A nation's image of outer space reflects itself. Jules Verne's moon train was a small wagon-lit. American science-fiction movies stress the gleaming pipes and dials, a kind of hi-fi waterworks. Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris," gives us Russian outer space.
I say Russian rather than Soviet because this complex and sometimes very beautiful film is about humanity but hardly at all about politics.
In any case, the space station on the planet Solaris has an absent-minded neglect about it that could have come straight out of Dostoyevsky's study. There is a suspicion of rust on the pipes, and the furniture would look at home in the Omsk railroad station. One has the feeling that wrappers of half-eaten sausage are lying just out of sight and that a samovar is at work. Outer space is shabbiness, lots of tea and urgent philosophical discussions that leave no time for shaving.
Nothing that's visible matters very muchexcept for nature: shots of a pond of water weeds of a running horseand life's surface are quite unimportant. Because of it, the blockish camera work, the egg-like colors and the general visual poverty are almost irrelevant. What matters is the conversations, the problems they raise, the faces that reflect them, seen blurrily as if at the end of an all-night session.
Mr. Tarkovsky, who is known here for a truncated version of "Andrei Rublev," made "Solaris" from the novel by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. It is science-fiction in the formal sense of the word; in substance, it is a parable about the nature of mankind.
Set in some future time, it is about the voyage of Chris Kelvin to the space station on the planet Solaris. The Academy of Sciences has found no profit in the long studies made of the planet. Chris's mission is to talk with the three scientists at the station and to report on closing it down.
The surface of Solaris is something like a sea, a great pulsating mass. A previous scientist, Burton, has come back in severe nervous shock; he believes that it may not be a sea but a superior order of consciousness, a great brain, in fact. Chris, a haunted but practical man, a missioner of human progress, is prepared to order a final experiment: a massive infusion of radiation into the "sea."
Burton, now older, is horrified. "You must not destroy what you don't understand," he says. Chris's father, a solitary, severe man, is also appalled. "Space is too fragile for your kind," he says.
The whole long, strange trip develops the theme. Mankind, with its aggressive expansionism intellectual as well as materialdestroys more than it finds. Chris is the practical man who, by the film's end, will be converted.
He finds that the space station, that summit of technology, is a heart of darkness. All three scientists there have been shattered by encountering the mystery of the planet. Solaris is, in fact, a great consciousness. Thought is made reality there, including the deepest thoughts of its visitors.
One has killed himself, leaving behind an obscure message on videotape for Chris. As he explores the decrepit space stationalmost visibly rusted by the presence of a greater realityChris finds the other two. Sartorius, who will not accept what he can't understand, barricades himself in his laboratory surrounded by dwarfshis thoughts made substance. Snouth, more innocent and hopeful, drinks a lot, but his visitors are children.
Chris has arrived with the suicide of his wife, Hari, on his conscience. Hari begins, nevertheless, to visit him. She is not an apparition; she is a yearning that the Solarian sea has given substance and builtthe other scientists explainof neutrinos. But she becomes more and more human until, in an act of abnegation, she asks to be destroyed so Chris can return to earth.
Put in summary, the plot may seem ludicrous. "Solaris" has its problems. Its rhythm is slow, and sometimes is extinguished altogether. The narrative can be difficult to grasp. Finally, as the film draws into conclusion, the parable seems to unclothe; the sense of wonder that Mr. Tarkovsky has created yields to a certain didacticism.
All of these drawbacks must be cited provisionally. "Solaris," whose mystical, totally nonmaterialistic character has won it no other favor in the Soviet Union than the permission to exist, is on DVD in a severely truncated form. The original was reportedly four hours long; a second version, shown in Cannes and elsewhere at the time of its release, was 2 hours and 47 minutes. The version we are seeing is down to 2 hours and 12 minutes and the distributors, who received it that way, say they don't know whether Mr. Tarkovsky supervised the cuts before his death.
Obviously it is impossible to judge the pace, the rhythms and the clarity of a film that is cut nearly in half. It is like a fresco partly eaten away by rising damp.
The result must be viewed actively and with some effort. But if it is, the result is extraordinary enough to compensate. The film's great metaphorsthe faces of Donatis Banionis as Chris, Natalya Bondarchuk as Hari and Yuri Jarvet as Snouthinvolve us totally in the difficult mysteries. Like his Solarian sea, Mr. Tarkovsky has made ideas walk, breathe and move us.
