Undisentanglable.

Listening to Nefertiti, drinking Calvados.

Can I riff on Solaris? - Soderberg's Solaris, not Tarkovsky's (or Lem's)? I saw it again the other night. I've seen both films a few times, but I'm currently in love with Soderberg's.

The topic is, what happens if you get what you wish for? Tarkovsky dealt with this in other places too. His Stalker is about the same thing. And Hofstadter's most recent book is about this, sort of: how we create inside us, over time, imperfect copies of people we know well. It also reminds me of The Monkey's Paw, in a Poe sort of way.

~ What happens when you get your wish? It drove Britney bonkers, didn't it? But Clooney's presentation in Solaris is more, um, nuanced than what we ever get to see of Britney.


And anyway the comparison isn't fair. Britney's situation is probably closer to:

1. receiving adulation for winning what was only ever a game of chance;
2. being bright enough to ask "why me?" but not having the resources to face the answer, poor girl; and
3. not having a third thing.

~ Solaris gives you what you wish for most, whether it's what you want or not. Chris, Sodergerg's main character, travels to Prometheus, a space station orbiting Solaris and gets what he longs for - a copy of his wife Rheya, long dead from suicide. He wakens from sleep and she's somehow there, horrific and miraculous.

Prometheus's other residents are given "gifts" too: Snow gets a copy of himself and Gibarian a copy of his son. Gordon never says.

~ Rheya ended her life because Chris left her. He left because she robbed him of his agency: without consulting him she took a decision whose repercussions would impact on his life. She had her reasons, but who doesn't?

~ Once Chris realizes his situation - that he's not dreaming, that yes, she's real - he makes the decision to get rid of her. You can't always want what you get. He sends Rheya away, forever.


But she comes back a second time and he chooses differently.

~ Not counting Gibarian's son, there are four beings on board the Prometheus, two humans and two copies. The two copies are presented in diametric lights. Rheya's copiness is the dramatic center of the story. Snow's copiness is hidden from us until the end of the film.

The two humans hold orthogonal views concerning the copies. Gordon doesn't trust them, she wants to destroy them. Chris is helplessly in love with Rheya's copy, seeing her as his salvation, his chance to undo mistakes of the past. The tension between the two views is the moral center of the story.

~ Rheya tells a story (in an improvised scene) of her imaginary childhood friend Micachelli. Rheya's mother was apparently "certifiable" and withdrew from Rheya more and more until she eventually only addressed Rheya *as* Micachelli.

So: Rheya's mother used Micachelli as a proxy through which she communicated with Rheya, just as Chris uses the doppelganger of Rheya's copy as a proxy through which he communes with Rheya.

~ The religious theme is given form when Chris reaches for the hand of Michael, Gibarian's son, in what strikes me as a reference to God Creates Adam from the Sistine Chapel, but with at least two differences:

1. in Solaris, the hands make contact; and
2. it's ambiguous which of the two represents the greater creative power.

Chris is skeptical by nature, and apparently some sort of agnostic or empirical atheist. As a psychiatrist, he's professionally familiar with the tendrils of projection and presumably an expert in guiding others through mazes of emotion. But confronted with a copy of Rheya (especially when she returns a second time), it doesn't take him long to become a deacon, a fevered ecclesiast for the benevolence of Solaris.

~ Plus it's beautiful overall. Almost every shot is framed as art. It's 2001esque. Pristine set design and muted color palette aside, Soderberg is always discovering ways to move the camera off Clooney, which is counter-intuitive. George is often either off-screen when he speaks or he's turned around so we see his back. There's a good example of this early on in the shot where Clooney is flanked by the two emissaries delivering Gibarian's message.

~ Someone said to me the other day they thought Solaris was a chick flick. This was something they'd heard - they hadn't ever seen it for themselves. I was surprised because I don't think it's chick flicky at all. In fact, it strikes me, if anything, as a specifically male movie. Its sci-fi-ishness aside, it deals with men's emotions, with a man's view of longing, and of love.

And honestly, what man hasn't had moments of suspecting that his woman is an alien? In the commentary, Soderberg and an entertaining James Cameron half-joke about this, how men will reason with themselves: "Okay yes, I admit it: she's not real, she's an alien. But I love her. And I think I can live with that."

And so he does.