“Solaris” (1972): A Review
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Writers: F. Gorenshteyn, Andrei Tarkovsky
Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem
Starring: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Juri Jarvet, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Vladislav Dvorzhetksy, Nikolay Grinko, Sos Sargsyan, Olga Barnet
Running Time: 167 Minutes
Puma Rating: Two Paws Up
When my human learned that this was not the 2002 version of the classic science fiction romance “Solaris,” that treated the audience to a side angle shot of George Clooney’s bare bottom, she became disenchanted and refused to watch it with me. Despite my boundless despair at her lack of taste, I persisted and sat through the entirety of Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic cinematic achievement. It is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Donatas Banionis stars as Kris Kelvin, a “space psychologist” in a future where the Soviet Union has made significant technological advances but not to the point where we are treated to the typical clichés of flying cars and robotic companions. Kelvin is mournfully commemorating the anniversary of his mother’s death at his father’s home in the country when disgraced cosmonaut Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) arrives with a request. A government-funded mission to contact the sentient planet Solaris is in crisis. The space station orbiting Solaris has lost all but three of its scientists. The remaining men have ceased communication with Earth. The Soviet government needs Kelvin to travel to the station and evaluate the scientists’ health and determine whether the program should be continued. After some initial reluctance, Kelvin agrees to be flown to the station. When he arrives, he discovers the source of the chaos. Solaris is “listening” to the minds of the men onboard and manifesting people from their memories, a group that one of the scientists (Juri Jarvet) ironically calls “guests.” Kelvin is skeptical of all of it – until his deceased ex-wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) manifests in his room.
In the erstwhile Soviet Union, Tarkovsky was something of a rebel. Communist censors frequently diminished and interfered with his finished work and made it impossible for him to make more than five films for the entirety of his career. When it came to “Solaris,” they were very irritated by his focus on spiritual philosophy and the metaphysical. According to Bondarchuk, who had known Tarkovksy since childhood through her father, the filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk, the Soviets were philosophical “gravediggers” in the sense that they tried to suppress any notion of the spiritual. Yet, Tarkovsky’s “art was eternity.”
That preoccupation with the idea that there is something more than the mere physical permeates much of “Solaris.” Indeed, the film sometimes feels like a philosophy lecture. Right at the beginning, we’re treated to a nature vs. science debate between two characters. Throughout the film, the audience is treated to declarations like these:
“When we show pity, we empty our souls.”
“Shame will save mankind.”
“We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror…We are in a ridiculous predicament of man pursuing a goal that he fears and that he really does not need.”
“You love that which you lose.”
“Maybe we’re here to experience people as a reason to love.”
People do not speak in this lofty style of prose in real life. To some extent, Tarkovksy knows he’s not so much as telling a story with characters as he is using fictional stand-ins to appeal to the audience to think beyond the tangible. Characters frequently break the fourth wall and look directly at the audience. Usually this is done in the context of watching something on a screen, but the effect is so jarring that one gets the impression that Tarkovsky does not want his viewers to passively watch the film but rather to be active participants in it, taking in and being affected by the lessons he wishes to teach.
And yet at no point does the film feel bogged down by philosophy or science. From the opening shots of a lake near a country house owned by Kelvin’s father to the final, heartbreaking scene, “Solaris” teems with life. In less capable hands, the sentient planet Solaris would have been treated as a threat. Yet, Vadim Yusov’s cinematography is sensuous and textured; his soft shots of Solaris after major character arguments or mental revelations establishes the planet as less foe than benevolent companion, listening compassionately to the rantings and frustrations of the hapless humans on the station orbiting above its ocean. Tarkovsky and Yusov eschew the trappings of Eisensteinian montage for long, lingering shots that allow the characters to simply exist onscreen. We watch from a respectful distance as they speak, fight, think and make love. A few alternating shots contrasting fast-paced technologically advanced society with languid, quiet scenes of nature flouts science fiction conventions by making the viewer yearn for the simpler moments rather than the loud scenes from a society bent on progress at the cost of all else. Combined with the naturalistic sound design for both the space station and nature scenes, these contrasts serve as the audiovisual underpinning of Tarkovsky’s central philosophy. Namely, the idea that, as one character laments, “We have lost the ability to appreciate the smaller things.” His and Yusov’s cinematography is his critique. This is what the Soviet censors resented.
A scene of weightlessness on the station becomes a chaste, loving interplay between Kelvin and his “guest” Hari. Silent scenes from Kelvin’s childhood and of the real Hari at his father’s country house are repeatedly juxtaposed with the scenes from his present circumstances on the space station. From these lengthy and varied shots, we realize that Kelvin is yearning for something that he cannot articulate. His scientific career pales in comparison to his need to recover what is lost. For her part, Hari’s fascination with a Pieter Bruegel painting called “Hunters in the Snow” encapsulates realizations about herself, her love for Kelvin and memories from a past that is not really hers. Yet, she keeps her thought process to herself, away from Kelvin and us. Selective camera angles and minimal special effects keep the focus even further on the characters and their journey.
