Director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), who co-wrote the screenplay from the novel by Stanislaw Lem, uses stark, clean images, long shots, long takes, and deliberately self-conscious camera movements to tell us Kelvin’s story. Like many great filmmakers, he is uninterested in “fooling” us into thinking we are simply looking through a window at reality. These images are punctuated by philosophical waxings, first by Burton and the Kelvins on Earth, then by the three scientists on Solaris. The forthcoming DVD version of “Solaris” should be preferable to VHS, not just because it will be a sharper reconstruction of the original celluloid images, which Tarkovsky renders through strong contrasts in primary colors, but because it will more accurately bring us the distant footsteps and jingles to which the cosmonauts are subjected while on Solaris. Like the more recent film “Signs,” “Solaris” is masterful in creating a sense of lurking unease, of being watched while something scrapes its feet in the next room.
The research facility on Solaris shares some of the stark white cleanliness of Kubrick’s spacecraft in “2001,” but while “A Space Odyssey’s” sets and visuals still remain crisp and stunning even after a quarter-century, Tarkovsky’s equipment has dated slightly. Tarkovsky has made no attempt, probably intentionally, to “futurize” Russia, and the streets and vehicles look no different in the future than in 1972. The Solaris station is convincing, although there are several spaces within it where we see neither the floor nor the ceiling. On VHS the interiors of the station don’t quite join with the Ocean exteriors; these images may be strengthened through digitally trickery for “Solaris’” upcoming DVD release, in the same way that matte lines have been removed from the original “Star Trek” movies for their DVDs. These glitches have little bearing on the film, and “Solaris” was made in the USSR of the 1970s, where I doubt films were a high priority for the state.
As Kelvin’s ghost, Natalya Bondarchuk (who herself wrote, directed, and starred in a 1986 Russian movie about Bambi) is the most memorable element of “Solaris.” Without revealing what or who she is, I will say she is immensely melancholy, with a reason, and she is vulnerable, beautiful, so hurt and fragile, yet oddly terrifying. The movie’s best scene is near the end, when the research station’s artificial gravity is temporarily deactivated. She and Kelvin sit in the library and watch glasses and candlesticks floating around them. The scene is great not because of the effects involved but because of the sad-eyed wonder with which she watches it.
Perhaps its greatest affinity with “2001” is that “Solaris” is masterful in its interpretative ambiguity. This is a movie that can be visited and revisited by both the heart and the mind. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming remake from filmmakers Steven Soderbergh (“Traffic,” “Kafka”) and James Cameron (“Aliens,” “The Abyss”). (“Solaris” was already sort-of remade in “Event Horizon,” a moderately-skillful outer space suspense piece. While featuring technically superior production design, “Event Horizon” is an overall inferior experience because of its inability to look past the thrill of ghouls jumping out of nowhere.) With the budget awarded to an Oscar-winning director, I expect Soderbergh’s “Solaris” to be even better looking than the original, and star George Clooney will no doubt give a fine performance. But I’m skeptical about whether any improvement can be made to the depth of Tarkovsky’s original’s vision.
Finished November 24, 2002
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