By Dan Callahan
The last five films of Carl Theodor Dreyer are accepted classics of world cinema, written about, shown regularly, and given the full Criterion treatment on DVD. Many who have only seen a few silent films have seen his The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and Criterion recently put out a comprehensive Vampyr (1932) that helped to shed some light on that misty, eternally disorienting film, with its radical, bizarre use of space. His three late sound films stake their claim in an essential Criterion box set: Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (1943) continues to exert its nearly unbearable tension; watching it is like working up a sweat, almost dying, then letting the sweat evaporate off of your mind and body until you are as free of fear as the accused witch Anne (Lisbeth Movin). (Dreyer disowned his next film, the nearly never-seen Two People {1945} but I’ve heard that a rare print was screened at the Toronto Film Festival, and I can only hope that this final piece of the Dreyer puzzle will someday play in New York and elsewhere.)
Personally, I’ve always found Ordet (1955) stupefying, with its slow religious discourses and alienating, gloomy actors, but watching the great Gertrud (1964) is akin to undergoing deep hypnosis; with her young lover, Nina Pens Rode’s Gertrud claims that she’s “a mouth, searching for another mouth,” a reminder that Dreyer openly explores earthly eroticism as a way of searching for spiritual meaning. The films Dreyer made before The Passion of Joan of Arc have been difficult to see, and when they are alluded to they are often discounted as minor or without much interest (the Dreyer documentary My Metier skips right from his first film to The Passion), but a recent Dreyer retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music offered a valuable opportunity to see the steady, sometimes surprising development of this major director’s visual and emotional ideas.
(The President)
Dreyer was the illegitimate son of a girl who later died trying to abort a second baby and was raised by coldly unloving adoptive parents (apparently he was not brought up as Lutheran, as early biographies suggested, yet the subject of religion pervades nearly all of his work). He made a living as a journalist and court reporter before going into filmmaking, and his first film as director, The President (1920), shows a reporter yawning at a murder trial (is this Dreyer’s knock at his former profession?). It’s a confused and confusing movie (a colleague charitably called it “elliptical” after the BAM screening), but there are moments even here when Dreyer shows his uncanny ability to transfigure a human face, especially when a young unwed mother is found guilty of murdering her baby; he cuts to her profile as she slowly swoons and bends her head downward, and it’s possible to see the first genesis of Falconetti’s Joan of Arc in this elaborate, very abstracted shot. Otherwise, Dreyer is content to give the film’s unwed mother the happy ending that his own birth mother was denied; he also insists on continually cutting to close-up shots of cute puppies (was this a commercial or an artistic consideration?)
(Love One Another)
In The Parson’s Widow (1920), which is on DVD, Dreyer gives us his first memorable old lady, Margarete (Hildur Carlberg), a formidable figure who comes as the wife in a package deal for any young parson. Even in the first, comic scenes, Margarete has a kind of stiff-backed dignity, and Dreyer feasts on Carlberg’s stoic, melancholy face. His third film, Leaves from Satan’s Book (or, as I prefer to call it, Blades from Satan’s Bog) (1921), is a film in four parts that apes the structure of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), and it displays Dreyer’s already palpable sense of good and evil, guilt and fear. But it’s his next film, the obscure Love One Another (1922), which was the real find of this Dreyer festival, a fascinating treatment of anti-Semitism in Russia, shot in Germany, with very subtle actors from the Moscow Art Theatre (including a young Richard Boleslawski). Dreyer uses dynamic switches of perspective to sketch in the sensual attraction between Boleslawski and a young girl; she lifts her skirt for him, and then she stares at him with his shirt off (in the framing section of The President, Dreyer uses two shots of a peasant girl’s breast almost falling out of her shirt to show how she attracts the man who will lead to her downfall). The crosscutting action climax of Love One Another is still exciting, and surely it’s a movie that deserves wider exposure (it would seem a perfect fit for a Kino International DVD.)
(The Bride of Glomdal)
In these early films, Dreyer is something of an “issue” director, sensitively treating illegitimate birth, anti-Semitism, homosexuality (Michael {1924}) and feminism (Master of the House {1925}). Only fragments survive of Once Upon a Time (1922), and it’s impossible to make a definitive judgment on it, but the first twenty minutes or so of this fairy tale are fairly complete, and they’re unlike anything else Dreyer ever did, as exquisitely, cuttingly comic as the best of Lubitsch. Finally, before making his masterpiece on Joan of Arc, Dreyer filmed a simple bucolic romance, The Bride of Glomdal (1926), which is memorable for the full-out tenderness of the film’s two lovers; they caress each other slowly, wonderingly, like Eric Rohmer’s Astrea and Celadon. In a truly lovely scene, our heroine Berit (Tove Tellback) yawns expansively and stretches out on the grass in an openly sexual way, then lifts her left leg in its heavy white stocking and scratches it. There’s a cut to her fiancée Tore (Einar Sissener) staring at her, and he does a wonderful “ain’t I lucky?” sidelong leer off-camera before going over to embrace her. The Bride of Glomdal is a minor film compared to The Parson’s Widow or Love One Another, and surely it can’t stand any comparison to The Passion of Joan of Arc or Gertrud, but every frame of it is infused with Dreyer’s commitment to romantic and sexual love between two people as the living embodiment of God on earth.
House contributor Dan Callahan's writing has appeared in Slant Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal and Senses of Cinema, among other publications.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Love One Another: Early Dreyer at BAM
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style, Pt. 1: Introduction, Melendez, Welles, Truffaut
By Matt Zoller Seitz
[The following is an excerpt from Part 1 of a five-part documentary analyzing the style of Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), commissioned by Moving Image Source, the online magazine of the Museum of the Moving Image. Part 2, on Scorsese, Richard Lester and Mike Nichols, is here. Part 3, on Hal Ashby, is here. Part 4, on J.D. Salinger, will be published April 8. Part 5, an annotated version of the prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums, will finish out the series April 10. By visiting the Moving Image Source website, you can read the series in transcript form or watch the documentaries by clicking on the "video" button in the right-hand column of the page.]
With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he's a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur -- an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson's many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility.After the release of his second film, Rushmore, in 1998, it became obvious that Anderson was, love him or hate him, an idiosyncratic filmmaker worth discussing. In the decade-plus since then, dissecting Anderson's influences, and Anderson's influence on others, has become a bit of a parlor sport among cinephiles. Sight and Sound and Film Comment have been particularly rich resources. More recently, the Onion A.V. Club contributed a couple of playful, astute lists. Anderson himself has gotten into the act by paying tribute to his heroes in interviews and magazine articles.
This series will take the process a step further, juxtaposing Anderson's cultural influences against his films onscreen, the better to show how he integrates a staggeringly diverse array of source material into a recognizable, and widely imitated, whole. It will examine some, but certainly not all, of Anderson's evident inspirations. Along the way, it may incidentally illuminate why Anderson-esque movies—from Garden State to Son of Rambow—can seem, no matter what their virtues or pleasures, a weak substitute for the real thing.
To read the rest of the article, or watch the video, click here. Read more!
Breaking Bad Mondays: Season 2, Ep. 4, "Down"
By Todd VanDerWerff
If the United States makes it easy to follow a certain path to some form of success, it also makes it a little too easy for someone to get lost. “Down,” written by Sam Catlin and directed by John Dahl, is evenly split between two deliberately paced stories that converge at the end. In one, a man tries to reconcile with his wife after his secrets and lies take their toll on his marriage. In the other, the man’s partner in crime confronts the fact that he’s being cast out of the place he’s been staying and he doesn’t really have a backup plan. Like last year’s much-acclaimed film Wendy and Lucy, his descent into some American underbelly becomes a story about just how easy it is to blip off the map, to find yourself completely and utterly gone.
“Down” is the first episode of Breaking Bad’s second season to not spend significant amounts of time following the investigation into the Albuquerque drug trade. The show already feels fairly methodically paced but removing that cat-and-mouse aspect of the show’s template makes it feel even slower, in a way. For those of us who love how the show gets into the claustrophobic psychologies of its characters, it was yet another highlight in a second season that’s improved on the abbreviated first season in almost every way, but for those who think the show is just a molasses-like soup of depressing moments, it must have been well-nigh unbearable.
