Summary
Dr. Kelvin is sent to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris to discover why everyone on board went insane.
The Film
I wanted to love this movie the first time I watched it. I didn’t.
I wanted to realize how wrong I was about it as I watched it for the second time. I didn’t.
The bottom line is that, while I like this movie a great deal, I do not love it like I love other Tarkovsky films.
The first reason for this, I think, is the setting. The film is set in an ambiguous future which, like many imagined futures in film, looks quite dated and strange in many ways. Some of the strangeness plays into the themes of the movie but there is a small part of me that just can’t handle watching a rocket shoot off in a closed room and not have it kill someone standing nearby. It’s the same part of me that can’t look at the candelabras in the library and wonder how they manage to burn a wick without setting the entire station on fire.
As much as I love Tarkovsky for his meditative style, I honestly feel like he pushes it a little with “Solaris.” Even I, and I’m no fidgety teenager, had trouble sitting through some of the longer meditative scenes and not wandering in my mind a bit.
All that being said, I really enjoy the rest of this film. The concept is quite bold and unique, especially for a sci-fi film which would normally focus on the harder science aspects of space travel or biological aspects of alien life. To make a film which is almost exclusively interested in discussions surrounding the nature of conscience, individuality, and societal identity takes extraordinary courage. I imagine a film like this would be roughly received by general audiences in its day and even more so today.
However, Tarkovsky is interested in whatever he is interested in and makes no apologies for it. That is not to say that he leaves his audience with no handholds. He certainly allows his characters to fully live out and explain their emotions and thoughts despite the fact that they ay not always make a lot of sense the first time through. With repeat viewing however, you realize the depth of background he has built into every scene. The architecture of the house and where it is located says something and is actually important to the main character’s psyche, though it is never discussed, just as the layout and endless nature of the station lends and air of eternal mystery to the entire film.
So what is the film about? I find sometimes I try so hard to obfuscate the facts of the film in order to avoid spoilers that I say almost nothing at all about the movie. It’s about what makes us human as it relates to memory. It’s about the people we form in our heads from our perceptions of others, whether they bear any resemblance to reality or not. It’s about scientific exploration and its limits as we run up against potential limitations or difficult choices when it comes to life or unexplained phenomena.
In a way, I suppose it is about wonder, love, monotony, and death. It is a film that makes a real effort to give its viewers a door through which to walk through and into thoughts which we do not entertain very frequently. That is enough for me to give this challenging film at least a third viewing.
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