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Has anyone seen Solaris (Tarkovsky’s version)? There is a boring section in a car (forget that), and it is a slow and long film compared to Hollywood standards, but I also find it is a very spiritual film in some ways, and is very poignant for those who have loved and lost. I have watched it a number of times, and there are some parts I find profoundly moving. I rarely cry at films, but I have done with this one. I didn’t go for the Soderberg version at all, for one reason and another. The book is also very different.
Although they are all quite different, they do share some things in common. How can we really understand the other? Whether it is another person, another being, or the universe, I never know if we do or not. The film also deals with memory, and how it distorts. Although it is a bit of an “intellectual” film, there is a lot in it which speaks to my emotions and to my soul. It is hard to explain.
It comes as no surprise to learn that the director was a Soviet-era Christian, with mystical tendencies.
I saw the soderberg version, and, …. ok. It takes a mystic to really communicate mysticism, and soderberg has done some pretty rad stuff, but he’s no zen master. You’ve inspired me to bring the old russian version higher up on my netflix queue.
Jordan wrote:I saw the soderberg version, and, …. ok. It takes a mystic to really communicate mysticism, and soderberg has done some pretty rad stuff, but he’s no zen master.
You’ve inspired me to bring the old russian version higher up on my netflix queue.
One word of warning though, the early parts are quite slow. There is one section where a guy is in a car in Japan (I’d recommend the FFwd for that part!), but there are other parts I find extremely moving, and the music is beautiful (I think it’s Bach or Handel)
I watched Solaris last night, the Tarkovsky version. The pacing of the movie may not be something people are accustomed to, the only thing I can compare it to in that regard is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The beginning can be the perfect cure for insomnia. Beautiful, yet lumbering. The beginning of the film can be hard to follow, you’re tossed into an established world with no attempt whatsoever to introduce you to the characters or to define the environment in which they exist. You could interpret that as a weakness or a strength, the director may have been purposely trying to disorient the audience.
[spoilers]
When I’m watching a film like this I tend to hyper-fixate on extracting symbols. For instance, the film kept switching between color, black and white, and various shades of photographic print toning. My mind is wired to want to find meaning but I think the director purposely made the transitions random to disorient people like me. Do the monochrome segments represent an alternate reality? Are the segments in color merely dreams? There are enough instances of dreamlike and reality-like things in color and monochrome that I believe that it can blur the line between the two words. There is no figuring out random and I think that was the point.
My gut reaction after watching this was that Inception presents some of the same themes in a more Hollywood/entertaining way but Solaris does bring new themes to the table. In addition to the theme of choosing our reality there’s also the question of whether people we love are just a projection of our memories of that person. Inception also explores the concept but Solaris asks the question, “is there a difference?”
What defines our relationships with other people, the person or our projection of that person?
I’ve seen the Tarkovsky version of Solaris but haven’t seen the more recent version nor read the book it’s based on. I quite liked the film. It is definitely slow moving and a movie about ideas rather than action. I read somewhere that the long car ride (which IS appallingly long) may have been inserted as a way of “wow”ing his Soviet audience. It would have been first look any of them had at a “modern” city and perhaps they found it more interesting than we do.
I like this quote from one the user reviews on IMDB:
Quote:Two truths drive this film: the inadequacy of human-kind to understand the Universe, and the inadequacy of human-kind to understand the human heart.
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