Solaris (1972)
Solaris is, on the one hand, quite strange. On the other, it’s not strange enough.
The 1972 Soviet film by Andrei Tarkovsky follows a psychologist named Kris Kelvin to the planet of Solaris, which is covered by a vast, intelligent ocean. It’s this intelligence that responded when scientists blasted it with radioactive waves some years earlier. Solaris tapped into the dreams of scientists as they slept and sent them “visitors” that embodied their deepest desire. (No, it’s not that kind of movie.) For Kelvin, it’s his wife Hari, who had committed suicide ten years earlier when he left her. This is not a resurrection, but a creature of neutrinos that looks, feels, and loves just as Kelvin remembers. This time, Kelvin loves back.
But for the pseudo-wife, the problems have only begun. Her feelings for Kelvin may be real, but she is not a “real” human, and her existence keeps Kelvin tied to Solaris. As Hari spirals into depression and guilt, Kelvin faces the prospect of losing his wife yetagain.
Meanwhile, he and the other scientists must decide how to respond to the planet that has sent these indestructible visitors. Deliver a final, mortal blast of radiation? Give up and return to Earth? Or a new, third option: send the brain waves of Kelvin to the ocean and see what happens?
Hari’s problem is familiar from any number of stories about androids and other automata, at least the ones that aren’t out to terminate you. What’s the difference between a human and an automaton when an automaton can talk the talk, walk the walk, and above all, feel? These films suggest it’s their relationships with humans as sons (A.I.) or lovers (Blade Runner).
It’s not love that makes human human in these stories, but uniqueness — or to be precise, the perception of uniqueness. A loved one is an individual who is more than the sum of his parts. Although you know you could find someone richer, handsomer, and less likely to snore, he is irreplaceable.
The flip side of this warm-and-fuzzy possibility is the fear of replacement: that ordinary humans will be supplanted by a double who steps into their lives and relationships. In Solaris, the scientist might love the double who has been created from memories of his wife, but the more human-like she becomes, the more she agonizes that she is not the “real” Hari. There is, or was, only one.
The Polish writer Stanislaus Lem criticized the film for turning his novel about a fundamentally alien planet into a love story. On screen, Solaris is less about the possibilities of science than the danger of desire. For Kelvin, the “realness” of his alien wife doesn’t matter. Arguably, she’s better than the real thing. The new Hari literally cannot exist without him; facing separation, she tears through metal doors. She’s beautiful, compliant, and loving — a figment of his nostalgic memories. This is a planet that fulfills deepest desires. Is desire a humanizing force that makes an alien creation a wife? Is it a crushing will to possession that destroys its object? Or does it imprison us, as in the film’s last scene, on the islands of our minds?
There are echoes of a hundred movies in these themes, from Forbidden Planet to A.I. What distinguishes Solaris is its restraint: the uncanny soundscape, long shots of clouds and water that contrast with the Kubrickian ship, the deliberate pace at which the inner workings of this world unfold.
