Solaris and Dorian Gray reviews

[alobear]

I bought Solaris by Stanislaw Lem after re-watching the modern film "re-imagining" a few months ago.  I've never quite been able to pinpoint why I like the film - it speaks to my emotions on a visceral level, and I don't care that it's wibbly, almost plotless, and makes little sense.  I was interested to see what the book that inspired it was like, and the answer is - totally different.  It's very much in the vein of traditional 60s-70s science-fiction - full of incomprehensible technobabble, remote, and almost wholly cerebral, despite a potentially heart-rending subject matter.  I have to admit that I skimmed the second half, just to see whether the end was different to the film, which is was, and not in a good way.


Last night saw a cinema trip with Dave and nezumi_sama to see Dorian Gray.  It had its moments - Colin Firth was deliciously corruptive as Henry Wootton, and Ben Barnes has the nicest hair I've seen on screen in quite some time.  However, as the titular character, I didn't think Barnes convinced in any of his three stages - wide-eyed innocent, debauched pleasure-seeker, or guilt-wracked repentent.  There were plenty of scenes I couldn't watch for fear of scariness or ickiness (I have no idea how actually scary or icky they were because they were telegraphed well enough for me to miss them altogether), which made me again wish I wasn't quite so much of an incredible wuss, but there wasn't any real emotion to it, so it wasn't truly affecting in the way that it should have been.

Comments

[cholten99.livejournal.com]

> I didn't think Barnes convinced in any of his three stages - wide-eyed innocent,
> debauched pleasure-seeker, or guilt-wracked repentent.

Interesting. I would say the first two were pretty good and the only reason the last one didn't work was because his character wasn't genuinely repentant.