George in Space

The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh's Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's film at all but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Still, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone tried to make a new Wizard of Oz, for instance, or Gone with the Wind, they could claim that they were merely re-adapting the book, but no director could hope to fully escape the memory of the landmark interpretations by cinematic predecessors.

Tarkovsky's version, though well-respected, gets a bad rap these days: It's common even among critics who should know better to deride it as incomprehensible and boring, though it is neither -- merely lengthy and Russian, which scares some people off. True, it's laden with symbolism, but you need not even pay attention to that, as there's a story going throughout its nearly three-hour length. You want boring, go to the chapters in Lem's book that forget about the characters so as to endlessly describe the fictional speculative physics of the imaginary ocean planet of the title.

Tarkovsky and Soderbergh wisely play down the geek technobabble to focus on the dilemma of Kris, or Chris (George Clooney), a psychiatrist sent from a mundane future Earth to a space station orbiting Solaris, where weird stuff has been happening, but no one will say exactly what. In this new telling, Chris is a psychiatrist sent to bring back the remaining crew safe and sane, though he himself is questionable in the latter category, brooding endlessly over his dead wife, Rheya (The Truman Show's Natascha McElhone). So when Rheya shows up alive in his space station bunk the next morning, well, that could really throw off a fella's equilibrium.

Since flinging her out into space creates only a temporary delay, she's back in the sack again the following morning, Chris does as most men would and gets his groove on. Meanwhile, we get a look back at how he originally met the real Rheya and at the incident that split them; though it's telling, and relevant to the plot, that he doesn't remember much about the deterioration of the relationship.

At this past summer's San Diego Comicon, producer James Cameron promised that this Solaris would resonate with "anyone who's ever been in a relationship." Not that the typical Comicon attendee would know from experience, necessarily, but the resonance here seems forced, mainly because we know so little about the principals: He's a psychiatrist who doesn't believe in God and knows exactly one Dylan Thomas poem by heart ("And Death Shall Have No Dominion," naturally), and she has an English accent, gets moody sometimes, and in one scene carries a doorknob around for no particular reason. More is needed if we are to feel the vicarious ache of longing.

For all its flaws, though, Solaris is a good try and a definite improvement over the dull remakes Soderbergh's been sleepwalking through lately. Longtime fans will be pleased to know that the director's back to his old stylistic tricks, jumping back and forth in time, overlapping sounds from the previous scene, and shooting the backs of people's heads in close-up. Like Tim Burton remaking Planet of the Apes, Soderbergh is keenly aware that the original film's ending was one hell of a suckerpunch and has tried to come up with a new twist (the book has no real ending; it simply stops without full closure). At first, he pulls it off, but ultimately he doesn't quite get away with it. What should feel transcendent instead plays like a cheat, but that's mainly because he never fully invested us in the romance angle.