Some nights in movie-watching, I strive for a double feature or heck, even a triple feature. Other nights, you’ve gotta give that entire evening to a three hour epic arthouse classic and so it was that I finally sat down with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). I liked the Soderbergh version (love the Cliff Martinez soundtrack) but this was something else as I expected. Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, this is about a scientist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) who is sent on a mission to the space station orbiting the ocean planet Solaris – however, once there the planet creates a replica of his dead wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) based on his memories. Intentionally slow as to be a meditation on humanity, love and exploration, I became quite immersed in its rhythms. The older special effects make the space station interiors look rough and lived in, the shots of the ocean planet strange abstracts. Even just the patient close ups and wide shots of Kelvin’s father’s house are eerie and beautiful. The performances are great (one of the space scientists, Anatoly Solonitsyn, I recognised from Stalker). There was something so melancholic and haunting about the film, most of which doesn’t feel like a sci-fi movie with its long philosophical discussions in drawing rooms, but always punctuated by something strange and alien. Recommended (obviously). I streamed this on the UWA library account I have on Kanopy (which has a small selection of Janus Films/Criterion Collection titles). Recommended.
VHS Tracking 