Solaris (1972)

Re-watching Tarkovsky’s films never fail to be a rewarding experience. All of his films are rich enough so that new thoughts keep occurring in my mind on every single viewing (discussing them with others help). Solaris is one of his best films. This is not to say that it lacks weak moments. As an aesthetic experience, Solaris is, I would say, very hard to criticize. But when one starts to disentangle its themes and point of view, it’s easy to come upon bad solutions, half-thought material and unnecessary vagueness. What is the main thrust of Solaris? Is it a critique of contemporary (Soviet) scientific ideals that turn nature into an anthropomorphic mirror? Is it a story about love and conscience? Or is it, rather, a film about consciousness and memory? Or are we taking metaphysics here, we are all trapped in Illusion, we are all inhabitants on the space station of the film? Or ... God?

Well, all of these themes are present. The relation between them is not always clear, and this makes, in my opinion, interpretation quite difficult. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station that circles around a planet, Solaris. Solaris is covered with a mysterious sea. The sea has a strange influence over the crew on the space station, some of whom have disappeared, some have committed suicide and some are on the verge of insanity. As Kelvin boards the space station, he learns that it is haunted by “visitors”, materializations of memories. Thus, he finds his dead wife, Hari, in his room. Throughout the film, it is unclear how we are to view Hari. In many senses, the film asks us to see her as a human being; she is a human being in the light of Kelvin’s concern for her. On the other hand, we are challenged to view her as a manifestation of the allure of science, the utmost mirror of human desire. Is Hari a representation of Kelvin’s bad conscience or is she a human being? The film, the ending in particular, doesn’t really provide an answer. All I can say is that the film sometimes fall into the trap of muddled dichotomies between Love versus Science but other moments it does not work with dichotomies like that at all.

What is most confusing of all is how to understand the very ending of the film. Is it a tragedy - or a story about redemption? I am torn between different intepretations here.

The sci-fi part of Solaris is not very important. Yes, the story is based on Stanislav Lem’s novel. The novel is not very good. The film is far better than the book. But what makes the film so appealing is not the sum of narrative twists and turns.

What is interesting about the film is not the “science fiction”. And maybe it is the wrong approach to talk about Tarkovsky’s films in terms of being “interesting”. He is a religious director, rather than a philosophical director – what I mean by this is just that if we want to understand what drives the films, the religious themes are all-important, the level of “thoughts” and “ideas” less so. There are many, many stunning scenes in Solaris. In one of them, we see a car drive through a futuristic landscape. Dissonant, eerie noise/music enhance the feeling of uncertainty. Where are we going next? Those moments of uncertainty, of the unknown, are what has made me return to Solaris over the years. On the level of aesthetics, Tarkovsky is a good interpreter of something that appears as absolutely Other/Unknown (the sea on Solaris). When transformed into ideas (science tames & domesticizes the Unknown, turning it into an alluring, but dangerous mirror – the Unknown strikes back) the film is less convincing. 

PS: Don't watch Soderbergh's version. It's crap.