Solaris Review: Why

Space is Not for Us

Space has, supposedly, always been the destined final frontier of humanity. Ever since the conception of our civilization, we’ve always looked up at the night sky and wondered what is truly out there? This question gave birth to the genre of science fiction. It is a genre which serves to imagine the uncharted parts of existence, to celebrate the adventure which awaits us out in the stars, and to question what is to become of the future. But ultimately, these questions of extraterrestrial life, artificial intelligence, mechanisms of space travel, and many other tropes are all dictated and mediatized by our collective belief in the indomitable human will: the belief that humanity will always stand victorious against any obstacle through our collectivity and ingenuity, and that these same virtues will lead to a better future for all. Mankind never gives up; forever ambitious, aspiring, and never content with just what we have—for we can always see more to be gained.

It is then interesting when scifi media breaks this boldly optimistic notion and explores instead our fragility, and why, despite being its proud inhabitants, humans may never stand a chance of truly having its place within the stars. Two of the best to have ever done so must be Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972).

Kubrick and Tarkovsky are also considered to be two of the greatest directors we have ever had, and both ponder human nature but through two very different styles and means. The difference between these two masterpieces then perfectly reflects the difference of their styles, both legendary in their own rights—and with Solaris being routinely called Tarkovsky’s reply to Kubrick’s 2001:ASO, we must not only look at Solaris, but its contemporary as well to truly understand what makes it special. Both Solaris and 2001:ASO explore the fragility of humankind, but whereas Kubrick did this through showing how truly primitive we all are and how unknowable the universe we are up against is, Solaris spends its precious runtime illustrating the delicacy of all which makes us human—love, memories, familial connection, and the emptiness we feel when we are lacking in these. Where 2001 looked outwards, Solaris looked inwards.

Tarkovsky’s films are more like environments than entertainments. It’s often said they’re too long, but that’s missing the point: he uses length and depth to slow us down, to edge us out of the regrettably hasty nature of our lives (of which we have all become accustomed to and rarely stop to think of it with discontent anymore, a fact that Tarkovsky must find most unfortunate) to enter a zone of reverie and meditation. When he allows a scene to continue for what seems like an unreasonable length, we have a choice. We can either be bored, or we can use this interlude as an opportunity to consolidate what has gone before, and process it in terms of our own reflections. This is what Solaris and all other Tarkovsky films often are at their core: a mirror for the audience. His films often explore the fundamental truths of life as he believed in cinema and its power as a medium in connecting us all through universal experiences. One of the most wonderful things about a Tarkovsky film is its unique sense of rewatchability, not out of the endless entertainment it provides, but because it is a reflection of its viewer. If you have changed, the way you see the film will have changed as well. You will pick up different meanings and interpretations, but they will always be true, and you will always feel a sense of vindication and connection to their message.

