Set in an indefinite future. A space exploration firm has a spaceship orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris. The crew of the ship behaves oddly, then breaks off contact with the firm.
The firm recruits Kelvin (George Clooney), a former close friend of a crew member, to visit the spaceship to find out what has happened. Kelvin arrives, and promptly learns that his friend has committed suicide. The remaining crew consists of Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis). The former is talkative but hopelessly eccentric. The latter is grim and humorless.
The next day, Kelvin awakes to find a woman in his compartment who appears to be his beloved late wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone). Kelvin realizes that something similar, a person from the past, has materialized for each crew member, presumably sent by Solaris to distract the crew from their mission.
Rheya's replica and Kelvin have their relationship travails, as both come to grips with who she is. Snow's character has a major plot twist. Gordon decides to return to Earth, but Kelvin can't bring himself to part from his hottie replica.
How others will see it. Solaris (1972) is one of the best-known Soviet-era movies, and it has a considerable cult and critical following in the West. This also goes for other films by its director, Andrei Tarkovsky.
Thus, its Hollywood remake had big shoes to fill. 20th Century Fox put in the effort, hiring Steven Soderbergh as director. Soderbergh was red-hot at the time, since Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000) were acclaimed box-office hits. George Clooney was ideal for the lead, and fresh off cinematic successes such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Ocean's Eleven (2001).
Alas, Solaris (2002) met with a lukewarm reception. The film did receive Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Actress nominations at the Saturn Awards, but it was ignored by the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTA, even in technical categories. It was also a dud at the box office, with a gross of only 15M in the U.S.
What went wrong? Today at imdb.com, the user vote total of 88K is respectable, but the user rating is a middling 6.2 out of 10. The problem seems to be that while the film is mildly interesting, it simply isn't entertaining.
Kelvin does seem have a happily ever after with Rheya's replica, but by the time this happens, viewers have mostly lost interest. Perhaps they are confused why Snow's "visitor" was a replica of himself. Now that makes no sense.
The film is also unfavorably compared with the 1972 classic. True, that movie was in Russian, and did not star George Clooney, but like Tarkovsky's other 1970s films The Mirror and (especially) Stalker, it had a surreal vibe that mesmerized viewers.
How I felt about it. But it's not that bad of a movie, is it? Made with better intentions than usual, it is not like Psycho (1998) or Miracle on 34th Street (1994), which cynically attempt to monetize the success of the original.
Even upon its release, some believed that the Solaris had a bad rap. At least, the Golden Schmoes did, since the film received three 2002 nominations as the Most Underrated Movie of the Year, the Trippiest Movie of the Year, and the Best Sci-Fi Movie of the Year.
Perhaps it wasn't all that. But we do understand why sad sack Kelvin decides to remain with the reincarnation of his late wife, even though two of the four crew members died, while the other two crew members (including Kelvin) killed off their replicas.
The reason can be found in the lyrics of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive #1 single, "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." That is, "any loving is good loving, so I took what I could get." Or from the lyrics of "Midnight Train to Georgia": "I'd rather live with him in his world, then live without him in mine."