Ulrich Tukur vs. Stellan Skarsgård
Battle of the Clinical Eastern-Europeans

As you're sitting and watching Solaris, you might find yourself thinking (and, trust us, there's lots of time for thinking) that you've seen one of the characters before. Yeah, that guy, the scientist, the one who puts out the distress call at the beginning of the film. The one with the wispy blonde hair and the slightly doughy face. The one with the clinical air of Eastern-European remove. Where do you know him from?

(Unrelated sidenote #1: Doesn't the title Solaris make you want to break out into that old Plymouth Volare car-commercial jingle from the '70s? Go ahead, try it: "So-lar-is...la la la la!")

(You will now never be able to not think of that movie and that song at the same time.)

Well, that familiar-looking actor has been in over forty movies. All of those movies, however, have titles like Liene Melanie, Stammheim, Die Morder und sein Kind, and Apokalypse 99. (Those are four different films, by the way.) That's because his name is Ulrich Tukur, and he's a German actor of renown, though one who hasn't shown up in many American films yet.

The person you were thinking of, we'll bet, is Stellan Skarsgård -- Hollywood's current favourite chilly Eastern-European.

Skarsgård also was wispy blonde hair and a slightly doughy face, as well as a near-monopoly on roles as intense mathematicians, overworked scientists, chess fanatics, and the occasional psychotic neighbour-with-a-secret. He's popped up in everything from Good Will Hunting to Ronin to The Glass House.

(Unrelated sidenote #2: If a movie is a horror movie, and it is called The Glass House, and the people who live in the house have the last name "Glass" -- doesn't that pretty much guarantee that the movie will be terrible? Couldn't the actors have recognized this simple sign and saved themselves a lot of trouble? Isn't that what agents are for?)

("Sol-ar-is...la la la la." See?)

Skarsgård is also an accomplished actor (as anyone's who's seen Breaking the Waves or the original Insomnia can attest) and he's not actually Eastern-European -- he's Swedish. Still, until now, he's had all the slightly accented, slightly obsessive, coldly clinical roles all to himself.

Of course, one turn by some German interloper isn't going to change all that overnight. But anytime someone shows up in a movie looking exactly like you, and playing a part for which you are exactly appropriate, you've got to start sweating a wee bit. Which is why we wouldn't be all that surprised if Skarsgård bolts out of bed early some morning in the not too distant future, shiny with sweat, and whispers, to no one:

"Tukur."

Advantage: Skarsgård