The film involves a Russian scientist, Christ Kelvin, who journeyed to the planet of Solaris, a transforming alien intelligence which creates people from clues apparently obtained by reading minds. The planet of Solaris, we learn, is entirely covered by an ocean, and when X-ray probes were used to investigate it, the planet apparently replied with probes of its own, entering the minds of the cosmonauts stationed there to research it, and making some of their memories real. Guests are created to ‘haunt’ these cosmonauts as people from their memories come back as apparitions. Within a day, Kelvin is presented with one of the Guests that the planet can create: a duplicate of his late wife Khari, exact in every detail, but lacking her memories. When we love someone, who do we love? That person, or our idea of that person? Some years before virtual reality became a commonly understood concept, Tarkovsky was exploring its implications. Although other persons no doubt exist in independent physical space, our entire relationship with them exists in our minds. When we touch them, it is not the touch we experience, but our consciousness of the touch. It is us that give that touch meaning. To some extent then, the second Khari is as ‘real’ as the first, although different. The relationship between Kelvin and the new Khari plays out against the nature of reality on the space station. He glimpses other Guests. He views a taped message from a dead cosmonaut, filled with information and warning. Khari, we find out, cannot be killed—although it is attempted—because she can simply be replaced by the planet. Physical pain is meaningless to her, we see when she attempts to rip through a steel bulkhead door because she does not know how to open it. Gentle feelings are accessible to her, as shown in a scene that most people agree to be the magic centre of Solaris, when the space station enters a stage of zero gravity and Kelvin, Khari, and lighted candles float in the air. It is then this—that which makes love beautiful; the violent, fiery passion tempered within a gentle longing, a warmth within one’s evening of their memories—that makes us all but too delicate in the harsh temperament of the stars. Khari’s indestructible state speaks to Christ’s eternal love that can be understood all too well, and it is not one of dull indomitability, for it can be swayed at the fainted notion of gentility. It is a fragility so treasured it is wrapped in eternity, a construct of our consciousness that we can all share and relate to, for it has been conceived and was ours at some point, something entirely human and completely detached from the physical realm like a safe sanctum, inviolate from our pitiful physical condition— and the fact that we, most of all Tarkovsky, holds this which makes us human and makes humans beautiful in reverence as something noble and righteous is precisely why we are unfit for space. It is a preciousness of which the cold abyss abhors— when our existence is but a speck in the eternity of the universe, how dare we have the audacity to value such a soft little thing? How dare we spend time and dwell on such a lingering as Christ does? Humans may never truly come to accept the relative impermanence of our existence compared to that of our environment—how can we then conquer the space which cares not to nurture our fragility? This coldness of the universe is further shown in a sequence in which Christ remembers his childhood in a dream. We are shown simple and abstract images which invoke the concept of motherly love and nurturing, things core to how we think and judge things to be humanly and humane, all opposite to the universe that is cruel without even the consciousness to be so.

As a short note on this film’s spirituality—while one might consider it to be a breaking away from the typical conventions of sci-fi, that would actually be contradictory. Science fiction has always also had the theme of human continuity—it is the notion that the ideals which define us in the modern day are so core to our identity that not only will it persist on even to the far flung future, it might even have always existed. That in some way, shape, or form, humanity will remain recognizable at heart, in both the good and the bad, no matter how advanced we are. Solaris’ portrayal of the universal truth of human connection is then in line with this idea; everybody loves somebody, sometime.

If we are creations of the universe, made from the very same substances, then how come we are so far from its vast, eternal glory? And if we’re one with it then are we made by the universe just so the universe can observe itself? These are two questions that Tarkovsky answers within this film, whereas Kubrick stopped at just the first. Kubrick’s answer, though, was apt: to simply say that we are too fragile and primitive for the universe—in that we are not as different as the primates we evolved from as much as we’d like to admit, still ruled by primal instincts and primitive conceptions of technology (even our space stations look like the bones we used to use as tools when we were primates!)—this answer was entirely sufficient, for to say that we can’t have the universe as we are not its likeness is also entirely sufficient. But Tarkovsky saw something more. He concluded that, actually, we are alike to the universe for we also found our own eternity, even if only in our own consciousness.

There is a whole entirely separate world within our consciousness that is created from our perception of the physical world, one in which this new Khari is derived from, different from the Khari who died but just as true as the original one to Christ because was the very idea of her in his mind that he was in love with. It is something eternal, indestructible by the physical world, and thus we are alike in this way. Just as the universe will outlast all of our existence, our mental conception is bound to outlast the physical reminders that they are created from. This is then what ultimately makes us unfit for space. It is a world in which humanity is all too happy to dwell in, content with the cultivation of this world of which we perceive to be a higher existence than the physical. We can not triumph over the universe for we never had the ambition to do so in the first place, just as Christ abandons any scientific attempt at explaining the existence of this new Khari, as she is entirely true to him as the original Khari was. Tarkovksy uses the universe to reflect back at ourselves, who also are reflections of the universe. In Khari, Christ finds peace as the idea of her lingers on, forever eternal in his mind, and the Solaris who recreates our thoughts into existence then represents a universe existing entirely in our consciousness. Tarkovsky concludes that we are spiritual creatures by nature, only bound by the physical against our will, and that is why we are unfit for space.

I obviously highly recommend this film, of which you can watch on Youtube on the Moscow Films channel. It is in russian and while the english subtitles aren’t the most accurate, it will suffice, and I hope this will lead you to developing an appreciation for the way in which Tarkovsky uses cinema.

Written by Pom (So11)

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