Our A-plot, as always, has to do with the beleaguered and backsliding Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who’s trying his best to put the events of the season’s first three episodes, when he found himself abducted by violent drug dealer Tuco (Raymond Cruz) and trying to cook up an alibi to cover for his disappearance during same, behind him. He’s trying, as if nothing happened, to go back to being the good family man he was before his cancer diagnosis, cooking up a full breakfast for his wife, Skyler (Anna Gunn), and his son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte); taking Walter Jr. out for driving lessons; and apologizing for just how strange he’s seemed lately to Skyler. All of this might have worked to smooth the waters over somewhat, but Walter has a tendency to overcompensate, offering up an elaborate excuse for why he has a second cell phone that’s so clearly a lie that Skyler just walks out on him mid-explanation and takes off for the day with no real announcement of where she’s going. (At episode’s end, she even goes out for a cigarette despite being pregnant. A woman in a neighboring car gives her a judgmental glare as she is about to light up, and you can see Skyler almost not indulge, but she finally just needs her own tiny rebellion and she lets out a big mouthful of smoke. In some ways, Skyler is as trapped as Jesse, whom we’ll get to in a moment.)
Walter’s attempts to provide for his family via his meth production would break up his little unit if anyone found out (though he always seems to be on the verge of telling Skyler), but they’re already doing a pretty good job of that in advance. Because he has this secret he’s keeping from his family, he’s unable to really level with Skyler in a way that might bring her back into the loving partnership he clearly misses, and because he’s spending so much time off with his new business venture, he’s also missing lots of what’s going on at home, including his son’s new nickname, Flynn, and much of what his wife has been up to. Neither Gunn nor Mitte has gotten a lot to do this season so far, but both are wonderful here, showing Walter just how they’re moving on from both his diagnosis and him, how much they miss him but also how much they just want him to stop giving them reasons to be suspicious of him. Maybe Walter could get out of the meth game since Tuco’s gone and there’s probably not enough evidence out there to tie him to the city’s drug trade, but the missing weeks when he was seemingly losing his mind would always come between him and his family, and he could never offer an adequate explanation to them as to what, exactly, he was up to in that missing time. Walter seems chipper enough in this episode to make me wonder if he’s not seeing some success from the treatment he entered last season, to the point where perhaps he’d enter remission, even as he really had no way to get out of the world of the drug trade. “There’s the easy way, and then there’s the right way,” Walter says when he’s trying to teach his son to drive and not use both feet on the pedals. Walter’s tragedy is that he too often confuses the two for each other.
There’s a marvelous little bit of editing early in the episode where Walter is preparing omelets for his family, still trying to win his way back into their good graces. Walter Jr.’s friend comes over to take him out to teach him how to drive, and Skyler is going out, so neither will be there to eat the omelets. His frustration growing, Walter answers the ringing phone to hear Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner, on the other end. He attempts to lie his way out of the phone call, since Skyler’s there, but she seems on to his game, and, even if she wasn’t, the fact that the phone starts ringing again just as quickly as Walter hangs it up would surely tip her off. Jesse’s being tossed out of his aunt’s house, the place where he was able to find a sort of safe haven and set up a rudimentary cooking lab and also the place where he had some memories of an aunt who seemed concerned for his well-being when most of the rest of his family did not. As he attempts to convey the seriousness of his situation to Walt, he keeps getting rebuffed by the other man, who’s far more concerned with saving his family life for appearances and for staying low just long enough to get the investigation of what happened to Tuco to calm down. The sequence cuts from Walter watching his family wander off in all different directions and growing increasingly angry, even throwing out the freshly prepared omelets in a fit of frustration, and Jesse, calling Walter over and over to try to figure out some way out of his predicament and turning to the only person he knows he can trust. The editing grows more and more frenzied (unusual for this show), almost seeming like an action sequence, until the final cut, when Jesse slams down the phone after one last hang-up from Walt and the movers emptying his aunt’s home snatch it up just as quickly as he can set it down. He throws the ice trays from her fridge, the last remaining vestiges of the place as it was, after them as they go, but the damage is done. He has no place to go.
It’s the Jesse story that really drives this episode, even if the episode spends more time following Walt’s attempts to patch up his family. We’ve met Jesse’s parents a few times in the past, but here, we see them trying to get their son to fly straight again by kicking him out of the house after his mother found his lab in the basement. But it’s also clear that they’ve long since lost track of their son, that they don’t really know who he is anymore. They clearly have dreams for him (of data entry positions, if last week’s episode is any indication), and they’re also clearly tired of him putting them off with lies (as he tries to do again in this episode by telling his mom he’s looking into business school). It certainly doesn’t help that Jesse’s essentially a grade-A screw-up. His mind, addled too often by drugs, is never quite able to keep up. He’s got some street smarts, clearly, to have gotten by this long, but he’s also unable to make the $600 Walt loans him last for any real amount of time. There’s a moment late in the episode when Jesse tackles Walt and chokes him, raising his fist in anger to punch him, and it seems almost as if he’s striking back at everyone in his life keeping him on the bottom rungs of society, turning on the one last ally he has left. But he blinks and lives to fight another day.
It’s hard to blame Jesse for lashing out like that. His tackling of Walter came after the older man laid into him with a verbal tongue-lashing that was meaner than anything his parents or friends could have said to him but managed to externalize almost everything Jesse must feel they think about him anyway. Walter questioning just what Jesse DOES to help him in his burgeoning drug empire certainly must have stung as well. It was also the final indignity in a long string of indignities that led Jesse to that point. Among other things, the guy saw his bike and all of his worldly possessions stolen, couldn’t find a place to sleep, couldn’t get Walt to talk to him and broke into the impound lot where the mobile cook lab RV was being kept only to find himself falling into a PortaPotty and getting covered in the chemicals from the thing, his skin winding up blue. (Walter asking, in disbelief, “Why are you blue?” was a comic highlight in a very, very grim episode.)
Breaking Bad always has money concerns at its heart. Walter just needs to make enough money, he thinks, to keep his wife, son and unborn child safe and cared for after he dies. Jesse spends most of this episode just trying to find a way to keep his head above water, to have a place to sleep, to not completely disappear, and he decides the way to do that is to get half of Walter’s money, after his half of the drug sales was confiscated from his car in the wake of the Tuco shooting. Walter’s right that the money is technically his and that Jesse just lost his half through his own incompetence, but he’s also missing that Jesse is in dire straits and that he should be helping the kid who’s helped him so much. (It’s sort of telling that when Walter splits up the cash bundles finally at the end of the episode, he has an odd number and gives the extra cash bundle to himself.) It’s probably the right thing to do, but it’s certainly not the easy thing to do.
Centering the episode on Jesse’s dire financial straits really drove home just how easy it is for someone like him to fall off the map. Ideally, we hope, someone like Jesse will have friends or family who will care enough to reach out and pull him to shore, but Jesse’s parents seem to have long since given up on him, and Jesse’s friends (represented here by a former bandmate, who has moved on to a fairly typical mid-20s life, complete with house, wife and toddler) are just too far removed from his current situation to really understand just how far their friend has fallen. The show presents these both as ways that Jesse is able to slip off the radar of the world at large but also as admonishments that Jesse hasn’t quite made as much of his life as he might have. We don’t see that Jesse’s friend is significantly different from him. He just managed to pull his life together, while Jesse did not. Jesse has too much faith in being able to skate by at any given moment, and when that lets him down, he puts on a gas mask and collapses in tears.
In a way, Jesse’s downward spiral starts to feel inevitable after a while. He laid the seeds for this a long time ago, and now they’re just paying off. We may feel for him, but there’s also really no way it wouldn’t have played out this way. Inevitability just might be Breaking Bad’s major theme. It’s there in the way Walter’s choice to turn to crime has played out with him getting sucked in further and further. It’s there in the fact that Walter’s death lurks around every corner. It’s there in the idea that Walter is going to have to break with his family and already has begun that process. And it’s there, lurking, in every flash-forward we see at the start of these episodes, tantalizingly offering hints of what is to come down the road. We see, tonight, Walter’s glasses among the pieces of evidence at the crime scene with the floating teddy bear, and we know that, inevitably, there’s only one way this can end for Walt.
Some other thoughts:
House contributor Todd VanDerWerff is the publisher of the pop culture blog South Dakota Dark.
Links for the Day (March 30th, 2009)
1. The Rotten Tomatoes Show. Friend and contributor to The House John Lichman writes to let us know that anyone who wants to can contribute to the Rotten Tomatoes Show. If they have a webcam. And here's some other fun stuff they've done, including 3 Word Movie Reviews, Five Favorite Films with John Cena and I Learned It from the Movies: How to Be a Man.
["The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a movie review show that airs on Thursday nights at 10:30 e/p on Current TV. From reviews of the newest releases to commentary on cult favorites and movie trends, each episode of The Rotten Tomatoes Show is a fast-paced, comedic journey through the week in cinema."]
2. Apple of My I. Culture Snob signs on to the Underrated Blog-a-Thon with a look at Neil Jordan's In Dreams. Yeah, I forgot it existed too!
