The open­ing cred­its of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris state it is “based on the sci­ence fic­tion by Stanis­law Lem.” It’s per­haps telling that the term “sci­ence fic­tion” is used in place of sim­ply “novel.” This faint hint of apol­ogy may hint at a lack of respect for the orig­i­nal Pol­ish novel or the entire sci­ence fic­tion genre as seri­ous lit­er­a­ture. A sim­i­lar ambiva­lence echoes decades later in the adver­tis­ing cam­paign of direc­tor Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remake, empha­siz­ing the roman­tic melo­drama over the fan­tas­tic, futur­is­tic setting.

Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (read The Dork Report Review) had arrived only a few years before Solaris, and was by a long shot the most seri­ous stab at intel­lec­tual, lit­er­ary sci­ence fic­tion cin­ema yet filmed. In his essay for the 2002 Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion DVD edi­tion of Solaris, Phillip Lopate out­lines three ways Tarkovky wished to dis­tance his film from Kubrick’s. He found 2001: A Space Odyssey “cold and ster­ile,” and set out to infuse his own sci­ence fic­tion with “pas­sion­ate human drama.” Unlike its predecessor’s gleam­ing high-technology, Tarkovsky built run-down and filthy sets for the space sta­tion, and found futur­is­tic earth­bound loca­tions in the con­tem­po­rary cars and archi­tec­ture of Japan. Finally, Lopate points out that Solaris shares more themes with Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­tigo than 2001, namely, “the inevitabil­ity of repeat­ing past mistakes.”

Kelvin sees dead people

The links between the two films go beyond the the­matic into the polit­i­cal; Solaris is fre­quently cited as the Soviet Union’s answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it ought to be viewed in the con­text of the Cold War. 2001: A Space Odyssey pre­ceded actual manned moon land­ings, the US’ most defin­i­tive vic­tory in the space race. Kubrick’s visu­als were so effec­tive that they spawned the still-simmering rumor that the moon land­ings were fal­si­fied using footage directed by Kubrick. But before all this, 2001: A Space Odyssey must have seemed like a threat or promise made to the USSR: say­ing, in effect, that the US is going to be first in space and the first to make first con­tact with alien intelligence.

So in this con­text, it’s hard not to inter­pret Solaris as at least partly a pro­pa­ganda coun­ter­shot. It too illus­trates how the soci­ety of its mak­ers and audi­ence also have the brain­power and resources to extend their empire into space. But most unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tarkovsky and co-writer Fridrikh Goren­shtein never allude to pol­i­tics or even men­tion the names of other coun­tries. Kubrick’s film envi­sions no end to the Cold War, even at least thirty years into the future. Kubrick’s vision of the future is actu­ally a wicked satire, show­ing how lit­tle he expects human­ity to evolve despite sig­nif­i­cant tech­no­log­i­cal advances. His future humans still engage in petty squab­bles and apoc­a­lyp­tic brinks­man­ship in the face of a poten­tially paradigm-shifting rev­e­la­tion: the dis­cov­ery of defin­i­tive evi­dence of alien intel­li­gence in a man­u­fac­tured mono­lith buried on Earth’s moon. The US sci­en­tists and gov­ern­ment offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ing the mono­lith seem unmoved by the pow­er­ful notion of alien con­tact, and instead hold bor­ing board­room meet­ings and pose for pho­tographs. In stark con­trast, Tarkovsky’s Solaris has no sense of humor at all, about any­thing. Per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant trait Solaris shares with Kubrick is a pen­chant for long takes. As Lopate also notes in his Cri­te­rion essay, atyp­i­cally for a Russ­ian film­maker, Tarkovsky favored long takes over Eisen­stein­ian montage.

Kelvin inspects the ductwork

In this vision of the future, the Soviet Union oper­ates a sci­en­tific research sta­tion in orbit over the ocean planet Solaris. An entire school of study called Solar­is­tics has sprung up around the study of the ocean’s pecu­liar prop­er­ties. Astro­naut Berton (Vladislav Dvorzhet­sky) returns to Earth with con­tro­ver­sial claims that the Solaris ocean some­how cre­ates phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of land­scapes and mon­strous crea­tures on the planet’s fluid sur­face. Dr. Gibar­ian (Sos Sargsyan), still sta­tioned at Solaris, sends for his old friend, psy­chi­a­trist Chris Kelvin (Donatas Ban­io­nis). Berton, haunted and pre­ma­turely aged by his expe­ri­ences, vis­its Kelvin at his father’s home in an attempt to warn him about what he is surely to expe­ri­ence, but Kelvin rudely dis­misses him. We later learn the source of Kelvin’s mis­an­thropy: his wife Hari (Natalya Bon­darchuk) com­mit­ted sui­cide after he left her some years before.

