Post by Clark Nova on Oct 14, 2006 17:14:05 GMT -5
Often cited as director Andrei Tarkovsky’s answer to “2001: A Space Odyssey”, which he considered to be “cold”, “Solyaris”, to the untrained eye, may take that “cold” reference and run away with it. Consider the fact that it is practically a science fiction film through-and-through, and yet it contains nary a special effect and not an evil, flesh-eating monster to speak of. Try pitching that to a movie executive today. Instead, the only monsters here are the ones within the human soul, struggling to come to terms with the concepts of love, free will, and humanity itself. After three hours of meditating on such open-ended concepts, it’s obvious that “Solyaris” is not your average sci-fi flick, but something much, much deeper, and in the end, much more important to the world of cinema.
The only thing more out-of-place in this supposed sci-fi movie than the aforementioned meditations on life itself is its beginning: we see trees, a grassy meadow, a horse trotting along, a quaint cottage, and a pond with weeds gently dancing to the ripples of the water. A middle-aged man (Donatas Banionis) quietly observes these scenes, walking along, with a look of both longing and admiration adorning his face. This one scene is so peaceful, so serene, that we could watch it with this man all day and be at absolute peace (ironically, this very scene and the sentiments it gives off become very important at the film’s conclusion, which I won’t give away here). Alas, we have a movie to get through, and with every movie comes a plot. Enter this man’s father (Nikolai Grinko) and a Cosmonaut named Berton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky). It turns out this man that we have been observing is a psychologist named Kris Kelvin, and he is about to undertake quite the journey. We learn that a space station is orbiting the mysterious planet called Solaris, and all is not right at said space station. Berton would testify to some strange goings-on on ocean-covered planet, as seen in his video testimony describing, of all things, a 4-meter tall boy. Immediately, we have the feeling that either Solaris is a pretty strange place, Berton’s absolutely mad, or both. Kris is to go to the station to observe the three remaining crew members and determine if the station and the Solaris project is to be abandoned.
Once on the station, the film’s action really picks up. This term, “action”, is not the common sense of the word, as no sci-fi action that the western world is used to is to be found here. Solaris station is a bleak, boring place, with uniform hallways and bedrooms, and the feel of, well, a station occupied by three people that can accommodate over eighty. Kris soon finds that one of the crew members, an old friend of his, has committed suicide, and the remaining two, Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn), don’t exactly seem of sound mind (though Kris’ dead friend Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan) will insist in a video recording that it is not insanity). Snaut tells Kris that the planet probes one’s mind and materializes that which the person subconsciously has an emotional attachment to. For the hermit-like Sartorius, his “Guests” are dwarves that keep him company in his laboratory. For Snaut, they are children. Soon enough, Kris receives a Guest of his own, in the person of his wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), who committed suicide ten years before. After an experiment in “disposing” of this apparition (with help from a rocket), Kris soon finds that there is no getting rid of this new Hari as long as he is on the station. She will just keep coming back again and again. As time passes and he spends more time with this manifestation of his lost love, Kris begins to question just what true love is and what it takes to be truly human.
Though Kris is undoubtedly the protagonist of this story, the character I had to most emotional involvement with is Solaris’ manifestation of Hari. Like a newborn, Hari begins without knowledge of what it is to be human. She injures herself trying to open a steel door, panics when Kris is not around, and doesn’t know how to sleep. What she does have, however, are scant memories of the real Hari’s love for Kris and genuine emotions. Or rather, the emotions and memories that Kris thinks she would have. Solaris is only able to probe Kris’ mind, so this incarnation of Hari is merely Kris’ interpretation of his dead wife, complete with the needle mark signifying how she killed herself. This new Hari knows this, too. For somebody made from neutrinos, Hari seems to show the most humanity and questioning of one’s existence out of anybody. She knows she loves Kris, but she also knows that she is not a real person and can never truly be with him when he inevitably leaves the station (and leave he will, though not in the way you’d expect). With this, she, like her predecessor, attempts suicide, only to once again be resurrected ("I can never get used to this resurrection thing", Snaut says), thus refuting her true humanity. Any human would be allowed to die, but she cannot have even this right. Kris, in any case, ignores this and all common sense to declare his love for this new Hari, merely a figment of his thoughts. This brings to mind our own feelings about love and existence. How many times have we grown to “love” an imaginary conception of the perfect person, only to end up disappointed when reality has a say in the matter? We as humans cannot help but long for the unattainable: that which is lost or simply perfect. Tarkovsky uses the science fiction genre to put this into a literal context, as Kris grows to love this doppelganger of his dead wife even more than the real thing, as he symbolically retreats into his thoughts and the limitless bounds of human perception, abandoning the inevitable disappointment of what the real world has to give.
While the film can feel distant and cold to the casual viewer, that cold feeling actually serves to drive the themes of “Solyaris” across quite brilliantly. The sets are bleak and rather non-interesting, and the pace is practically at a crawl. This, however, forces the viewer to actually pay attention to what the characters have to say, as their words and their actions dictate their conflicting emotions, as Kris and Hari struggle to understand just how they should feel about each other. All is not perfect with “Solyaris”, however. While the slow pace often succeeds in driving across the moral questions raised by the characters, there are points where it is just overkill. The prelude on Earth, for instance, is just far too long and drawn out, focusing too much on exposition and a long video featuring Berton’s description of the planet that becomes derivative after a while. We’re going to Solaris with Kris and will see the wonders that Berton experienced eventually. We don’t need him to tell us what we’re going to see for fifteen minutes. Also, I for the life of me can’t figure out why we needed to see a car drive through Japan for what seemed like ten minutes. To pad the running time? At nearly three hours, it’s long enough. Too long, in fact. Yes, some of the slow scenes are quite beautiful, such as when Kris and Hari hold each other in zero-gravity (I’ll leave the limitless possibilities of symbolism to you, dear viewer), but a number of the scenes of desolate space station life could have been left out.
The incredibly slow pace aside, “Solyaris” is not so much a science fiction vehicle, but a meditation on love and humanity. Love is, after all, an indescribable feeling, and Kris’ love for this manifestation of Hari makes one wonder just what he or she loves: the physical flesh and blood of another, or simply an idea or thought, or perhaps even an mere interpretation of this person? As the neutrino-based Hari questions her overall purpose and building emotions, and Kris declares his unwavering love for her (“You mean more to me than any scientific truth”), one begins to wonder just which one of these two is, in fact, the human by film’s end, and, for that matter, just what it means to be declared a human being.
8.5/10
