MOVIE OF THE MONTH: JUNE 2011

SOLARIS 

Director         : Andrei Tarkovsky
Based on        : Stanisław Lem
Music             : Eduard Artemyev
Camera          : Vadim Yusov
Blu-Ray Disc : 26 May 2011
Running time : 165 min.  

Modern viewers may be more familiar with Steven Soderbergh & George Clooney’s remake of Solaris, a good film on its own merits as it’s so different from its source in tone, but the massively influential original version by the legendary Andrei Tarkovsky holds a far more prominent place in film history. Tarkovsky’s mesmerizing piece of science fiction has been a part of the Criterion Collection for some time but it’s been chosen to get the upgrade to the Blu-ray department of the legendary line of releases and so the standard DVD, which was the only version we could get our hands on, was given a new treatment as well.

It’s hard to describe Solaris accurately. It’s such an unusual movie in that it’s a piece from a genre in which we’ve become accustomed to things like space creatures, but it’s far more based on human psychology than alien technology. With elements of “2001: A Space Odyssey” or, for younger viewers, even “Event Horizon,” “Solaris” is about the roots of madness and the devastating impact of human emotion.

Based on the novel of the same name, by Stanislaw Lem  is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species. Tarkovsky's adaptation is a “drama of grief  and partial recovery” concentrated upon the thoughts and the consciences of the cosmonaut scientists studying an extra-terrestrial (alien) life.The psychologically complex and slow narrative of Solaris has been contrasted to kinetic Western science fiction films, which rely upon fast narrative pace and special effects to communicate character psychology and an imagined future.

Solaris is about a space station circling the titular planet. The crew has essentially gone crazy. A psychologist goes there to see if there’s anything can be done and he falls victim to the same problems. It’s not long before he’s communicating with his long-dead wife and things get weirder from there. The less you know about Solaris, the better. Just know that it’s a piece in which the subconscious of the average man is truly the final frontier.

Tarkovsky’s film is strangely mesmerizing, in no small part because it’s so different from what we’ve come to expect from films set in outer space. It’s undeniably slow but it doesn’t feel overly long (even at close to 3 hours). It’s a masterfully crafted piece by one of history’s most-admired directors. If you’re a young reader who wants to expand his view of science fiction, it would be a fantastic place to start.

And you couldn’t do better than the Criterion edition which includes a complete second disc of special features along with a strong transfer, even on standard DVD. I wish we could appraise the HD transfer, and the Blu-ray is definitely the way to go if you have the option, but the standard transfer is better than average.

Salman Rushdie calls Solaris "a sci-fi masterpiece", and has urged that "This exploration of the unreliability of reality and the power of the human unconscious, this great examination of the limits of rationalism and the perverse power of even the most ill-fated love, needs to be seen as widely as possible before it's transformed by Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron into what they ludicrously threaten will be '2001 meets Last Tango in Paris.' Tarkovsky must be turning over in his grave.

Film Review Text Courtesy : http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com

To buy DVD BluRay            : http://www.criterion.com/films/553-solaris