft Solaris is described orbiting somewhere around the
orbit of Pluto, a mysterious planet that has just popped up on the radar so
to speak. I wondered if they decided to edit this out to sidestep the
comparison of Solaris as a repository of human consciousness of the dead, a
sort of physical manifestation of 'heaven' where the mind goes after death?
Man, that anonymous Toynbee plaque guy would have loved that wouldn't he?
Resurrecting the dead - on Solaris instead!
In the movie it is left rather nebulous where Solaris is exactly in the next
star system or what. So far as I was ever able to work out from the Russian
version they left the location similarly vague when this seems to be an
important, if minor plot point.
>> And death shall have no dominion. Earlier When Kelvin asks Gibarian what
>> Solaris wants Gibarian explained that Solaris doesn't necessarily want
>> anything from them. That Kelvin must stop thinking that way. There are no
>> answers, only choices. This illustrates the human difficulty accepting ideas
>> outside of our finite thinking. (Beyond the infinite.)
> Good point, and what Kubrick said about the ETI in "2001" would apply: their
> motives would be ungraspable. So with the motives of Solaris.
What does a god-like being want? What can ants know of the mind of the human
stirring their ant-pile with a stick? Why doesn't this crop up more in
sci-fi movies?
>> Yes, these are big themes revealing the various dilemmas humans face in their
>> lives and interactions. And you dismiss all of this as a ghost story.
> Ghosts have no more to do with the creations of Solaris than HAL is a ghost.
Absolutely bizarre that as I work my way down to this line, CNN plays in the
background at low volume but as I paused they tease a story on ghosts;
Anderson Cooper saying "one-third of American believe in ghosts - do you?"
And I think ONLY one-third? I thought more believed in ghosts cousins
angels?
I agree to a point your point about the visitors having little to do
DIRECTLY with ghosts because it doesn't work for the premise of the story
but in a way memories are the ghosts of those no longer with us if only in a
metaphorical sense. So the whole thing twists around and around on ghosts
and you are dumped on some insane causality loop of pop philosophy.
Solaris is about those memories made real for some purpose, though for the
sake of drama we can never know quite what purpose. Solaris seems benign and
noncommittal. All we can surprise is that this alien intelligence perhaps
can't comprehend the very idea of a discontinuity like 'death' and is
experimenting on the crew of Prometheus simply in the only way it knows how,
not knowing how much it is upsetting these humans anymore than we can gauge
how we upset lab rats.
We deal with ghosts indirectly all the time. Not spectral ones mind you, but
think of someone you know who is now dead; the things they said, wisdoms
imparted. We can see them can't we? Honestly you know it's probably not
accurate since when can we ever really imagine what it was really like, how
they might have really said or thought about something? If we are skeptical
we take it with a shaker of salt but whenever we think of the dead, there
they are again. Not solid like Rheya, Gilbarian or Snow certainly but we
remember the connection and use it as a roadmap for how to deal with
whatever the hell it was that caused our subconscious to dredge them up to
begin with.
Memory itself is a ghost of knowledge and insights passed on to us from
others be they parents, friends or teachers. Perhaps half remembered words
on a page from someone we never met. All you have to do is pick up a book or
pop in the movie and a ghost speaks to you from long gone decades to tell
you how much or little human nature really has or hasn't changed.
Solaris isn't a ghost, but it sure manifests the next best thing doesn't it?
Once the viewer gets that it is a great jumping off point.
I don't know if the film could ever be called profound in anything
approaching "2001" but I give it kudos for at least trying.
So very little output of Hollywood even makes the attempt. "I see dead
people" indeed!
>> Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is just about a smart ocean, Soderbergh is a dolt,
>> and this movie really is a "foolish, low-brow entertainment" for 11 year
>> olds.
>>
>> You are the kind of person it is no fun to argue or discuss with because most
>> of your argument is imagined, superfluous, factually incorrect or based on an
>> incorrect premise that you just run away with to the point of absurdity. And
>> by the way, having a published book about "2001" does not validate any of
>> your misreadings. That film is not "BASED ON" Homer's Odyssey anymore than
>> "Star Wars," "Meet John Doe," or any other myth form movies are. And TMA-1
>> (one) does not decode as "No Meat." Man, that's FUNNY.
