Copyright 2005 Braden MacDonald. All rights reserved. You may not distribute copies of this work in any form without permission.
Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film Solaris has a strange, and potentially confusing ending; is the ending happy, or sad?
In some ways, the ending of Solaris is a happy one. Chris and his wife are together in some form, and seem happy. Rhea says that all is forgiven, meaning that the two factors contributing to Chris' depression - the loss of Rhea and his guilt over her suicide - are gone. In addition, he possesses a "body" that can heal itself, and is presumably immortal - provided Dr. Gordon is not running around with her ray gun. This reality is better than what most people imagine Heaven to be like, so one could almost call it a happy ending
However, the questions raised by the Solaris experience haunt not only Chris and Rhea but the moviegoer as well. Did Chris ever really know his wife? Is it enough to live with the physical manifestation of a memory? Is it even possible to go beyond that state of relating only to our perspective of a person, and not the person themself? These questions, together with the melancholy mood of the ending leave the viewer with a sense of loss and confusion, much like Chris has for most of the film. The mood is created by dim lighting, constant rain, and minimal interaction between people. Combine that mood with the sense of loss and simply the number of "people" who have died during the film, and the ending is un happy.
Ultimately, this film seems to conclude that we live in a reality where we can never truly know anyone or anything at all. Even our selves we cannot fully know. Yet, we can accept that and live anyways.