On Tarkovskian Solaris 🪐

102; 12022 H.E.

What if a planet could think? What if a planet could act as a single entity? Feel and make decisions as a whole. Not a modern hivemind kind of a way, nor an artificial structure. An ocean enveloping a celestial body is a big brain, which wants to make contact with beings so much inferior and less complex - humans. It would even seem hard to misrepresent such a fascinating concept, yet Andrei Tarkovsky, a Soviet film director found a way to do just that.

Psychologist Kris Kelvin is being sent on an interstellar journey, to conclude whether the decades-old expedition sent to Solaris’ orbit should continue its study or simply halt all operations. Unexpectedly, it is revealed to the audience that the planet has more secrets than our heroes can chew. The last three real inhabitants of the station get visits from their materialized pasts, haunting them, bringing out the loneliness and baggage each has.

Let’s talk about what the film excelled at, such that it would be simpler for us to follow the thread of where it went wrong. For its time, Solaris is very well shot. Especially, the part about representing a futuristic city, we watched a couple of minutes long cut of dashcam footage on the highway roads of Akasaka, Tokyo. Stylistic choices in aesthetic visuals were very well done, ranging from how the ocean water was represented, down to the electronics and an advanced-looking space station interior. Unfortunately, when I think of the moments from the film, the above is all I could think of what I enjoyed during my watch.

Lem’s story is evenly divided into a balance of three main arcs: Drama, Science-fiction, and Solaristics. The third drama revolves around the story of Kelvin and Harey. Science-fiction part focuses of course on the observations made by scientists regarding the planet. The last third is deeply woven into the story, where we are thrown into bits and pieces of the story of Solaristics, the study of Solaris. The documentary-like flashbacks give us more insights into the relationship between humans and Solaris. Tarkovsky decided to completely ignore the value of a gradual reveal of the planet’s history by compressing it all into a single 40-minute segment at the beginning of the film.

This changed the pacing completely, thus, giving out too much information to viewers regarding what is to come in the story. Solaris is presented as something scary, untamed, and inhuman. Scientists working on understanding the planet are a bunch of fanatics, who have devoted their lives to the field. Kelvin is supposed to be some special “inspector”, which will evaluate the need for Solaristics. What happens after can be described as nothing more than “Crime and Punishment” in space, where a man deals with his past, ethics, and moral imperatives. There would have been some hope for Tarkovsky’s commentary on human conscience, only if it were even remotely close to the mastery of understanding such concepts as Dostoevsky does.

I am a humanist myself. I love when authors and directors go deeper into the psyche of a human, the emotions, feelings, worries, and pain. This is why Dostoevsky is my favorite writer. While Tarkovsky’s version follows a man and his late ex-wife coming back to life from his dreams to haunt him on the station produces arguments and raises discussions, which seem to be entirely too sentimental, lacking competence to properly ponder and execute themes, such as sin and retribution, while also lacking the courage to go beyond those classical concepts and attempt a more unique discussion. This is presented ever so vividly in the inclusion of Kelvin’s parents.

Those extra characters are simply not needed and the only part in which they succeed is confusing the viewer about the importance of their part in the film. This is Tarkovsky attempting to show the importance of family, of internal struggles of a man, and one’s fight against themselves. It would be great if this attempt were executed more properly, rather than showing minutes worth of stills and uninterrupted footage of what appears to be aimed at putting me to sleep or impressing inexperienced viewers with the “aesthetic” method of watching films.

I must admit, there were parts in dialogues between characters, which I found to be masterfully written, such as “Only an unhappy person will ponder about the meaning of life and happiness. A happy person has no time nor needs for those cursed questions.” I couldn’t decide whether Solaris is a masterpiece or a mirage of one in those specific moments. The ending of the movie and how it was presented answered that question for me.