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Review of Solaris (Cliff Martinez)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if an extremely conservative and alienating combination
of tone, instrumentation, and rhythm typical to the scores of Clint
Mansell, Jon Brion, and Philip Glass is your ticket to deep, quiet, and
meaningful contemplation.
Avoid it... if you have feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, pessimism, emptiness, anxiety, or hopelessness, in addition to suicidal thoughts, appetite loss, fatigue, persistent aches, excessive sleeping, or loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Solaris: (Cliff Martinez) As good as the two
adaptations of Stanislaw Lem's original novel may be considered by
critics, neither the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky or 2002 Steven Soderbergh
screen adaptations of Solaris really represented the broader
focus of the book. Still, they are extremely thought-provoking
explorations of identity and psychology, using the genre of science
fiction as a mere tool to study how people interact with those they
perceive to be around them. The story takes place on a space station
orbiting a distant planet, but not any ordinary one. The planet has the
ability to replicate realistic representations of those familiar to
anyone onboard the station, but only as realistic as the crew members'
memories of those people can be. When this disruption causes panic and
death on the station, a psychiatrist (played by George Clooney)
investigates and is confronted with a replication of his dead wife. He
spends the rest of the film grappling with his relationship with this
dead, but awkwardly living, physical being, as well as trying to sort
out disparate stories about what happened to the rest of the station's
crew from the two original survivors. It's an intimate character study
that didn't have enough standard, glitzy science fiction or fantasy
appeal to translate its critical success into fiscal revenue (turning a
$47 million budget into a paltry $15 million in grosses). Soderbergh
admits in hindsight that an arthouse science fiction film was nearly
impossible to market, despite the fact that he had condensed Tarkovsky's
version down by over an hour. Likewise, Solaris proved to be a
difficult assignment to reconcile for any composer involved in the
project. The typical bombast or large orchestral tones of the genre
would not suffice, and the dreamy, other-worldly aspect of the film's
personality precluded a bloated, romantic affair from the same
orchestra. Thus, the only alternative for Soderbergh was his high
opinion of sound design, and he relied upon his usual collaborator,
composer Cliff Martinez, to explicitly emulate the style of Gyorgy
Ligeti (among other temp track inspirations) for an extremely
conservative, atmospheric approach. By mixing orchestral shades with
foreign specialty instrumentation and electronics, Martinez was able to
address both the warmth felt between the film's real and not-so-real
leads and the foreign environment that produced the story's freaky
dilemma. Understatement was obviously Martinez's goal, and to that end
he produced a score that meanders and groans in the background with
subtle ease. His work is an intriguing merging of Clint Mansell and Jon
Brion's sensibilities at the time, and it's not going to awaken anyone
from a slumber.
Given Martinez's career experience with percussion, it's not surprising that the orchestra for Solaris, which consists of mostly strings but also utilizes a few brass and woodwind accents, takes a secondary roll to a gamelan ensemble of bells, gongs, and drums (from Indonesia), as well as celesta and steel drum. While the challenging atmosphere of dissonance, in conjunction with the instrumental choices, may resemble Mansell and Brion, the structures of the score seem heavily influenced by Philip Glass. Everything in the work is cyclical, rhythmically churning on the gamelan elements in nearly each cue. The only alterations from cue to cue involve the relationship between these atonal rhythms and the weaving of the orchestra, the two general sides of the score constantly juggling romance and apprehension. Neither of these two sides is particularly appealing, but their interaction does seem to follow ebbs and flows throughout the otherwise non-descript work. The score only very rarely shifts in harmonic progressions (the final minutes of "First Sleep" among the few examples), and melodic consistency is almost completely obscured by the hazy and bleak tone of the performances. Because the score is extremely cold and distancing apart from the film, it's likely to raise the usual questions about whether Martinez provided Soderbergh with music or sound effects. Enthusiasts of the film consider the score a form of high art, a stark but appropriate representation of the mental agony and subsequent coping witnessed on screen. How the score for Solaris can carry any kind of appreciation outside of that cult following remains a curiosity, because for most film score collectors, this music will function better than the leading brand of sleep pills. At 43:00 minutes in length, the album will seem insufferably long unless you can allow yourself to become absorbed in its atmosphere. The 11-minute cue "Hi Energy Proton Accelerator" moves so excruciatingly slowly through its basic chord shifts that perhaps some interest could result if you listened to it at five times its normal playback speed. A handful of listeners will excuse Martinez's music for Solaris because it matches the attitude of the film (or because it is simply different from the norm). The problem with that thinking is that the composer had a chance to transcend a simple and safe match for the film and enhance the narrative through far more creative and risky melodic and instrumental choices. Instead, he took the conservative route, one that ultimately translates into an incredibly boring album for those not interested in the film. Superb Records debuted the score in America in 2002 and re-issued it Europe in 2008. La-La Land Records remastered and re-issued it again domestically in early 2011, and all three presentations are identical in contents and equally effective as a sleeping aid. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
All Albums:
Total Time: 43:30
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts of the 2002 and 2008 albums include no extra information about the
score or film. That of the 2011 La-La Land product includes notes about both.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Solaris are Copyright © 2002, 2008, 2011, Superb Records, Superb Records, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 12/29/09 and last updated 1/17/11. |
