Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.0
When first heard Soderbergh was working on an adaptation of the Lem novel/Tarkovsky epic, I scoffed, writing that it will fail, because Soderbergh is a master stylist and not an intellectual, which is precisely not what the material demanded. And while I hate to agree with the film going public, who in the polls rated this an 'F,' it's really a disaster of a film, a faux-art movie mass-marketed to the blue-collar, don't-let-me-think kind-of people (Eyes Wide Shut was the same sort-of thing, but the exact opposite in terms of originality and sheer brilliance; that was a genuine work of art, this a preposterous chunk of abridged nonsense). Soderbergh, unlike Tarkovsky, overstates the grieving husband-and-dead-wife relationship to make sure you clearly 'get' what he's driving at. Anyone that's seen the original – all twelve of you – know what a dense, complex and difficult work it was; this wants the poetry of the 1972 film but wants to be done with it as soon as possible.
