Originally published at Cinema Knife Fight, June 14, 2014
Have you ever watched a movie, then later read the book on which it was based, and decided to see the movie again? The first time this happened for me was after seeing the 1968 film 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY on TV. As a teenager, I was mesmerized by this Stanley Kubrick opus (I’m probably not using that word right), that is, until the final scene where astronaut David Bowmen was… well, something happened to him. I had no idea. After reading the novel (written by Arthur C. Clarke in parallel with his and Kubrick’s screenplay), the story made more sense. The film was no clearer, and I remain annoyed to this day how the director made his ending that obscure. Someday I’ll write a review of 2001, considering how often it comes up in this column.
A few weeks ago, I picked up the 1961 science fiction novel Solaris, by Polish author Stanislaw Lem. I had seen the Soviet film SOLARIS (1972), based on his novel, a decade and a half earlier and, as with Kubrick’s film, was enthralled—even if it was a bit vague in meaning and took a couple of rentals to finish this two-and-a-half hour behemoth of a movie. After finishing the novel, I went back and re-watched SOLARIS. As before, it took me more than one sitting to watch because, well, read on….
Let’s start from the beginning.
In the late 1990’s, I rented an intriguing science fiction film out of the USSR (Russia’s official name back when it was communist and called The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The movie was long, and
very
slow-paced,
but I was fascinated. Maybe because foreign films are always so unique when compared to our usual American fare. You never know what will happen next. Usually nothing, but you never know.
SOLARIS tells the future story of a distant, ocean-covered planet. Over the decades, human scientists have determined this ocean is a sentient life form. All attempts to communicate with it have failed, as have attempts to understand the complex, seemingly-deliberate structural formations growing from it like organic sculptures. One report described human-like creatures being shaped out of the ocean, only to fall and crumble later (as all of the constructs eventually do). Weird stuff seems to be happening more frequently, yet funding for “The Solaris Project” is slowly, inexorably, being cut.
The center of all research on the planet, such as it has become, is a massive scientific station hovering at varying altitudes over the ocean surface. Since support has been waning, the station is manned by only three scientists.
The novel opens with psychologist Kris Kelvin arriving at the station to investigate bizarre communications from the scientists. The movie gets to this point eventually, but not before a forty-minute prelude, which we’ll talk about in a moment. No one greets him on his arrival, not even Kelvin’s long-time friend Dr. Gribaryan. As he wanders the station, Kelvin is dismayed by the complete disarray around him. After learning Gribaryan has committed suicide, he discovers that neither remaining scientist, Doctors Snaut and Sartorius, seem concerned. They have enough of their own problems, which they keep hidden away in their respective cabins. Snaut tells Kelvin that if he tried to explain what was happening, he would not believe him. He will see for himself soon enough.
And Kelvin does, after waking up the next day to find his long-dead wife standing over his bed.
Solaris the novel oscillates between what happens between Kelvin and his seemingly-resurrected wife, and the author’s detailed history of research on the ocean. These latter sections are framed under the auspices of the main character reading one book after another in order to understand what is happening now. I usually wander mentally when authors get too thick with exposition, but somehow Lem, who is fascinated with his own material, makes what could be overlong diversions about an utterly alien world, and mankind’s response to its incomprehensible resident, an interesting read… most of the time. Halfway through this short novel I found myself skimming parts.
Neither the novel, nor the 1972 film, explain whom the other two scientists are hiding in their rooms. But we do get glimpses (mostly in the film): Snaut’s visitor is a child – whether his or someone else’s isn’t specified; Sartorius has… well, a dwarf, I think, at least in the movie. We get no information from the narrative except he has more than one visitor. Whoever they are, their presences have turned these men into emotional wrecks. The nature of these “visitors,” and their painful, past relationships to the scientists is enough to convince them the ocean is responsible for these appearances, trying to retaliate for a recent experiment bombarding the ocean with intense x-rays.
What is Kelvin’s late wife Hari’s story? Years earlier, on Earth, Hari (played by Natalya Bondarchuk in the film) killed herself, and Kelvin has blamed himself ever since. Now, an unspecified number of light years away, she is back. Culled, Kelvin feels, from his deepest feelings of guilt. His theory is confirmed by Snaut and Sortorius. Their dead comrade Gribaryan’s visitor is a woman who, since his death, has purposelessly wandered the halls of Solaris Station. Interestingly, the book describes her as a heavy black woman. The movie changes her into someone younger and Caucasian. Maybe (because of the times?) the filmmakers had decided a white man could not have had a relationship with a black woman, guilt-ridden or not.
Though the book opens at the station, SOLARIS the film opens on Earth. Kelvin (played by Donatas Banionis) is staying at his childhood home with father and aunt before leaving on the mission. This long section of the film (forty minutes, roughly) gets the viewer caught up with the history of Solaris research and its flagship station. Kelvin and his father have some lingering (mostly unspoken) issues between them, a detail only briefly touched on in the novel.
