Big Jelly

There are no answers, only choices.

I finally finished watching Soderbergh’s Solaris this evening. Great metaphysical science fiction. This film does not try to promote a clear position about the universe, but suggests that we are products of what we choose to do — I guess in itself that is a position, but the ontology of the film is one of human volition in that we make our own meaning and determine our own happiness (and sadness) through the decisions we make every day. What if we had decisions to make over again; what would we do differently? This very question provides the impetus for the film and at the same time suggests our own inability to perceive and live our own lives beyond the choices we make.

Ultimately, we live in our memories. Synaptic pathways, connecting neurons, gray matter — all produce the moving pictures that illuminate our past, create our present, and guide our future. If we could live certain key instances in our lives again, would the very fact of these very real, physical, physiological characteristic determine our choices? Are we pre-programmed by our experiences (that is the actual experience and our assimilation of that experience through our senses) so much that the outcome would be the same time and again? How much of how we perceive the universe — and therefore create our own reality — affects others? Perhaps our own memory equals our reality and produces very real, tangible, ethical consequences.

The film is brilliantly shot. It’s thematic focus reminds me of the old Star Trek episode “The Managerie,” where Mr. Spock is court-martialed for attempting to return his old captain, a now crippled and disfigured Christopher Pike, back to Talos IV. Spock’s reasons become clear during the episode: the denizens of this planet have the ability to see into a person’s mind and manifest his or hers greatest desires. The virtuality of this creation does not pose a problem for the vegetable Pike (sounds like a fish soup), but the notion of reality is implicitly addressed in this episode: can we as humans knowingly live a fantasy, a lie? Because something exists solely in our minds and imaginations, does that make it any less real? Both “The Managerie” and Solaris initially suggest a revulsion toward that which we know to be ersatz, but by the end embrace the notion of fantasy by suggesting that we live in one of our own making anyway. Indeed, what is reality but a notion created through our perceptions of the physical? Even the physical, to a great extent, is a product of our perception — ask a quantum physicist.

What’s so great about reality? If given the choice, would we really have a dilemma about choosing to live in a quotidian world or living in our own fantasies? If I had a holodeck, I’d never leave the house. The problems here — and what some sf has addressed for decades — is just what would the ability to live in our fantasies do to the human race. If we all had the ability to just plug into happiness, wouldn’t that mean an end to our conception of humanity at the least, and the end of our existence as a species, at the worst? Read any Philip K. Dick lately?

The problem with Solaris is that it creates a physical reality out of desire — and we all know that there is nothing as solipsistic as desire. So, Dr. Chris Kelvin journeys to a space station orbiting Solaris — a planet of dancing fluidic lights — to see what happened to the research team. He carries with him the memories of his wife’s suicide and his guilt for not being able to help her. While there, something about Solaris creates his dead wife using Kelvin’s memories of her. The problem, something that this creation soon realizes, is that she is determined and created by Kelvin’s very biased perceptions of her. To him, she is just as he remembers. To her, she is incomplete, being only a gestalt of Kelvin’s sorrow, passion, and love. Therefore, she is doomed to kill herself again because of Kelvin’s own powerful memories of her suicide. Tough. Kelvin wants her to come back to earth, but she cannot live with the reality of being created from such a narrow perspective. Cool allegory on the nature of creation, too.

The movie ends the only way it can: ambiguously. Like Soderbergh’s other work, it mirrors life in that we are left to make our own meaning, supplying our own pessimism or optimism or indifference. We all want life a certain way, but do we realize in our quest for this perfection how we influence the lives of others, often for the worst? Is isolation the answer? I don’t think so, but a knowledge that our perceptions have ethical and very real consequences in our lives and those who are most dear to us remains a subtle and most poignant message.