By Nia Edwards-Behi
For my sins, I’ve not seen nearly as much canonical European ‘art’ cinema as I probably should have, all things considered. I am, however, a big fan of one Ingmar Bergman, and when he’s claimed that Andrei Tarkovsky is “the greatest”, then really it’s a bit of a crime that it’s taken me this long to watch any of his work. Tarkovsky’s most famous and well known film, to my knowledge anyway, is Solaris, and so I suppose it’s appropriate that that is the film that I should see first, because otherwise, where do you even start with a giant of cinema like Tarkovsky?
The 1972 film has reemerged as part of a massive Tarkovsky retrospective, in cinemas and on home media, by Curzon Artificial Eye, which has seen all seven of his feature films released on brand new digital prints. There have also been special events and newly commissioned essays, posters and more. I’m not familiar with his work, but the season has no doubt been something of an absolute blessing for fans of his work or of art cinema as a whole, and it’s credit to Curzon for putting together such an elaborate season of films.
Cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent to a space station in orbit of the planet Solaris, where the original crew appear to have abandoned their mission because of the mental crises they’re suffering. Upon arrival, he discovers his only friend in the crew, Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), has killed himself. The other two crew members, Drs. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) seem relatively indifferent or uninterested in Kelvin, at least until he too experiences the very thing aboard the station that has made its crew so useless. Kelvin sees visions of his dead wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), and learns that Solaris is a sentient being which uses the humans’ memories as a weapon, of sorts, against their investigations. Kelvin, the alien manifestation of Hari and the other crew members must decide what it is they must do to confront and escape the power of Solaris, and in doing so face philosophical and personal quandaries of their own.
So what’s an arty Russian film from the 1970s doing getting review on a site like BaH? Well, it’s sci-fi, innit, and, if you’re to take the whole thing about how each and every one of us humans is self-absorbed and myopic, then it’s also pretty brutal. But, in that lies an interesting crux in finding some motivation in Tarkovsky’s film. In her essay on the film as part of this Curzon retrospective, Jemma Desai notes Tarkovsky’s “explicit disdain for the concept of genre in general,” and his famous criticism of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, “for being too enamoured by the spectacle of the genre.” (This essay, among others, can be found here.) Well, excuse me, Comrade Tarkovsky, but I spent the duration of your film hoping for a Monolith to appear and make things a bit more interesting.
Yes, I’m being flippant – truthfully I found Solaris to be quite captivating, and there is absolutely no doubting Tarkovsky’s position as a master of cinema as a language. But, I’m also a genre fan, and actually reading that did rub me up the wrong way, even if it’s hardly surprising. It’s the same binary thinking that makes, I don’t know, gorehounds go ‘ew, art cinema!’ or, say, art critics attempt to coin derogatory terms like ‘New French Extremity’. Genre and art are not mutually exclusive, even if each ‘side’ tries incessantly to convince us otherwise, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of cultural othering which ultimately serves no purpose other than to make ourselves feel good about not being other people.
Well, hang on a minute. Maybe Tarkovsky’s onto something after all. At the core of Solaris – for me, anyway, I don’t doubt there are many interpretations of it – is Kelvin’s stubbornness, and, in particular, the increasing realisation that the Hari that manifests on the space station above Solaris is his own version of her, without, perhaps, the sadness, or disappointment, or worry, or anxiety of his late wife. And even so – Hari the Second eventually longs to be destroyed. On board the station, judging by the mental states of the other men on board, and Kelvin’s eventual, head-in-the-sand fate, hell is quite literally other people, even when they’re your own idealised manifestations.
Solaris isn’t the sort of thing that will satisfy or keep the attention of everyone, and nor should it have to. Slow is slow, and unless you are won over by Tarkovsky’s style then you’re not likely to find much to cling onto. Having said that, the other most striking and enjoyable element of the film for me was easily Natalya Bondarchuk’s absolutely stunning performance as Hari. While the rest of the cast, to me, did their job as well as they needed to, Bondarchuk completely embodies the confused, anguished and enigmatic Hari. While the film is ostensibly about Kelvin, Bondarchuk brings Hari to life so vividly that she’s practically the lead – and given her role in the story, that’s magnificently apt.
Apparently Tarkovsky eventually claimed to have regretted showing any fidelity to Stanislaw Lem’s original novel (Lem had expressed his dislike for the film), stating that “the rockets and space stations – required by Lem’s novel – were interesting to construct; but it seems to me now that the idea of the film would have stood out more vividly and boldly had we managed to dispense with these things altogether.” I do wonder if anyone would have broken it to him that even if he’d dispensed with all the apparent trappings of science-fiction that he seems to have to so disdained, then he’d still have made a cracking ghost story. Even if Tarkovsky would resent the fact, it must be said that there is a lot for a genre fan to enjoy in Solaris, and, cinematic artistry aside, that’s what makes it worth watching.
Solaris is out now in the UK on limited theatrical release, and comes to DVD & Blu-ray on 8th August, from Curzon Artificial Eye.