Solaris (1972 film)

Solaris (Russian: «Солярис», tr. Solyaris) is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris (1961), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station, to learn and evaluate the situation—yet soon encounters the same mysterious phenomenon like the others.

The Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species. Tarkovsky's adaptation is a “drama of grief and partial recovery” concentrated upon the thoughts and the consciences of the cosmonaut scientists studying an extra-terrestrial (alien) life. The psychologically complex and slow narrative of Solaris has been contrasted to kinetic Western science fiction films, which rely upon fast narrative pace and special effects to communicate character psychology and an imagined future.^[1] The ideas which Tarkovsky tried to express in this film are further developed in Stalker (1979).^[2]

The critically successful Solaris features Natalya Bondarchuk (Hari), Donatas Banionis (Kris Kelvin), Jüri Järvet (Dr Snaut), Vladislav Dvorzhetsky (Henri Burton), Nikolai Grinko (Kris Kelvin’s Father), Olga Barnet (Kris Kelvin’s Mother), Anatoli Solonitsyn (Dr Sartorius), and Sos Sargsyan (Dr Gibarian); the music score is by Eduard Artemyev. At the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.^[3]

Plot

Psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) spends his last day on Earth reflecting on his life while walking by a lake near his childhood home where his elderly father still lives. Kelvin is about to embark on an interstellar journey to a space station orbiting the remote oceanic planet Solaris. After decades of study, the scientific mission at the space station has barely progressed. To make matters worse, most of the crew has succumbed to a series of emotional crises. Kelvin is dispatched to evaluate the situation aboard ship and determine whether the venture should continue.

Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), a former space pilot, visits Kelvin. They watch film footage of Burton's own testimony years before of seeing an over-sized child on the ocean surface of Solaris while searching for two lost scientists. However, the cameras of his craft recorded only clouds and the flat ocean surface; Burton's report was dismissed as hallucinations. After failing to convince Kelvin of the truth of his experience, Burton leaves angrily only to later call Kelvin. He explains that he met the child of a scientist lost in that mission, and the child was reminiscent of the one he saw on Solaris.

Before departing Earth for Solaris, Kelvin destroys most of his personal mementos in a bonfire, noting the volume of keepsakes he has accumulated. In Kelvin's last conversation with his father (Nikolai Grinko), they realize that the father will not live to see Kelvin return. Although he readily accepted the mission, it is a choice that weighs heavily upon Kelvin's conscience.

Upon arrival at the Solaris space station, none of the three remaining scientists meet Kelvin, who finds the disarrayed space station dangerously neglected. He soon learns that his friend among the scientists, Dr. Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), has mysteriously died. The two surviving crewmen are unhelpful, and give contradicting and confusing information. However, Kelvin soon glimpses other people aboard the station. While Kelvin sends news of the chaos on board the station, the oceans of Solaris begin swirling on the planet's surface.

Waking exhausted from a restless sleep, Kelvin finds a woman with him in his quarters despite the barricaded door. To his surprise, it is Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), his late wife who committed suicide some years before. However, she is unaware of having committed suicide on Earth, and she is equally puzzled as to her presence in Kelvin's quarters. Grasping that she is a psychological construct brought on by the mysterious effects of Solaris, he lures her to a spacecraft and launches the illusion of his wife into outer space. In his haste to be rid of her, he is burned by the rocket’s blast. Dr. Snaut tends his burns and explains that the “visitors” began appearing after the scientists attracted the attention of Solaris, seemingly a sentient entity.

That evening, Hari reappears in his quarters. This time calm, Kelvin embraces Hari through the night. Later, Kelvin causes her to panic when she discovers the clothes of the first apparition and tries to leave the room. She beats her way through the room’s metal door, severely cutting herself. Kelvin carries her back to his bed, where her injuries heal before his eyes. Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) calls for a meeting, and Kelvin introduces Hari as his wife, insisting they treat her respectfully. In their symposium, the scientists begin to understand that Solaris created Hari from Kelvin’s memories of his dead wife. The Hari present among them, though not human, thinks and feels as though she were. Sartorius theorizes the visitors are composed of neutrinos and that it might be possible to destroy them.

Kelvin shows Hari films of himself and his parents when he was a boy and, later, of his wife. While she is asleep, Snaut proposes beaming Kelvin’s brainwave patterns at Solaris in hopes that it will understand them and stop the disturbing apparitions as communication. However, Sartorius suggests a radical attack of heavy radiation bombardment. In time, Hari becomes independent and is able to exist beyond Kelvin’s sight. She learns from Sartorius that the original Hari had committed suicide ten years earlier, and Kelvin is forced to tell her the entire story. Distressed, Hari kills herself again by drinking liquid oxygen, only to painfully, spasmodically resurrect a few minutes later. On the surface of Solaris, the ocean is moving even faster.

In a fevered sleep, Kelvin dreams of his mother and of many Haris walking about his quarters. When he awakens, Hari is gone, and Snaut reads him the good-bye note she wrote him. The note indicates that Hari asked the scientists to kill her. Snaut tells Kelvin that since they broadcast Kelvin’s brainwaves at Solaris, the visitors stopped appearing, and islands began forming on the planet's surface. Kelvin debates whether or not to return to Earth or to descend to Solaris in hope of reconnecting with everything he has loved and lost.