I say Russian rather than Soviet because this complex and sometimes very beautiful film is about humanity but hardly at all about politics.
In any case, the space station on the planet Solaris has an absent-minded neglect about it that could have come straight out of Dostoyevsky's study. There is a suspicion of rust on the pipes, and the furniture would look at home in the Omsk railroad station. One has the feeling that wrappers of half-eaten sausage are lying just out of sight and that a samovar is at work. Outer space is shabbiness, lots of tea and urgent philosophical discussions that leave no time for shaving.
Nothing that's visible matters very muchexcept for nature: shots of a pond of water weeds of a running horseand life's surface are quite unimportant. Because of it, the blockish camera work, the egg-like colors and the general visual poverty are almost irrelevant. What matters is the conversations, the problems they raise, the faces that reflect them, seen blurrily as if at the end of an all-night session.
Mr. Tarkovsky, who is known here for a truncated version of "Andrei Rublev," made "Solaris" from the novel by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. It is science-fiction in the formal sense of the word; in substance, it is a parable about the nature of mankind.
Set in some future time, it is about the voyage of Chris Kelvin to the space station on the planet Solaris. The Academy of Sciences has found no profit in the long studies made of the planet. Chris's mission is to talk with the three scientists at the station and to report on closing it down.
The surface of Solaris is something like a sea, a great pulsating mass. A previous scientist, Burton, has come back in severe nervous shock; he believes that it may not be a sea but a superior order of consciousness, a great brain, in fact. Chris, a haunted but practical man, a missioner of human progress, is prepared to order a final experiment: a massive infusion of radiation into the "sea."
Burton, now older, is horrified. "You must not destroy what you don't understand," he says. Chris's father, a solitary, severe man, is also appalled. "Space is too fragile for your kind," he says.
The whole long, strange trip develops the theme. Mankind, with its aggressive expansionism intellectual as well as materialdestroys more than it finds. Chris is the practical man who, by the film's end, will be converted.
He finds that the space station, that summit of technology, is a heart of darkness. All three scientists there have been shattered by encountering the mystery of the planet. Solaris is, in fact, a great consciousness. Thought is made reality there, including the deepest thoughts of its visitors.
One has killed himself, leaving behind an obscure message on videotape for Chris. As he explores the decrepit space stationalmost visibly rusted by the presence of a greater realityChris finds the other two. Sartorius, who will not accept what he can't understand, barricades himself in his laboratory surrounded by dwarfshis thoughts made substance. Snouth, more innocent and hopeful, drinks a lot, but his visitors are children.
Chris has arrived with the suicide of his wife, Hari, on his conscience. Hari begins, nevertheless, to visit him. She is not an apparition; she is a yearning that the Solarian sea has given substance and builtthe other scientists explainof neutrinos. But she becomes more and more human until, in an act of abnegation, she asks to be destroyed so Chris can return to earth.
Put in summary, the plot may seem ludicrous. "Solaris" has its problems. Its rhythm is slow, and sometimes is extinguished altogether. The narrative can be difficult to grasp. Finally, as the film draws into conclusion, the parable seems to unclothe; the sense of wonder that Mr. Tarkovsky has created yields to a certain didacticism.
All of these drawbacks must be cited provisionally. "Solaris," whose mystical, totally nonmaterialistic character has won it no other favor in the Soviet Union than the permission to exist, is on DVD in a severely truncated form. The original was reportedly four hours long; a second version, shown in Cannes and elsewhere at the time of its release, was 2 hours and 47 minutes. The version we are seeing is down to 2 hours and 12 minutes and the distributors, who received it that way, say they don't know whether Mr. Tarkovsky supervised the cuts before his death.
Obviously it is impossible to judge the pace, the rhythms and the clarity of a film that is cut nearly in half. It is like a fresco partly eaten away by rising damp.
The result must be viewed actively and with some effort. But if it is, the result is extraordinary enough to compensate. The film's great metaphorsthe faces of Donatis Banionis as Chris, Natalya Bondarchuk as Hari and Yuri Jarvet as Snouthinvolve us totally in the difficult mysteries. Like his Solarian sea, Mr. Tarkovsky has made ideas walk, breathe and move us.
