Solaris

"Duty to the truth is the only concern that should count"

Quite possibly the greatest science fiction film of all time, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is a profound work that explores the human condition, our ambition to push the limits of our knowledge, and the barrier of silence that sits between ourselves and God (whether he exists or not). Owing to the budgetary constraints that often restrict science fiction, America has historically been the breeding ground for the vast majority of science fiction films. Non-Western filmmakers have always faced a challenge in building their own films in the science fiction genre; do they work off the common ideas and tropes that have become part of the familiar code of American (and British) sci-fi films? Or do they attempt to do things on their own terms?

Solaris definitely does sci-fi on its own terms, it isn't concerned too much with spectacle or monsters or flashy gadgets because to do so would be to set itself up for failure in comparison to western sci-fi. It's a Russian film, and as such it's more ponderous and looks very hard at more theological and ontological questions that relate to the boundaries of science. The result is gobsmacking in its difference; a piece of art that bears comparison to a great work of literature - or to the intellectual depth of Tarkovsky's medieval epic, Andrei Rublev.

Solaris is a recently discovered celestial object that the Soviets of the future have built a research station on. The object is defined as a cross between a planet and a living entity, and causes hallucination and trauma for those who visit it. Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), a recently returned cosmonaut-scientist, refuses to accept that what he experienced was a hallucination - prompting the authorities to reconsider the expensive process of stationing people on Solaris. Kris Kelvin (Donatas Benionis) is sent to Solaris to investigate, and it falls upon him to decide whether research should be abandoned or if the remaining scientists should risk bombarding the ocean of Solaris with dangerous x-rays in a desperate final attempt to explore and communicate it. Kelvin discovers that the ocean of Solaris is sentient, like a giant brain, and that it can only communicate directly when humans are in a sleeping/dreaming state. The byproduct and method of this exchange means that independent apparitions are created from the consciousness of the human scientists and made flesh. These newly created individuals aren't initially aware of their origins though, which complicates things somewhat. For Kelvin this means the resurrection of his dead wife, a process that makes it impossible for him to make an objective decision about Solaris.

The above paragraph is a vast simplification of what's going on in Solaris. Solaris is trying to communicate with the humans that have landed on it but it's really too much for the humans to bear, likened to an 'invasion of the soul'. Tarkovsky uses the idea as a metaphor for communion with God, with lingering shots in the earlier half of the film mysteriously focusing on various aspects of nature - a girl's face, a floating strand of pondweed, the droplets of rain, a horse. How much do we really understand nature? Or God's design? Is there really a God at work behind our world? How do we know if he doesn't talk directly to us? The questions are endless, and even this is a big part of the film.


Solaris looks at our very human need to know the why and how of things, suggesting that it's our misery that drives this quest for knowledge rather than happiness or curiosity. Solaris is a form of life that's completely different to everything we know on Earth, a neutrino-based lifeform that obeys different laws of physics... it challenges our perception by taking human forms. This is established right from the film's outset, with Burton refusing to categorise his experience as a hallucination. He defends this as just a label for something we don't understand... we put labels on things and it restricts out understanding accordingly. If communion with Solaris is something that is completely new then labelling it a 'hallucination' (or anything else) is a counterproductive attempt to define something on our own terms when there's no actual frame of reference for us to use.

There's something highly dsturbing about the second half of the film (where Kelvin gets to Solaris). Space is shown to be dehumanising and nightmarish in its isolation, suggesting the ways in which we sacrifice our humanity for knowledge. And to compoud this, the way that Solaris reaches out to these castaway humans does little to assuage this loneliness. Kelvin's wife (as created by Solaris) isn't made up of atoms so it means that her physiology doesn't actually allow her to die. Once she's made aware of her true nature she can't handle it. The film touches on this in other ways by offering glimpses of midgets and spooky children that have been borne out of the consciousness of one of the other scientists. Our frame of reference leads us to assume that the scientists are being driven to madness, but this is just another reflection of our own needs and wants - our difficulty with things we're unable to understand (harkening back to the God metaphor). We try to conquer knowledge by recreating it in our own image, and one of the characters acknowledges that "madness would be a blessing" as these characters are all too aware that what they're experiencing is completely different to anything they've experienced before... they've gone beyond the boundaries of human knowledge, and it isn't a comforting experience.

As you can see, Tarkovsky tackles some big themes, but he never does it in a facile or vulgarly obvious way. The nature of these themes lend themselves to a certain obliqueness, even when characters talk directly about the nature of Solaris and what it's doing to them. The ending is absolutely brilliant, a bizarre and shattering revelation that ensures (in part) the film's status as an international classic. Tarkovsky makes a few inexplicable choices with his direction, such as the way the camera often seems to only pan right (I'm not 100% sure of this, I didn't rewatch the film to double-check, I just noticed it at one point) or his occasional use of black and white (a decision that could be stylistic, but it's hard to fathom how when it comes and goes with little regard to scene or setting).


Also, Tarkovsky's location filming in Tokyo seems a little weird. The city was meant to stand in for the future, looking suitably multi-layered and advanced in comparison to Soviet cities in the '70s. The only problem with this is that everything in the city is written in Japanese, which doesn't really square with the fact that it's meant to be the Soviet Union. Also, this scene goes on forever - there's about fifteen minutes of characters sitting silently in their car as they drive through Japanese tunnels and overpasses. I guess Tarkovsky had to justify the expensive location filming by making this sequence as long as possible. On the plus side, one touch I did really like was when the camera zoomed in on a black window that looked out onto Solaris... the camera gets closer and closer until the blackness fills the whole screen - a striking absence of knowledge that symbolises the way humanity struggles with this new form of life they've discovered.

Anyway, I think I've written enough. This is an amazing film, easily one of the best ever made.

DIRECTOR: Andrei Tarkovsky
WRITER/SOURCE: Andrei Tarkovsky and Fridrikh Gorenshtein. Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem.
KEY ACTORS: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Anatoli Solonitsyn

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel science fiction novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Tarkovsky's film was the second of three adaptations so far.
- The first adaptation was a Russian TV film made in 1968. The third was an American remake of Tarkovsky's film, also called Solaris, by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney.
- Tarkovsky made one other sci-fi film in the '70s, the equally acclaimed Stalker. He also previously examined themes of faith and communion with God in the film Andrei Rublev.
- Other famous introspective, non-Hollywood sci-fi films: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Moon.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won FIPRESCI Prize and the Grand Jury Prize. Also nominated for the Palme d'Or.