["Jordan’s movie (which he directed and co-wrote) is at its core a baroque and gothic collection of symbols and pregnant images and fears and clichés and pop psychology woven together into a garish quilt. The pieces are familiar, lending it a worn look, but its patchwork nature also means that it’s open to interpretation depending on the angle from which you approach it. I see it as a study of dark urges, guilt, and psychological projection."]
3. Mexico's Drug Gangs Drive Film Crew Out of Town. The Independent examines how the film Queen of the South had to abandon production in Sinaloa, Mexico.
["Queen of the South, based on a novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, was due to be filmed in Sinaloa, on the country's northern coast. But, following a decision by Jonathan Jakubowicz, its Venezuelan director, and two of his producers, the plug has now been pulled on the project. 'I've worked really hard to make this beautiful movie, but the safety of my family and my team comes first,' Jakubowicz told Variety. 'Making this movie [would have] put us all at risk, not only in Mexico but in the US.'"]
4. Cities Deal with a Surge in Shantytowns. Listen, I work for the Census now, and the training manuals for the job make the U.S. sound like a land filled with destitute hobos. But, reading this story, you start to wonder if MAYBE THEY'RE RIGHT?
["Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”"]
5. Turn Off the Shuffle: 25 Great Albums That Work Best When Listened to from Start to Finish. The AV Club details a number of concept albums, from well-known to obscure.
["Not satisfied with just one or two concept albums, Sufjan Stevens set out to record a concept collection, with 50 albums, each dedicated to one of the 50 states. We’re still waiting on 48 of them, but his most recent contribution, 2005’s Illinois, was enough of a success that he could rest on his laurels a bit before moving on to a (potentially smaller or less complicated) state. With 22 songs each focusing on Illinois history, from the criminal to the bizarre, there’s enough minutiae in the lyrics to keep over-analyzers happy for weeks, matching up the references to towns, people, and historical events from the Land Of Lincoln, both well-known and less-so. Stevens’ Illinois is a bustling yet melancholy, beautiful, sometimes-surprising and mysterious place, which seems to be exactly what Stevens took away from his research, and decided to share with listeners. He may end up feeling that way that about all the states, but as long as the stories are there and the music is surprising and beautiful, who cares?"]
Quote of the Day:
—George Orwell
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): I have no idea what this novel is about, but that cover sure makes me want to judge it!
Clip of the Day: Some nice animation in this Neko Case music video.
"Links for the Day": A selection of Links that will hopefully spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to todd@vanderwerff.us. Read more!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday Night Lights on Saturday: Ep. 3.11, "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"
By Jonathan Pacheco
“It’s gonna blow, don’t ya know.” It’s a phrase that a Dallas sports radio host was fond of saying back when the polarizing Terrell Owens joined the Cowboys. Since very early on in Season 3 of Friday Night Lights, the phrase has been looping in my head. For nearly the duration of the season, Joe McCoy’s fuse has been burning, and it was only a matter of time until the man did something drastic. “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” was written by Bridget Carpenter, Patrick Massett, and John Zinman; the only other Friday Night Lights episode crediting three writers was the Season 1 finale, “State.” It seems fitting that these specific three would write this episode, as they’re responsible for scripting some of the more McCoy-centric stories this season such as “How the Other Half Live” and “It Ain’t Easy Being J.D. McCoy.” With the Texas High School Football State Championship just a game away, the show’s writers, along with the episode’s director, Michael Waxman, and the actors playing the McCoys (D.W. Moffett, Janine Turner, and Jeremy Sumpter) are tasked with bringing this festering problem to a climax at the most inopportune moment.
After deliberately disobeying his father last week, J.D. (or, “that little bastard” as Joe called him) is still spending most of his free time with a redhead named Madison. He’s also spending some of his non-free time with her as well; Madison shows up at practices and a distracted J.D. trots over to chat with her any chance he gets. When Joe gets wind of this, he calls the girl’s parents to inform them that their daughter is a bad influence on his son. J.D., though, is smitten with the “amazing” Madison, as he constantly emphasizes; I personally notice little that’s “amazing” about her, so I get the feeling that, since they’ve literally been seeing each other for a week or two, they must be doing more than kissing for the boy to be so amazed.
But smelling State, Joe needs J.D. to focus with intensity, with the next Panther game taking place in some heavy rain. Focus, ball control—those are the keys. But instead of taking care of the football and running when he gets the opportunity, J.D. keeps slinging the ball around, forcing passes, creating turnovers, and diminishing the team’s championship hopes. Not only is J.D. hearing about it from his father in the stands, but now random fans are yelling at him. Through some luck, big plays, and gutsy coaching by Eric, the Panthers sneak away with a win, but Joe is still livid at his son’s reckless play and lack of focus. To make things worse, on the ride to Applebee’s from the game, J.D. sits in the back seat, flirting on the phone with Madison. It’s gonna blow, don’t ya know.
Joe can no longer hold his frustration in and wants to talk to J.D. in the rainy parking lot about his pathetic performance. J.D. is sick of the criticism. He talks back to his dad, telling him, “Screw you” and “I don’t give a crap.” The two shove each other. Joe snaps. He slams the boy against the car, shaking, smacking, and hitting him. “You don’t talk to me like that! You will respect me!” Katie can only scream for her husband to stop. From inside the restaurant, Eric and Tami see this and run out, pulling Joe off of his son.
Much like Tyra’s “escape” from Cash, this scene runs the risk of feeling too soap opera-ish (not to mention that the Taylors also seem to swoop into these situations right in the nick of time). But we’ve been building up to this moment for practically the entire season, and I feel the payoff is appropriate, and even at times frightening when you see just how physical Joe gets with his son.
J.D. and his mother stay at the Taylors’ house that evening, with a tearful Katie shocked at what she witnessed and her son letting out some pent-up frustration. In this scene, J.D. comes across as very young as he talks about how sick he is of his father, how he can’t take the negativity anymore, how nothing is ever good enough. These are very much the types of feelings kids his age feel, even if they come across as a little self-righteous in their delivery. But that’s okay. That’s precisely how a teenager in J.D.’s situation would sound. And just like Eric assured him, this was not his fault. Should he have talked back to his dad and shoved him? Of course not, but that’s still no excuse for a father smacking around his son. There’s a big difference between physical discipline and what Joe did.
A tea party seems like an odd occurrence in Dillon, TX, let alone in the Collette household, but that’s the kind of bridal shower Mindy demands that Tyra throw. Way in over her head, she bumps into Landry at the grocery store, who offers to help. Apparently he no longer feels like a tree from a children’s book after Tyra landed his band a gig; Crucifictorious has been invited to play again, and may become a permanent fixture. All seems well as Landry helps Tyra, their relationship rekindling by the minute. Though they’re preparing a tea party, I think Tyra is quite attracted to the way Landry begins to take control of the situation. When Mindy calls Tyra, trying to change plans or ask for something different, Landry grabs the phone, informs Mindy that the tea party is being prepared on schedule, and tells her to leave Tyra alone. Even when he tells Tyra to slice the cucumbers thinner (as cucumber sandwiches should be delicate), it’s a masculine sign of Landry taking charge.
After the successful party concludes and Mindy happily leaves with Billy, Tyra finds herself in tears, wondering to her mother why she can’t just want what Mindy wants. She wonders why she feels she has to do more, especially when more requires the academic struggles she’s been going through. She just received her new SAT score, increasing by 100 points, but figuring she needed at least another 100 to get her score where it needed to be. Every day, it looks like her chances of getting into college are slimmer, yet that’s what she truly wants. If only she could just want what Mindy wants—to settle down with a local Billy Riggins-type and be content.
Tyra’s mother comes through with some wise words for the first time in a while—a welcome change. Instead of telling her to hold onto any man with money to provide for her, she informs Tyra that Mindy, bless her heart, has never surprised her. But Tyra surprises her every day with her ambitions and drive. She doesn’t know what the future holds, but she knows that there’s something special out there for her younger daughter. Particularly this season, Angela has too often been a negative influence on Tyra, merely providing shallow advice, encouraging her daughter to settle. While I find the turnaround a little jarring, it felt good to see Angela being so perceptive, revealing, and even a little vulnerable (but in a strong way, if that makes sense). The scene also feels like a goodbye scene. The two know that some big changes could be happening—good ones, but changes that will be difficult to deal with. But Angela is proud of Tyra and shows here that she wants what’s best for her daughter, even if it means letting go of her.
