This is the first movie I have seen by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. I was very impressed with a number of things and especially with one of its main themes (which I’ll get to in a bit). I might say it was entertaining but that would not be quite right. Some scenes run a little long. To focus on that misses the point. He seems to use length and depth to slow us down, to enter a place of reflection and meditation. You can choose to be bored by the long segments or you can choose to use those segments as a way to process what happened in terms of your own thoughts. It’s as though Tarkovsky invites us to do this with the film.
The movie begins with a conversation between the psychologist Kelvin (DONATAS BANIONIS) and a cosmonaut named Burton (VLADISLAV DVORZHETSKY). Burton tells Kelvin about a space station that circles the planet Solaris. There are a number of mysteries. Kelvin goes to the station where he finds one crew member dead and two others who seem rather bothered by events on the station. The planet is covered by a sea. When X-ray probes were used to investigate it, the planet did something strange. It replied with its own probes. These probes entered the minds of the cosmonauts bringing some of their memories to reality. Kelvin is eventually presented with one of the Guests the planet creates. It is an exact duplicate his dead wife Hari (NATALYA BONDARCHUK) but lacking her memory. She can’t know anymore than he knows.
Kelvin and the second Hari begin to fall in love. This is where one of the most impressive themes of the movie is introduced. Tarkovsky examines the nature of love. When we love someone, who do we love? Do we love the person or do we love the idea of the person? The other person exists in his/her own physical space. How much of our relationship exists in our minds? At some level, Hari, the Guest, is just as “real” as the first Hari but somehow different.
Other themes are addressed: morality, morality and science, resurrection, guilt (resolved and unresolved), our need for relationships. This is a deep movie and well worth the nearly three hours of viewing time. Tarkovsky cuts out fluff and filler (like space travel) to keep you moving into the story and those lengthy scenes really help.
April 28, 2008 at 7:05 pm
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