Solaris

Wow, what an experience my wife and I had tonight seeing "Solaris", based on a novel by one of my favorite science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem. As we knew from reviews we had seen, it is a very long film at 165 minutes with many drawn-out but compelling scenes. Though it's a classic and has much to recommend it highly, I must admit that the first half I found a bit difficult to sit through - having just had a nice pasta dinner and some chocolate didn't help :-). It is such a complex film that it probably takes at least two or three viewings to feel that one has understood much of it.

The basic story is that a Russian spaceship in orbit around a planet has been sending back confusing status, and Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent to investigate. He finds out that the crew has been experimenting with sending pulses of radiation into the planet's vast ocean and are in turn manipulated by some sort of innate intelligence on the planet. "Guests" materialize on the ship, crafted from mental elements of the crews' minds.

The first night there, Kris himself wakes up to find his long-dead love Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) by his side. The other two crew mates, scientists Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) puncture any misconceptions that Kris may have by clarifying that "she" is not real, and invite Kris to try looking at a blood sample, which clearly is not human ("she" does "bleed" when hurt, but the "blood" can be easily wiped away). The scientists in fact want to experiment on sending an annihilation sacrificial pulse of radiation to the ocean below, and imply, it seems, an interest in using Hari for that purpose.

The film is unlike anything that I have seen before, and begs many philosophic questions about the nature of reality and existence, the meaning of love, time and timelessness, and much more. The sterile and very unnatural milieu of the spaceship, as well as the melancholic and minimalistic music and sound effects, make one despair for being in nature, and reflect on the early lakeside scenes. The ending (no spoilers here!) leaves room for interpretation and even understanding of just what happened. Hauntingly amazing.

The thing that generally stands out most about this movie is that it is long. Very long. And Russian. Very Russian.

It raises a lot of interesting questions about the nature of humanity, conscience, love, etc. which, honestly, I'd never thought to ask before, and don't care enough to answer now that they HAVE been asked. (Will Shame really save humanity? Who knows? Maybe. How will it do that? Haven't a clue. Now what's for lunch?) That's not to say I didn't like the movie. I did. It's very beautifully shot, such that I think it would be worth purchasing, even if I never sit through the whole thing again, just so that I can have scenes like "City of the Future" on hand as a reference for my own film-making endeavors.

Speaking of which: "City of the Future" is a very long scene consisting entirely of one character driving through the streets of Japan. It's supposed to look like, well, a city of the future, but to modern American audiences, it won't very much. It just looks like a guy driving his car through a series of tunnels, and past a series of skyscrapers, as day turns gradually into night. It goes on for five minutes.

But here's the thing, the paradox of this film: It didn't bother me that there is a five minute sequence consisting of nothing but shots of traffic. In fact, I loved it. It's an amazing scene, really quite beautiful in its own way. And a lot of the film is like that. It's slow and confusing, but still, it's never boring. Even once Kelvin gets aboard the Space Station, wherein 90% of the decor looks exactly the same. It's still fascinating to look at.

And the weird thing is, I can't figure out why. I mean, when I tried to watch 2001, another very long, beautifully shot movie set largely in space... I was bored literally to tears in the first 10 minutes, and had to shut it off. (No offense to fans of the film; I realize how incredibly crass I am for failing to recognize the genius of 2001. It's something I will just have to come to terms with on my own.) But for some reason, while watching Solaris, even when absolutely nothing was happening, I could not tear my eyes away. I have the strangest feeling that, if I were indeed to watch the movie again--without the subtitles--it could become one of my all-time favorites.

I don't know if I can recommend this film to others or not, because I have no idea if anyone else will share my sentiments. I don't know who will understand it and who won't, or who will even think it's worth trying to understand. There are, of course, some people who absolutely love it, and probably even some who understand it (or think they do), because... well, it's a classic, and a movie doesn't become a classic if nobody likes or understands it. But there are probably just as many people who hate it, because... well, it's a three-hour Russian movie.

At any rate, though, I think it's at least worth a look. If you find it boring, slow, incomprehensible, whatever... just turn it off. No big deal. But, on the other hand, if you find yourself inexplicably compelled to keep watching, unwilling or unable to tear yourself away for a single frame... well, then, you're welcome.

I'm just starting out into the vast world of foreign film and having seen this film on many a video store shelf, and knowing that it was considered a sci-fi classic, I thought it would be a good way to spend an evening. Based on the case I was expecting something along the line of typical American sci-fi. Needless to say I was wrong.