> Primary magnetic anomaly at the crater Tycho. Less funny. Protein rich.
>
> Mark Ervin
Man, I love Lenny so much because he's such a benign kook. He's got the
world all figured out. That No Meat thing made me laugh coffee all over my
keyboard.
On the one hand I'm incensed that such a person even gets the privilege to
write a book on anything much less "2001" that warps the film so, but then I
think it's pretty much par for human nature.
My mind envisions Kubrick shrugging someplace in the Great Beyond as if to
say that's really what it was all about in a nutshell...
--
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
--Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"
Leonard F. Wheat
>
> I said I would reply, and I started to a number of times, but I found your
> lengthy misreading of "Solaris" so frustrating it is difficult to answer
> without writing a line by line rebuttal or a book length analysis, neither
> of which I'm willing to do. This is probably why you're so confident in your
> opinions. You meet with little extensive opposition.
>
> desires and physical and mental limits, and the limits of science to cure
> this condition.
Your review of Solaris is full of buzzwords and generalizations but
provides no specifics to support your generalizations. Your primary
generalizations were "brilliant," "thoughtful," and "insightful." In
an earlier reply, I asked you to name some of those insights. I also
offered some possibilities, things that YOU might have considered to
be insights but that most other people would regard as either common
knowledge or fiction -- definitely not insights.
Faced with this challenge, you were unable to name a single insight
you gained from Solaris. Instead of supporting your claim that
Solaris is "insightful," you resorted to the old trick of shifting
ground -- trying to change the subject. You asserted that I hold that
Kubrick's 2001 has insights, and asked me to provide them. But I have
never claimed that 2001 is "insightful." I have never claimed to have
learned from 2001 any truths about the world or humanity or anything
else. Finally, in the post I am now responding to, you come up with
some lame "insights." Let's see how insightful they really are.
> You can mock what I consider insights, but you found a sentient ocean
> insightful.
That is a complete falsehood. I did not find it insightful; it is
fiction. But you did seem to imply that it was one of the things that
provided you with insight. In fact, it was the only specific insight
you even hinted at. And the insight turns out to be not a truth but
fiction.
[snip]
> The film is also about human communication. The need and desire to
> understand one another. It is about the nature of life and living, of what
> it means to be human, of mortality. of love.
You fail to make your point clear. Are you describing insights you
gained from Solaris? You didn't understand before viewing Solaris
about the need to communicate and to desire and understand one
another? You didn't even understand what it means to be human? Call
those insights if you must, but to be insights they must be things you
didn't realize beforehand. Most of us already knew those things.
They have been written about endlessly, and they have been presented
in film countless previous times. Communication, understanding, love,
and humanity are trite ideas. Handled skillfully (something
Soderbergh doesn't do), these ideas can still support good fiction,
but that doesn't justify calling them insights. The film is not
"insightful."
> The film jettisons earthbound
> conventions of what life is. What you call his suicide is a rebirth. A
> movement toward something, not the inability to confront something.
Lots of films, not to mention books and stories, have portrayed life
after death. Did you see Carousel? It's a Wonderful Life (Clarence)?
Hamlet? A Christmas Carol? Etc. You seem to have found that
insightful, but I call it fiction or superstition (depending on
context). Calling suicide "rebirth" is, in turn, nothing more than
semantic tomfoolery -- unless you are a devout Christian, in which
case you undoubtedly believed in rebirth before seeing Solaris and
therefore did not really acquire this "insight" from the film.
> Rheya is not a ghost or a duplication. She is only his memory of their
> relationship.
I didn't say she was literally a ghost. I said she amounts to a
ghost, that she is in effect a ghost. She is the rational, thinking,
emotional reembodiment of a dead person, which is what a ghost is.
She is not "only his memory." She is DERIVED from Kelvin's memory,
but she has all the characteristics of a human being except memory of
her past. As for not being a "duplication," she is as much a
duplication as any fictional ghost ever is. Physically, Rheya's
replica is an exact duplicate of the original, and she appears to
exhibit the same intelligence and emotional qualities. Solaris starts
out as science fiction and degenerates into a ghost story.
