Review CXLVII - Солярис

Review 147
Solaris (1972)

After watching Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, I was down for more. I ended up reading Roadside Picnic (which was fun!), and then vowed to watch the perhaps more internationally known Solaris, starring Donatas Banionis (a Lithuanian! And he apparently influenced Vladimir Putin to join the KGB... I don't even know), Jüri Järvet, Natalya Bondarchuk, and the ever-lovely Anatoli Solonitsyn. Well, my boyfriend - who had watched the film previously - was unwilling to subside to my pleas, and thus, I never got around to watching it. Well, until yesterday. So let's sit down and discuss Solaris.

Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent up to a space station near the planet Solaris when communication to the lifeforms on the planet has remained muddled for years. His new colleagues, Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn), greet him with the message that his friend and their former colleague, Dr. Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), has committed suicide. Initially skeptical and fearful of their secrets, Kelvin meets his dead wife of ten years, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), on board the ship. Now he must make sense of what is happening on this ship.

My description was pretty shit, but sometimes it's hard to write those little synopses, especially when the beginning plot really doesn't connect to what the film is portraying in the end. Regardless, Solaris is a not-so-mysterious piece about understanding the mind and what is real and what is not, what is human and what is not. Basically taking this thinking entity, this Cogito ergo sum, and making you question whether everything you know and see is really just a figment of your mind. I mean, it's made clear enough in the film when Kelvin sees his dead wife's apparition, knowing she must be dead. It turns out that the intelligence on Solaris, an oceanic planet, takes the crew members' thoughts and past memories and makes a form from them with neutrino bases instead of atoms (don't question the science fiction). The form of Hari we see on the ship asks who she is since she is not Hari, and when her second form dies, she asks who she is now. So we're examining this debate whether or not memories make the person, but anyway, the film explores it in a nicer way than I can explain. And if you're taken any basic psychology class, or philosophy I suppose, you've heard these questions brought up in your class (I know I did).

Though the message was maybe interesting, I cannot recommend Solaris. My boyfriend had commented that he had to watch the movie in three separate sittings because it was long. Bordering on near three hours, this is already a long movie, but he also said Stalker was kind of slow, and I thought that one was fine. But while Stalker was engaging and well-crafted, Solaris was damn slow. I can't really say what section I found too long because really, everything seemed to take its time. It's like, every scene was important in what was shown, but they would drag on way too long. The opening scene with the ex-space pilot (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) showing us a tape of him explaining what he saw on Solaris could easily have been shown in less time. The walking around, the minor dialogues, easily shortened. I can't think of specific parts since everything ran longer than it should, but in a way that just made the film feel really long. Stalker is just as long as Solaris, but somehow that one did not feel as lengthy.

And while on the subject of Stalker, you definitely see style parallels between the two films, though I prefer the way Stalker was handled. You have the same black-and-white bit existing to show difference between past and present, showing how they blend, but it was not as shocking and revealing as in Stalker. I can't remember anymore what was the other parallel I remarked, but as I told my boyfriend, I feel like Andrei Tarkovsky was attempting his style in Solaris which he mastered seven years later in Stalker (there was The Mirror in between both films, but I have yet to see it, so I dunno). Tarkovsky actually said himself that Solaris was his least favourite film, and based on Stalker, I can see why. I'd have to see his other stuff, but I can definitely say I feel sad that Solaris is better known than Stalker, at least internationally. Stalker is fine, grand piece, and Solaris is trying to find its footing. The pacing is not great, the message not as significant as Stalker (in my opinion), and well, you get less Anatoli Solonitsyn (just joking).

Solaris is not a bad movie, but it definitely falls way shorter than Stalker. The ideas it presents are interesting and gets you thinking and the cinematography is still nice (still love that ending scene in Stalker at the end, though. So beautiful), but its pacing is horrible and compared to its successor, it really could use improvement. Watch it with a movie buff friend, and then check out the masterpiece that is Stalker. Though not in one sitting - that might be really brutal.