Tarkovsky's SOLARIS Film

[Extollager]

Here are my notes (prepared about eleven years ago for a class I taught) on Solaris. I have a lot of comments, so I will send several messages.

#1

This is a science fiction movie, but the director goes his own way. There are places where we would expect, if we have seen typical SF movies, to see expensive special effects, but will not find them. Tarkovsky’s interest is in the human story, a story of loss and love, rather than in dazzling effects and comic book action. Note for SF movie fans: so far as I know, this is the first time that the spacecraft sets in a movie had a real “lived-in look.” The space station is messy – perhaps about what you’d expect from a place inhabited by two bachelors. Later movies such as Star Wars, with rusting metal, dangling cables, stained patches, etc., may owe something to Solaris.



Locations. I. We begin on earth, where Chris Kelvin, cosmonaut and psychologist, lives with his father. They have a dacha, a country house, with a garage where a horse is kept, and a pond. Possibly the woman Anna, of approximately the same age as Kelvin’s father, lives there, also. Is she the father’s sister? Friend? Housekeeper?

At the father’s invitation, Burton, another cosmonaut, joins them, showing film of his testimony (as a younger man) after his experiences flying above the surface of the planet Solaris. Burton brings his son. The young girl who plays with the son does not appear to be a member of the Kelvin household.

Burton says that he saw some truly bizarre things when he flew near the Solaris ocean. A typical SF movie would provide special effects sequences that would show us what Burton saw. Tarkovsky relies on Burton’s oral testimony. This keeps the focus on the human – the mental suffering of a man who believes, at least, that he has seen something very strange, and who also is not believed by some of his listeners.

We are shown Burton and his son riding into a large city via numerous tunnels and overpasses. We glimpse oriental writing – in fact, this sequence was filmed in Tokyo. Burton’s film shows people of unspecified nationality and agency discussing the state of “Solaristics,” etc. There is a suggestion that the political situation is different than that of ca. 1970, as the last names do not point to one nation. Interestingly, the rocket that appears about halfway through the film has Roman lettering (as in the English-speaking world and other Western locations), not Cyrillic – which is the alphabet most familiar to Russians, as in the opening credits.

Tarkovsky, working on the film circa 1970, apparently thought of the date of the movie as 2004.

 

[Extollager]

#2

II. The film omits the conventional science fiction movie footage of space travel, getting Kelvin to the space station above the Solaris ocean remarkably quickly.

Note: The film has often been considered to be a Russian answer to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which gives lingering attention to details such as the exterior of buildings and craft outside of earth, exercise under artificial gravity, and even a low-gravity toilet. Tarkovsky may be giving pointedly short shrift to technology.

Sets within the station include corridors; Chris Kelvin’s room and those of the two men living there when he arrives, Snauth and Sartorius; a library/lounge; a cryogenic storage area where the dead cosmonaut Gibarian awaits burial, etc.

III. Finally, the puzzling conclusion of the film combines features of earth and of the Solaris ocean, perhaps literally, perhaps in Kelvin’s consciousness. The pond at Kelvin’s dacha is frozen, and steaming rain (?) falls inside the dacha.

Recordings, dreams, etc. that depart from the chronology that begins with Chris by the pond, at the beginning of the movie: The majority of the film proceeds straightforwardly enough, but there are a number of departures from this sequence [which we will label A-F].

The lengthy flashbacks provided by Burton [A] are tape. There is a frame-within-a-frame effect in the brief film of clouds above Solaris – all that Burton managed to film during his flight above the planet [A-1]. The Burton material [A, A-1] gives us much background regarding Solaris, the space station, etc. – that is relevant to Chris’s own forthcoming mission; also, it portrays the defeat that an evidently decent and competent man, Burton, has experienced, which has left him somewhat bitter.

A second batch of electronic flashbacks is provided by [B] Gibarian’s confession, prepared just before his suicide, and indicating his guilt, probably connected with the young girl in blue. We see [B] in two installments.

