Solaris (1972)
A film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Written by: Mario Ivanov
Solaris (1972) is one of the best science-fiction films of all time, The Guardian puts it at number 5 [1]. The film is complex and hard to watch at times but it captures all of the techniques of Andrei Tarkovsky so in order to understand it we a short history lesson about Tarkovsky.
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) was born in USSR and died in exile in France. He had a rough childhood and that played a huge role in his life. He went on one-year-long scientific research in the Taiga which led him to taking the choice of studying film. Because of these events, recurring motives in his films are the nature – running water and rain, childhood, dreams, memories, fire and reflections. Tarkovsky took a philosophical approach of the film making craft and often he dabbled in existential questions and the subconscious. He directed 7 feature films and two of them were sci-fi – Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979). Although science fiction is regarded as something more technological and about humans interacting with machines, Tarkovsky turned the genre upside down by making us look inward. The human characters ponder about their existence, conscience and bad life experiences from the past. A very unique technique which he uses is “sculpting in time”. This means that the cinema as a medium can take our experience of time and alter it. Unedited movie footage transcribes time in real time. By using long takes and few cuts in his films, he aims to give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another [2]. On one side, because of that his films are hard to watch at times because of the length of the shots. On the other side, having extremely long takes makes the audience more immersed in what they see and memorise the symbols, that Tarkovsky uses, easily.
The plot of Solaris is the following – Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) spends his last day on Earth reflecting on his life while walking by a lake near his childhood home where his elderly father still resides. Kelvin is about to embark on an interstellar journey to a space station orbiting the remote oceanic planet Solaris. He has to evaluate whether the government should close down the mission or not. He meets Henri Berton, a former space pilot, who shows him a video about the strange things happening on Solaris. Later on Kelvin is in space and reaches the floating station to find out that it’s in wrecks. He learns that his friend Dr. Gibarian had killed himself while the other two scientists - Dr. Sartorius and Dr. Snaut are hiding something. When Kelvin’s dead wife – Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) appears everything changes. Later on we learn that Hari is a copy made by the ocean of Solaris which uses memories to create human-like beings called “guests”. Kelvin falls in love with Hari while she learns what is like to be a human, while the other two men are ignorant. Because Hari is a memory of Kelvin she tries to kill herself over and over again but she cannot die, that hurts Kris a lot and he gets a fever. After he wakes up he learns that Hari had asked the scientists to kill her in order to protect him and also the two men had sent Kelvin’s thoughts as radio waves in the ocean which stopped spawning guests and started forming islands. The last shot is Kelvin back at the lake by the house of his estranged father, but it’s strange that it’s raining inside the house while Kris’ father doesn’t notice it. Then the camera pulls out in the sky to reveal that this piece of land is an island in the ocean of Solaris. One of the most remembering endings I’ve ever watched.
Solaris is arguably the “soviet answer” to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When Tarkovsky saw Kubrick’s film but he was disappointed saying that the film was “cold” and “sterile” because it’s outward. Then he decided to make an inward sci-fi film on a humane topic about a man not able to overcome his past and humankind being afraid of the new and the unknown. “We are in the foolish position of a man striving for a goal he fears and does not want.” – Dr. Snaut. Although the limited budget and the communist regulations, Solaris was made and it won a few awards on the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, proving the genius of Tarkovsky. In 2002 Steven Soderbergh made a remake of the film but it wasn’t as good as the original and the critics didn’t like it.
The film is colourful most of the time, but it switches to black and white and sepia tone from time to time. This may look bizarre but the minimalistic and haunting soundtrack, utilizing electronic elements, makes the transition flawless and also the black and white most of the time represented past events.
As I said before, the film is built on long continuous shots (involving a lot of panning) which are not easy to watch, especially for the modern generation. The shots have unique feel of peace to them, especially the running water shots. There were a lot of running water shots in Stalker as well which done well can create a feel of another world solely by themselves. Critiques argue that the weakest part of the film is the Future City scene in Act 1. This is a five minute scene of a car on a highway in Tokyo, which in the early 70’s was quite modern. There a few theories about why the scene is so long but maybe the best one is that Tarkovsky hated big cities - “I can say that I love nature. I don’t like big cities and feel perfectly happy when I’m away from the paraphernalia of modern civilization” [3]. That’s why the scene becomes dreadful to the audience and then Tarkovsky cuts to the countryside house from the very beginning making us feel relaxed and amazed by the amazing landscape shots.
Another Tarkovsky filming technique is the reflection. At the very start he uses the lake to make a reflection of the house. Later on when Kelvin and Hari have a hard conversation, they talk in front of a mirror so we see the reflections of their faces which subconsciously makes us question reality and it’s the moment where Hari learns the real story of who is she. And after that when Hari tries to kill herself, we see her dead body on the ground but the camera tilts a bit and we not only see Hari’s face but a magnified version of it on a mirror-like wall next to her. That scene puts even more emphasis on Bondarchuk’s character.
Last but not least, the lighting is different from other sci-fi films. There is a lot of warm light coming from the windows of the space station, contrasting to most films where it’s either blackness or cold light. One of the reasons for the warmer tones was that the film was inward looking, exploring human psyche, linking that the ocean is welcoming the humans, although they are afraid of it. Also the word solaris means sunny in Latin.
No director makes greater demands on our patience. Yet his admirers are passionate and they have reason for their feelings. Tarkovsky consciously tried to create art that was great and deep. Solaris is an exploration beyond the vessel of humanity, a journey to extend the territorial bounds of man, only to find the vast frontier of his own subconscious. In a society driven to explore the farthest reaches of the universe in search of the truth, the Solaris ocean provides an introspective catalyst for looking into the deepest regions of the human soul. This film is very significant to the genre and it has inspired Alfonso Cuaron to make Gravity (2013) and Christopher Nolan to make Interstellar (2014). Both of these films are sci-fi, but they don’t rely on action/adventure like in Star Wars, but they address the human nature just like Solaris did 44 years ago.
Bibliography:
1. Top 10 sci-fi films [Online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/16/top-10-sci-fi-movies
2. Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. Trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2003
3. Solaris (1972) Analysis [Online] Available from: http://cinemasailor.com/2014/01/14/solaris-1972
4. For further references visit – http://bgmario.tumblr.com