ANDREY TARKOVSKY'S SOLARIS
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Tarkovsky is first and foremost a film poet. He can construct shots that seem to have an endless depth of meaning. And it is in the individual shot that he excels. Like all of Tarkovsky's films, Solaris seems to depict primarily its characters' emotional, or spiritual, states.
Some strange quirk of fate decreed that the two most respected science- fiction films ever made were released within three or four years of each other, yet while interest in 2001 has never abated, the Soviet masterpiece Solaris has remained almost unknown and unseen. The story of Solaris gives us a revealing glimpse into the difficulties of expressing artistic creativity in a Soviet society years before glasnost and perestroika, with results that equal if not better the output of any western studio.
Interestingly, though Solaris was even more obscure for most watchers than 2001, reviewers who deliquesced into mental jelly when 2001 hit the screens miraculously recovered to greet Solaris with comments like "The most intelligent and questioning science- fiction movie ever made" (Quote from Science Fiction Movies by Philip Strick, Octopus Books Limited, London, 1976.) Was it that they were determined not to admit to being faced with a second film they couldn't understand?
Even given my own admiration for 2001, I have no quarrel with that statement. In fact, I would add that it is also the most beautiful, and probably most superbly crafted, science- fiction movie ever made.
Solaris was billed in the west as "Russia's answer to 2001", which while useful in gaining an audience may have been a mistake in the same way as 2010 being marketed as the "solution" to 2001. It meant many viewers came to it with inappropriate expectations, and quickly lost patience when it became clear that Tarkovsky and Lem were clearing a new path for themselves in an entirely different direction from the one taken by Kubrick and Clarke.
Nevertheless, it is true that Solaris did represent a cultural rejection of what appeared to non- Western eyes to be an un-human, technological clinicism evident in Kubrick's work. Tarkovsky read Clarke's novel in early 1971 and set out consciously to explore the same ultimate cosmic adventure - humankind facing an infinite universe populated with far more ancient entities - but with the focus much more on the response of an individual carrying with him the not- untypical baggage of domestic terrestrial experience. We know nothing of what motivates Dave, Frank, Floyd or any other of the characters in 2001; in sharp contrast, it is the motivations of Tarkovsky's central characters that gives his film its power and challenges all of us to question our own innermost impulses. It could be said that "2001: A Space Odyssey" exemplifies the Western preoccupation with external, racial influences, while "Solaris" represents the most fundamental internal quest for individual humanity in a way that is far too self- preoccupied to be attempted by anyone operating within Western culture.
The sombre organ tones of J S Bach (almost rejected, on the grounds that his music was considered too fashionable at the time!), accompany the simple opening titles. Just as Stanley Kubrick's first scenes in 2001 are as far removed from the hard edges of science- fiction as any could be, so Andrey Tarkovsky opens Solaris with idyllic scenes of pastoral life, breathtakingly filmed with muted colours and perfect widescreen compositions. The very first images we see are of running water - water in motion - water that flows and also falls to earth in sudden summer storms. This concept of water, incessantly moving, is a thread that runs through the film, a stream of life that embodies endless change and represents all that is free, yet is constrained to follow whatever proves to be the least resistant path from its source, regardless of how indirect that path might be. When a destination has been resolved, a transformation will provide the means by which the flow can return to its source once more. The cycle will recommence, but its course will be a new one. It is water, too, that brings Solaris to a close.
Thus, within seconds, do we enter the domain of Tarkovsky, where nothing is shown unless it has some bearing on what we are to experience, where nothing is ever exactly what it appears to be, yet where seemingly unrelated events occurring at different times in different parts of the universe are ultimately seen to be caught in the current of a single stream of life. This knowledge is hidden from humans following the earthbound tracks of their own perceived destinies, but in Tarkovsky's vision the planet Solaris affords a deeper realisation of the connections between origins and destinations, and gives us probably the most daring and satisfying treatment ever filmed of the meeting of two intelligences. Unfortunately, the realisation takes some of its human participants beyond the point of sanity.
