Solaris (2002 film)
If you think that there is a solution, you'll die here.
Chris : Am I alive, or dead?
Rheya : We don't have to think like that any more. We're together now. Everything we've done is forgiven. Everything.
Snaut: We don't want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don't want other worlds. We want a mirror.
A 2002 adaptation of the Science Fiction book by Stanislaw Lem, directed by Steven Soderbergh, produced by James Cameron and starring George Clooney.
Chris Kelvin is a future psychiatrist on Earth, where he is eking out an existence after the death of his significant other, Rheya. Out of the blue he gets a call from an old friend/coworker of his, Gibarian. The crew of the station Solaris doesn't seem to want to come home, and they have lost contact with the security team they sent. Gibarian puts a good word in for Chris with the crew, and the latter goes to Solaris to try and fix things. Weirdness ensues.
- All Just a Dream: Towards the end of the film, a sequence occurs with Chris that is revealed as this, then reverts to the original position in time.
- Driven to Suicide: Rheya and Gibarian.
- Rheya several times.
- Gender Flip / Race Lift: Sartorius is replaced by a completely different character, a black woman named Gordon.
- Genius Loci: The planet orbited by Solaris is actually a single, living being--or at least the ocean that covers it is. It also responds to the memories of humans.
- Jerkass: Gordon, though she comes off a lot more sympathetically than her counterpart in the 1972 movie, Sartorius.
- Ironic Echo: "And death shall have no dominion."
- Living Emotional Crutch: Rheya needs Chris as one of these.
- Soulless Shell: An interesting case. Rheya's manifestation claims that that's all she is. Gordon agrees. Kevin thinks so at first, but as the film goes on he seems to reject this hypothesis. copy Snow acts like he agrees with Gordon, but is one of these manifestations himself.
- Spell My Name with an "S": In the original film, Chris is "Kris", Rheya's name is "Hari", Snow is "Snaut" and Gordon is "Sartorius". Translations of the novel seem to cycle through the two sets, but "Sartorius" remains fairly consistently NOT Gordon.
- Starts with a Suicide: Though it's intimated in the flashbacks instead of at the beginning.
- Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: Discussed, with respect to the manifestations aboard the Station. Gordon does construct a machine that does the job. Chris objects at the idea of using it on Rheya.