Again at the shore of the frozen lake, Kelvin finds himself at his father's house. His dog runs to him, and he happily walks towards it. He realizes something is wrong when he sees water is falling inside the house but is unnoticed by his father, who appears in the house. Father and son embrace on the front step of the lakeside house, on an island in the middle of an ocean on Solaris.

Production

Writing

In 1968, the director Andrei Tarkovsky had two motives for cinematically adapting the Polish science fiction novel Solaris (1961), Stanisław Lem: firstly, he admired Lem's work. Secondly, he needed work and money, because his previous film, Andrei Rublev (1966) had gone unreleased, and his screenplay, A White, White Day, had been rejected, yet it later was realised as The Mirror (1975). A film of a novel by Stanisław Lem, a popular and critically respected writer in the USSR, was a logical commercial and artistic choice.^[4] Tarkovsky and Lem collaborated, and remained in communication about the cinematic adaptation of the novel Solaris. With Fridrikh Gorenshtein, Tarkovsky co-wrote the first screenplay in the summer of 1969, two-thirds concerned the Earth marital history of Kris and Hari; Lem and the Mosfilm committee disliked it. The final screenplay, yielding the shooting script, has little action on Earth, and Kelvin’s marriage to his second wife, Maria, was deleted from the story.^[4]

In the literary Solaris, Stanisław Lem describes human science’s inability to handle an alien life form, because extra-terrestrial life is beyond human understanding; in the cinematic Solaris, Tarkovsky concentrates upon Kelvin's feelings for his wife, Hari, and the impact of outer space exploration upon the human condition. Dr. Gibarian’s monologue [from the novel’s sixth chapter] is the highlight of the final library scene, wherein Snaut says, “We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors”. Unlike the novel, which begins with psychologist Kris Kelvin's spaceflight, and occurs entirely on Solaris, the film shows Kelvin’s visit to the house of his parents, in the country, before leaving Earth for Solaris; the contrast establishes the worlds in which he lives — warm Earth versus a cold space station orbiting the planet Solaris — showing and questioning space exploration’s impact upon the human psyche.^[5]

The Solaris soundtrack features the chorale prelude for organ, Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 639), by Johann Sebastian Bach, and an electronic score by Eduard Artemyev, and the set design features paintings by the Old Masters. The interior of the space station is decorated with full reproductions of the 1565 painting cycle of The Months (The Hunters in the Snow, The Gloomy Day, The Hay Harvest, The Harvesters, and The Return of the Herd), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and details of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and The Hunters in the Snow (1565). The scenes of Kelvin kneeling before his father, and the father embracing him allude to The Return of the Prodigal Son (1669), by Rembrandt. The references and allusions are Tarkovsky’s efforts to give the young art of cinema an historic perspective of centuries, to evoke the viewer’s feeling that cinema is a mature art.^[6]

The cast

Initially, Tarkovsky wanted his ex-wife, Irma Raush, as “Hari”, however, after meeting Swedish actress Bibi Andersson in June 1970, he considered her for the role. Wishing to work with Tarkovsky, Andersson accepted her salary in rubles. In the end, Natalya Bondarchuk was cast as “Hari”. Tarkovsky had met her when they were students at the State Institute of Cinematography; she had introduced Solaris, by Stanisław Lem, to him. Tarkovsky auditioned her in 1970, but did not cast her for being too young, and, instead, recommended her to director Larisa Shepitko, who cast her in You and I. Half-a-year later, Tarkovsky saw that film, and decided to cast Natalya Bondarchuk as “Hari”.^[7]

Tarkovsky cast Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis as “Kris Kelvin”, the Estonian actor Jüri Järvet as “Dr. Snaut”, the Russian actor Anatoly Solonitsyn as “Dr. Sartorius”, the Ukrainian actor Nikolai Grinko as “Kelvin’s Father”, and Olga Barnet as “Kelvin’s Mother”. Earlier, the director had worked with Solonitsyn, who had played Andrei Rublev (1966), and with Nikolai Grinko, who appeared in Andrei Rublev and Ivan's Childhood (1962). Tarkovsky thought Solonitsyn and Grinko, would need extra directorial assistance.^[8] After filming was almost completed, Tarkovsky rated actors and performances, so: Bondarchuk, Järvet, Solonitsyn, Banionis, Dvorzhetsky, and Grinko; yet wrote in his diary that “Natalya B. has outshone everybody”.^[9]

Filming

In the summer of 1970, the State Committee for Cinematography authorised the cinematic realisation of Solaris, with a length of 4,000 metres (13,123 ft), equivalent to a two-hour-twenty-minute running time. The exteriors were photographed at Zvenigorod, near Moscow; the interiors were photographed at the Mosfilm studios. The scenes of space pilot Burton driving through a city were photographed in Japan, in September and October 1971, at Akasaka and Iikura in Tokyo. The shooting began in March 1971, by cinematographer Vadim Yusov, who also photographed Tarkovky’s previous films. They frequently quarrelled to the degree of afterwards not working together again.^[10][11] The first version of Solaris was completed in December 1971.