I watched Solyaris twice in two days, because the first time I saw it I knew that I hadn't processed even a quarter of what I knew was there. I was taken completely aback. The second viewing was extremely rewarding.

It was unusual for me, raised as I was on the sledgehammer moralizing and we'll make our point so obvious that there's no way you can miss it because we have no respect for your intelligence way of American film. I'm a huge literature buff, and this was one of the very few films I've confronted that is thoughtful and has so many things to say yet does it in a literary or poetic fashion.

You will get out of this film what you bring to it. I've been to so many movies where the audience is not actually participating, it's being attacked. But true art is not domineering; it woos you.

So to sum up, I greatly appreciated Tarkovsky's unwillingness to manipulate the viewer. It showed that he had respect for me as a thinking soul, and it is this love and respect for humanity which makes this a truly great film.

This has to be one of the best science fiction movies ever produced. Not because it's filled with gee-whiz gizmos or creepy aliens (it isn't) but because it actually gives you something to think about besides "I wonder how much they spent on *that* shot". When I was a kid, I used to love reading sci-fi because it stimulated my imagination, but as I grew up (especially once "Star Wars" came out), I found that it was harder and harder to find anything remotely resembling imagination or mystery in the genre.

Well, this movie has restored my faith in what is possible to achieve under the guise of "sci-fi" (obviously, it's older than "Star Wars", but I didn't see it until years later, when I had basically written off the whole idea of science fiction movies). I saw it 10-15 years ago when it was re-released in the USA and liked it then, but seeing it again recently has convinced me that this is an all-time classic. As I said, it actually stimulates thought (rare enough in most sci-fi movies), but on top of that, it has a real and profound emotional impact that's far beyond what you find in most "dramas", let alone "kid stuff" like sci-fi. If this movie is intended to be an "answer" to "2001" (I'm not convinced that it is), the main contrast is that "Solaris" concerns itself with real human emotions, whereas the most interesting character in "2001" is the computer.

For those who complain that it's boring, just go see something else. You'll obviously never get it. If the opening shot of water and plant life didn't tip you off to the fact that this movie is intentionally paced a little bit more deliberately than, say, "Buckaroo Banzai", then you should go out and try to get some sort of clue before watching this movie. It's not boring... it's SLOW. It's *meant* to be slow. Some of the scenes exist solely to set a mood, not to advance the plot. If you can't handle that, then this isn't the movie or you. But if you're able to sit still for 3 hours without squirming, and if you're able to enjoy a movie without having every idea spelled out in giant neon letters, then you just might like "Solaris", and find that it haunts you for years to come.

It's tough to come into a film like "Solaris" without tremendous expectations after having heard for so long about its greatness. If you don't immediately feel like it's one of the best movies you've ever seen -- after hearing so many say it is -- you're either tempted to overcompensate and exaggerate how overrated it is out of a sense of defensiveness, or think something's wrong with you for being the only one not to "get it."

As with most movies that have been saddled with the word "greatness," I understand why "Solaris" is considered to be such a watershed movie and so revered by so many, but I have to admit that I didn't personally feel myself responding to it all that much. Maybe I would on a second (or third or fourth) viewing, but I can't say I'm very compelled to watch it again. It's cerebral and philosophical, which I expected, and a bit cold and emotionally uninvolving despite the fact that it's about almost nothing but human emotions and how we react to life's biggest mysteries. I didn't warm much to the characters or ever really think of them as individual human beings so much as necessary conduits for communicating the film's philosophical ruminations. Despite being set in the vast reaches of space, it's a claustrophobic movie, which I think is intentional. We never see space, only the cramped interiors of a spaceship, and that feels right, since the movie is more about the vast universe contained within Man's head than it is about the great physical universe beyond our solar system's borders.

What I liked most about "Solaris" is that it suggests that Man isn't really developed enough to handle breakthroughs in our understanding of the larger universe. Given the chance to explore space and engage with elements beyond our comprehension, the characters in the movie instead spend all of their time ruminating over and regretting the people they left behind on Earth and the mistakes they made there. It's almost like Mankind turns to solving giant huge mysteries as a distraction from the fact that we're not capable of cracking the lesser, more mundane mysteries of everyday life, like love, commitment, and dependence on one another.

"Solaris" does have one chilling and memorable ending, I'll give it that. If we go poking around in what we don't understand, it seems to say, we may very well find ourselves unable to return to what we do.

Grade: A-