Solaris

The dvd version of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris was the first dvd that I bought for myself, while still at the University. At that time, dvds were still new and rather expensive, while I was a rather poor student. The cost of the disk was the equivalent of several weeks food money, yet I decided that I will buy it. It is difficult to say why... I had read about Tarkovsky before, I was more or less aware of the story of Solaris as well. I remember I somehow found the presence of such a piece strange; I imagined I would have sooner found it on the shelves of some specialized store, rather than on those of a shopping center, surrounded by nothing of its kind. It somehow looked lonely, and I guess I saw a lost treasure in it. I went by it several times before I had the funds to finally buy it, but it waited for me patiently. I believe it is still to be found among my belongings I brought back from the University years, yet I haven't actually seen it for several years, until quite recently, the Solaris novel of Stanisław Lem came into my possession. After reading it, I decided to rewatch the Tarkovsky movie, and ended up watching the remaining two film versions based on the same novel. I thought I will commemorate the event by noting down a few things about these.

Let's start with the novel. Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) was probably the internationally best known Polish author of recent times. Among his numerous science fiction related and non-fictional writings, Solaris is the most well known, not entirely unrelated to the fame of the film versions, although Lem himself was rather critical of these. The main theme of the novel, which according to Lem has been largely overlooked by all adaptations, is the difficulty in establishing contact with an alien civilization. The underlying argument is that humans do not really look for new worlds, they look for the mirror images of their own, and once they encounter a form of intelligent life form that cannot be grasped in the framework of human notions, attempts to establish contact become difficult and are probably even bound to failure or are at least of limited interest for either parties. The sentient ocean of the planet Solaris is such a life form. It can only be partially compared to a brain or a cell, and by the different nature of its existence it likely has little to communicate to human beings. For a long time, the ocean largely ignores them, until strong irradiation triggers a response. Occupants of the space station located above Solaris, begin to receive visitors, animated forms of their own most hidden thoughts... Another nice feature of the novel, probably unsuitable for the medium of film is the description of Solaristics as a scientific trend, its ideas and its development. This is an intellectual effort that requires a lot of imagination; to come up with a sort of 'fictional science'. And for this very reason it is likely to be appreciated by only a few...

There are to my knowledge three film versions of Solaris. I tend to think about them as independent from the novel, and both Lem and Tarkovsky seem to agree with me, although for different reasons, and with different emotional coloring... The first version was a soviet tv adaptation, with a flavor of heroic comradery. The whole film is on youtube.

Tarkovsky and Lem collaborated up to a certain stage on the script of the movie, which ended due to artistic differences. The film keeps the plot structure of the novel, but alters its philosophy. Although the theme of contact is present in the movie, Tarkovsky used this as a starting point for a story more centered on human conflicts, the human reaction to the situation created by the confrontation with the sentient ocean. Unlike the novel, an initial large segment of the movie takes place on Earth, discovering the roots of the main character, Chris Kelvin, a psychologist sent to Solaris, to investigate what happened to the crew of the space station. The contrast to the novel is even more interesting, since Tarkovsky is considered a more 'epic' artist, in the sense that he takes time to create an atmosphere, in the sort of detailed manner comparable to novelistic descriptions, relying less on the dynamics of drama/action as the majority of films do. The difference in the views of Tarkovsky and Lem is more than formal, however. Tarkovsky's Solaris is after all, still a drama, a slow paced psychological one under alien circumstances, whereas Lem's novel is more in the nature of a philosophical pondering.

But the version that really maximalized the element of dramatic action within the Solaris story is Steven Soderbergh's adaptation. Of course, compared to the action packed space operas of today, this is probably still somewhat slow paced, but it is a bit hard to see in what way this adaptation would fulfill the promise of its makers that it would be closer to Lem's novel than the Tarkovsky version. The plot is close enough, but it focuses even more on the weird psychological scenario packed into significantly less runtime, and if the description of interpersonal relationships tend to overshadow the philosophical content of the novel, then this version is on the dark side. However, like some other things from the dark side it's not altogether that bad... It has sometimes been described with the formula 2001: A Space Odyssey + Titanic. Now from that recipe, anything can be concocted... On that note however, I would have been interested to see Stanley Kubrick's take on Solaris. Somehow I can imagine that his capability to keep emotional distance could perhaps paid off well for Lem's philosophical goals. Distancing is a much argued tool, but it is a tool after all, and perhaps not only Solaris, but sci-fi in a somewhat more general sense can benefit from it, since it is a genre where the underlying general idea may well rival the importance of the 'human element', as well demonstrated by the conflicting versions of Solaris.