Kelvin arrives at Solaris to dis­cover that Gibar­ian has already com­mit­ted sui­cide. The strange man­i­fes­ta­tions Berton reported on the Solaris oceans are also occur­ring on board. Every sur­viv­ing sci­en­tist still aboard the space sta­tion is haunted by “guests,” their euphemism for the appari­tions that, as best they can deter­mine, are some­how culled from their most emo­tion­ally intense mem­o­ries. In due course, Kelvin’s dead wife rein­car­nates in a con­fused, partially-formed state. She is dazed and doesn’t quite under­stand who she is or why she is there, and doesn’t “remem­ber” that she is dead. When she tries to undress, she dis­cov­ers her dress is com­pletely sewn shut; Kelvin’s imper­fect mem­o­ries of her appar­ently don’t include but­tons ‘n’ zips. Kelvin also expe­ri­ences fever­ish night­mares in which he con­fuses Hari with his long-dead mother.

the twice-doomed Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk)

In a kind of filmed sui­cide note, Gibar­ian tells Kelvin the man­i­fes­ta­tions have “some­thing to do with con­science,” indi­cat­ing that the com­mon ori­gin of every guest is that they are each the pri­mary object of guilt in an individual’s mind. Gibar­ian asks Kelvin “did you see her yet?” sug­gest­ing that he sent for him because he cor­rectly pre­dicted Kelvin’s guest would be his dead wife Hari. The pres­ence of Gibarian’s guest (a lit­tle girl) was evi­dently for him an intol­er­a­ble curse, but per­haps he imag­ines it would be a gift for Kelvin to have Hari back. But the whole sit­u­a­tion begs the ques­tion: if the author­i­ties know about the man­i­fes­ta­tions, why would they agree to send such a psy­cho­log­i­cally dam­aged man as Kelvin?

When Kelvin attempts to leave Hari alone in his quar­ters, the not-quite-human crea­ture man­ages to smash through the door­way in pur­suit. She instinc­tively doesn’t want to be left alone, but can’t explain why. A suit­able sci­ence fic­tion expla­na­tion might be that she some­how senses that she may lit­er­ally dema­te­ri­al­ize when Kelvin’s brain is not within prox­im­ity. Or her newly-formed mind may be suf­fer­ing echoes of what the “real” Hari felt when she com­mit­ted sui­cide after Kelvin left her. What if Kelvin becomes com­fort­able liv­ing with this rein­car­na­tion of Hari, and his guilt for the orig­i­nal woman’s death lessens… will her rein­car­na­tion then disappear?

Kelvin at home in Mother Russia

An obser­va­tion: like Lind­say Anderson’s If… (read The Dork Report review), Solaris uses a mix­ture of black & white and color film. For most of the first hour, black & white footage ini­tially sig­ni­fies either film clips or tele­con­fer­enc­ing (note that the film cor­rectly pre­dicts widescreen HDTV mon­i­tors and web­con­fer­enc­ing in the future). But later sequences appear in black and white, with­out inter­nal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion: first as Berton dri­ves deject­edly back into the city (filmed in the alien land­scapes of Japan), and later as Kelvin locks him­self in his cabin on Solaris. To con­fuse the mat­ter still fur­ther, Kelvin brings a home movie with him from Earth, which is in color! I don’t have a the­ory to explain these log­i­cal dis­crep­an­cies; I’m just point­ing them out.

I’m sur­prised to find to find that I did not like the film as much as my first view­ing almost a decade ago. Solaris is as talky and over­writ­ten as its osten­si­ble model 2001: A Space Odyssey is ele­gantly quiet. Totally self-serious and humor­less, its three-hour run­ning time is frankly a lit­tle try­ing on the patience. In his 1977 appre­ci­a­tion of the film reprinted in the Cri­te­rion edi­tion book­let, Akira Kuro­sawa reports he was stunned by the expense when he vis­ited the set, equiv­a­lent to 600,000,000 yen at the time. But he defends the sig­nif­i­cant length of the early scenes set on Earth, which he inter­prets to be intended to instill nos­tal­gia for Kelvin leav­ing nature behind for­ever. Indeed, the time spent on Earth in the early parts of the film does pre­fig­ure a sig­nif­i­cant home­com­ing at the end, when Kelvin seems to return to a dream­like vision of his father’s house. The for­merly lush and mov­ing nat­ural scenery land­scape is now wasted and frost­bit. It rains inside as well as out, sug­gest­ing a kind of bap­tism or rebirth in the waters of Solaris.

Must Read: Solaris by Phillip Lopate

Must Read: the Organic Mechanic review by Adam Harvey

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.