![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentThere is an article by Bryan Appleyard in today's Sunday Times about the remake of Solaris. It moves on to the place of SF in general:
"But the real reason Hollywood finds adult sci-fi unfilmable is not aesthetic, it is financial. The mass audience isn’t interested. It wants recognisable conflicts, made cosmetically into sci-fi by light sabres, baby aliens and warp drives. [...] This is serious, because, as I say, sci-fi is a serious artistic matter. It is the form that most precisely questions and generates fables about the present human condition, by dramatising the possibility of an encounter with otherness. [...] Sci-fi, therefore, should be a primary artistic form of modernism. In writers of the stature of Lem, JG Ballard and the late Philip K Dick, that is what it has become. They are the giants of the genre, who can toss off more ideas about the future and technology in a short story than Hollywood has managed in dozens of films."
I am torn between:
(a) Applauding a mainstream journalist - a mainstream arts critic, no less - who apparently recognises the value of SF as a literary genre.
(b) Denouncing him as a snob for his restriction of said value to Lem, Ballard and Dick.
(c) Denouncing his taste in proclaiming the original film of Solaris to be a masterpiece. And for apparently failing to understand that aliens-as-representation-of-human is not always a failing, it can be a powerful device.
:-)
"But the real reason Hollywood finds adult sci-fi unfilmable is not aesthetic, it is financial. The mass audience isn’t interested. It wants recognisable conflicts, made cosmetically into sci-fi by light sabres, baby aliens and warp drives. [...] This is serious, because, as I say, sci-fi is a serious artistic matter. It is the form that most precisely questions and generates fables about the present human condition, by dramatising the possibility of an encounter with otherness. [...] Sci-fi, therefore, should be a primary artistic form of modernism. In writers of the stature of Lem, JG Ballard and the late Philip K Dick, that is what it has become. They are the giants of the genre, who can toss off more ideas about the future and technology in a short story than Hollywood has managed in dozens of films."
I am torn between:
(a) Applauding a mainstream journalist - a mainstream arts critic, no less - who apparently recognises the value of SF as a literary genre.
(b) Denouncing him as a snob for his restriction of said value to Lem, Ballard and Dick.
(c) Denouncing his taste in proclaiming the original film of Solaris to be a masterpiece. And for apparently failing to understand that aliens-as-representation-of-human is not always a failing, it can be a powerful device.
:-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Hmmm...
Date: 2003-01-05 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-07 02:47 am (UTC)(b) Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but he doesn't limit the value of science fiction to Lem, Dick and Ballard. He's merely pointing them out as a few fine examples.
(c) Solaris is a masterpiece, damnit! (Feel free to denounce my taste too, if you like ;) )
Fair enough quandry Niall, but...
Date: 2003-01-07 01:53 pm (UTC)Moreover Geneva, your approach is entirely wrong, we the truly Solaris-illuminated, should denounce all the nonbelievers. To be fair, having another of the truly faithful would assist in our unholy Troika, but I'm sure Solaris will provide (and provide and provide). :-)
---
Do watch the remake, I think it is a highly commendable remake, and from Soderbergh who was interviewed as saying he 'doesn't like sci-fi' ... that he 'didn't want to make a film about technology.' I think his interpreation of Solaris in strongly human dramatic terms was entirely fair, and that George Clooney did a really really good job, perhaps even expanded himself.
Personally, I found Soderbergh's comment funny since I think his work on 'Kafka' and possibly even 'Crash' should and could qualify, respectively.
---
Again, for those of you who do want to explore Tarkovsky, but are put off by Solaris and his lengthy films generally, I recommend 'Stalker.'
Enjoy