‘We don’t need other worlds; we need a mirror.’
After years of fruitless research and observations, the space station orbiting the planet Solaris is manned only by a skeleton crew. All attempts to communicate with the sentient ocean covering the planet’s surface have failed, but a last-ditch experiment has surprising consequences…
Philosophical science fiction courtesy of acclaimed Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. This famous adaptation of Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s novel stars Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, and Jüri Järvet.
It’s the last days on Earth for psychologist Kris Kelvin (Banionis), who is shipping out on an interplanetary mission, destination Solaris and the research station in orbit around it. An apparently sentient ocean covers the planet, but little more is known despite close study lasting many years. Now, communications from the station have become erratic, and the viability of the station’s future called into question. Banionis has been tasked with making an on-the-spot evaluation of conditions and making recommendations. Saying goodbye to his estranged father (Nikolai Grinko) is difficult, further complicated by the arrival of ex-astronaut Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), who has tales of tell of his time on the station. During an emergency, he flew low over the planet and saw strange visions, including that of a four-metre-high child formed by the ocean. However, his observations were discredited when onboard camera footage showed nothing of what he described.
When Banionis arrives at the station after the necessary spaceflight, none of the three-man crew is there to welcome him, not mission commander Dr Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), cyberneticist Dr Snaut (Jüri Järvet) or astrobiologist Dr Sartorius (Anatoly Solonitsyn). The station is also in poor repair, and when he finds someone, it’s Järvet, and he is drunk. What he says makes little sense beyond the fact that Sargsyan is dead, a likely suicide, and Solonitsyn has barricaded himself inside his laboratory and will see no one. Leaving these mysteries for the following day, Banionis goes to bed, only to wake up and find that he is not alone. Sharing his cabin is Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), his wife who committed suicide ten years earlier. She seems to be a flesh and blood woman, although her memories of their life together are fragmentary and confused. Banionis panics and shoots her off into space in an escape capsule but discovers from Järvet that she will return the next time he sleeps.
Much has been written over the years about Tarkovsky’s work, and this film is regarded as one of the cornerstones of his artistic legacy. Although much of science-fiction literature wrestles with questions of what it means to be human and our place among the stars, these are not themes generally embraced in cinema, where more commercial considerations take precedence. Tarkovsky’s film is often inaccurately compared to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968), a movie that the director reportedly disliked due to what he considered a lack of a human element. That’s something the director placed at the centre of his story, much to the disapproval of original novelist Stanislaw Lem. The Polish writer was initially involved with the project’s development but departed over creative differences and later somewhat facetiously referred to the film as ‘love in outer space.’ The fact that the film has inspired so much commentary and interpretation over the years puts paid to that opinion.
The film opens with Banionis staying at his father’s cottage in the idyllic Russian countryside. Tarkovsky’s camera lingers on the beauties of nature, but the strained father and son relationship gives the scenes a feeling of sweet melancholia. The exact family dynamics in play remain obscure, but both men are closed off emotionally and unable to articulate their feelings for each other. These scenes also establish the contrast between the warmth and vitality of our home world and the cold, alienating vastness of space, as well as one of the director’s most recurrent themes: a yearning for the lost days of the past. This part of the film lasts over 40 minutes, fleshed out by the arrival of ex-astronaut Dvorzhetsky and his tales of Solaris. Eventually, he departs, and we see him drive into the city, a long, five-minute sequence that seems pointless. This sequence was filmed on location in Tokyo, and some have argued that it’s in the film to justify the expense of sending the director and his small crew to Japan, something which would have involved the likely reluctant permission of the Soviet authorities. Others have suggested that the footage of traffic, tunnels and concrete overpasses would have looked quite futuristic to a Soviet audience of the time if not to an international one.