[snip]
> The film is not pro-suicide. That is ridiculous. Kelvin doesn't kill himself
> (he could have done that with the liquid nitrogen) and has no way of knowing
> what effect the expansion of Solaris will have on him. He is hoping it will
> reunite him with his love -- he is calling her name as Solaris engulfs the
> ship -- and it does.
Insofar as Solaris glorifies suicide, and it does, it IS pro-suicide.
Your claim that Kelvin doesn't kill himself is essentially false; you
are quibbling about the meaning of the word "kill." If you're the
captain of a sinking ship and you elect to go down with the ship when
you could climb into a lifeboat, you are killing yourself just as
surely as by putting a gun to your head or taking poison. Kelvin
elects to go down with the crashing space station when he could climb
into the return vessel and return to earth. That is suicide, pure and
simple.
I have no idea what this "expansion of Solaris" you refer to is, but
it is probably something you are imagining. Solaris isn't expanding;
the space station is falling -- falling into the planet. Solaris
doesn't "engulf" the ship. The ship's antigravity machinery has lost
its power because the nutrino disruptor drained the power supply. The
ship is crashing.
You say Kelvin "has no way of knowing" what will happen when the ship
meets Solaris. He knows exactly what will happen. He will die. That
is why the female scientist is heading back to earth. That is why
Kelvin was heading back to earth before he changed his mind.
You say Kelvin "is hoping [Solaris] will reunite him with his love."
Now you are pretending to be able to read minds, fictional minds at
that. Nothing in the ending suggests that Kelvin expects to be
recreated. Nothing suggests that he hopes or expects to be reunited
in an afterlife. The reunion is merely his good luck. And Kelvin's
"calling her name" strikes me as a cry of despair, the basis for
suicide.
[snip]
> Both are reborn as higher level creatures. "Am I alive or
> dead?" Kelvin asks. "We don't have to think like that anymore," replies
> Rheya. And death shall have no dominion.
Whether or not they have to think about being ghosts, ghosts are what
they amount to. They die and then experience "rebirth" (your word) as
the equivalent of ghosts -- conscious, rational, emotional, material
reembodiments of their earlier selves. Happy ending. Hollywood
fluff.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Here you go, Leonard, the message you couldn't find.
> > hypothetical insights snipped]
You're going to have to do better than that. I did not claim that
200l is "insightful" or that its excellence resulted from presentation
of insights (truths) that had previously escaped me and other people.
You are the one who based his admiration for a film (Solaris) on the
opinion that the film was
"insightful." I'm still waiting to hear what insights you gained from
Solaris. Shifting ground -- trying to change the subject -- is no
answer.
[snip]
> > If I want insights, I usually find it a better better to pick up a
> > philosophy or science book.
Really? Then why did you base your evaluation of Solaris on the claim
that it was "insightful." You, not I, are the one who is chasing
after insights.
Leonard F. Wheat
> "Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:b5f71a25.04052...@posting.google.com...
> Soderbergh's "Solaris" is not a story about ghosts, extraterrestrials,
> liquid nitrogen, or neutrino rays. It is about the human condition, our
> desires and physical and mental limits, and the limits of science to cure
> this condition.
When I replied a moment ago to this post of yours, I overlooked the
above paragraph. Permit me to correct that oversight.
When you say Solaris is about "the human condition," I assume that
that "the human condition" is the subject of most of those insights
you say you found in the film.
This is just too much. In both phrasing and substance, "the human
condition" is about trite as an idea can be. And in substance, the
human condition is something you should have known about before seeing
Solaris. Everyone with an IQ above 85 knows that humanity is afflicted
with pain, suffering, suicide, murder, sorrow, worry, conflict,
remorse, deceit, brutality, starvation, disease, rape, poverty,
mosquitos, Saharas sun, Alaskan cold, and all the other negatives that
constitute "the human condition." You evidently noticed a few of
these negatives -- sorrow, worry, suicide, remorse, and conflict I
suppose --in Solaris and regarded what you saw as insights.
Lord have mercy! You really didn't know these things until you saw
Solaris? You found the worry and conflict and remorse "insightful"?