Buddy, on the other hand, just wants to get his daughter back. Since her father lost all of her college fund, Lyla’s lost motivation. She drinks more than usual, skips school, and is generally uninterested in what the future now holds for her. A desperate Buddy approaches Tim, asking what he needs to do to win Lyla back, to which the Older, Wiser Tim (debuting last week) says that Lyla just needs some time right now. Truth is, Tim’s not even entirely convinced of that himself. Lyla’s been taking time, but she doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I imagine it’s a temptation for the writers to allow the Older, Wiser Tim to have all the right answers to his girlfriend’s issues, but Friday Night Lights allows him to stumble a little as well. He brings Lyla to the church that her and her family first attended in an attempt to somehow help. How is that supposed to help Lyla’s situation? I have no idea, and I don’t know if Tim does either. He’s just trying anything at this point. He finally has a heart-to-heart with her after the team’s Friday night victory (he chooses not to attend any parties that evening, again giving off the Older, Wiser Tim vibe; he’s been there, done that). I mentioned last week that Lyla still has options for college. She’s a great student, and there are a plethora of scholarships available. Tim echoes these sentiments, assuring his girlfriend that they’ll figure something out to get her to Vanderbilt, and if not, he and San Antonio State would love to have her.
“Did I just say I loved you? Did I?” he asks.
“No.”
“No? Because I’m kinda madly in love with you, and I’ll be here no matter what.”
“I love you, too,” says Lyla, and she kisses her boyfriend.
It’s the first time the two have said those words to each other. The show and its actors, Taylor Kitsch and Minka Kelly, play the scene to perfection, allowing the significant moment to exist without forcing it. The dialogue is written and performed so naturally that it really elevates the small moment to something very personal and wonderful.
Matt is hoping to attend college, leaving his grandmother in the care of his mother, Shelby, but serious doubts creep in when Lorraine falls out of the car as Shelby begins to pull away from the curb. Matt recklessly blames his mother, especially when, at the doctor’s recommendation, she mentions that they should consider putting Lorraine in a home. He tells her if she wants to bail like she did so many years ago, then fine, but he’s taking care of his grandmother. It’s a little bit of an overreaction on Matt’s part to go that far, but he’s understandably upset when the grandmother he’s watched over for years gets injured under someone else’s care.
Things get complicated when, at home, Lorraine begins to cry and yell at Matt, asking for her slippers, which happen to already be on her feet. The realization that even he can’t care for his grandmother anymore hits Matt pretty hard, and he and Shelby agree to figure Lorraine’s future out together. It’s an important development to Matt’s story, but it feels clipped. There are essentially just four scenes to the subplot (the accident, Matt’s blowup at the hospital, Lorraine’s breakdown, and Matt’s apology to Shelby), and it ends with plenty of time left in the episode. There was lots to get to in “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” but I wish this story had a little more time to breathe.
There’s some talk from the school and the board that’s going around, and not everyone is happy about it. They’re considering redistricting the town of Dillon, literally splitting the town right down the middle to create East Dillon. The town would then reopen East Dillon High, a long-closed cesspool of a school. The reason behind this plan is that redistricting looks like the only way Dillon High can receive much-needed additional funds. The problem is that the redistricting would send more than half of Coach’s Panthers to East Dillon High, their new rivals.
The boosters refuse to stand by and let this happen. They meet up, take the redistricting map, and start changing the line, zig-zagging it to ensure that the Panthers stay in Dillon High. Evidently the boosters have the superintendent’s ear, giving them the power to make something like this happen. Eric tells Buddy that he doesn’t feel right about what the boosters are doing, to which the car salesman passionately tells him that none of the boosters will ever let some politics divide the Dillon Panthers. I’ve talked several times about Buddy’s willingness to manipulate in order to protect what he loves. He feels he’s losing Lyla, so this man is desperately willing to fight for his Panthers. If Eric doesn’t feel comfortable with what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t be asking, says Buddy.
The story is left hanging a little as Tami hears rumors of the new jigsaw puzzle-like map, and I imagine a development that could split this championship-caliber Panther team apart will have to be explored further in the season’s final two episodes.
Some miscellaneous thoughts:
Jonathan Pacheco is a current web developer and future freelance writer. He blogs and reviews films at Bohemian Cinema.
The Conversations: Overlooked, Part 2—Solaris
By Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard
[Editor's Note: The Conversations is a monthly feature in which Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard discuss a wide range of cinematic subjects: critical analyses of films, filmmaker overviews, and more. This is the second half of a two-part conversation; the first part can be found here. Readers should expect to encounter spoilers.]
ED HOWARD: You selected Steven Soderbergh's Solaris as the film from the last few years you believe to be unfairly overlooked, and it's not hard to see why you chose it. There are few types of films that are more often overlooked and forgotten, en masse, than the amorphous category of the "remake." Fairly or unfairly, critics tend to be inherently skeptical of remake projects, even if audiences flock to genre remakes like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the "reboots" of franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween. In Soderbergh's case, his film couldn't even be called a commercial success; it was more or less a flop whose memory has almost completely faded from the popular imagination in just a few short years. When Soderbergh's film came out in 2002, I skipped over it for the same reason that I suspect a lot of other people did: by all appearances, it was yet another Hollywood "updating" of a classic film from years before, a film that if you ask me didn't really need to be revisited. Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Solaris is a classic of the science fiction genre, as well-loved and admired among art-cinema fans as Stanley Kubrick's more popularly known 2001: A Space Odyssey, to which Tarkovsky was directly responding in making his own film. Moreover, the 1961 novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem is also a classic, one of the greatest works of sci-fi literature (and a personal favorite of mine). Soderbergh was stepping into tremendous shoes by attempting to tell this story, and I'm sure he realized that this film would inevitably be compared to its predecessors, making it difficult to evaluate on its own terms.
The question then becomes: on its own terms, what is Soderbergh's Solaris? What was his rationale for revisiting a classic story? What does he bring to the film to make it his own? Does this new Solaris deserve its current obscurity or should it be remembered simultaneously with its predecessors (or even elevated above them)? I have my own opinions on these questions, but for now I'm interested to know what you think. Does what I've described gibe with your own reasons for picking this film? And why do you think Soderbergh's Solaris deserves a second look?
JASON BELLAMY: If I answered all those questions immediately, it would be a very long and very one-sided conversation. So let me focus on that last question first. Why does Solaris deserve a second look? Because I don't think it got a fair first look, if it got a look at all. Coincidentally (or maybe not), Solaris, like Undertow, is a difficult movie to sell to the general public because it mashes together some rarely paired themes. Most obviously, Solaris is a love story set in space that's equally passionate about both its romance and its sci-fi trappings. (Name five other films that fit that description. They're out there, I'm sure, but it's going to take you a while to come up with them.) Soderbergh's Solaris is a square peg in a landscape of round holes. It doesn't fit well into any niche, which is the recipe for commercial doom. Ironically (or maybe not), Soderbergh's adaptation includes a line about the search for extraterrestrial life that might as well be a forecast for the film's eventual (inevitable?) box office failings: "We don't want other worlds," Gibarian says. "We want mirrors." It's sad but true: To the general movie-going public, that which feels unfamiliar tends to feel uncomfortable.
Additionally, Fox did the film no favors by marketing Solaris according to what the average consumer hoped a George Clooney romance would be, rather than what this movie really is. Or something like that. Andrew O'Hehir of Salon best summarized the misleading marketing campaign in his review, writing: "[Fox] has primarily promoted the film as a love story starring Clooney and a beautiful woman, which has the virtue of A) being true and B) sounding like something lots of people might want to see. What the publicity doesn't make entirely clear is that most of the movie is set on a mostly deserted space station orbiting a planet that has some kind of psychological and/or spiritual powers (never specified or defined) and that the beautiful woman in question may be an alien creature or a fantasy projection but is in either case the not-quite-convincing simulacrum of a dead person."
Now, don't get me wrong. I needn't watch Mad Men to understand how advertising works. I realize that the majority of a film's box-office take is made on opening weekend, regardless of whether folks get what they thought they were paying for. I respect that Fox financed the film, and it's the studio's product and Fox can market the picture however the hell it wants. And I concede that Solaris isn't the kind of movie one could easily promote through toy giveaways at McDonald's. Nonetheless, when people are walking out of a film after only 15 minutes — 15 especially tight and propulsive minutes that we'll talk about later — that can't possibly be a black mark on the filmmaker or the film.
I was a witness to such walkouts. When Solaris was released, I was living in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which you won't be surprised to learn isn't exactly a hotbed for art films, or anything resembling art films. Solaris was the second movie I saw that chilly November day, and I remember that I had to hustle from my previous screening to get seated before the previews. Just before the lights went down, I looked around and noticed that females overwhelmingly outnumbered males in the audience. Stupefied, since that happens exactly never at sci-fi films, I immediately referenced my ticket stub, certain that I'd walked into the wrong theater. But, nope, I was in the right place. And, sure enough, I saw the kind of movie I hoped to see. In the meantime, at least a dozen people walked out over the course of the first 15 minutes, and one flock of about eight women who stayed (probably because it was a girls' night out) started bitching about the film the second the credits appeared.
