Solaris (1972)

Solaris - 1972 - 165 minutes - Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Nikolai Grinko, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Sos Sargsyan

Tarkovsky's vision of existence as it stands in Solaris is one of fragility and vulnerability, a world where the ground is always damp, the cold steel clinically clean, the weather a warning against the storm to come. Sterility is the rule despite the lived in conditions, and while the station in which the action takes place appears solid and holds a particular weight it also appears vulnerable and easily swayed; a door, previously thought to be impenetrable (in the way only futuristic materials can appear) bends under the pressure applied by the hardly imposing Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) from the inside before it shatters, revealing its thin and flimsy construction. Here, in Tarkovsky's adaptation of Stadyslaw Lem's Solaris, exists people and objects and environments which are relentlessly impacted upon, where characters have unforeseen effects on each other, where settings are established as cold and still places before their contents and physics are shifted.

Tarkovsky was known for having said, "The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts." And as evidence of that included a notoriously lengthy sequence of the protagonist, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), driving down highways and through tunnels, the camera drifting along behind him patiently, inevitably. While Solaris' first part is undeniably slower than most films of the period, it can hardly be classified as 'dull'. Tarkovsky takes great care in establishing the gentle atmospherics of Kris' parents' cabin, and the ever-present serenity of the environment becomes almost overwhelming at points as the camera dwells on what other directors would consider insignificant details; ripples in a lake, untouched grass, moist shrubbery. This stillness is in direct contrast to the stillness aboard the station where the lion's share of the action takes place, whereas the cabin's fragility is something to be admired, attaining a kind of sacred tone, the station's is to be exploited; there is calm so that something shattered will have a more dramatic effect. Indeed, things are always shattering near Solaris.
As all great science fiction which deals with foreign forces (be they extraterrestrial, mechanical construction, astral projection) must, Solaris concerns itself with what it means to be human, but more importantly it deals with the pressing quandary of the illogical, emotionally ecstatic nature of love. Famously a point of contention between Tarkovsky's adaptation and the source material's author, (Lem was quoted as saying, "As Solaris' author ... I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists... but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space.") Tarkovsky strips the narrative of some of the more abstract scientific concepts and instead focuses on the human relationship at the center of the film, and by that we mean the love Kris feels for the arguably human Hari. This love begins as a mere shadow of his affection for his previously deceased wife, but quickly evolves as Hari and Kris interact all the more readily.

Soon, the Hari who exists only aboard the station (as she is being projected by the sentient ocean that makes up Solaris' surface) has become the more real, the more important Hari to Kris. He forsakes his memories of a mercurial relationship which saddled him with guilt for the real Hari's eventual suicide in favor of the construction of a new relationship, built over the foundation of his marriage brick by brick. In effect, she replaces the old, original Hari through sheer appeal; a Hari projected from within Kris himself without conflict (internal love) is preferable to him to the harsher dynamics of a Hari existing on her own terms, i.e. external --and therefore unpredictable-- love. The newly discovered Hari's singular enduring feature is her unending, unconditional love of Kris, a love which is explained only due to her existence in his mind, his fantasy woman being hopelessly intertwined with memories of the similarly unending, unconditional love which his mother showers him with during a feverish dream sequence. The mother/lover dichotomy is exploited throughout the film as Hari appears as a maternal nurse figure to him and then as a subject of his own protective nature as evidenced by her numerous moments of self-destruction.

Solaris as a whole paints a harsh picture of man's selfishness and his need for total validation; raising the question of whether or not love even requires a second party or whether man can be utterly consumed by the approximation of understanding and absolute tolerance. It is fitting then that while the set design is sleek and intimidating in its boldness (so much so that even the great Kurosawa was impressed during a visit to the set), the human beings who inhabit this station are constantly dirty, bloody, sweaty or a combination of the three. The human world is a messy, unpredictable place which forces even those things we assume are constant (e.g. inanimate objects) into conflict with our disastrous endeavors. The film's conclusion in which Kris has to choose between a life in reality on Earth and his total submission to Solaris' will, and therefore the hope of being reunited with Hari, is as bleak a picture of the human condition as could be imagined. Kris selfishly turns his back on all that was tangible and important to him in favor of a less substantial, fraudulent existence where he can exist on his own terms and to his own benefit.Tarkovsky's skill as a director is displayed here in all of its brilliance, his crippling ability to build emotional resonance through long takes and a slow, burning pace is as paramount to the film's success as is his ear for provocative yet evasive dialogue (in one of the film's best moments, one of the station's doctors proclaims, "I can never get used to all these resurrections.") Solaris' triumph, above all, is its atmosphere; never has a science fiction film evoked such a tangible sense of time and place. We feel that we are in the future, but so far from the computer generated worlds of the Matrixes and Star Wars that a modern day viewer has no choice but to stand in awe of the precise vision Tarkovsky possessed of the future and his execution of it. That the film may have dramatically disparate effects on viewers attests to Tarkovsky's commitment to his unique conception of Lem's source material-- in this instance his deliberation pays off, slowly pulling us into the film's diegesis until we are as concerned with the narrative's outcome as any of the characters depicted.
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