You didn't know that spouses disagree and argue? Or perhaps you
noticed some other aspect of the human condition that actually was new
to you. If so, the most likely such insight is that people are
sometimes harassed by "visitors" from their ids. Maybe you even
gained the insight that some of these visitors are murderers. If you
think anything relating to the visitors -- or to the sentience of the
planet Solaris -- qualifies as "insight," you don't know what
"insight" means. Insights are truths. The sentient planet and the
visitors are fiction.
Seminal Johnson
> "Seminal Johnson" <no...@na.net> wrote in message
news:<aAzuc.400$tJ3...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>...
> > Here you go, Leonard, the message you couldn't find.
> >
> >
> > "goFab.com" <tpl...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:c8vr7...@drn.newsguy.com...
LEONARD F . WHEAT! PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE ATTRIBUTION ABOVE!
THE MESSAGE YOU ARE REPLYING TO BELOW DID NOT COME FROM ME BUT FROM
"goEab.com"
Seminal Johnson
> In
> an earlier reply, I asked you to name some of those insights. I also
> offered some possibilities, things that YOU might have considered to
> be insights
No, you offered silly sarcasm which "goFab.com" tore right through.
You are disingenuous.
> Faced with this challenge, you were unable to name a single insight
> you gained from Solaris.
Bullshit. I said I would reply later and I did with examples of insightful
things regarding how well one can know someone in a relationship. etc. One
can make these observations in a textbook but art provides a much better way
of conveying the ideas through an experience, with feeling.
> Instead of supporting your claim that
> Solaris is "insightful," you resorted to the old trick of shifting
> ground -- trying to change the subject.
Sigh. You are doing exactly this yourself and attributing this to me.
You are NOW claiming your objection with my enjoyment of Solaris has to do
with the definition of "insightful."
You seem to think insight means learning something never before known by
man. I even pulled out a dictionary definition of
insight for you and you still insist it doesn't mean what it means. Lets try
this again.
---------------------
insight (în´sět´) noun
1. The capacity to discern the true nature of a situation; penetration.
2. The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or
of perceiving in an intuitive manner.
insightful (în´sět´fel, în-sět´-) adjective
Showing or having insight; perceptive: "The major contribution of this new
biography . . . is its insightful discussion of the Christian dimension of
Dostoyevsky's life and art" (Maria Carlson).
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
---------------------
Then you go into a lot of convoluted misdirecting crap about how art doesn't
provide insights, that people should know all about life from other sources,
blah blah blah.
You see, when Shakespear said "there is nothing new under the sun" he was
being observant about a certain aspect of human knowledge and perception
which audiences clearly found familiar but never defined or articulated as
well as Shakespear managed to. They may have had prior knowledge of people
repeating themselves or dressing up old ideas as new ideas or finding that
new ideas were old ideas from a different angle or having the arrogance of
believing they knew everything there was to know and there is no more, but
had anyone articulated this as well as Shakespear? He doesn't get credit for
an insight because the basis of his observation was already vaguely
understood? You clearly have no appreciation for or understanding of art,
have a narrow mind, an emotionally retarded personality, and aren't as smart
as you think you are. It must suck being you. Getting angry because people
enjoy things you can't then drawing them into insane mazelike arguments for
your own sick pleasure. Go change your Depends, will ya.
> I have no idea what this "expansion of Solaris" you refer to is, but
> it is probably something you are imagining. Solaris isn't expanding;
> the space station is falling -- falling into the planet. Solaris
> doesn't "engulf" the ship. The ship's antigravity machinery has lost
> its power because the nutrino disruptor drained the power supply. The
> ship is crashing.
We are told by Snow that since their use of the ray Solaris has been taking
on mass exponentially and its gravitational pull is now drawing the station
closer to it. We are not told anything about any anti-gravitational device
on the space station losing power thus causing it to plummet to the surface
of a planet. We are shown the gasses of Solaris engulfing the station. We
are never told or shown that Solaris is a planet with a surface or an ocean.
We are never shown any crash, though the station obviously suffers
distress. Kelvin is transformed before any possible crash even happens.
Talking to you, Leonard F. Wheat, is a waste of time. If you want to see
what a reasonable reply looks like read M4RV1N's message in this thread.