I mention all of this because it represents the uncertain reception that greeted Solaris that I'm convinced has been a factor in the film being unfairly maligned or altogether overlooked (which isn't to suggest it was or is entirely without champions). In the above, I didn't even touch on the skepticism of Tarkovsky loyalists (one of whom reportedly approached Soderbergh in the street and told the director that he should be "ashamed" for attempting a remake), nor did I go into detail about my hunch that, after a string of successes (Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean's Eleven) followed by a flop (Full Frontal), some critics were hesitant to re-embrace their filmmaking golden boy, as if suddenly skeptical of Soderbergh's intentions. Heck, I have yet to argue the merits of the film. I'm eager to get to the latter, but let me shut up for a bit. You watched Soderbergh's adaptation upon my urging, having read Lem's story and seen Tarkovsky's original film some time ago. What did you think?
EH: Well, I have to say, if this film was marketed primarily as a love story set in space, then I don't think its marketing was so dishonest after all. Maybe I'm just too caught up with comparing Soderbergh's adaptation to my previous exposure to this material, but I'm far from convinced that the film is "equally passionate about both its romance and its sci-fi trappings." Quite to the contrary, it seems to me that the romance all but overpowers the sci-fi premise. For too much of the film, Soderbergh doesn't exploit his setting, doesn't deal with the nature of the living ocean below the space station. By far the most compelling concept in Solaris is Solaris itself, and it is the least-explored element in the Soderbergh film. I found myself wondering just how much this film would be changed if it was relocated to Earth, if Rheya (Natascha McElhone) was a ghost, or a figment of Kelvin's (George Clooney) imagination, if it was all a dream or fantasy or earthbound tale of insanity brought on by grief. I tried to imagine if the film would be irrevocably altered by a change of setting, and I think the answer is, damningly, no — for a film titled Solaris, the planet is strikingly irrelevant to most of the action, to the themes that Soderbergh wants to explore. I almost laughed when, at the very end, the title dramatically appears onscreen: it seems like a non sequitur considering how little importance is given to the planet, how little the implications of Solaris' existence are explored. It's not a film about Solaris, it's a film about a man who misses his dead wife, and who falls in love all over again with her doppelganger. Is it really so important to this film's essential point that the doppelganger originated in the living ocean on Solaris?
Whereas Lem's original novel was concerned with confronting the unknown, with the limits of human knowledge and humanity's place in the universe and other dense, heady philosophical and scientific concepts, Soderbergh's film is about a relationship, about loss and the desire for second chances. It's a matter of focus and emphasis: the themes relating to the alien planet are still there, but largely relegated to the background, often literally. That line about "mirrors" is a crucial one, an important concept in both the novel and in Tarkovsky's film, and yet Soderbergh just tosses it off, has a character speaking it on a TV set in the background and then never revisits the idea. Again and again, he downplays what should be the central ideas of the film, instead dedicating enormous amounts of time to flashbacks of Kelvin and the original Rheya's life back on Earth, before she killed herself. These flashbacks are unique to Soderbergh, they are the primary invention of his screenplay, the most obvious way in which he diverges from his source material. And their effect is to take the emphasis off of Solaris, to move the setting from space to Earth, to replace the scientific acuity of Lem's prose with a maudlin romantic drama.
Of course, Lem himself had similar complaints about Tarkovsky's film, and it's true that even Tarkovsky shifts the emphasis slightly towards the central relationship and away from the conceptual underpinnings of the story. I don't think any adaptation of the novel could avoid that, considering how dense and technical Lem's writing often is. But Tarkovsky does a far better job than Soderbergh of balancing the science fiction with the psychology of the characters and the romantic story. Tarkovsky's film has the texture of conceptual sci-fi; Soderbergh's film has the texture of a romance with incidental sci-fi trappings. I'm not one of those people who think Soderbergh should be "ashamed" for attempting to remake some sacred text — I'm not a "Tarkovsky loyalist" and in any event I don't think Solaris is one of Tarkovsky's best films — but I'm also not sure that Soderbergh has anything unique or interesting to say through this story.
It's true that movie audiences generally don't want "other worlds" but "mirrors," and to satisfy that urge Soderbergh really tries to make this story as reflective as possible, to play down the essential strangeness and inaccessibility of Solaris and dwell on a love story that anyone could relate to. It's ironic that, even after watering down Lem's themes so much, the film still wasn't simple enough or accessible enough for mainstream audiences, who apparently don't want even the barest hint of challenging material getting in the way of their sappy romance. But ultimately, all Soderbergh's film offers is that hint, the suggestion of deeper themes that he borrowed from Lem or Tarkovsky, and which were much more thoroughly explored in both previous takes on this story.
JB: "Maudlin"? "Dwell"? Thems fightin' words! But I'll respond to those jabs later. For the moment, let's focus on the general thrust of Soderbergh's adaptation. Is it a romance above all else? Absolutely! But let's be realistic about those sci-fi trappings. "Incidental" or not to the romance's evolution, they have a significant impact on the mood. This is, after all, a love story that unfolds in the surgical chill of a space station, with the hum of the ship's operating systems routinely filling our ears. This environment hardly offers the typical ambience for a romance. I presume you'd agree with that.
Furthermore, Solaris is by no means "irrelevant." Does the planet consume the attention of each scene? No. But it's the key to everything that happens. And since Solaris itself cannot emote, we learn about it through what happens to Kelvin. I can see how the unveiling of the title at the end of the film might feel overly dramatic, particularly if it's a reminder of all that Soderbergh's adaptation isn't. But, dude, we just finished debating Undertow. Let's not get picky on titles. Besides, Solaris is to Soderbergh's film what the titular wardrobe is to the first episode of the Narnia series. It doesn't speak and it isn't the center of attention, but we never forget it. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a character in the film, but I think you underestimate its influence over everything that happens.
In response to your earlier pondering on the topic, yes, Solaris would be irrevocably altered if Rheya were just a figure of Kelvin's imagination on Earth. Under that design, this would be a story of Kelvin's sanity (or lack thereof), because even if Rheya seemed to be "really there" by virtue of some inexplicable magic, like Patrick Swayze's character in Ghost, she still wouldn't be "really there," and we'd know that. (Fuck. Did I just refer to Ghost?) The Solaris construct changes the recipe in a subtle but significant way. Here Rheya is a wholly "real" creation of Solaris, even if she isn't actually Rheya. Still, undoubtedly, she's there. Kelvin can see her, and so can the other members of the crew. Thus, Soderbergh's film stops being a question of if this is really happening and, through its romance, the film quickly becomes an ethical examination of what to do about it. If the same events unfolded on Earth, insanity would be the root of Rheya's appearance to Kelvin in the first place. Here, Kelvin is fully sane when Rheya arrives, and the debate becomes whether or not he should willingly and knowingly give himself over to the insanity of pretending that this faux Rheya is the real thing.
Is this what Lem's Solaris is about? I don't have a clue. I haven't read it. But, as I suggested in our Undertow discussion, a good filmmaker "borrows what works and then adds to it, enhances it, reinvents it." If as a fan of the original material you're upset that neither Tarkovsky nor Soderbergh fully captures the complexity or the spirit of Lem's work, fair enough. To look at it another way, Batman wouldn't be Batman if you failed to include Gotham, the Batmobile and arch villains and instead told the story of a guy in a funny black suit who lived in Malibu, drove a Mustang and played poker all day. On that note, maybe Soderbergh did drift too far away from Lem. I wouldn't know. Then again, if Tarkovsky was justified in calling his film an adaptation of Lem, then Soderbergh is, too.
These two films are different, without question. They even have different aims. But they're in a similar orbit. I'd argue that the reason Tarkovsky's film seems more dedicated to the scientific concepts of Lem is because his picture is less successful at conjuring human emotion. I'd argue that Tarkovsky's film doesn't go into greater depth, just into greater length (169 could-hardly-be-slower minutes vs. a lean 99). I'd argue that Soderbergh's film is indeed "heady" and "philosophical," it just might not seem that way, because Soderbergh weaves these elements into the tragic love story of Kelvin and Rheya, rather than resorting to overt references of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. But I'm prepared for you to tell me I'm wrong.
EH: I'm willing to admit that I may have overstated the irrelevance of Solaris and the space station setting to the film's love story. And it's certainly possible that to some extent I'm just disappointed that Soderbergh doesn't do more justice to Lem's ideas — though despite my similar issues with Tarkovsky's film, I think it is unquestionably better and more complex than Soderbergh's. Tarkovsky has substantially different concerns from Lem but the film is interesting in its own right. Soderbergh's take on this story is distinct from both Tarkovsky's and Lem's, and that's fine, as long as he's purposefully going somewhere different. I can only assume he is, that there's something motivating this film, but I'm not quite sure what ideas are actually being expressed.