The drama that follows contains many ambiguities and talking points, with conclusions mainly a matter of personal interpretation. The purpose of the visitors remains unrevealed. Are they an attempt to communicate, intended as a gift or an attempt at retaliation after the crew has bombarded the planet’s surface with X-rays? It seems like a punishment to Banionis, at least at first, as his desertion back on Earth ten years earlier prompted the real Bondarchuk to commit suicide. Crucially, the audience never learns the identity of the other visitors. However, it’s clear that neither Järvet nor Solonitsyn is happy with their unearthly lodgers, suggesting more guilty secrets from the past that lie untold. These uncertainties even extend to small details, such as items appearing in the background in the crew’s quarters. Several of these mirror objects from Grinko’s cottage back on Earth, which, given the film’s ending, raises the somewhat unlikely possibility that Banionis has been on Solaris the whole time.
Despite Lem’s misgivings, the developing relationship between Banionis and Bondarchuk is essential and allows for many of Tarkovsky’s themes and questions to be brought to the table. It’s certainly not played in the way the original author may have feared; it’s firmly downbeat and underplayed, particularly well by Bondarchuk. The resulting audience investment in the couple allows more resonance to some of the film’s most breathtaking visual moments, such as the weightless sequence in the station library. It’s also a stroke of genius that the human side of the drama is accessible through Bondarchuk’s non-human character rather than the emotionally stunted Banionis or his jaded, paranoid crew mates. As time passes, she begins to learn about love, pain and regret and, finally, achieves independent action. It’s her journey that provides the necessary emotional core of the film.
The SFX are of their time, but the models and miniatures hold up surprisingly well for the most part, and the internal landscape of the station is impressively functional. It’s only on rewatching that you realise how little of these interiors are shown, but what does appear is a well-judged chaos of cluttered cabins and ageing technology, systems wearing out due to lack of attention, investment and the passage of time. The ocean was created by mixing an acetone solution, various dyes and aluminium powder. There was likely neither the budget nor the necessary expertise on hand to create the kind of oceanic formations envisioned in the novel by Lem. However, it’s still an effective representation of an alien world, aided by the sparse score of Edvard Artemyev and the repeated use of an ethereal organ prelude by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
In the broadest sense, Tarkovsky seems to be musing on the futility of roaming amongst the stars, suggesting that such explorations will not answer any of our fundamental questions about humanity and the universe we inhabit. First contact with an alien life form will just provide more questions rather than resolve any issues. For those, we should turn to each other. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the answers lay not in the stars but in ourselves. Of course, that’s just one interpretation of many.
Tarkovsky was born in Russia in 1932, and pursued an education in several different fields before turning to film in 1954 when he began studying at the State Institute of Cinematography. He began writing scripts in collaboration with fellow student Andrei Konchalovsky in 1959, one of which Tarkovsky directed as his graduation project, which won 1st Prize at the New York Student Film Festival in 1961. His first feature followed a year later, when he replaced Eduard Abalov in the director’s chair on the superb war drama ‘Ivan’s Childhood/Ivanovo detstvo’ (1962) after the production was initially shut down by authorities. The resulting film won awards at the Venice and San Francisco International Film Festivals. It was also submitted as the Soviet entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1962 Academy Awards, although it was not subsequently nominated.
Rewarded with a large budget for his next project ‘Andrei Rublev/Andrey Rublyov’ (1965), Tarkovsky began to have problems with the Soviet authorities. The director was forced to cut and re-cut the finished film several times, and despite winning a prize from the International Federation of Film Critics in 1969, the film was only released in the Soviet Union two years later in a truncated version. There were more domestic release problems around ‘Mirror/Zerkalo’ (1974), and the historical drama ‘The First Day’ was shut down mid-shoot by the Soviet authorities in 1979. He travelled to Italy to make ‘Nostalgia/Nostalghia’ (1983), and when state financing was withdrawn, he secured alternative backing to finish the project and never returned to the Soviet Union. He shot one more film, ‘The Sacrifice/Offret’ (1986), before succumbing to cancer in the final days of 1986. Given that his wife and one of the principal actors in ‘Stalker’ (1979) eventually contracted the same type of cancer, possible leaks from a chemical plant close to the shooting location have been cited as a likely cause.
A film that rewards multiple viewings and still leaves you wanting more. A captivating and fascinating work.
Mark David Welsh 