This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Seminal Johnson
news:20040531002938...@mb-m06.aol.com...
> >Seminal Johnson
> writes, in part:
>
> >Soderbergh's "Solaris" is not a story about ghosts, extraterrestrials,
> >liquid nitrogen, or neutrino rays.
>
> No, it's not. Since you're objecting to Wheat's objections, I'm going to
offer
> some of my own objections (though they're not precisely
> objection-objection-objections). Actually, I agree with your general
points on
> how one should value the film:
>
> > It is about the human condition, our
> >desires and physical and mental limits, and the limits of science to cure
> >this condition.
>
> I think ideally the film should also be about examining the limits of our
> conventional conceptual framework of the mind, rather than science.
I agree. By science I was referring to Solaris' powers, the interaction with
which causes us and the characters to deal with the limits of mind and
communication. As Ebert pointed out in his review, human beings have the
same problems even without Solaris' interference. But in this story, it is
Solaris that causes these problems to be illuminated for the characters.
> The most
> profound issue is that of the relationship between form and content in the
> individual personality, and form/content in the complex process that
creates
> it. The narrative demands clarity on this, and both Tarkovsky and
Soderbergh
> play a bit fast and loose with the issue. Basically both directors can't
> commit on what depth we can assign to the content of the minds of
Solaris's
> creations.
Good point. Right or not, I always saw the Monolith in 2001 as omniscient
and omnipotent.
Solaris may be powerful but it may not know what it's doing in creating the
visitors. Doesn't know how it is affecting the humans or the visitors.
Solaris could be a child experimenting. It is not as clean or clear as the
evolution depicted in 2001.
> >Rheya is not a ghost or a duplication. >She is only his memory of their
> relationship.
>
> I think the intent is that the memory of her is a starting point; it
inflates
> this into sentience by either diverting part of itself into the being, or
by
> tapping into the actual thought pattern and placing it in a newly
constructed
> consciousness. Rheya definitely lives "again," but different is not less.
Agreed.
> >Unlike the original, she has no experiences of her own. She is
> >his perception of who his wife was.
>
> But her ability to speak, to interact at all, demands experiential
ability. A
> person with amnesia is a full person with experiential content. What
matters,
> after all, is the content of *now* in consciousness.
Yes, but she does mention her having memories but not remembering being
there when they occurred.
She is clearly struggling with her own existence, as we do, but with very
different circumstances.
> > Interacting with this manifestation
> >reveals to Kelvin the tragic limit to our ability to understand one
another.
> >For anyone who has been in a long term relationship only to find yourself
> >suddenly with someone you consider a stranger, this might resonate for
you.
>
> Excellent and important point. All we actually have access to are the
> constructions our brain makes of the outside world, including people we
are
> closest to. A point made quite effectively in "Eyes Wide Shut" when Bill
must
> adjust his perception of his wife after her confession.
I wonder if one reason this film did poorly at the box-office is because the
traditional SF fan is a nerdy geekboy with little social and especially
romantic experience. Audiences expecting SF action were put off by the
grownup stuff and those expecting sweet romance were put off by the SF
setting.
<snipped lots of interesting points>
I think we have proven that this is indeed a rich and thought provoking (and
dare I say insightful) film as per my original recommendation. I don't think
it's as good as 2001, and there are some things about it I don't like, suck
as Jeremy Davies' low-keyed impression of Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now,
but it is definitely worth seeing.
Leonard F. Wheat
> "Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:b5f71a25.04053...@posting.google.com...
> > "Seminal Johnson" <no...@na.net> wrote in message
> news:<aAzuc.400$tJ3...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>...
> > > Here you go, Leonard, the message you couldn't find.
> > >
> > >
> > > "goFab.com" <tpl...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > > news:c8vr7...@drn.newsguy.com...
>
>
> LEONARD F . WHEAT! PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE ATTRIBUTION ABOVE!
