There is a reason why the monologue belongs more in the theater than in the film. A lonely person who expands his inner life without a counterpart requires a great deal of willingness on the part of the audience to refrain from naturalistic standards. In film, the naturalistic art branch par excellence, it almost always appears extremely artificial. So when Amazon presents an anthology series with solo appearances by famous actors, it is initially very daring.
Make stars like Helen Mirren, Anne Hathaway and Morgan Freeman Solos first of all a rather obvious prestige project. Amazon brings something like that into the program every now and then, there was The Romanoffs of Mad Men-Creator Matthew Weiner or Modern love, also extremely top-class cast. But none of the Look-here-who-we-can-cast series was remembered.
Solos now throws even more into the ring than celebrities, namely topicality and a certain editorial ambition, because the background of the project is the corona pandemic. Mirren, Freeman and Hathaway also appear alone or with a single other because the monologue was the safest form at the time of shooting. In this respect, author David Weil’s idea was very practical. The science fiction stories, which are told in around 30 minutes each, are dystopian. It’s about technology and loneliness, most characters talk to machines.
Sasha (Uzo Aduba) lives in pleasant isolation from the pandemic and doesn’t want to leave her house.
(Photo: Jason LaVeris / Amazon Prime Video)
This is a lot of baggage of importance. One episode is about a middle-aged woman who has lived in isolation since she was young – but the pandemic that once forced her to do so has been over for years, according to the artificial property management intelligence she talks to. Sasha is supposed to slowly get out of the chic isolation house, but she doesn’t want to because she mistrusts the good news on her screens. Solos is ambitious, but the series is not subtle.
These poor, great actors look like they’re recording a casting video
That is only one of the reasons why this Amazon anthology is unlikely to make history either. Half an hour is too short to really get to the bottom of topics such as memory theft, time travel or modern methods of conception in such a way that it becomes interesting. Instead, the scripts take the first turn towards kitsch at every opportunity and then try to compensate for that, haha, fart jokes. Yes, really: In every second episode of Solos comes a fart joke.
Not even the great Helen Mirren, who is also strong here, as a senior citizen on a space trip without return, can save these expected, hyperemotional texts from drowning in the melancholy clink of the piano that accompanies them. These poor, all great actors seem like they’re recording a video for a casting that shows how far they can go emotionally.
Anthony Mackie (Avengers) sits across from his robot double, who is to replace him as a family man after his soon death. He raves about his cute children and his perfect wife until he starts to cry. Hardly any of the monologues or quasi-monologues stops at this climax, the peak of tears. Worst of all, Constance Wu has to cry, who sarcastically talks about her wish to become a mother in a kind of waiting room – until she finally tells of a fatal breakdown and howls of snot and water. Embedded in a film, such parforcer rides may work. In half an hour of sci-fi drama, they’re an impertinence.
The climax of the emo festival is then the finale, in which Morgan Freeman tells his tragic story on a beach. The light is golden, violins are added to the piano, and while Freeman has to declaim an incredibly flat staring-not-just-at-your-screen morality, as a viewer who has made it this far, one thinks only one thing: If the future is already becoming dystopian, then please at least don’t let us turn into kitschoods in it.
Solos, seven episodes, on Amazon Prime.