Solaris (Tarkovsky)

Previously:  The novel by Lem

I wasn't sure how well the novel would translate to the screen, but I hadn't seen anything by Tarkovsky, so I got it from Netflix, more curious about the early 70s Soviet cinema than the science fiction effort.

Tarkovsky adds almost an hour of preamble establishing our protagonist Kelvin and his relationship to his parents (who will almost certainly predecease his return from space), as well as delivering exposition of the fantastic properties of Solaris via oral testimony by a retired explorer (whose recording devices have mysteriously malfuctioned).  This latter point economically evades the limitations of Soviet cinema visual effects, but unhelpfully introduces the possibility that everyone who travels to Solaris suffers from hallucinations.

Because I had just read the novel, I was much less impatient with the first act than the average viewer would likely be.  I knew that Kelvin's suicidal ex-wife would figure largely in Kelvin's encounter with Solaris, and I expected more foreshadowing than Tarkovsky delivers.  Instead, we are left with the feeling that Kelvin is more attached to his childhood; he seems to have made his peace with his ex-wife's suicide.  I think this is more effective than having Kelvin haunted by his ex-wife, fleeing Earth only to find her at Solaris.  That jibes with my experience of memories; they can be quite impertinent when they choose to surface.

I don't know how intentional this was by Tarkovsky, but one motif that struck me was how often he shows us the back of a person's head.  I found myself trying to read a character through the movement of his shoulders, with mixed success.

When facing the camera, I found the performances to be strong.  It's a talky piece, and I thought they hit the right balance of weariness and curiosity without falling too hard on the obsessed scientist cliche.  One element that Tarkovsky captures well is the dilemma faced by scientists charged with what was once the most important mission imaginable—establishing contact with another intelligence—now almost abandoned by the attention of greater humanity.  When the project turns disturbingly personal, from whence do they derive their duty?  40 years ago, one might have been tempted to say that only a Soviet filmmaker could do this absurdity justice, but I hope we know differently now.

Taking the film as one of my few exposures to Soviet science fiction, I wasn't terribly concerned that it didn't look as "futuristic" as 2001 or even Barbarella.  I found nothing kitschy or camp among the Zaporozhets, flaring shirt collars, or ubiquitous cigarettes.  I instead empathized with a group of people who had little enthusiasm for moving into the future if we were just going to bring the past along with us.

Followed by:   Soderbergh's adapation, and Lars von Trier's Melancholia.

Solaris (Lem)

I'd been vaguely aware of Stanislaw Lem for years, but I'd never read any of his stuff.  When a correspondent gave Solaris a favorable rating, I picked it up from the library (I failed to notice that a new English translation just came out, so I read the Kilmartin/Cox translation from the French).

Solaris is an apparently self-organizing body covering the entire surface of a planet orbiting a binary star system.  It came to the attention of space-faring humanity because the orbit of the planet is anomalously stable, a fact that is ultimately attributed to the purpose and capability of Solaris.  Humanity has established a local research station with the mission of studying and making contact with Solaris.  The "ocean" (as they have dubbed the vast, colloidal mass) is hardly placid but rather practiced in creating objects and structures of varying permanency and in occasional defiance of laws of human-observed physics.

Decades of futility and occasional, accidental deaths have reduced the staff of the research station to three, including the former mentor of our protagonist.  Shortly before we arrive at the station, the scientists have decided to conduct an unprecedentedly provocative experiment involving the exposure of the ocean to powerfully directed x-rays.  Correlation is never here established to be causation, but soon afterward the scientists are visited by "Guests," people of their acquaintance who (for a panoply of reasons) cannot possibly be on the station and who have no memory of how they arrived.  This is now a common trope, but Lem gets some clever tension out of it, primarily because the surviving scientists don't see fit to warn the protagonist when he arrives at the station (a less focused writer would have spent more time with the scientists mistaking the protagonist for another "Guest").

What distinguishes Solaris from other aliens-in-grandma's-clothing is that there seems to be no purpose to the "contact" or even any true awareness of the humans.  The analogy I find most apt (and which I haven't seen in other discussions of Solaris) is that of an allergic reaction by Solaris to the humans in its noosphere.  The Guests are formed from human memories much as antibodies learn the shapes of foreign bodies.

There is a wealth of implications here.  I'm fond of the existential paradox (?) of humans seeking extra-terrestrial intelligence and confronting only themselves.  Also gratifying are the conjectural and wry responses by the scientists; very little Lovecraftian Sturm und Drang in the face of galactic absurdity.  The responses by one of the Guests when she grasps the nature of her origin are refreshingly inconclusive.  How much of another person can we preserve in our memories?  How much do we need?

A more mischievous writer might have created a cult of Solaris, galactic pilgrims who believe the ineffable ocean to have been responsible for our millennia of religious phenomena.  Lem raises this idea and disposes of it as almost a mathematical digression.

It's difficult to compare physical and temporal scales between humanity and Solaris, so the conclusion of the novel is ambiguous as to whether Solaris has resisted or succumbed to the infection by humanity.  Our infection by humanity, of course, remains terminal.

Followed by: the film adaptations by Tarkovsky and Soderbergh, and Melancholia by Lars von Trier.

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