>
> THE MESSAGE YOU ARE REPLYING TO BELOW DID NOT COME FROM ME BUT FROM
> "goEab.com"
I apologize. Originally, on another post, I did attribute the message
to someone else; I didn't see how it could have come from you. But
when you reposted the lost post, circumstances gave me the impression
that the reposted post was yours. In the back of my mind was the idea
that you might have copied and saved your postings for future
reference and that only you had the raw materials for reposting the
lost message. That idea, in turn, came from the fact that you were
the one who reposted the message.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to hear the specific things in Solaris
that you regard as justifying your statement that Solaris is
"insightful." In one of your later posts you refer to perceived (by
you) statements about "the human condition," but you never say
specifically what characteristics of the human condition --
characteristics previously not known to you -- were revealed to you as
"insights" by Solaris.
Leonard F. Wheat
> "Leonard F. Wheat" <lenw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:b5f71a25.04053...@posting.google.com...
>
> > In
> > an earlier reply, I asked you to name some of those insights. I also
> > offered some possibilities, things that YOU might have considered to
> > be insights
>
> No, you offered silly sarcasm which "goFab.com" tore right through.
> You are disingenuous.
Since you refused to identify your insights, I offered some
hypothetical ones that could have come from the movie. "GoFab.com"
tore right through these by saying he wasn't interested in getting
insights from movies; he preferred other sources. And here you are
implicitly endorsing the "go.Fab.com." rebuttal. You find the
rebuttal valid; you say it tears right through my criticism. That
means you agree with "goFab.com" that lack of insights is not a flaw
in a movie. But if you, like "goFab," prefer to get your insights
from other sources (e.g., science books), why did you praise Solaris
as "insightful." You can't have it both ways. Do you agree with
"GoFab" or do you agree with Seminal Johnson?
> > Faced with this challenge, you were unable to name a single insight
> > you gained from Solaris.
>
> Bullshit. I said I would reply later and I did with examples of insightful
> things regarding how well one can know someone in a relationship. etc. One
> can make these observations in a textbook but art provides a much better way
> of conveying the ideas through an experience, with feeling.
The things you mention are not things you identified as "insights" and
they are not recognizable as such, since they are things just about
everyone knows. Where is the insight in "how well one can know
someone in a relationship"? Before you can even pretend that is an
insight, a newly acquired truth, you must restate the idea as a fact
rather than as a subject. The equivalent fact might be, "In a
relationship wherein one thinks one knows the other party intimately,
the other party may actually have thoughts and fears and even
depression of which you are totally unaware." I don't know if that is
what you meant or not, but if it is you were awfully naive not to have
known that before seeing Solaris.
d
> > Instead of supporting your claim that
> > Solaris is "insightful," you resorted to the old trick of shifting
> > ground -- trying to change the subject.
>
> Sigh. You are doing exactly this yourself and attributing this to me.
> You are NOW claiming your objection with my enjoyment of Solaris has to do
> with the definition of "insightful."
> You seem to think insight means learning something never before known by
> man. I even pulled out a dictionary definition of
> insight for you and you still insist it doesn't mean what it means. Lets try
> this again.
>
> ---------------------
> insight (în´sět´) noun
> 1. The capacity to discern the true nature of a situation; penetration.
> 2. The act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or
> of perceiving in an intuitive manner.
These two noun definitions of "insight" refer primarily to persons,
not to movies or to anything else besides persons. But you could
still call Solaris "insightful" if the movie grasped and brought to
light hidden truths. So these definitions do have limited relevance.
They are relevant in pointing to "true nature" and "inward or hidden
nature" as the essence of insight. Insight involves "grasping" the
truth, truth that was not previously perceived, truth that was
"hidden." So to be insightful, Solaris would have to perceive and
bring to light hidden truths, truths not previously perceived.
> insightful (în´sět´fel, în-sět´-) adjective
> Showing or having insight; perceptive: "The major contribution of this new
> biography . . . is its insightful discussion of the Christian dimension of
> Dostoyevsky's life and art" (Maria Carlson).
Now you're on the right track. In the Maria Carlson example, the
Dostoyevsky biography brings to light a "Christian dimension" of
Dostoyevsky's life and art that, by implication, had not previously
been recognized. What previously unrecognized "dimension" (aspect) of
"the human condition" or of "how well one can know someone in a
relationship" did Solaris reveal?