A third electronic recording imparting a sense of the past to us is [C] the film Kelvin brings to the space station. We are given no explanation for its juxtaposition of portions filmed by Kelvin’s father, showing Chris as a boy and his melancholy-seeming blonde mother, and material filmed by Chris himself, showing a thoughtful Hari. Unlike the Burton and Gibarian material, there is no narrative here, and, obviously, it is not chronological. This produces a somewhat dream-like quality.

Late in the long section of the movie that occurs on the space station, Kelvin and Hari float in temporary weightlessness, and the screen is filmed with [D] a series of details from Breughel’s painting Hunters in the Snow. This is not yet a dream sequence, but it has a dreamy effect. We inevitably associate it with the imagery from the beginning of the film that shows Chris in the outdoors, at the country cottage. It is important that Tarkovsky provides outdoors sounds, e.g. birds and bells, while the picture is shown to us. That discourages us from thinking of the painting in an art history way more than as an expression of the harmony between human needs and feelings, and nature. The snowy scene is bound to be more resonant for Russian viewers than, say, a tropical scene would have been.

Kelvin becomes ill and evidently [E] hallucinates that he sees multiple Haris, and his mother; and he dreams or hallucinates a meeting with his mother.

As for the final sequence, [F] Chris’s return to the dacha, reunion with his father – it feels too easy to say this is just in Chris’s mind and he is hallucinating or dreaming while on the space station. On the other hand, plainly he has not simply flown back to earth and gone home to exactly the same house and circumstances that he left.

 

[Extollager]

#3

Images. The film begins and ends with water – graceful water plants in the Russian countryside where Chris lives at the beginning, and the Solaris ocean at the end. In between there are: a rain shower at the dacha; water in a shower in Kelvin’s bathroom; Chris’s memory or hallucination of his mother washing his hand; and Solaris itself, which seems to be entirely covered by water or some other liquid.

The presence of so much water may tend to support the Undine-interpretation (see below).

Fire appears: the bonfire into which Chris throws mementos before he leaves earth; fire of blazing rockets; Chris’s clothing on fire after he dispatches Hari from a rocket. (We must simply suspend our disbelief. Chris could not fire a rocket directly into the vacuum of space as he does in this scene. However, the ignoring of scientific fact here permits Tarkovsky to show Chris burnt by his fearful rejection of Hari, and perhaps the symbolism justifies the factual error.

Pictures – in addition to videotapes, etc. – are important. Chris discarded a photograph of Hari on earth, but brought one like it – or rescued the same one, after all, and brought it – to the space station. He has a copy of Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity in his room. Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow connects with the snowy scenes in Chris’s film.

Light – blinding light – appears at the end of Burton’s film of Solaris and at the end of Gibarian’s tape. Chris awakens beneath bright light in his room. Chris is supported by Snauth and Hari as he advances towards an extremely bright light in the space station. In each case, what happens next, after the bright light appears, provokes our attention or conjectures. There may be a connection with the traditional symbolism of light as revelation and truth. The lights in the tunnels through which Burton and his son ride, however, seem stress-inducing in a typical modern way. Another notable use of light: Hari is warmly backlit when we first see her, unlike anyone else in the film.

Style. The film doesn’t emphasize the standard “Gothic” science fiction effects. There is a little looking around, looking into corners where things might be hiding or have just disappeared, etc., but Tarkovsky is not trying to evoke claustrophobia and other fears as persistently as many other SF films made later or before Solaris. Much of the time the camera is showing us faces – Kelvin’s, his father’s, Burton’s, Hari’s, even the face of Solaris itself – and gestures. Snauth has a bruise on the left side of his face when we first see him, which he touches after he gives first aid to Kelvin. As noted above, it seems to me that ordinary bruises and burns are associated with moral failure in this movie; by contrast, when Hari literally tears a door down to reach Chris, cutting herself, she heals with unnatural (supernatural?) swiftness. (As in the scene when Chris launches a rocket into the vacuum of space, we may boggle at the unbelievability of a woman tearing through a metal (?) door, but intuitively the scene makes sense – it is a powerful dramatization of her determination to be with the one she loves. Also, it may indicate that Hari as a “new-born” doesn’t understand doors!)

