Solaris [DVD] [1972]

The story follows the book "Solaris" by Stanislav Lem. Solaris is a planet covered by the ocean. One of the hypothesis is that this ocean is a thinking matter that tries to correspond with humans. Misterious events happen at Solaris space station: personnel disappears, scientific experiments are in dolldrums, eventually contact with station is lost. A researcher played by the famous Soviet era Lithuanian actor - Banionis - is sent to investigate the situation and take a decision on whether to continue the work on a station or close it down...

However, let the viewer be forewarned that anybody expecting a thriller will be utterly disappointed. The film is a contemplation and analysis of what we consider important in our lives. The questions of duty, love, memory, nostalgia and soul occupy most of the film's content. In a way, science fiction only serves a purpose of the best conduit to explore the most important issues of human existence.

It is a definite tribute to Tarkovsky's mastery that film manages to convey its ideas with a bare minimum of science fiction stunts (if any) and very minimal other technical means of expression. Aspiring film makers can learn from Tarkovsky on how to create one of the most powerful images ever seen in the world cinema without big budgets or artificial wizardry.

Tarkovsky is a very consistent director in his film making. The attention to small details of nature, slow camera exploration of every shot will be familiar to the viewers who saw his other films. Indeed, after Mirror and Andrei Rublev, Solaris is a natural progression of Tarkovsky's initiate. The pleasure of recognising the common themes of all his films is an important viewing experience.

Solaris is more understating than "Mirror" or "Andrei Rublev" in its expression of Tarkovsky's own views. While it makes the film a touch more dificult (relative to the other two films)to understand, it definitely gives the viewer more room for interpretation and own exploration of spiritual topic.

Unlike Soderbergh's interminable and seemingly much longer take on Stanislaw Lem's novel, Tarkovsky's Solaris is a sensual film, but one where the senses aren't exactly numbed as dulled into a kind of half-dreamlike state. Like the reeds in the opening shot, you have to go with the ebb and flow - it's almost more of a feeling than a film. And, it has to be said, at times that feeling can be like being lulled to the verge of sleep, while at others it's like being caught up in a fever. It's tempting to wonder what Werner Herzog makes of the film.

Lem famously disliked the film with a passion, feeling it gave into the heart rather the head with trite clichés: "Instead of focusing on deeper moral questions related to frontiers of human knowledge, he made a drama-type Crime and Punishment in space, by making up unnecessary characters of parents and relatives, then adding a hut on an island," was one of his less bitter comments after he fell out with Tarkovsky writing the script, although that implies a far more sentimental film than Tarkovsky delivered. Certainly the issue of whether the visitors are a gift, an experiment, a probe or a defensive psychological attack on the scientists is all but ignored in favour of their emotional effects on Kelvin and (to a much lesser effect) the scientists: these characters really aren't looking for answers, they're looking for a mirror, and it's their insular nature that condemns them to literally float in their own islands of memory (or a 'hut on an island' if you ascribe to Lem's view).

Rather than a formulaic movie redemption tale or Lem's examination of our inability to truly comprehend a superior alien intelligence because of the biological limitations imposed on us almost as design faults, Tarkovsky's film is about the limitations we impose on ourselves regardless of how far we technically advance and our inability to rise above them. Its nominal hero, Kelvin, is not a pleasant man and the film makes little attempt to bring the audience to his side. He treats the disgraced Cosmonaut Burton with insensitivity, professes a ruthless scientific pragmatism that allows for no human element and his immediate response to his first 'guest' on the Solaris research station is to deceive and dispose of her. Yet ultimately, as much because of his emotional limitations as in spite of them, he's the one human being who acts most humanely by recognising, albeit in a totally self-centred way, that the fault lies not in the stars but in themselves. Like Burton's young son with the horse in the lengthy prologue on Earth, he displays a childlike fear and rejection of something he doesn't understand before reluctantly accepting that it may have beauty, even if it's a beauty he cannot comfortably embrace.

But the most human character remains the least human: Hari, or rather his image of his dead wife Hari, unable to feel anything that he does not remember for her, stifled by his limitations and gradually assuming a painful awareness and despair of her own. Ironically, it's as she becomes more human that she becomes more unstable. To the other scientists it's because the visitors are unstable neutrino systems, but it's when the artificial Hari studying a painting - another artificial creation of man's consciousness - which triggers a real memory that the horror of her situation as a mere facsimile strikes home. To Kelvin she's at first more a penance than a second chance, a condemnation to repeat history while remaining oblivious - as he presumably did with the real Hari - to the person she is really becoming.

So, not exactly a barrel of laughs, but strangely compelling if you go with it. The 165 minutes don't exactly fly by, but they certainly can get under your skin if you're in a receptive mood and it's not hard to see why it's been so influential on Hollywood sci-fi (Sphere, Event Horizon and Star Trek The Motion Picture among the most prominent).

Sadly, I was shocked by just how bad the picture quality of the first hour of Criterion's Region 1 NTSC DVD was compared to the PAL Russico/Artificial Eye Region 2 PAL one - aside from some grading and subtitle changes it looks like you're watching a bad standards conversion of a video tape that's been burned onto a CD-R for all of the Earth-bound sequences, although the colour is better. If it weren't for the better extras package - including several deleted/extended scenes and detailed interviews - I doubt I'd have kept this copy. So, if you're wondering which to buy, the Criterion NTSC disc has the better extras but the Artificial Eye PAL disc has the better picture.

SOLARIS remains Tarkovsky's most spiritually intense film - an unparalleled achievement that quietly gathers force with each passing year. Entirely devoid of the glibness and hip irony that cripples much of today's cinema, SOLARIS is an unapologetically earnest and sincere attempt to explore the state of the human soul and the redemptive powers of simple, human love.

The DVD transfer is very good, but without knowing the condition of the print used or the technical details of the transfer, one can't really make a judgement. Suffice to say, it's superior to the VHS editions I have seen and is presented in its original aspect ratio. The extra features are fascinating and include present day interviews with actress Natalya Bondarchuk, Tarkovsky's sister and a late sixties featurette on lead actor Donatis Banionis (a revered stage actor). There's also an original trailer/promo spot for Mirror, with a glimpse of Tarkovsky himself, and some good production stills on Disc 2. The major complaint here though, derives from the ridiculous decision to put the film itself onto 2 discs. Why not place the film in its entirety onto disc one and the extra features onto disc two as most other companies do?

In summary, if you don't mind flipping discs halfway through, and you're as continually amazed and moved by the cinematic power of Andrei Tarkovsky, then buy this DVD now!!

Daniel S Graham
Sydney, Australia