Solaris

While recovering on my couch yesterday (yes, I waaaaayyyy over did it) I decided to watch Solaris...again. It is one of those Sci-Fi movies that takes more than one viewing to even begin to grasp all of the images thrown at you. The flavor is certainly that old style Sci-Fi outer space weirdo movies, yet the more I watch it the more sense it makes.

George Clooney plays psychologist Chris Kelvin. From here on, I must confess I will be offering a review that is completely subjective. I have watched this movie a few times knowing full well that I am doing exactly what Filmcritic often reminds me that I am doing. I am seeing my own world being told throughout this motion picture.

With that in mind I must say that the movie seems far more than just a man who is looking for a second chance to get rid of his guilt. It seems plain to me that this movie is about Modernism verses Post-modernism. Although the dialogue is important, the director mostly uses images to tell his story about Chris' life as a psychologist.

Through flash backs while on a space station we are told how Chris meets his deceased wife played by the beautiful Natascha McElhone. After they are married there is a scene where the couple is having dinner with snooty friends (other psychologists?) who's arrogance uses typical psycho mumbo jumbo. Chris' wife tries to explain that there must be a God or higher power of some kind to explain mankind's existence. Chris responds with his friends that the idea of God is simply man-made as we project man's qualities on the old man in the sky. We are, in fact, no more miraculous than the trees (see the arrogance? Science has even less of an explanation of trees than it does for mankind).

Now here comes my subjective part. Chris loves his wife. His world of modernity and all of its supposed answers is never able to get him past his guilt of the dreadful day when he and his wife have a huge fight, and she commits suicide when she thinks he has left her. While on the space station orbiting Solaris (a mysterious gaseous cloud resembling the size of a planet) Chris meets a copy of his wife produced by the mysterious Solaris based on his memories.

Here is where Chris must choose. He knows this woman is not really his wife. He knows that his past is not able to be just wished away. Yet when he comes to a point to go back to his atheistic life, back to emptiness, back to friends that have nothing to offer, he chooses to enter a world that may or may not be real. A world made in his own image. A world of his own fantasy. It is nothing more than a replacement of the "old man in the sky".

The Director, like many Emerging Christians, is offering answers that Modernism could not give. Eternal Life through escaping the old world. Yet does this new world really exist? Are our sins truly forgiven? Is trading pure objective science for purely subjective feelings an exchange for the better?

In the end, the main character deals with his sin by hiding it in another reality. Instead of his suppressing his past in psycho mumbo jumbo, he hides it by living a lie. This is not salvation, but self deception of the highest order. Man is still looking for answers to solve his sin problem. All the while he acts as if his sins are just mistakes, and God still doesn't exist. He exchanges the truth of God for a lie. What a shame, what a loss.

At this point, although most reviews seem to not like the movie (here is one), I will say I loved the movie. I loved the filming, the editing, the story telling, the struggle of man in dealing with his sin. The film is truly Sci-Fi-ish. Perhaps I should not write reviews, but I just liked this story. Enjoy or be "bored".