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By PAUL BRENNER
Andrei Tarkovsky is a take-no-prisoners filmmaker. His self-described "long,
boring films" will either carry you along into a quiet and self-absorbed
meditation or render you teary-eyed and vacant. Tarkovsky's 1972 film version of
Stanislaw Lem's science fiction novel, "Solaris," is, perhaps, his most
originally conceived film. Like his previous film, "Andrei Rublev," it is a
non-genre genre film. As much as "Andrei Rublev" is an epic that is not an epic,
"Solaris," is a science fiction film that is not a science fiction film. The
story concerns a psychologist sent to investigate the strange happenings on a
Russian space station orbiting the planet Solaris. From what can be discerned in
the film, the planet Solaris is a nebulous, forever changed ocean expanse but an
ocean expanse that turns out to be a thinking being. When the cosmonauts send
probes to Solaris, the planet retaliates by probing into the subliminal thoughts
of the cosmonauts, recreated simulacrums of their repressed longings and
desires. When the psychologist arrives at the space station, he awakens to
discover his dead wife staring at him.
A companion piece to Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Solaris" is as deadly
slow and philosophical as Kubrick's science fiction epic. But Tarkovsky is a
different type of filmmaker than Kubrick, the difference being a filmmaker whose
obsessions are examining what it means to be human versus a filmmaker whose
obsessions are examining what it means to be inhuman. Tarkovsky hits the bedrock
soul of the nature of love, longing, and need while condemning mankind for
neglecting its humanity. Tarkovsky has no patience with mankind's one-sided
attitude that man is the peak of creation and can blunder into Solaris blindly,
waving arrogance like a flag (somewhat like Bush in Iraq). However, as the
cosmonauts learn in "Solaris," there are greater intelligences in the universe
than man.
The Criterion Collection presents "Solaris" on a two-disc set, featuring a
restored transfer and audio commentary by Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie,
co-authors of "The Films of Andrei Tarkovksy: A Visual Fugue." Other features
include nine deleted scenes, video interviews with lead actress Natalya
Bondarchuk, cinematographer Vadim Yusov, art director Mikhail Romandin, composer
Eduard Artemyev, an excerpt from a Polish documentary about Stanislaw Lem, and
essays on Tarkovsky by Phillip Lopate and Akira Kurosawa. |
