Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Starring Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis.
Starring Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis.
In a Nutshell: A man is visited by an apparition of his dead wife on board a space station.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s work expresses a pensive quality that can be refreshing or infuriating, depending on the pace at which you are accustomed. A movie like Solaris, a crown jewel in his filmography, does not immediately gain depth through its languid pacing and Tarkovsky’s lingering hold on shots. But it helps to draw us into the film’s aura and its meditations on our existence. Our main character is psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) who has been instructed to evaluate the conditions of a space station science crew orbiting the ocean planet Solaris. A pilot had returned from the planet claiming to have seen a child on the planet’s surface, despite his data holding little water with the science brass on Earth. On board, the crew is distant and uncooperative while a video log of a dead scientist warns Kelvin of any supernatural activity, eluding that it drove him to suicide.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s work expresses a pensive quality that can be refreshing or infuriating, depending on the pace at which you are accustomed. A movie like Solaris, a crown jewel in his filmography, does not immediately gain depth through its languid pacing and Tarkovsky’s lingering hold on shots. But it helps to draw us into the film’s aura and its meditations on our existence. Our main character is psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) who has been instructed to evaluate the conditions of a space station science crew orbiting the ocean planet Solaris. A pilot had returned from the planet claiming to have seen a child on the planet’s surface, despite his data holding little water with the science brass on Earth. On board, the crew is distant and uncooperative while a video log of a dead scientist warns Kelvin of any supernatural activity, eluding that it drove him to suicide.
Kelvin then finds an apparition of his deceased wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) created by Solaris’ psychic effects. Hari is not a pure replication, but a physical manifestation of Kelvin’s memories (minus any knowledge of the real Hari’s suicide). She starts to gain thoughts and emotions of her own despite being constantly aware over her non-existence. This unfolds at an almost unbearably slow pace, but Tarkovsky uses this a means to explore the issues of Hari’s sudden manifestation. If Hari is nothing but Kelvin’s memories, does this make her real? Through this incarnation of Hari, we see both the unknown around (the planet of Solaris) and the unknown within.
Solaris is not a guns and spaceships science fiction film. It is not even a sci-fi film about discovery (like 2001: A Space Odyssey, a vastly dissimilar film). But with the sci-fi elements Solaris provides, Tarkovsky can explore what it means to be human and our place in the universe. Yes, the film is lengthy and slow, but can establish a lonely, unfamiliar atmosphere to reflect on. It stands as a rare science fiction film built on emotion rather than intellect while still utilizing the genre’s freedom. Solaris is more an experience than a structured film, but a hauntingly beautiful one at that.
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