Yes, there are tangential references to the encounter with the unknown, the mystery of Solaris, but they're throwaways, relegated to the background like Lem's great "mirrors" line: traces of the original story poking through here and there, that's all. So if Soderbergh isn't dealing with the ideas of Lem's novel in any rigorous fashion, then what ideas is he exploring? It's a perfectly valid choice to bring one's own concerns and themes to the process of adapting another's work — Tarkovsky injected a level of spiritual and theological inquiry into his Solaris that was hardly as pertinent for Lem — but this film doesn't leave me with any profound sense of what Soderbergh saw in this story, why he thought it was so important to put his own stamp on it.
In the Salon review you quoted above, Andrew O'Hehir says that Soderbergh's concerns are primarily formal, that he's not deeply invested in the plot or ideas, and I think that's about right. The film is visually striking and impeccably designed, but its beauty seems somehow empty: slick and sterile. You called the film an "ethical examination," but of what exactly? The ethical dilemmas in both Lem and Tarkovsky had weight and substance; Soderbergh reduces everything to Gordon's (Viola Davis) line, "Whatever it is, it's not human and I'm threatened by that. And I want humans to win." That kind of silly, overwritten line basically sums up my problems with Soderbergh's film, independently of my disappointment with it as an adaptation: its themes are blunt and obvious, trafficking in the kind of "us vs. them" human/alien dichotomies that have driven countless science fiction films before it. So many of the supposed "heady" moments in this film consist simply of shouting matches between Gordon and Kelvin about whether the visitors are "real" or not. A lot of it reminded me of the debates that often take place in stories about artificial intelligence — like the Terminator films. The love story is conventional beneath its unusual exterior, but ultimately the science fiction elements in the film are even more conventional.
Indeed, the choices Soderbergh makes consistently seem designed to drain the premise of its inherent mystery and uniqueness. It starts as soon as Kelvin arrives on the spaceship, when Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon are far more forthcoming than they were in either previous version, giving the opening this weird, anticlimactic atmosphere as the two of them simply pour out exposition, deflating the sense of mystery and tension. Davies is a great actor within his particular niche — currently proving on Lost that he's the go-to guy for twitchy, nutty scientists — and he's fun to watch as always, but his character is just another example of Soderbergh seemingly changing things just for the sake of changing them. He sheds all the abstracted and mysterious things that character says about his visitor in both previous versions of the story — intriguing hints that the ocean is not necessarily drawing only memories from the humans' minds — for the sake of a pointless twist that I guess is meant to add shock to the climax.
I know I keep coming back to the differences between Soderbergh's film and its predecessors, and it probably seems like I'm just the usual bitter fan upset about a remake. I'm not, really; I would've been very happy had Soderbergh done something different with this story and done it well. But I think the choices he made in adapting Solaris reveal the limits of his vision. There are just too many places where his changes add nothing and elide a great deal, where he seems to be aiming only at expediency, at streamlining the story's themes, at jazzing up (and sexing up) its narrative.
JB: OK, well, let's start with the expediency. You suggested that the cut-to-the-chase conversation between Kelvin and Snow creates an "anticlimactic atmosphere," but I don't see it that way at all. For me, one of the refreshing elements of Soderbergh's version is the way that Kelvin asks all the questions that we would ask, and in about the same order that we would ask them. Yes, the early exposition resolves without difficulty many of the riddles that go unconfronted to the point of absurdity in Tarkovsky's film. Yet it creates riddles at the same time. As if marching to the commands of Syd Field, the first 15-minute segment of Soderbergh's screenplay introduces Kelvin and the space station, lays the foundation for the effect of Solaris and then dangles a mystery: "I could tell you what's happening. But I don't know if that would really tell you what's happening."
This isn't anticlimactic. It's enticing. Soon after, Kelvin, who clearly has an inkling of what he might encounter at the space station, finds himself struggling to reconcile the difference between what he knows to be untrue and what he desperately wants to be real. As I said earlier, Kelvin's ethical dilemma is whether to give in to the illusion. One might compare his struggle with that of an addict who knows that the right thing to do is to stay clean but that greater pleasure might be found in a drug-fueled haze. Human nature attracts us not to what's "right" but to what feels best. In this case, human nature draws Kelvin to something that isn't human. There's some irony there.
Now, before I go further let me compare this to Tarkovsky's version, where it takes until the 2-hour mark for the words "copy" and "matrix" to be uttered. In that film, Kelvin comes across as hardly human. Upon arriving at the space station, he sees a woman he knows shouldn't be there and a boy he knows shouldn't be there... and he has no reaction to this whatsoever. The most mysterious element of Tarkovsky's version isn't Solaris, it's that Kelvin goes out of his way to avoid asking questions that might result in advancing the plot or addressing the elephant in the room. (If Tarkovsky's Kelvin found a woman lying on the sidewalk, hemorrhaging from her eyes, he'd stop to ask her about her earrings. It's maddening.)
In contrast, by not wasting time, Soderbergh's Solaris is able to provide a depth to Rheya that isn't found in Tarkovsky's film. It provides what could be considered an early commentary on the ethics of human cloning. It explores some of the same mind vs. soul ponderings that power Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It reveals long before Michael Clayton how fascinating it can be to watch a George Clooney character think. And all the while Soderbergh's Solaris demonstrates the challenge of facing unpleasant reality. The planet Solaris is preying on the crew's vulnerabilities, weaving together visitors from the fibers of the hosts' memories and emotions. This isn't a battle of "us vs. them." It's a battle of us vs. ourselves. In that respect, I agree with you that much of the conflict might hinge on a line from Gordon. I just disagree about the line. For me, it's about Gordon's need to regain control. "I want to stop it," she says.
EH: See, I think pretty much any Gordon line is problematic, because the character is such an amalgam of sci-fi action movie "tough guy" clichés, which needless to say is really jarring in a film that's otherwise so low-key. She's the character who Soderbergh changed the most, and as with most of his choices, I'm not sure why: Tarkovsky's Sartorious is less an erstwhile action hero and more an ornery man of science who, though unsympathetic, is genuinely thinking through these problems. That's what gives the conversations between him and Kelvin such an intellectual charge in Tarkovsky's film, something that's sorely missing here. Tarkovsky makes the conflict between Sartorious and Kelvin an argument between rationality and spirituality, with neither obviously having the upper hand. The tension between Gordon and Kelvin is much more prosaic. Clooney's Kelvin may ask more questions than Donatis Banionis' Kelvin, but that's because Clooney gets such improbably lucid and coherent answers from the people he asks, whereas in the earlier film Snaut and Sartorious seem genuinely frazzled and distant, as though in a sleepwalking daze. It's not that Kelvin doesn't react in the earlier film, but that he quickly realizes he's not going to get any worthwhile answers from the people on the station. And when the characters finally begin talking later in the film, what they have to say is so much more interesting than the routine exposition of Soderbergh's script. At one point, Tarkovsky's Snaut tells Kelvin, "Don't turn a scientific problem into a love story," a piece of advice that Soderbergh might have taken more seriously in making this film.
That said, I like the way you unpack the themes of Soderbergh's Solaris; I just wish I could agree that the film is as deep and complex as you insist it is. I wish I'd seen the film that you apparently did. I did enjoy Clooney and the unconventionally beautiful McElhone, and in fact the performances are worthwhile in general, with the exception of Davis, who's hamstrung by some really blunt writing. I also think it's intriguing that Soderbergh shifts some of the emphasis of the story onto Rheya herself, trying to get inside of her head, tracing her thought process as she tries to understand who or what she is. That's interesting, but ultimately all Soderbergh does with the idea is use it as an excuse to tell the love story through multiple, lengthy flashbacks to Kelvin and Rheya's life on Earth. Also interesting is an idea that Soderbergh introduces late in the film but, typically, doesn't explore: the suggestion that this incarnation of Rheya is somehow different from the real woman because Kelvin has remembered her "wrong," that her personality is crafted from his mind and thus subject to the distortions and nostalgic tendencies and selectivity of memory. Like so many of the film's best ideas, though, it's brought up in passing and then allowed to slip away without delving into it further.
In contrast, Tarkovsky's film centers the drama around the question of what it means to be human. Is it our capacity for love? Our independence? Our intellect? Our thirst for knowledge? Our sympathy for fellow beings? Our spiritual longings? And though Tarkovsky spends far less time than Soderbergh considering things from the visitor's perspective, I think the earlier film is actually just as effective in exploring her internal conflicts and questions. Tarkovsky's Hari slowly becomes more human as she spends more time with Kelvin, and her dawning awareness of her unique situation is, to me, just as poignant and affecting in the earlier film as in the later one, despite the fact that Soderbergh spends so much more time with Rheya. It's a kind of Pinocchio tale: am I a real girl now? Soderbergh is ostensibly dealing with similar issues but keeps getting bogged down in the details of the tragic romance instead.