[snip]
> You see, when Shakespear said "there is nothing new under the sun" he was
> being observant about a certain aspect of human knowledge and perception
> which audiences clearly found familiar but never defined or articulated as
> well as Shakespear managed to. . . . [Shakespeare] doesn't get credit for an > insight because the basis of his observation was already vaguely understood.
Fair enough. Now tell us, what "aspect of human knowledge" that we in
the Solaris audience "found familiar" but understood only "vaguely"
was "articulated" by Solaris? What ideas -- please be very specific
-- did you find in Solaris that were sort of familiar but that you
previously understood only vaguely? Again, what was "insightful"
about Solaris?
> > I have no idea what this "expansion of Solaris" you refer to is, but
> > it is probably something you are imagining. Solaris isn't expanding;
> > the space station is falling -- falling into the planet. Solaris
> > doesn't "engulf" the ship. The ship's antigravity machinery has lost
> > its power because the nutrino disruptor drained the power supply. The
> > ship is crashing.
> We are told by Snow that since their use of the ray Solaris has been taking
> on mass exponentially and its gravitational pull is now drawing the station
> closer to it. We are not told anything about any anti-gravitational device
> on the space station losing power thus causing it to plummet to the surface
> of a planet.
You had better rerun your DVD. The space station has antigravity
equipment that enables it to hover -- remain stationary -- above the
planet, obviously without the aid of centrifugal force, which requires
orbiting (as opposed to hovering). The antigravity machinery
apparently works by rendering the space station massless, so that
Solaris exerts no gravitational pull on it (even though there
apparently is pull on the occupants, who walk on floors). The
scientists discover that the visitors do not consist of ordinary
matter -- atoms and molecules -- but, instead, of nutrinos. So they
build a nutrino disruptor in an effort to get rid of the visitors.
The idea works: the visitors disappear. But the nutrino disruptor
requires lots of power, which implicitly came from batteries that
cannot be replenished fast enough by the space station's implicit
generator. So the space station starts taking on mass, at an
exponential rate. The mass allows Solaris to exert gravitational pull
on the space station, causing the space station to fall at an
exponentially accelerating rate. Your words, "drawing the space
station closer to it [to Solaris]," understate the facts.
"Taking on mass exponentially" means falling faster and faster,
because the gravitational attraction between two bodies (Solaris and
the station in this case) is directly proportional to the product of
their masses, i.e., to M1 x M2. Gravity is also INVERSELY
proportional to the square of the distance between M1 and M2. You
acknowledge that Solaris is drawing the space station "closer to it."
That means that distance (D) is decreasing. So TWO gravitational
influences, the station's mass and distance, are interacting to cause
the station to fall faster and faster. It is going to crash.
> We are shown the gasses of Solaris engulfing the station. We
> are never told or shown that Solaris is a planet with a surface or an ocean.
> We are never shown any crash, though the station obviously suffers
> distress. Kelvin is transformed before any possible crash even happens.
You are way, way, way off base. "Taking on mass exponentially" means
falling faster and faster. That's why the last two scientists get
into the escape ship and prepare to return to earth (until one of
them, Kelvin, changes his mind). They are not evacuating the station
because of vaguely defined "distress." The distress is very specific:
the space station is crashing.
So what if we don't see the crash. All that means is that Soderbergh
saved himself a few million bucks on special effects. Your statement
that "Kelvin is transformed before any possible crash even happens" is
totally absurd. You are mistaking a break in continuity -- a jump
from a precrash scene to a postcrash scene -- for an event occurring
during the fall. Kelvin is clearly going to die, and then we see him
recreated as what amounts to a ghost.
If there were no crash, and if Kelvin didn't die, then we would see
TWO Kelvins. One would be the real Kelvin, the other a "visitor."
You acknowledge that "Kelvin is transformed." (Earlier you used the
word "rebirth.") That means the real Kelvin is gone. He is dead. He
is replaced by what amounts to a ghost. Solaris has degenerated into
a ghost story with a happy reunion in a metaphorical heaven.
You are right that "we are never told . . . that Solaris is a planet
with a surface or an ocean." But we do know it is a planet. In the
novel and in the earlier film, the planet had a sentient OCEAN. But
in Soderberg's film the ocean is not mentioned. By implication, the
planet itself is now sentient. All of which is irrelevant. It makes
no difference whether the station crashes into land or into an ocean.
