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Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) has a shocking reunion with his beloved wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone) in "Solaris."

The word “experimental” has been synonymous with director Steven Soderbergh’s name for some time now, and his new film “Solaris” is no exception.

However, instead of wrangling actors with digital video cameras, or focusing on international drug-runners or casino heists, this time Soderbergh chose to remake the Stanislaw Lem novel that was first filmed by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972.

While many consider Tarkovsky’s 168 minute epic to be the Soviet Union’s answer to the Kubrick classic “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Soderbergh offers a pared down 98 minute vision that promises to be challenging.

“We went through some drafts that were completely different – I wanted to see if there was something in them,” Soderbergh said.

In addition to the A-list talent in his film, Soderbergh found an unlikely ally in a fellow filmmaker. The director found that the movie rights for “Solaris” were actually owned by “Titanic” director James Cameron. With a specific vision for the piece, Soderbergh got Cameron interested enough to let him direct, while Cameron himself produced.

“The movie is the script,” Cameron said, pointing out that this is not a remake of the Tarkovsky classic. “It’s a script that Steven wrote.”

In fact, “Solaris” is actually two stories in one. One is based on the life of Clooney’s character, Chris Kelvin, aboard the space station floating above the moon. The other focuses on why he decides to go in the first place. This involves his relationship with love interest, Rheya, played by Natasha McElhone. While it is Rheya’s suicide that jettisons Kelvin to the station, it is her mysterious reappearance that leads to the greater questions in the film.

“It’s really parallel storytelling,” Cameron said, “and the structural architecture of the film is very precise; I think it took (Soderbergh) a while to arrive at that precision.”

“And I think that it’s a pretty unique story in that regard,” Cameron added

Although Cameron’s take on Soderbergh’s film was rather concrete, the impressions given by his actors revealed a less certain entity, much like the glimpses Soderbergh gives viewers of the surface of the planet that gives the film its title.

“I still haven’t digested what it was about,” McElhone said. “I’d just seen it last night, and...there were four drafts of the script that I first read, which were all completely different, and then we started (shooting), and then we re-shot stuff and that changed it.”

Letting go of presumptions quickly became par for the course on the set.

“We just played the scenes,” McElhone said. “We didn’t even know where the camera was half the time.”

McElhone came into the process having met Clooney only once before. However, she used this to her advantage.

“I think Steven structured that very well,” she said. “It was easier in the sense that you didn’t know someone, because you’re your character and they’re their character and that’s what you have to go on in terms of the story.”  

Soderbergh’s working relationship with Clooney has grown from when they first worked together in 1997’s “Out of Sight.” Since then, they have collaborated on a number of films; Clooney acted in Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and through Section Eight, their film production company, the duo has executive-produced such films as Christopher Nolan’s “Insomnia” and Todd Haynes’ “Far From Heaven.”

For Soderbergh, “Solaris” was just another one of these steppingstones. “I feel like from an actor-director standpoint this was a big step for the both of us,” he said. “I felt that the film was an important evolutionary step for me as a director and I knew it was an important evolutionary step for George as an actor.”

The compliment is more truth than flattery, considering this is Clooney’s first real attempt at a character with serious emotional depth since his time as Dr. Douglass Ross on TV’s “ER.”

“We were able to (film) in a pretty close approximation of sequence,” Soderbergh said, “which was really important and helpful … because I felt it was important to be in emotional order.”

Clooney found the linear shooting schedule that left room for artistic interpretation both frightening and liberating. Soderbergh’s process affected the actors in much the same way audiences have reacted to his film – complex, but ultimately comprehensible.

“We got into a position where we got into a room and we’d start rehearsal for a scene, and Steve would go, ‘Okay, let’s try it,’ and we’d try it one way and we’d move around (in order to) find where it wanted to be,” Clooney said. “Then he’d say, ‘That doesn’t work, say this,’ and then he’d say, ‘Okay, well this is actually more about this,’ and then you’d go, ‘Oh,’ and then everything would change and then you’d say ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ and then all of a sudden you’d understand what the scene (was about).”

Steven Soderbergh’s “Solaris” opens nationwide Friday, November 29th. That same day, the Nuart Theater on Santa Monica begins its week-long limited run of the 1972 Tarkovsky classic.