JB: Right. Soderbergh's film is "bogged down" in the romance — because Kelvin is bogged down in the romance. Clooney's character is making the very mistake that Snaut warns against in the first film. He's confusing a scientific problem with a love story. Appropriately, Soderbergh's adaptation reflects Kelvin's internal struggle. The flashbacks to life on Earth aren't just background. More significantly, they reveal the foreground of Kelvin's thoughts and feelings. And that's what I love about this film. I positively ache for Kelvin and his conundrum. Here's a man who has spent years yearning to be with this person while disbelieving in an afterlife that would make that possible. Then, by virtue of some unexplained phenomenon, Rheya arrives. Yet as soon as she does, Kelvin can't help thinking about how he lost her in the first place. (As you just indicated, this new Rheya can never be her own self, because her DNA is made up of Kelvin's memories. She is doomed.)
One of the things I'm finding intriguing about this discussion is that I cherish the element of Solaris that you seem to most despise: the film's unwillingness to complete its numerous thematic and philosophical explorations. For me, this format engages the audience, forcing us to fill in the blanks. These are open-ended questions that Soderbergh's film is asking. And whereas Tarkovsky allows ample time for rumination, Soderbergh never lets us get settled, which is part of the reason why the film lingers in my imagination while managing to feel new each time I watch it (and I'd say I've seen it at least once a year since it was released in 2002). There are many elements of this film worth exploring in depth that, no, Soderbergh doesn't resolve and that, no, I haven't resolved yet either — part of the reason being that Soderbergh doesn't give me enough time. In that respect, Solaris is the philosophical equivalent of another sci-fi film from the past 10 years that I adore, Danny Boyle's suspense-crazed Sunshine, which spends 107 minutes following one near-disaster with another so as to keep us in the moment. Does that make Soderbergh's picture Philosophy Lite, compared to Tarkovsky's adaptation and Lem's original story? I'm sure it does. But so what? I think Soderbergh's motive with Solaris is similar to that of Charlie Kaufman with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which came along more than a year later. Solaris utilizes an atypical premise to knock us out of our comfort zone and give us a fresh perspective on otherwise weary themes.
EH: Yeah, we seem to have run up against one of those situations where we essentially agree on what the film is doing, but can't agree on whether it's a good thing or not. I find the open-endedness of Soderbergh's film frustrating rather than enticing. It hasn't lingered in my imagination or made me want to fill in the blanks; I've just found myself wishing there had been more there in the film itself, more substance, more time to think about the issues raised by Kelvin's predicament. It's why I still believe, for all its flaws, Tarkovsky's Solaris is the superior film. It's got nothing on the Lem novel, and Tarkovsky himself made better, richer films (Mirror, Stalker), but it is a serious consideration of the issues that Tarkovsky finds in this premise.
Of course, neither adaptation quite captures the essence of Lem's novel, but that is an entirely different issue. Indeed, it may be impossible to "faithfully" adapt that book to the screen; the only way into it is probably the route that Soderbergh and Tarkovsky took, bringing their own perspectives to bear on the basic plot. The novel is very dense, very textual and abstract. Kelvin spends a lot of time in the station's library, reading through stacks of Solaris literature in order to review the various theories and observations about the planet by other researchers. The book is as much about Solaris as it is about Kelvin; the planet is a true character in a way it isn't in either film. The history of humanity's interaction with Solaris is discussed in great depth and detail. There are long passages that are strikingly impersonal and objective, using scientific jargon and meticulous cataloguing to convey the exact nature and extent of the alien ocean's strangeness — and the exact boundaries of humanity's understanding of it.
One source of my disappointment with Soderbergh's adaptation is certainly the sense of missed opportunities. He presumably had access to sophisticated CGI and could've really explored the oceanic phenomena described so wonderfully by Lem, but instead the images of the planet in Soderbergh's film aren't substantially any different than what Tarkovsky achieved by crudely processing images of Earth's oceans. They're pictorial inserts, whereas Lem's precise descriptions of the ocean directly engage with the special problems provoked by the ocean's unique nature.
The book communicates a sense of wonder at the unknown, but a sense of terror as well, in that humanity is constantly seeking answers without really wanting to hear them unless they conform to what's already known. In Lem's book, the ocean represents a terrifying unknown so alien to human understanding that the only possible way to respond is to observe, to catalogue, to maintain an objective pose, obsessively arranging details with no hope of arriving at any deeper truths.
Given his particular obsessions, Tarkovsky naturally translated this idea into spiritual terms, using the ocean as a metaphorical God to slip by the Soviet censors, but for Lem the ocean's unknowability is explicitly not religious or God-like. Kelvin himself rejects the idea late in the novel. Lem is more interested in the metaphysical implications of it all, the idea that the pursuit of "progress" is actually just man's search for himself. The ocean represents a challenge to humanity, something so un-human as to be beyond our ability to comprehend, beyond any question of divining its intentions or reasons or "intellect." I'm not sure Tarkovsky gets this idea across, and I know Soderbergh doesn't; both directors are way more interested in exploring Kelvin's reactions to his visitor and the feelings of loss and guilt awakened in him by her presence.
There's a reason that even most of the aliens in our fantasies and sci-fi tend to be humanoid or at least demonstrate recognizable human behaviors and motivations. It's rare that our science fiction features a truly unfathomable creation like Solaris; instead, our imaginations keep devising endless variations on ourselves, disguised and reworked. Even in books and movies, we travel halfway across the universe to encounter a mirror. It's thus ironic but not especially surprising that both directors who have adapted Solaris, in very different cultural and commercial contexts, have responded by psychologizing the central problem, making it about human emotions and reactions rather than the humbling encounter with an impenetrable alien intelligence. This only proves Lem's point: we humans are extraordinarily skittish in confronting that which is truly outside us.
JB: We agree on that. Indeed, whether it's due to fear, ego, lack of imagination or something else, we seem to be seeking mirrors. At least, that's what much of our art suggests. I think it's funny, with all that we know about space and science today, that we still tend to imagine that the discovery of alien life — or alien life's discovery of us — will unfold in the same manner as Columbus reaching the New World. This seems increasingly unlikely.
If you'd kindly indulge me for a moment: The sci-fi movie I'm waiting for wouldn't involve space expeditions or high tech machinery. Instead, one day people across the East Coast would notice in the night sky a strange light that would look like a distant planet except that it would flicker, almost like Morse code. The point of light would narrow until it was almost unnoticeable and then it would widen again. It would do this repeatedly all night, and humans would be transfixed by it. By morning, there would be no doubt that this light was something else. People on the West Coast and all around the world would see the light, too. Two days later scientists would admit that they didn't know anything, couldn't explain anything. But, with studies ongoing, everyone would agree that this was a signal from some other world. Some would say that this light forecasted immanent doom, and others would suggest that it was the first message in a hopefully peaceful relationship that, due to the enormity of space, might evolve for generations before it led to any kind of face-to-face encounter. But everyone would agree that man wasn't alone in the universe. With no way to decode the message, the light would communicate only that something smarter than us, something more advanced than us and something more aware than us was reaching out to us. This would be heavy. Imagine yourself in that scenario. Imagine if tomorrow you encountered undeniable evidence that some life form more advanced than man was out there watching us. Every other element in your life would be exactly the same as it is right now except for this one monumental and yet presently innocuous change. How would you react? How would I? How would anyone? What would it mean? I think that would make for an interesting film. But I digress.
I mention all of that because I think that germ of a story, within the context of our larger conversation, indicates how staunchly we believe ourselves to be the most advanced species in existence and how truly stunned we'd be if we were proven incorrect. Lem's story, as you describe it, has unique qualities, I give you that. But in the end it's just like any other sci-fi yarn in that it asks us to buy into something greater than man. Deep down, I'm not sure most of us are capable of believing such a thing — God-fearers excluded. And so while I respect all the ways that Soderbergh seems to have abandoned Lem's intent as you've outlined it, in the end doesn't he get it right? If the unfathomable Solaris is the device that reveals the fraudulence of man's search for progress, then isn't Solaris the ultimate mirror within which man is reflected back at himself? Isn't Lem's Solaris a story about man after all?