The Earth, the sensual source of life, and the sterile space station orbiting the planet Solaris, are contrasted with lively images of underwater plants, fire, snow, rain and other natural phenomena. A like contrast appears at story’s end, on Solaris, juxtaposing Kelvin’s winter visit to his father’s house, featuring a frozen pond, surrounded by bare trees, but not covered with snow. The dead scenery contrasts with the earlier, summer pond scenes of underwater plants floating in the water current, and blooming trees. The Solaris ocean was created with acetone, aluminium powder, and dyes.^[12] Mikhail Romadin designed the space station as old and decrepit, rather than futuristic. The designer and director consulted with scientist and aerospace engineer Lupichev, who lent them a mainframe computer for set decoration. For some of the sequences, Romadin designed a mirror room, which enabled the cameraman, Yusov, to hide within a mirrored sphere so as to not be seen. Akira Kurosawa, who was visiting the Mosfilm studios, expressed that he was impressed with the space station design.^[13]

In January 1972 the State Committee for Cinematography requested editorial changes before releasing Solaris, such as a more realistic film with a clearer image of the future, and deletion of allusions to God and Christianity; Tarkovsky successfully resisted such major changes; yet, after some minor edits, Solaris was approved for release in March 1972.^[14]

Musical score

The soundtrack of Solaris features the chorale prelude for organ, Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 639), by Johann Sebastian Bach, and an electronic score by Eduard Artemyev. The prelude is the central musical theme of Solaris. Tarkovsky, initially, wanted a musicless film, and asked composer Artemyev to orchestrate the ambient sounds as a musical score. The latter proposed subtly introducing orchestral music. In counterpoint to the classical music Earth theme, is the fluid electronic music theme for the planet Solaris. The character of Hari has her own subtheme, a cantus firmus based upon J. S. Bach’s music featuring Artemyev’s composition atop it; it is heard at Hari’s death and at story’s end.^[6]

Reception and legacy

Although Stanisław Lem worked with Tarkovsky and Fridrikh Gorenshtein in developing the screenplay, Lem maintained that he "never really liked Tarkovsky’s version” of his novel.^[15] Tarkovsky wanted a film story based on the novel but artistically independent of its origin. However, Lem opposed any divergence of the screenplay from the novel. Tarkovsky claimed that Lem did not fully appreciate cinema and that he expected the film to merely illustrate the novel without creating an original cinematic piece. Tarkovsky’s film is about the inner lives of its scientists as human beings. Lem’s novel is about the conflicts of man’s condition in nature and the nature of man in the universe. For Tarkovsky, Lem's exposition of that existential conflict was the starting point for describing the inner lives of the characters.^[16]

In the autobiographical documentary Voyage in Time (1983), Tarkovsky says he viewed Solaris as an artistic failure because his film did not transcend genre like, he believed, his film Stalker (1979) did due to the required technological dialogue and special effects.^[17] M. Galina in the 1997 article Identifying Fears called this film "one of the biggest events in the Soviet science fiction cinema" and one of the few works that does not seem anachronistic nowadays.^[18]

Solaris premiered at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. In the USSR, the film premiered in the Mir film theater in Moscow on 5 February 1973. Tarkovsky did not consider the Mir cinema the best projection venue.^[19] Despite the film's narrow release in only five film theaters in the USSR,^[20] the film nevertheless sold 10.5 million tickets.^[21] Unlike the vast majority of commercial and ideological films in the 1970s, "Solaris" was screened in the USSR in limited copies for 15 years without any break, giving it cult status. In the Eastern Bloc and in the West, Solaris premiered later. In the United States, a version of Solaris that was truncated by 30 minutes premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on 6 October 1976.^[22]

A list of "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" compiled by Empire magazine in 2010 ranked Tarkovsky's Solaris at #68.^[23] In 2002, Steven Soderbergh wrote and directed an American adaptation of Solaris, which starred George Clooney.

Salman Rushdie calls Solaris "a sci-fi masterpiece", and has urged that "This exploration of the unreliability of reality and the power of the human unconscious, this great examination of the limits of rationalism and the perverse power of even the most ill-fated love, needs to be seen as widely as possible before it's transformed by Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron into what they ludicrously threaten will be '2001 meets Last Tango in Paris.' What, sex in space with floating butter? Tarkovsky must be turning over in his grave."^[24]

Nimród Antal cites Solaris as one of the influences on the making of his first movie, Kontroll. Kontroll has many similarities with Solaris, such as the ambiguity of reality, the hallucinatory look, and the score, which also mixes both traditional instruments and electronic elements.

Re-Release

On 24 May 2011, The Criterion Collection released Solaris on Blu-ray Disc.^[1][25] The most noticeable difference from the previous 2002 Criterion DVD release^[26] was that the blue and white tinted monochrome scenes from the film were restored.^[27]

References

External links

• Solaris at the Internet Movie Database
• Solaris at Rotten Tomatoes
• Solaris at AllRovi