Unfortunately, too, other film makers even today persist in rehashing tiresome concepts of "aliens" in confict with "humans". Solaris, surely, is the essential antithesis of commercial superficialities like "Independence Day". Tarkovsky is perhaps the only director who has ever challenged a cinema audience to consider the effects of an encounter with homo sapiens on the alien entity. As we shall see, the meeting is no less transforming for an intelligence that exists wholly outside human terms of reference than it is for the characters whose actions and responses are familiar, albeit startling.
In this opening paradise we immediately meet the film's main character, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), wandering deep in thought. The film's main character, that is, in terms of his on- screen role. It is not until the very end of the film that we question whether this is truly Kris's story. The ordeal is his, but perhaps Kris has unknowingly carried a burden that rightfully belongs to another player, one who has no direct part in what transpires but who is there at its initiation and again at its conclusion.
There are no sounds, save those of the stillness in this place - water running, birds in the trees, a cuckoo calling. In fact, Solaris has no soundtrack in the conventional sense (and not even in Kubrick's unconventional sense!). Bach's Prelude returns once or twice, otherwise the sounds throughout are mixed sparingly from natural sounds augmented by electronic means. Like Kubrick, only more so, Tarkovsky uses silence as a sound in its own right. He does not seek to influence our thoughts by anything as clumsy as music. The soundtrack we do hear was composed by Edouard Artemyev, who has since become one of Russia's leading film composers with credits to over 30 movies, including Tarkovsky's other science- fiction work, 1979's Stalker.
Henri Berton (Vladislav Dvorjetski) arrives at the dacha with his young daughter, a shy companion for the child we have just seen, frightened by a mysterious horse sheltering in the garage. The horse seems agitated, invoking a suggestion of fear, of something in this place that cannot yet be perceived by human participants. It is a feeling that Kris is destined to experience for himself when he is far from home. In these early scenes Tarkovsky contrasts the serene beauty of the landscape with an air of tension that seems to bind all his players together, a subconscious awareness that all is not quite right but with no clue as to the nature of its origin. We can understand the tensions generated from uncertainties, from partings and quarrels between people who are closer than they may care to admit, but there is something deeper here that underlies any familiar manifestations of unease.
It is for Kris's benefit that Berton is paying his visit, but with Kris still lost in his reverie Henri converses with Kelvin's father (Nikolay Grinko). In a brief exchange, Tarkovsky fills us in on the situation we are now witnesses to, and provides clues as to what will follow. The dacha has its roots far in the past, styled after a house built by Kris's great- grandfather. We learn that Kris is due to leave on his mission to the planet Solaris the following day, news given to us as dispassionately as we would talk today of a transatlantic flight, yet with the same sense of underlying tension, of partings and unnamed risks. We understand that Kris is a cosmonaut, but how can we relate this knowledge to the scenes of earthly tranquillity before us? Why is it important for Tarkovsky to emphasise the age of the dacha? It is a point we may care to remember in the film's closing moments.
Kris sits out a sudden downpour, heedless of the rain that sends the children hurriedly seeking shelter, before joining the others indoors. Thus Tarkovsky brings together the two main elements of his film, the man around whom his story unfolds and the endlessly moving water that will change Kris's life forever, in the effects of which he seemingly finds relief. But from what?
The tale of distant Solaris is opened by means of a video brought by Henri Berton. Now in middle age, the video shows him as a young man talking nervously before a commission of enquiry (fleeting thoughts of Floyd's briefing in the conference room at Clavius, though Berton's ordeal is altogether more emotional). With eyes downcast he has to steel himself to reveal what he has recently experienced on the remote planet. A manned exploratory craft has failed to return from an expedition across the strange ocean that constitutes this world. Berton, an experienced hovercraft pilot, is sent to investigate.
We hear Berton, faced with mounting incredulity and a dwindling audience, tell of what befalls him on that fateful journey. He describes a fog that is somehow more than fog, which moves and changes form, revealing visions of a garden, and of a giant child. Berton has brought back a film as proof of his claims. But the film reveals nothing but the blanketing fog and the churning surface of the ocean. Berton's fate as a man prone to hallucinations is sealed, and Tarkovsky shows us nothing of the long intervening years before we see Berton as he is today, embittered yet committed to the truth of what he revealed so long before.