 

[Extollager]

#4 and last.

Interpretation. The film may legitimately be considered as what it obviously is, a science fiction story speculating about contact with a very alien intelligence that somehow produces replicas of memories and dreams, made not of atoms but “neutrinos.” It has been likened to an American thriller from the 1950s, Forbidden Planet, and may also remind some viewers just a little of the Star Trek pilot, “The Cage” (incorporated into the series as a two-parter called “The Menagerie”).

Also, though, it is a story of guilt and repentance, and a kind of second chance that cannot happen on earth. It is about love, love rejected, reconciliation, forgiveness, loss. Unlike most movies (“realistic” or not), it can promote in us a renewed sense of the reality, mysteriousness, and preciousness of these human capacities.

“Contact” is mentioned often, and must be a theme of the film. Note that at the beginning of the film, Chris seems to look – for a moment -- right at us, but during much of the film he is looking away from the person with whom he is in conversation (e.g. Hari). When Hari earnestly declares that she is becoming human, she looks at us.

Viewers can make varying but legitimate connections to the film. One approach might be to consider the Hari story as akin to that of Undine, a water-spirit who gains a soul through love of a human man. (Friedrich de la Motte Fouque is the author of Undine [1811]; the story is available online.) In the film, an Undine-connection might be hinted at by the saturated blue garment that Hari is wearing when she convulsively returns to life late in the film, as well as the pervasive appearance of water in many other scenes, especially with regard to Solaris itself, as mentioned above.

By her love and her willingness to suffer, Hari-Undine perhaps gives to Kelvin a renewal of human attributes – at least as much as she receives from him or from her love for him. He seems to grow, in the course of the movie. At the end, he has become reconciled to his father though he has, evidently, lost Hari.

During most of the film, Hari wears a dress with earth tones. That does not support the idea that she is a “water-spirit”! On the other hand, those brown and tan tones contrast with the metal-glass-and-plastic environment of the space station and with lab coats and so on; she is more natural.

Some things in the movie still puzzle me!

 

[CS Johnson]

A lot of food for thought there, Extollager, and again thanks for that. There's an urgent need to watch the movie again before being able to come back with a considered response. 'Time's wing'ed chariot and all that.

 

[Vladimir]

#2
As for the final sequence, [F] Chris’s return to the dacha, reunion with his father – it feels too easy to say this is just in Chris’s mind and he is hallucinating or dreaming while on the space station. On the other hand, plainly he has not simply flown back to earth and gone home to exactly the same house and circumstances that he left.

In my opinion, Chris is on the surface of Solaris in the end and the Planet reproduces the dacha and his father for him. If I remember correctly (or it might be my imagination), the camera pans away in the final segment and it revealed that Chris is standing on one of the many islands on an alien surface.

Also, and most shockingly, it is raining, but the rain falls INSIDE the house, not outside. This is just another indication that the planet interprets the (unreliable) human memory to try to enter into the contact. One of the important points of films is that a contact with an alien intelligence is impossible for humans because we yet don't even know what's inside ourselves well enough.

 

[Vladimir]

By the way, excellent notes Extollager, thanks for sharing and for opening this thread!

 

[j d worthington]

In my opinion, Chris is on the surface of Solaris in the end and the Planet reproduces the dacha and his father for him. If I remember correctly (or it might be my imagination), the camera pans away in the final segment and it revealed that Chris is standing on one of the many islands on an alien surface.

No, your memory is correct on this one, only it isn't a pan, but the camera pulling back to reveal the planet's surface. Though it has been a while since I saw the film, I recall that one taking my breath away at that point; and in a discussion with a fellow worker, he mentioned how when the film was shown at the university here, with that last shot, the entire audience gave a collective gasp when this was revealed... and, as you note, it makes sense of the oddities which otherwise remain quite puzzling.