Now, much like this review, SOLARIS is a very slow-paced movie. How slow? In many cases, it makes 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY look like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001 – hey, 2001, funny…). The opening scene focuses on reeds and water plants swaying in the pond beside the Kelvin home. No music, just long stretches (two or three minutes) of reeds, moving back and forth. It’s enough to make any viewer start to go, “Uh, oh…” before anything actually happens. That’s OK, because after the watery plant shots, we get to see Dr. Kelvin standing by the pond and staring, then walking a little more along the shore and staring some more. Finally he returns to the house to speak with a cosmonaut named Berton, who had been to Solaris and seen the strange, human-like structures coming from the ocean.
One could watch this film, or try to, and decide it’s wasting celluloid with extended shots of people staring pointlessly into the distance, or down at their shoes. If you’re lucky (but also careful because this could be a very melancholy film if you’re not) you can let yourself be pulled into a thick, choking atmosphere which director Andrei Tarkovsky may be trying to project. A claustrophobic world of self-induced isolation, emotional depression so cloying to one’s psyche it becomes a prison.
Depression, guilt, resentment. The devil’s Allspice.
After Kelvin wanders in silence through his father’s homestead, it becomes obvious the guy has a few wires shorted out. The idea of clinical depression being an inherent trait passed from his parents, especially his mother, becomes clear when Kelvin shows his late wife Hari (her Solaris clone, that is) a montage of home movies he’d put together before leaving Earth. Every shot of his mother is one of prolonged staring into the camera, or away into the distance with a long, dropping visage of sadness—think of any photo of author Virginia Wolf, who eventually died of depression (well, she died of suicide, but they blame it on her depression).
Though Banionis’ character says very little in the film, he portrays Kelvin’s inner struggles well through his expressive silences. As does Jüri Järvet in his role as the twitchy Dr. Snaut. Both men share scenes where they speak very little, but connect through looks—or diverted looks—and nervous twitches. Yea, everyone has serious mental issues in this film.
As Hari learns she is a doppelganger created by the ocean below, Kelvin eventually accepts her as his second chance and does not want to lose her.
The story, sets and dialogue are lifted closely from novel, partly because the original novelist was the co-screenwriter. As slow-paced as it is, SOLARIS is a very good film version of the novel. The visuals aren’t mind-blowing like modern sci-fi, but for a movie funded by the Soviet government, they are decent. The filmmakers don’t try to do more than their budget and technology allow. I especially enjoyed the shots of the swirling, living ocean interspersed between scenes—more so after having read the novel with its longer, detailed descriptions of this character (and it is an active, fascinating character).
This is such a key point to watching a film from a different generation. Remembering what its creators had—and didn’t have—at their disposal for making sets and effects, and the social and economic situation in its country of origin. Knowledge of this sort allows the viewer to reset expectations long-tainted by today’s massive budgets and computerized wizardry.
Allow me to go back to a point about government funding for a moment to relay an amusing anecdote. When I first watched SOLARIS, the videotape had a special feature at the end. Someone involved in the film—I forget who—discussed how hard it was for artists in the USSR to get approval, let alone funding, for their work. Everything had to be approved. After completing principle photography, one scene (intended to be edited to less than a minute) showed Cosmonaut Berton driving home after visiting Kelvin in the first part of the movie. In order to illustrate a Russian city of the future without resorting to miniatures, they were allowed to travel to Japan and film external shots of one of its bustling and very-modern cities. They edited the seven-ish minutes of footage together with shots of Berton driving home with his son. It was a long, unnecessary scene, but they fully intended to edit it down to thirty seconds.
The government, however, decided these external shots illustrated how advanced the Soviet Union would become in the future, and insisted the entire seven-minutes be left in, as-is. The man in the documentary just shrugged and said (I’m paraphrasing here), “It was either leave this painfully long scene, where nothing happens, in the film, or the movie would not be made. We had to accept.”
Knowing why this scene is there makes it far more bearable to watch. You can have fun with it, too, by looking for the highway signs written in Japanese.
This, along with the film’s opening shots of water plants, and a number of long, whispered conversations punctuated with reflective silences between the actors, contribute to the slow pace of the film. There is action, and at times it’s quite good, but they are mere islands of motion in a sea of introspection.
The ending of both film and novel are similar, but have differences. I’m honestly not sure which I like better. Probably the movie, but my understanding of what happens here was enhanced the second time around, having read Lem’s book. Unlike the first viewing, I had a much better appreciation for how well the film represented its source material throughout.
If you’re into foreign, art-house films, but also dig science fiction, I recommend giving SOLARIS a chance. As long as you don’t mind extended shots of reeds flowing in the water. If you’d rather not sit through scenes like this, well, you can always take the time to make popcorn. They’ll still be flowing when you get back.
Come back next Friday, as we take a gander at the 2002 American remake of SOLARIS, starring George Clooney, to see how it measures up to the book and original Russian film.
Until then, try to stay happy.
© Copyright 2014 by Daniel G. Keohane