Kris's mission is, indeed, to investigate the situation on Solaris and help determine the future of the outpost. There are those who believe the ocean is a life form, a huge "brain", but the hypothesis counts for little without proof to support it. In a space station built to house 85 people, only 3 currently inhabit it. Should the station be closed down? Should the ocean be irradiated to eliminate any potential danger to the humans?
Berton hopes that his video will convince Kris that something is happening on Solaris that is far stranger than any rational explanation could account for. But Kris is a pragmatist, a psychologist fascinated by the frontiers of human thought. "Knowledge is valid only when it is based on reality". He impatiently spurns Berton's version of events. Berton leaves angrily with his young daughter, breaking the fleeting companionship between the children before it has had a chance to find a purpose.
What is Tarkovsky trying to tell us, in these snatched moments of meeting and departure between minds too young to understand their own part in this scenario? Tarkovsky never wastes time with scenes that have no bearing on his story. As Kris's own transformation slowly takes place, we are struck by the significance of the time that has elapsed during the course of his life, time that has taken a high toll on him but has not yet occurred for these two children. Once, Kris too was a child, but his ageing has carried him ever further from the source of his own life force, along increasingly convoluted paths. For the children, meetings and partings can occur without complications, without the implications that will cost Kris so dearly.
Berton's journey home through endless tunnels and concrete city ramparts (shot on location in Japan) conjures up, for us, unexpected but unmistakable memories of Dave's journey through the infinite. Streams of traffic snake on their alotted routes in and out of the city, reminding us of the perpetual flow of Kris's life from a source we cannot see to a destination we cannot suspect, such a flow as every one of us is bound to follow. The increasingly distorted and insistent sounds of this traffic become Tarkovsky's representation of Ligeti's Atmospheres. We see Berton's face, with unfathomable expressions, just as we see Dave's face on his mind- breaking journey.
Not until he is well on his way home does Berton's anger subside enough to make a final telephone call back to Kelvin's house, with the message that was lost in the emotion of his departure, a message not meant for Kris's ears. One of the men who disappeared on Solaris all those years ago was a scientist, Fechner. On his return to earth, Berton visited Fechner's wife to break the news of her husband's unresolved disappearance. He discovered that the giant child he saw created in the ocean of Solaris was none other than Fechner's young son.
But Kris stands in the doorway and hears Berton's words. What thoughts must now be running through his mind during these last hours before his departure? What will he find waiting for him on planet Solaris? Do not expect Tarkovsky to tell us! We can only find out by accompanying Kris on a journey that will transform the lives of more than just human beings.
The traffic noise surrounding Berton builds slowly to a crescendo. A sharp cut takes us back instantly to Kris's quiet haven.
There is an air of tension between Kris and his father, a sense that there may be something final about this eve of Kris's departure. Kris burns his papers on a bonfire. Like the water, the image of the bonfire, a consuming flame, is repeated through the film. Water and fire together, yet at odds. A photograph of a beautiful woman we have not seen lies on the ground next to the blackening flames. All Kris asks is that his room be kept for his return.
Will Kris ever return to this idyllic place? Is Kris's father justified in putting the blame for Kris's annoyance with Berton on the unspoken possibility that he will die with only Berton for a friend, while Kris is lost far from home? Those words will have consequences that Tarkovsky is not yet ready to reveal. The journey that will lead Kris back to them is a long and harrowing one.
Kubrick created a cinema icon with his dramatic cut from an airborne bone in the dawn of man to an orbiting satellite in the future. Peter Hyams, in 2010, also chose to make a conceptual leap from Floyd softly closing the door to his son's bedroom on the morning of his departure to the closing of the Leonov on Jupiter.
