Day 62/65 - Solaris (1972)

When one of the scientists on a space station over Solaris Ocean disappears, pilot Henri Berton tries to rescue him, but he returns to earth  with reports of a strange alien ocean which can engender such hallucinations as a floating giant child, dense fog, and trees and shrubs of plaster, even though cameras only show clouds. Berton tries to convince impartial widowed psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) and his father that what he experienced was real.

Kelvin, somewhat stocky, seems an average Soviet Union hero for the 1970s. Berton says he has the personality of an accountant. Kelvin is being sent to the space station to see if the Solaris Expedition should be closed down.

Kelvin arrives at the space station and finds his friend, one of the three remaining scientists left, is dead. One of the living men, Dr. Snaut, warns him to remember that there are only three living humans onboard and for him not to believe everything he sees. Immediately, we see other “guests.” One of the “guests” turns out to look exactly like Kelvin’s dead wife (Hari). Apparently the ocean can delve into each man’s psyche and people their alternate reality with their forms.  These forms cannot be killed because they can regenerate themselves.

Hari at the beginning only remembers some things. Each day, she seems to become more and more human. She begins to confront an infinite life without the human she loves. She and Kris also realize the only way she can exist is on the space station.

Can the humans learn from the contact with Solaris Ocean or will they be destroyed by it? How ingrained is man’s sense of guilt and will it help or hinder the contact.

After years of watching Twilight Zone, the ending seems logical and very 1970s in tone.

Director Andrey Tarkovskiy has a slow paced but literate film. In one sequence, for example, he follows Berton who is traveling with his son by car. They are given a lot of attention for a sequence which apparently is only to show us the future world.

Once on the space station, however, the leisure pacing allows the audience time to process the philosophical ideas with which Tarkovskiy plays. The décor alternates between 1960s modernism and Space Odyssey expressionism. The library of the space station (will we really have libraries in the future?) is filled with candles, Bruegel the Elder’s paintings of the snows on earth, and a bust of Socrates (which also appeared in Kris’ Russian home).

The film seems a very low tech response compared to 2001 (1968), which also deals with man’s attempt to communicate with alien intellect.

This film was remade by Steven Soderbergh with George Clooney as Chris Kelvin in 2002.

Solaris (1972) ***