EH: Of course it is. As we've both suggested, we humans are probably not capable, psychologically or cognitively or whatever, of telling stories that aren't about ourselves. It's hard to even imagine what other kinds of stories we would tell. I suppose Lem's as trapped by that as any of the rest of us, and so are you in the very interesting story you outlined above, which is, yet again, all about humanity's reaction to aliens. I think the interesting thing about Lem's Solaris is that it acknowledges being trapped by this limitation, it is in fact all about this limitation, about humanity's oft-ignored limits and boundaries. It's about our belief in our thought processes, our certainty in the scientific method, and about what happens when we encounter something that cannot be understood, something that simply ties our brains in knots trying to decode it or communicate with it. In a very literal way in Lem's novel, Solaris is the blinking light in the sky that you describe above; it inspires decades of research and theorizing and just sits there, doing its own strange thing, through it all. What makes Lem's novel unique is not that it gets beyond a human perspective, which is impossible for us, but that it directly engages with the limits of the human perspective.
Compare it, for example, to 2001: A Space Odyssey, that old sci-fi warhorse, in which we travel across the universe, through a wormhole to who knows where, only to encounter, ultimately, a giant human baby. Talk about mirrors. The implication of the film is that the entire history of the universe is driving towards creating some kind of refined form of humanity. Even HAL has a human personality with very human motivations and instincts; that's precisely what makes him so dangerous. It's ironic then that Tarkovsky's film was a response to Kubrick's 2001, which Tarkovsky deemed too inhuman, too cold and clinical. He wanted to make a film about space travel that focused more on human emotions and psychology as affected by space and the prospect of alien life. But the film also contains a very interesting scene that echoes Kubrick's space baby, when Kelvin watches a video in which a frazzled space pilot describes seeing the giant form of a human baby being constructed on the surface of Solaris. In Tarkovsky's film, it's just a way of exciting interest about the alien planet, a shorthand method of communicating just how weird the place is. In Lem's novel, it's more explicit that this incident is the planet's first trial run of sorts for extracting memories from human minds; the baby is the result of a very creepy "psychic dissection" process. Thus, though both 2001 and Solaris involve traveling across space to encounter an image of a human child, the implications of the two scenes are very different: one assumes human superiority while the other is rather conclusive evidence of something greater than us.
Another figure to think about in relation to all this is Dr. Manhattan, the most fascinating conceptual character from Alan Moore's Watchmen. He's an ordinary guy who, after a lab accident that seemingly disintegrates him, reconstitutes himself as this glowing blue inhuman being with tremendous powers. He's different from other superheroes in that what's interesting about him is not actually his power, but the way his experience alters his outlook on life and the universe. He becomes distanced from humanity, from emotions, and comes to believe that subatomic particles only he can see are as valuable and beautiful as the entirety of human life, that inanimate rock formations on Mars dwarf all the achievements of man. Maybe that's the key to getting beyond a human perspective. It's hard for us to imagine valuing an infinitesimal quark as highly as even a single human life, let alone all life, but that perspective is certainly one step towards the incommunicative distance of the ocean on Solaris.
JB: I haven't had time yet to see Watchmen, and I didn't read the graphic novel, but I'm glad you've brought up 2001. I wonder if Kubrick's space baby a) reveals an uninspired storyteller (Pauline Kael called 2001 "monumentally unimaginative"), b) acquiesces to the limited adaptability of audiences in a way David Lynch rarely does, or c) intentionally comments on man's repeated insistence to figure human life as we know it into any rendering of progress (fuck Darwin, I guess).
As we float farther away from Solaris itself, I'm reminded of a concept that has been raised before in books ranging from Colin McGinn's The Power of Movies to Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live. In a nutshell, does the way we dream enable our ability to understand movies, or have movies (and television) shaped the way we dream? Watching films, are we able to follow immediate (one-cut) leaps in time and space because our dreams include similar leaps? Or do our dreams include such leaps because of the impact of cinema and television? Put another way: Did primordial man dream about anything other than what he knew firsthand — the search for food, the fight for survival — in linear episodes? If so, when did that change?
For the moment, these are rhetorical questions. I'm not looking to send us down a rabb—, er, wormhole. But this transformation of human understanding is what Kubrick is getting at in the moment when the obelisk first appears in 2001. At some point, this scene suggests, human (or pre-human) awareness went beyond what we actually knew firsthand. Then again, as the conclusion of 2001 proves, there's a limit to what we can imagine. More often than not, we build our otherworldly visions out of familiar materials that we have stockpiled on "islands of memory," to borrow a phrase from Tarkovsky's film that should keep this conversation from drifting endlessly into space.
Before I miss the opportunity, I want to be sure to say that I admire Tarkovsky's film, especially in light of the obstacles he faced in the form of government censors. His film is indeed less inhuman, less cold and less clinical than 2001. (Of course, so is a morgue.) There are many elements of Tarkovsky's Solaris that succeed in revealing the human spirit — the evolution of Hari (Tarkovsky's Rheya) being my favorite. Yet while I acknowledge that Tarkovsky's Solaris is of a different era and a different culture, there's a hollowness to many of its scenes that makes it hard to get close to. Additionally, I question the decision to spend almost 45 minutes on Earth at the start of the story, because I don't believe it achieves Tarkovsky's stated intent, which was to make us long for home once the story reached space. In the Earth scenes, Kelvin is seen at a pleasant cottage that sits next to a tranquil pond, around which he likes to take walks, with a horse roaming free on the grounds. Removed from the film, it's a rather idyllic setting. But something about the way Tarkovsky films these scenes makes it seem like Kelvin is confined there under house arrest. In any case, when Kelvin leaves Earth for the space station it feels to me like liberation — though perhaps that reveals my own impatience.
Is Soderbergh's film better than Tarkovsky's, or the other way around? To me it's apples and oranges. The scenarios in which the films were made are too different. It would be like comparing a baseball slugger's stats in the recent (current?) steroids era to those of a hitter in the "dead-ball era" of the early 1900s. In terms of reflecting Lem's original story, it sounds as if Tarkovsky has the edge, though perhaps only slightly. If I understand you correctly, Lem's Solaris is about the process as much as anything, the same way that All the President's Men is about what Woodward and Bernstein do to uncover Watergate more so than it's about what they uncover; I don't think either Solaris film gets at that. Still, on its own terms, I find Soderbergh's Solaris to be nearly flawless. It's on the short list of films from the past decade that remain as engrossing to me today as it was on my initial viewing. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the score by Cliff Martinez, which is nearly as significant to the effectiveness of this picture as Clint Mansell's Kronos Quartet-powered score is to The Fountain (for my money, the best score of this young century), but mostly I think the film succeeds because Soderbergh takes so many compelling dramatic elements and philosophical teasers and forces them through a tiny aperture. I see how coming to Soderbergh's picture having already been exposed to Lem and Tarkovsky has a way of revealing what his Solaris isn't. But coming from the other direction, I can't help loving what it is.
EH: Well said. You're right that Lem's Solaris is about the (thought) process as much as anything, with the emphasis on concepts rather than characters. Neither film captures that, and really why should they? Neither Tarkovsky nor Soderbergh were setting out to make a Zack Snyder-style "faithful" adaptation of Lem's work, but to create original aesthetic statements of their own using the novel as source material. You're also right that even the two films, though similar in some ways, are fairly distinct in terms of their intentions and aesthetics. Tarkovsky's film certainly has its problems, and I'd agree that the long opening section on Earth doesn't really achieve what the director wanted it to: Kelvin is just so obviously miserable, sleepwalking through life, that the beautiful surroundings hardly create an idyllic portrait of life on Earth. One gets the sense that it doesn't matter to Kelvin where he is. Still, there's a sensual quality to these early scenes — like the one where Kelvin stands outside in a rainstorm and Tarkovsky lingers on the impacts of raindrops in a teacup — that does provide a meaningful contrast to the coldness of the Solaris station and the isolation of space. I think the early scenes are crucially important for letting us slowly acclimate to the texture of Kelvin's life, getting a feel for his loneliness and depression and, simultaneously, his appreciation of simple sensual pleasures. It doesn't make us long for home, that's true, but it does align us with the film's sad sack protagonist, and it adds poignancy to the later scenes of Kelvin's dreamlike nostalgia for his mother, and his conflation of her with Hari — scenes that, like the lengthy opening, weren't in the book at all.
As for Soderbergh's Solaris, maybe I just can't escape approaching it through the lens of the two other versions of this story, but this, not the Tarkovsky film, is the one that feels "hollow" to me. There are plenty of things to like here, of course. Martinez's propulsive Philip Glass-like score is one of them, though few scores could match the ethereal beauty of Eduard Artemyev's ANS synthesizer score to the first film, one of the greatest electronic scores of all time. Soderbergh for the most part gets richer and more complex performances than the flatter acting of Tarkovsky's cast. The imagery is often stunning. I just can't get past the impression that the film is lovingly crafted but ultimately empty, presenting a beautiful surface that's as slick and impenetrable as the oscillations of Solaris' ocean.
Jason Bellamy ruminates on cinema at The Cooler.
Ed Howard chronicles his film viewing at Only the Cinema.
Posts