But Tarkovsky too gives us that same jolt, a decision taken early in production. In the first forty or so minutes of Solaris, we see only scenes that we could see anywhere at any time in a trip to the country. Kelvin stands at an open door, the horse pacing quietly in the garden behind him. And, instantly, we are transported to the undisclosed location of Solaris, where Kelvin is about to make his final, and somewhat uncomfortable, approach. (Which is shown complete with a lens effect borrowed from 1953's "It Came From Outer Space", an effect that became rather better known to us in the shape of Hal's eye in 2001!).
Tarkovsky, like Kubrick, is far too subtle to tell us what to make of what he shows us. Nevertheless, we cannot avoid the realisation that his opening scenes of pastoral solitude are a key to what transpires on station Solaris. Kelvin is a child of the earth, his character shaped by his rural life. No matter how far he journeys, no matter how bizarre his surroundings, what happens to him is summoned entirely from his own experiences and the mental furrows that they have left in his unconscious mind. The mysterious ocean of Solaris has greater powers than Kelvin can imagine, yet in the end is only a catalyst. The ocean seems unable to create, but it can draw out and give physical shape to the unsuspected thoughts that lie deep in the minds of the humans on the station. As we are to discover, the ocean can do more, but at this point of first contact too little is know on both sides for any synergy to occur, or even to be expected.
In Tarkovsky's painstaking hands, Lem's science- fiction classic is given stunning visual form as a slow- paced exploration of the psychology of existence in close proximity with a vast life- force with hitherto unsuspected powers. Solaris addresses full- on the implications hinted at, but not explicitly confirmed, in 2001: that an alien life force is able to conjure a physically- tangible environment from Dave's unspoken thoughts.
Kris arrives on station Solaris wearing the same leather jacket he wore back home, although his trousers have a rather more high- tech look about them. His introduction to life on board is provided by the distraught cyberneticist, Snow (Yuri Yarvet), who reveals that one of the three inhabitants of the station, Gibarian, has committed suicide. Kris is incredulous, knowing Gibarian as a rational and level- headed scientist.
But Snow's next words are more than enough to set scalps prickling:
"There used to be three of us here. Now, with you, there are three of us again. Do you know Sartorius?...He's up there, in the laboratory, and I doubt if he'll come down before dark, but...In any case, you'll recognize him. If you should see anyone else - someone who isn't me or Sartorius, you understand, then..."
"But what could I possibly meet?" I shouted.
Painfully, dragging the words out one by one, he answered:
"I don't know. In a way, it depends on you." (Ref. 1)
Is Snow suffering hallucinations? Kris has already caught a momentary glimpse of a figure in the corridor. But what - who - is in the swaying hammock that Snow is so anxious to divert Kris's attention from?Kris looks for clues in the shambles of what was once his friend Gibarian's room. On the door he finds a child's drawing labelled "HUMAN". Gibarian's room is no different from the others in the station, so why has he felt obliged to mark his territory in this way? Is the drawing his? Kris is soon to learn what Gibarian also discovered, that outwardly human form is no proof of inner humanity.
Gibarian (Sos Sarkisian) has left his final words for Kris in the form of a tape (once again, Tarkovsky uses the device of a video to pull the story together for us). The tape is a warning. Gibarian talks of a "deadlock", of a "monster". The door behind Kris creaks ajar, startling him into a half panicked movement to shut it tight. What is there? Kris cannot concentrate without knowing. It is dark outside the windows overlooking the ocean, but is something out there that Kris cannot see?
Searching for the source of his interruption, Kris finds himself outside the laboratory. Sartorius (Tolya Solonitsyn) reluctantly agrees to open the door, but not to let Kris in - for himself to come out. The door behind him is almost snatched from his grasp, and the startling figure of a dwarf emerges to pull Sartorius back inside. In this short time, a new day floods the corridor with light. Drawn to the window, Kris has his first view of the mysterious ocean of Solaris, an ocean that seems to shift and change for reasons beyond mere changes in pressure and density.
As he gazes, another figure passes silently behind him. A young girl, who seems to expect Kris to follow her. The place she leads him to is the morgue, where Gibarian's body lies chilled.