Throughout filming, Tarkovsky and Yusov were challenged by a shortage of color film. But this challenge proves to be one of the film’s greatest assets. Tarkovksy skillfully alternates between color and black and white shots, using the latter only when characters are experiencing a sense of isolation or sorrow. A film recording that Burton shows Kelvin and his family of his meeting with cold, skeptical Soviet bureaucrats is also shot in black and white as a testament to the soullessness of Soviet bureaucracy. A long scene involving Burton driving down a highway after his meeting with Kelvin also employs this color technique to evince his relative isolation and abandonment by a society centered on loud, fast-moving progress. The use of black and white film is also useful for feeding the ambiguity of a lingering question at the film’s conclusion. The use of black and white cinematography in a particular scene that could have guided our interpretation of the end instead leaves us with no definitive answer. Furthermore, Mikhail Romadin’s art direction elevates “Solaris” above traditional science fiction conventions by going for the simplicity rather than spectacle. Conscientiously avoiding the replication of typical spaceship designs seen in other films, Romadin instead opts for a slightly crumbling design of the Solaris space station that gives it the feel of a tin can. In that sense, we relate to the characters even more because their existence is not so removed from our less advanced reality. Tarkovsky is not interested in telling the audience about these characters through long, dramatic speeches or in showing off the advanced scientific world in which they live. He merely settles for showing us, and allowing the characters to preserve their inner monologues. What could have been a technological spectacle with grand ambitions instead takes the form of a delicate human drama that just happens to take place in space.
The acting is phenomenal. Bondarchuk in particular shines as Hari, a woman desperate to love and be loved. Her portrayal of Hari’s heartbreak and consuming love for Kelvin is nothing short of magnificent – especially considering the fact that she was not even 19-years-old when cast as the passionate, doomed Hari. Despite his limited screen time, Dvorzhetsky makes the most of Burton, a humiliated man desperately trying to find redemption with the Soviet bureaucracy that shunned him. Banionis fully embodies Kelvin’s transition from a capable, disinterested psychologist into a vulnerable soul whose deeply felt need for more gradually affects his health and psyche. Jarvet and Anatoly Solonitsyn are fantastic as Snaut and Sartorius, the space station’s surviving scientists. Both actors do an incredible job of conveying their characters as polar opposites who fight not only for Kelvin’s intellectual soul but also the audience’s. When Solonitsyn as Sartorius berates Kelvin for not “doing his duty” or Hari for thinking she’s a person, we feel the cold, penetrating gaze of the Soviet Union upon Tarkovsky’s art. The delightful Jarvet is gloriously tender as Snaut, allowing Kelvin and Hari their moments of grace while gently, sadly reminding them of the inevitabilities they must face. Jarvet’s subtle but affecting acting choices at the end feed into that aforementioned ambiguous storytelling moment. One gets the impression that while the others wax poetic, he is the true, patient guide to the audience’s spiritual awakening.
My only critique of the film is that there is some underdevelopment in the characters. Initially, Kelvin is a disinterested and clinical character. When Hari manifests to him the first time, he tricks her into getting into a rocket, then launches her into space. But when she comes back a second time, he suddenly becomes vulnerable and needy. Hari both gives him what he apparently yearns for but also makes him weak. There is no explanation for this change. The transition from strength to weakness is done too quickly, even arbitrarily, to be realistic. What makes Kelvin so quick to abandon his sense of professional distance the second time he sees Hari?
Furthermore, much discussion is given to the fact that Hari killed herself after an argument with Kelvin. He admits that he was going to transfer to another town for work without her and that he purposely ignored her signs of suicidal ideation. After Hari manifests for the third time, he says that he did not love the real Hari, but that he loves her, and she is his real Hari. Yet, Kelvin never remarried after Hari’s death. He avoids her question as to whether he engaged in any romantic relationships after her passing. He initially tries to hide the fact that her death was caused by his leaving. If Kelvin had stopped loving Hari during her lifetime, then how is it that her reappearance can bring him practically to his knees? What makes him fall in love with her when she appears to him at the space station as a corporeal being with a celestial origin? What stopped him from having any romances after her death?
A few of those lingering scenes that Tarkovsky favors so much could have been devoted to establishing Kelvin’s and Hari’s past relationship. What drew them to each other, to the extent that they were the loves of each other’s lives? What made the relationship break? Kelvin reluctantly admits that his mother disliked Hari immensely, but there is no effort to develop Hari’s character beyond the confines of her deep love for Kelvin. Why did his mother hate her? Was that a factor in their love turning sour? Is Kelvin in denial about his love for the real Hari and how it might be a factor in his sudden devotion to this space substitute? What made Hari so susceptible to suicide during her earthly life? Is her growing self-awareness and gradual character transition linked to the memories of that suicide and whatever mistakes she might have made with Kelvin in the past?
Kelvin’s mother is also a formidable but quiet presence in the background. In the scenes from his childhood, we see a beautiful but deeply unhappy woman glowering at the camera, while a younger version of his father smiles and laughs easily. Why is Kelvin’s mother unhappy? What kind of impact did she have on his life? Did the fact that such a sullen, withdrawn woman was his earliest female role model have a negative impact on how Kelvin accepted who Hari was as a person during their marriage? Olga Barnet plays Kelvin’s mother as a woman who is adept at doing the usual mothering but is generally undemonstrative with her son. Could this have affected Kelvin’s ability to love? Is this why he clings so strongly to Hari when a second chance arrives? How does one reconcile that idea with his earlier behavior and statements?
Granted, such development would probably have pushed the film past its nearly three-hour run time. But given Tarkovksy’s ingenuity in the face of Soviet restrictions and other hardships, I’m sure he could have found a way to provide a bit more insight into Kelvin’s and Hari’s relationship and the influence of Kelvin’s mother.
Overall, “Solaris” is a fantastic film and I highly recommend it to anyone taking their first steps into the world of Russian cinema. The Criterion DVD of this film includes highly illuminating interviews with Romadin, Yusov and Bondarchuk about Tarkovksy’s life, filmmaking style and experiences making “Solaris.” In a last-ditch effort to get my human to watch the film, I tried to show her these interviews, particularly Bondarchuk’s. Unfortunately, she’d fallen asleep on top of her iPad with her face resting on a screenshot of the George Clooney bare butt scene.