Either way, Kelvin is killed. And he knows this is going to happen.
He has chosen suicide.
UncleMike
I trust that your facile reading of "Solaris" as evidenced by the questions
you pose refers to the Cliffs Notes Soderbergh version and not to
Tarkovsky's. Soderbergh got the words right, but not the music.
UncleMike
> "Seminal Johnson" <no...@na.net> wrote in message
news:<aAzuc.400$tJ3...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>...
>
> that it was "insightful." You, not I, are the one who is chasing
> after insights.
God you are a tiresome, narcississtic windbag. If you don't feel a film or
another work of art can express an insight, a deep truth, you are also an
imbecile.
Leonard F. Wheat
We are talking about Solaris, not about films in general or other
sources of expression. Keep your eye on the ball!
If you, as you seem to imply, find Solaris "insightful," why don't you
name some specific insights -- even just one -- instead of rolling in
the mud. What was it about human nature or anything else that you
understood only dimly, if at all, before seeing Solaris but now
recognize as "a deep truth"?
Should you decide to answer my question, please don't make the mistake
Seminal Johnson made. He doesn't know the difference between a
subject (topic) and a fact (truth). Saying that the film deals with
"the human condition" or with "how well you can know a person" is not
presenting insights gained from Solaris. You have to say,
specifically, what you learned about the human condition or about
knowing another person -- something that you did not know before. I
seriously doubt your ability to do this, at least not without making
yourself appear terribly naive.
Seminal Johnson
Get a life, you ridiculous fool. You're not even a good troll.
Leonard F. Wheat
The questions I pose are based on Johnson's praising the Soderbergh
version as "insightful." The comment you are responding to also
refers to the Soderbergh version. Didn't you realize that Johnson was
referring to the Soderbergh version when he wrote the line I respond
to above, the line that says "over the heads of too many people"? My
comment refers to that line.
The person using Cliffs Notes around here seems to be you. You are
using the Cliff Notes version of my May 21 review, contained in the
post that responds directly to Johnson's original post. Why don't you
read the review instead of trying to deduce from the posts of other
people (metaphorical Cliffs) what I wrote?
If you check that May 21 review, you will find that Soderbergh got
neither the words nor the music right. Lem's novel was speculation of
how man and an alien intelligence would react to each other if the
alien intelligence was so completely different from man that neither
could begin to comprehend the other. The alien intelligence in Lem's
novel was a noncreature being, a sentient ocean. (Read my review for
a more detailed description of the ocean.)
Lem was appalled by what Tarkovsky did to his novel. Tarkovsky
essentially dumped the science fiction, using it merely as a backdrop
for psychological conflict between Kelvin and his father. The
Tarkovsky film added a long prologue to present this conflict and to
set up his ending, which is basically a visual plot twist. Lem said T
had turned L's novel into Crime and Punishment. But at least T didn't
have Kelvin commit suicide (Lem would have been even more appalled),
and neither he morph Kelvin into the equivalent of a ghost for
purposes of reuniting him with his father.
Soderbergh goes even farther astray, getting both the words and the
music wrong. Both the novel and the Tarkovsky film keep the past
conflict between Kelvin and Rheya pretty much in the background. The
conflict that burdens Kelvin's psyche in T's film (and is symbolized
by the long, dark ride through tunnels) is a spat he had with his
father. Soderbergh changes the psychologically burdensome conflict to
the one between Kelvin and Rheya.
Both Tarkovsky and Soderbergh get the words of the novel wrong by
centering their stories on psychological conflict between humans
rather than psychological conflict between man and an alien
intelligence. But Tarkovsky at least gets the music right by not
trying to glorify suicide by portraying it as leading to happiness --
happiness in a quasisupernatural life after death, akin to heaven.
Soderbergh gets the music wrong too: he makes Kelvin suicidal, and
then wraps it all up by reuniting a couple of ghost equivalents in
what amounts to heaven.
Wordsmith
He got a few of the words right, maybe. (I think it was me who first
compared Soderbergh's revision to Cliffs Notes. Not that it's important!)
Wordsmith :)