Kris has had enough surprises. He wants answers, and returns to Snow's room. Who is this girl? Is there madness here? Snow scoffs. Compared to what is happening here, madness would be a deliverance! Kris restarts the video in the privacy of his own quarters. The child is there, with Gibarian, in the video. This is not madness, cries Gibarian, echoing Snow's words. It is conscience. What can he mean? The girl that led Kris to Gibarian's body is what Gibarian has unwittingly brought with him to Solaris, but we are given no clue as to why she preys so unbearably on his conscience that he is unable to live with her presence. How can such a child be a monster? What terrible guilt racks this rational man? Snow and Sartorius are demanding that Gibarian lets them in; the video ends with Gibarian's disappearance from the shot.
Kris is exhausted and perplexed, and falls into a slumber. While he sleeps, something else stirs. There is more life in, and around, this station than is accounted for by its three human inhabitants.
When Kris reopens his eyes, there before him is Hari (Rheya, his wife). We learn that Hari took her own life ten years ago, unable to reconcile herself to the differences that have come between her and Kris (Natalya Bondarchuk would indeed have been a sad loss, and makes a highly appealing and altogether more satisfying distant ancestor of Star Trek - Voyager's holographic doctor; there is nothing new in fiction, if you know where to look. Bondarchuk's performance delighted Tarkovsky - in his own words she "is one with her role", and "outshone everybody"). We understand now more about Kris's preoccupation with unspoken thoughts in those early scenes, thoughts of guilt and inadequacy that have lain inside him during those intervening years, with no means of outward expression.
But Kris is not yet ready to accept hallucinations. By highly dramatic and unconventional means, he is able to dispose of this unwanted apparition. In the course of this action, Kris is burned. The twin motifs of fire and water are reintroduced, as he stands under a shower to relieve the pain that his encounter with Hari has brought, physical pain that intensifies the mental pain that has haunted Kris since the tragic outcome of their original relationship.
Kris sleeps again. The unseen force of Solaris stirs again; Hari returns - no, another Hari comes. Now there are two shawls draped over the chair. While the second apparition appears to sleep, Kris leaves the room. Immediately the steel door buckles behind him, and before Kris's - and our - startled gaze Hari shreds herself with painful reality by literally tearing her way through, surely one of cinema's truly unforgettable, and unexpected, scenes. Why this act of violence? Of course! Hari is newly created. She has no knowledge of doors, and how they work! All she perceives is a barrier between her and the man who is the reason for her existence.
How can this be an apparition? Hari's flesh is torn and her pain is real, but her swift recovery adds to Kris's confusion. "Kris", cries Hari plaintively, "what's the matter with me?" If this is a new form of physical existence, what kind of a world is this Solaris?
At Sartorius's urging, Kris takes a blood sample from Hari. When the cells are destroyed, the blood regenerates itself. Are the three in the presence of some kind of immortality?
Kris's disgust at what is happening gradually but inevitably turns to acceptance, that the memories given physical form are real beings that cannot be ignored or dismissed by mere mental effort. Even if they are destroyed, they will be replaced with ever greater authenticity. Will Kris become trapped forever in the strange world now enclosed in station Solaris? The world that Kris and his companions have brought with them? Tension leads them to quarrel. Is their humanity slipping away from them? Yet it is Hari herself who points out that the quarrel is a sign of their humanity, not of its loss. Kris the rationalist has changed. The comfort of Hari, albeit an unnatural one, and his sense of protectiveness towards her, entirely natural but hitherto little in evidence in his life, are too strong for his emotional instincts to resist. Kris and Hari cannot be apart.
But Hari has no memory of her previous life, she can find no meaning in this existence. Kris tries to draw her out with a home video he has brought with him, but Hari's confusion only deepens. Just as the original Hari was unable to come to terms with her own unhappiness, so this Hari takes her own life, again in spectacular fashion. And, again, the ocean will not let Hari rest. She endures more of the pain that fills so much of her short life (nowhere is Bondarchuk's gift of expression better shown than in this recovery scene).
