Puzzling filmgoers, with serious intent

A meditation on cosmic questions concerning God and existence is not what mainstream moviegoers have come to expect from a science-fiction film, but that’s exactly what “Solaris” delivers. Critics are divided and audiences appear to have given it thumbs down, but Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney say their intention was to summon the cinematic spirit of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, when moviegoing was more challenging, provocative and adventurous -- at least in nostalgic hindsight.

The film, which took in less than $10 million in its opening weekend, was meant to be enigmatic, to stir debate, according to writer-director Soderbergh, who not only freely adapted the 1961 novel by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky, but giddily riffed on another mind-blower, Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Audiences accustomed to Clooney’s lighter touch also may be disconcerted to see him in a prolonged state of grief over the death of his wife (played by Natascha McElhone), who reappears as a mysterious visitor aboard a space station orbiting the eponymous planet that is having inexplicable effects on the occupants of the station.

“I thought it would be fun to make a movie where you remembered where you were when you saw it -- that it was not a casual experience,” Soderbergh says. “ ‘Oh, yeah, when I saw “Solaris,” I was at the such-and-such on the Saturday after it opened, and afterward we went for coffee.’ ” He would like to think “it had an imprint.”

“People keep asking if this is a commercial movie, if this is an audience movie. And my attitude is, ‘Dude, it’s the ultimate audience movie because it’s about what you bring to it, because you have to watch the movie and declare for yourself where you stand on all these issues.” Is McElhone real? Is she a hallucination? Is she created by Solaris? Is Solaris an evolving organism that feeds off humanity? Is there life after death?

“The great thing about this is that, as they say in the movie, there are no answers, only choices,” Clooney adds. “Each one of you gets to go home and make a decision, and each of those decisions is right -- you’re not wrong with any of them. Your belief system, your question of God, whatever.” The actor believes there’s a relevant moral lesson to be drawn from “Solaris,” given our terror-stricken post-Sept. 11 environment. “What’s interesting is that it’s a metaphor that allows for different beliefs in a time when people are killing each other more and more based on their own religious belief system.”

Still, what happens in “Solaris” is clear to Soderbergh, even though he maintains that’s beside the point. “I’ve made it so that it withstands religious and secular interpretations. My point of view is that there isn’t an answer to the big questions, and we have to resign ourselves to that.”

Clearly for the eclectic director, who years ago saw the original (just released on DVD by Criterion) and later read the novel (just republished by Harcourt), revisiting “Solaris” was too enticing an opportunity to pass up.

“I loved the premise: A second chance at love ... the issue of memory is something that recurs in some of the things I’ve made, and this seemed to be the ultimate memory film because you’re dealing with a guy who has to interact with the physical manifestation of his memory. And that manifestation is aware of the fact that it’s a manifestation, and isn’t entirely happy about it, so for me it was the perfect memory movie, and maybe I’ve gotten it out of my system now.”

Meanwhile, watching “Solaris” will stir memories of “2001” (the somber and claustrophobic station, the metaphysical sense of awe), “Last Tango in Paris” and various films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. Through it all, Soderbergh and Clooney give us a taste of an era when American cinema had a European flavor and was hip to existential angst.

“Somebody called it a dormitory movie,” Soderbergh says. “Everybody’s hanging out in doorways, there’s always rock music on. It’s true, it really is. But I’ve been pretending that we’re in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s for my whole career, actually. What happened was they lost control of themselves and then they lost control of their films. That’s the lesson I drew from that era.

“I’ve tried to adopt the idea of infusing American material with a European film aesthetic. I mean, that was their great contribution. What’s been running the industry in this country since the beginning of cinema is the studio versus the auteur. Who is in control of the movie? And it goes back and forth.”

But then that’s why Soderbergh and Clooney started their own company, Section Eight, in the first place -- to make riskier, more personal films within the Hollywood system at a lower price. The results this year include “Welcome to Collinwood” and “Far From Heaven,” and next month will see the release of Clooney’s directorial debut, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.”

“Part of what we’re trying to do is say, ‘Why can’t we do the aesthetic that came from [that era]?’ ” Clooney says. “And the way we do it is, we throw our money out, we don’t do it for cash. We just try to push an indie sensibility within the Hollywood mainstream.”

While “Solaris” was an ambitious stretch for the director, it was even more so for the easygoing actor, who was working out of his usual element. “There isn’t comedy, there isn’t a considerable amount of other actors [to interact with], there’s not action, there’s nothing you can hide behind. There was a lot of stuff that came out about my being naked” -- which initially resulted in an R rating but was successfully appealed to a PG-13. “Believe me, that’s the least naked I am in the movie.

“It’s very difficult as an actor to go through the experience of dread and deep-down-to-the-bone fear. There’s nothing harder than stillness. And I thought the only way I was going to try it was because I trusted Steven as a filmmaker and as a friend.”

Ironically, the lone opportunity Clooney had to lighten up -- during an extensive flashback sequence when he first meets McElhone in a bar -- was obliterated by a personal tragedy. “It was a night shoot on a Saturday, and that afternoon I was with my Aunt Rosemary” Clooney, the singer and actress.

“I left, she died two hours later, and the one time I get a little light on this shoot, I couldn’t get alone quick enough. Sometimes what’s reality and what seems like triviality come together when you least expect it.”