Redemption for Steven Soderbergh, after the crass commercialism of Ocean's Eleven (and, in lesser degrees of crassness, Traffic and Erin Brockovich), to say nothing of the self-indulgence of Full Frontal. Not that this one is without self-indulgence: a fifty-million-dollar science-fiction film devoid of action and sparse in special effects. Yet the self-indulgence here is balanced by intelligence, by generosity (beyond the glimpses, for interested parties, of George Clooney's tush), and by a genuine urge to engage and to stimulate. Part of the enjoyment of it, then, is the anticipation of the feelings of outrage, bewilderment, even outright derision on the part of the multiplex crowd unaccustomed to demands on their patience, their attention, their willingness actually to think about what they are seeing and to talk about it afterwards. In these demands, as well as in things like the Resnaisian nonsequential editing and the Godardian muting of sound, Soderbergh summons up the art film of yore (similar, in that sense, to his First Career Misstep, Kafka), so that the time frame of the film almost seems less futuristic than historical. Of course, the Andrei Tarkovsky film of the same name was a bona fide art film of yore -- the Russian answer to 2001, carrying the upmanship spirit of the Space Race onto the movie screen -- and indeed much of the Soderbergh intelligence comes down to knowledgeability in place of originality. He knows enough about movies to select a Tarkovsky film for remake. But then, too, he knows enough about moviemaking to make some improvements. The viewer who is wriggling out of his skin at the Soderbergh version might be astonished to find out how far Soderbergh has streamlined it, shaving a full hour off Tarkovsky's running time, while still offering much to mull over on the subject of human relationships. The science-fiction fan of today, though, may be out of shape for such ruminative rigors. (Certain plot points, concerning the materialization of memory, bring to mind Journey to the Seventh Planet, not a designated egghead film like 2001 and Solaris, but a grade-Z quickie from the time -- early Sixties -- when SF was not simply a synonym for FX.) And the fans are not the only ones who might be out of shape. It would not be improper, not be ill-bred, to suggest that Soderbergh leaves too much to conjecture at the end; that a few more questions could have been answered, or least asked, without quashing all discussion; and that the postulation of an afterlife, although it leaves room for ambiguity and irony, invites the kind of mushy, muddy feel-goodism that John Edward and James Van Praagh hold out to the bereaved on daily television. With Natascha McElhone, Jeremy Davies, Viola Davis. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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