In an attempt to appease whatever motivation lies behind the ocean's assault on their sanity, to deflect whatever power is tearing their lives apart, Kris and his companions agree to an experiment. An encephelogram of Kris's brain will be directed into the sea, in the hopes that the life force will be better able to comprehend the nature of humanity.
Kris falls into a fever as the ocean probes his soul. It rekindles past loves within him. His idyllic home is there. The mother as she was in his childhood washes the dirt from Kris the adult.
What is this action? "You're all unkempt and dirty. Where did you get into this state?", cries Kris's mother. As Kris tended to Hari's savage wounds from the jagged edges of the steel door, only to find the wounds healing as he watched, so the dirt washes easily from Kris's arm. It is the power of the water, again. It rinses away the debris of Kris's tortured life, which has now been teased to the surface. It is nothing more than a scab, an inert layer that has no more purpose.
And what is the part played by Kris's mother? We see her as almost an ancillary character, a comfort for Kris when it is needed but taking no significant role in his personal odyssey. Kris's mother, in the end, is the final cleansing agent for her son, but has played no part to our knowledge in creating the circumstances that have haunted him for so long. Hari, the only woman of importance in Solaris, is the bearer, and also a cause, of Kris's anguish. Tarkovsky allows her no relief. Her earthly existence is filled with sadness and her reproductions know little but pain and emptiness. Is this, as with 2001, a reflection of conventional contemporary views of femininity? Solaris, in the end, is a man's story, but by that means we also learn something of the burdens often carried by women.
Ocean Solaris begins to understand what gives Kris his humanity. When Kris's fever lifts, his first thought is of Hari. But she has gone, and will not return. Hari is not at the innermost core of his life force. The purpose of Kris's ordeal goes beyond assuaging the guilt that haunts him over Hari's death. Her shawl is there, the steel door remains as a sign of the pain and violence of her brief existence, but Kris has no more need of her companionship. His need lies deeper yet.
Snow and Sartorius, too, have been freed. No more apparitions will appear. But the ocean is channelling energy into other mysterious activities. Islands are forming in the boundless sea. First meaningful contact has been made between humans and an alien lifeform. The station can continue in existence, and the destruction of the ocean by radiation will be unnecessary. Kris has completed his mission.
But what has the ocean learned from its exploration of humanity that prompts it to make changes within its own structure? How long has this life force lain undisturbed, and what dormant mechanism now responds to the stimulus of something outside its own experience? The transformation of Solaris implies that there is something inevitable about the meeting of these two species, that for both the ocean and the humans who live close by it the encounter is the trigger for a new level of consciousness and a sense of place, of purpose, of a destiny that is woven into the very fabric of the universe they share.
And what destiny is it that now awaits Kris? He has no reason to remain exiled in this distant place, but what is left for him back on earth? Just as Dave in 2001 underwent a transformation beyond the point of any human reference, so Kris's experiences have carried him long past the point where he can simply return whence he came; so his journey is almost complete. It is time for Kris to learn - or to be reminded - of his own true source and find his ultimate destination.
Kris is back home, back in that paradise where we first saw him so deep in thought. But the summer is gone. It is winter. The water is still, frozen at its last point of motion. Its long journey is done. This is Kris's final destination, but it is also the source. Kris approaches the old house, peers through the window. His father is sorting through books. Water from a leaking ceiling cascades over him, but he seems not to notice, just as Kris paid no heed to the summer shower. It is our final reminder of the flow of Kris's life back to the man who gave him that life.
Tarkovsky slowly pulls his camera up and away. As our field of view widens, there is the garden, the lake, the road. The dacha, rooted in a distant past, is the centrepiece. But something more gradually encroaches from the edges of the screen, something new yet born out of an existence vastly more ancient than the house. In the last scene of this magical film, we realise that we have witnessed a point of evolutionary significance for not one, but two races. Kris's father, like Kris himself, has journeyed, unknown to us but implied with his own words earlier on, beyond the need of any earthly shelter. At the doorway to what we once knew as their home on earth, Kris and his father - or what Kris and his father have now become - are reunited.
