Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky

Toby Marshall

Contemporary film critics often claim that beneath the gleaming metallic exterior of the popular science film, one will find a meaty, more intellectual, content.

Those films that construct alien lifeforms, for example, are said to examine what is uniquely human. Some go so far as to argue that films of this type should be viewed as works of philosophy. With Tarkovsky's Solaris (USSR, 1972) it is easily to see how this argument might take hold.

It opens in the future. A deep space exploration has gone badly wrong, with cosmonauts filing highly confused reports regarding a mysterious cloud that is floating on a distant planet called Solaris. The authorities are unhappy with this, and decide to despatch a refreshingly portly psychologist by the name of Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) to diffuse the interplanetary fog.

Onboard the space station, Kris finds that his scientific assumptions and individual priorities are challenged, when his memories of his late wife start to take a material form. As Kris undergoes a personal transformation, he and the remaining crew ruminate on the ethics of experimenting on a possibly sentient cloud, the limits of scientific knowledge, and man's defining essence.

If all this sounds faintly ridiculous, and possibly dull, think again. Tarkovsky dramatises his themes in a stately fashion, developing them slowly, and working them up into a satisfying, if wilfully romantic,
conclusion. On the most vast of stages, Kris comes to the realisation that the real frontier is within and, as one crewmember has it, man's 'one need is his own kind.'

Engaging as all of this is, it would be a mistake to judge this film by its philosophical content. In doing so, we would lose sight of its artistic qualities, such as the vivid opening shots, in which Kris ponders his
forthcoming mission amid the hum and buzz of his garden, or the moods that are evoked as he tries to reason with a physical manifestation of his tragic personal life.

One could extract a set of propositions from all of this, but there wouldn't be that many, and they wouldn't be terribly engaging when divorced from their narrative context.

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