We understand the purpose of one of those islands that has formed in the great ocean of Solaris.
The difficulties experienced during the making of 2001 have been well documented, often centred on Kubrick's insistence on achieving the closest possible match with his demanding standards even if it went against advice offered by other people. Kubrick, however, was fortunate. He was given a multi- million- dollar budget and access to the facilities he needed. To achieve the miracle of Solaris, Tarkovsky had to struggle against odds that would have seemed insurmountable to most film- makers used to working in the pampered west.
Early in my Spectacle page, I refer to a contemporary description of Stanley Kubrick and the filming of 2001, with a link to the full text in the Places page. It is fascinating to compare this view of movie- making in the west with the situation facing Tarkovsky in Soviet Russia. Here is my interpretation of records left by and about Tarkovsky.
Andrey Tarkovsky: 4 April 1932 Moscow - 29 December 1986 Paris (Ref. 2)
Solaris, released in 1972, was the third of the 7 feature films directed by Andrey Tarkovsky between 1962 (Ivan's Childhood) and 1985 (Sacrifice).
In 1973, the year after the completion of Solaris, Tarkovsky spoke about the film with a Russian interviewer, Z. Podguzhets. The text appears in Kitty Hunter-Blair's book, named in the footnote to this section. This is my summary of part of the text. Please note, I use "man" here in a generic, not gender, sense.
As Tarkovsky read it, the key to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris was not the technological sophistication represented by space travel, but "the moral problems evident in the relationship between Kelvin and his conscience". The spiritual implications of technology were more important to Tarkovsky than the technology itself. He described two opposing forces influencing man: one, a yearning for complete moral freedom; two, the search for meaning in his own existence. The inevitable result was a deep inner conflict and a battle with conscience, which Lem expressed through the relationship between Kelvin and his wife, Rheya, summoned back to physical form in station Solaris. Surrounded as he is by the ultimate products of technological achievement, with which he pursues his urge to explore the universe, Kelvin can do nothing to avoid coming face to face with the implications of his own past actions.
Kelvin can never distance himself from the forces that shaped his own development. However far he journeys, he will ultimately be drawn back to his own roots. Even at the limits of human endurance, Kelvin is a creature of the earth and the people who gave him existence. The dream of returning home and eradicating the mistakes of his past lies at the core of Kelvin's being, but it takes an alien intelligence to perceive the dream.
Yet that alien intelligence, too, is subject to whatever laws may govern the universe. The inescapable fate bestowed by a spiritual, moral existence is to live with the conscience that arises from the actions a person takes, with no prospect of a second chance. Kelvin's ultimate destiny is to return to the place where he was born. He can go nowhere else.
Andrey Tarkovsky revealed many of his own frustrations and inspirations in the form of a diary, which he kept for many years. During the period while he was directing Solaris (1971 and 1972), his diary records the creative difficulties he faced working for his studio, Mosfilm. As late as 1972, struggling with a looming deadline, Tarkovsky found himself presented with a long list of criticisms directed at his work by various bodies and committees, and obliged to respond. Complying with the requests for changes, Tarkovsky felt, would destroy the entire purpose of the film. Yet however keenly felt were his frustrations he knew he could not reject the demands.
In the end, Tarkovsky was able to reach a compromise by agreeing to carry out those changes that he felt able to accept. But even this was not enough. At a time when the possibility of showing Solaris at the 1972 Cannes film festival was being seriously proposed, Tarkovsky was faced with another round of changes. "In April I shall be forty", he wrote. "But I'm never left in peace, and there is never any silence...Late this evening I looked at the sky and saw the stars. I felt as if it was the first time I had ever looked at them...what have I done...? Three pathetic pictures..."
Then the miracle occurred. Solaris was passed with no futher alterations, in time for its premiere in Cannes on 13th May 1972.
Solaris was awarded the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Tarkovsky finally left his home country in 1984. Since his death just two years later he has belatedly been afforded the recognition he did so much to earn, in his own country and around the world.
SOLARIS by STANISLAW LEM - LIST OF CONTENTS 1 The Arrival "A hatch opened, and with a long, harsh sigh, the metal shell which imprisoned me reached the end of its voyage." 2 The Solarists "...any scientist who devotes himself to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discern fragments of an intelligent structure... 3 The Visitors "...a tall silhouette appeared, barely distinguishable in the surrounding gloom... Who was this monstrous Aphrodite?" 4 Sartorius "...I realized that he had not heard a word I was saying. Both hands behind his back, he was holding the door in position with all his strength..." 5 Rheya "Not even a steel robot could have imparted such a convulsive tremor to an 8-ton mass, and yet the cabin contained only a frail, dark- haired girl." 6 "The Little Apocrypha" "...the human face has an expression, and this face... It was alive, yes, but it wasn't human." 7 The Conference "...the door did not open; it shook and vibrated... The steel frame bent further and further inwards and the paint was cracking." 8 The Monsters "It is not their nightmare appearance that makes the gigantic symmetriad formations dangerous, but the total instability and capriciousness of their structure..." 9 The Liquid Oxygen "There was a shrill hissing noise, interspersed with heavy, muffled thudding... I could hear a dreadful labored whining..." 10 Conversation "...there's something I have to say: you are doing all you can to stay human in an inhuman situation." 11 The Thinkers "There was speculation about a sudden heart attack... but I have always believed that this was in fact the first suicide, brought on by the first abrupt crisis of despair." 12 The Dreams "Out of the enveloping pink mist, an invisible object emerges, and touches me. Inert, locked in the alien matter that encloses me, I can neither retreat nor turn away..." 13 Victory "It is capable of carrying out organic synthesis on the most complex level... It knows the structure, micro- structure and metabolism of our bodies..." 14 The Old Mimoid "Tell me something. Do you believe in God?" - Afterword The Open-Ended Parables of Stanislaw Lem and Solaris, by Darko Suvin
Although Tarkovsky gives us nothing as dramatic as a monolith or a cosmic light show, I can well imagine that Kubrick and Clarke may have felt some envy at his treatment of the alien theme, compared to which the 2001 version of alienness is rather remote and mechanical. Solaris was not a collaboration in the same way as 2001 - my understanding is that, unlike Clarke, Lem was not involved in the filming of his novel. The script as filmed was written by Tarkovsky himself, with Friedrich Gorenstein, and departed considerably in places from Lem's novel.
The film, however, is more convincing than 2001 and, ultimately, more satisfying as a taste of the truly alien universe that is likely to exist "out there" (if any such thing as an alien life form is ever found to exist at all), and the effects of the encounter on the ability of human beings to operate rationally. There is no Hal- type blurring of the boundaries between man and artificial intelligence - all of the non- human intelligence in Solaris is decidedly non- human in origin.
In 2001, we witness the assisted evolution of mankind and its destiny with machines and higher life- forms. In Solaris, we see man as a distinctly un-assisted earth- bound creature confronted by forces outside his understanding, yet inescapably coming to the realisation that those forces are nothing other than his own fears and deeply- hidden yearnings. Solaris joins 2001 in showing us that man has just three choices when it comes to sharing the universe with other intelligences. We can conquer them, learn to live with them or move somewhere else. We cannot confront when faced with something outside our ability to comprehend.
Solaris is long, and challenging, and requires patience (it is almost 30 minutes longer than 2001). The reward for allowing yourself to be immersed in its slowly- unfolding mystery is an experience that is unforgettable, even after only a single viewing, and you will find yourself recalling scenes many years later that cannot be confused with any other movie. A truly unique science- fiction classic, indeed, and a remarkable and beautiful achievement. Not to be confused with 2001 in any way, other than opening our minds up even further, but I'd have thought a natural journey for 2001 followers to go on.
In idle moments, I dream of grafting 2001 with Solaris. Replace the Jupiter encounter and subsequent events in 2001, with the hypnotically rising and falling sea of Solaris in all its moods (the alien sea is already there in 2001!) and the struggles of Dave to come to terms with its impact on his "humanness". Hmmm.
From UNDERMAN'S 2001
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