Andrei Tarkovsky released arguably his most celebrated work, Solaris in 1972.
The film is a meditative piece that explores many themes, not least of which is what it
means to be human.
At the centre of the film is our stern and inscrutable protagonist Kris Kelvin who is
bound for the oceanic planet of Solaris.
His mission as a trained psychologist is to investigate why the skeleton crew of three
on the space station orbiting Solaris are sending nonsensical messages back to Earth.
The powers that be are growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to decipher
anything meaningful about the planet and Earth’s study of Solaris may ultimately be terminated
based on Kris’s findings.
The Solaris ocean seems to be alive and appears to be attempting to communicate with the cosmonauts
exploring the planet, however the alieness on both sides prevents them from being able
to bridge the gap.
Before Kris bids goodbye to his home planet he spends some time with his elderly father
and it’s clear that the pair have an emotionally distant relationship. The absence of Kris’s
mother looms large. Her death impacted father and son deeply.
Berton - an ex cosmonaut and an old friend of Kris’s father visits them in order to
tell Kris of his own strange experience on Solaris.
When there, he encountered a four-meter-tall, glistening naked child emerging from the ocean.
Berton’s experience was deemed a hallucination by so-called experts back on Earth and Kris
too dismisses Berton’s tale, much to Berton’s dismay and anger.
After Berton storms off, Kris is berated by his father for his abrasiveness.
Later Kris burns his earthly possessions in a symbolic ending of what was his life on Earth.
His father and aunt watch on, knowing that they are unlikely to see Kris again.
When Kris arrives on the space station no one is there to greet him and everything is
in disarray.
He tracks down a Dr Snaut who is nervous and evasive. Kris learns that his friend Dr Gibarian
who was on the mission with Dr Snaut and a Dr Sartorius has commited suicide.
Kris also becomes aware of beings that are present on the space station, entities other
than himself and the Drs.
He comes across a rambling suicide video message left for him by Gibarian. Something has
happened on the space station - something that Gibarian could not deal with and which
ultimately caused him to kill himself.
A tired Kris retires to his room to get some sleep and when he wakes up he is shocked to
find himself in the presence of his late wife Hari.
Terrified Kris tricks her into entering a rocket and then he launches her into outer
space. Hari’s screams are audible as she realises what is happening.
But this is not the end of Hari and Kris and she reappears in his room once again and this
time Kris calmly accepts her. The pair fall asleep in a tender embrace.
Hari is a creation of Solaris; the ocean has delved deep into Kris’s mind and recreated
his late wife from his memories.
When Hari wakes up from her slumber she finds that Kris has left her alone and in a panic
she breaks down the metal door of their room, attempting to reach him. She can’t bear
to be alone. She cannot exist without him.
Kris comes to her rescue and she is bloodied and injured from trying to escape but before
he can tend to her wounds, her injuries spontaneously heal by themselves.
Sartorius theorises that the guests Solaris is sending their way are created from stable
‘neutrino systems’ and that it might still be possible to destroy them using a device
known as ‘the annihilator’.
Kris emphatically bans anyone from harming Hari. He has fallen back in love with his
ex wife and will not be parted from her.
Snaut proposes beaming Kris's brainwave patterns into the ocean in hopes that it will
understand that they do not want these guests from appearing on the station. Solaris is
attempting to communicate with them via these visitors but it is not effective and the
inhabitants of the spaceship do not want these disturbing apparitions.
We learn that Kris and his ex wife Hari had a troubled relationship back on Earth. It’s
implied that Kris held Hari at an emotional distance. Hari and her late mother-in-law
also didn’t get along which added further strain to Hari and Kris’s relationship.
After one particularly nasty argument between Hari and Kris, Hari commited suicide.
This new Hari is Kris’s second chance and he seems to develop a much deeper connection
with her than to his original first wife.
Over time Hari develops more and more independence. She no longer needs to be around Kris constantly,
she becomes her own person and is no longer just a replica of the original Hari, built
from Kris’s memories.
In the film, all members of the ship gather for a rather sad birthday party for Snaut and during
philosophical debates and arguments Sartorius brutally reminds Hari that she is not human.
Affected and distressed by this Hari later attempts to commit suicide by drinking liquid
oxygen but much to her dismay she is spontaneously healed once again.
Kris doesn’t want her to die, he is happy with his new found love and wants to live
his life with Hari on the ship.
However the decision is taken out of his hands, as Hari succeeds in ending her life with the
help of the other scientists and with the use of the annihilator.
The ocean Solairs also stops sending any more visitors to the ship. Instead of these apparitions
the ocean starts creating islands on the ocean’s surface.
With no Hari, Kris has to decide how to move forward and the film ends with him reuniting
with his father but there is something wrong about the scene. It’s raining inside his
father’s house and the pair don’t even seem to notice. That is when the camera zooms out
and it’s revealed that Kris may actually be on one of the islands that Solaris has created.
Has Kris decided not to return to Earth but to remain on Solaris?
Earth’s frustrated reaction to not being able to understand Solaris leads them to want
to abandon the pursuit of their exploration.
A disillusioned Snaut says of mankind: “We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want
to expand Earth endlessly. We don’t want other worlds, we want a mirror.”
And this desire to see what we want to see is illustrated to a lesser degree by Kris’s
love for Hari.
She begins as a reflection of his memories, of what he wants her to be, what he remembers
her to be and not as she really was.
Earth’s failure to make any progress with Solaris throws into sharp focus our limits
as a species.
As communication with an entity so entirely alien proves to be futile, the film questions
whether alway being outward looking and the human tendency to believe in limitless possibilities
because of our rapid technological advancements is realistic.
And subsequently, if we are so limited - what is our ultimate place in the Universe?
Is Earth it and is that so bad?
Tarkovsky celebrates life, humanity and Earth through beautiful shots of nature.
A key message in the film is that finding fulfillment, meaning and our place in the
Universe can be achieved through the celebration of life and humanity over the use of cold,
sterile and ultimately limiting science.
The film grapples with the question of what gives a person their identity.
Hari struggles with the fact that she’s a copy and not the original but it is something
that she comes to make peace with as develops her own thoughts and comes to her own conclusions
about how she wants to or does not want to exist.
Solaris questions how much we know about the people we have relationships with.
Do we love our partners, our children, our parents based on who they actually are or
simply because of how we perceive them?
Kris loves the Solaris Hari much more than the real Hari and the Solaris Hari begins
as nothing more than his memories of her.
The narrative of the film charts Kris’s evolution from emotional deadness to a rediscovery
of his humanity as he falls in love with Hari on the space station.
He was cold and distant to Hari on Earth but on the space station
he openly shows his love for her.
When Hari is gone, he returns to his father - wanting to reconnect.
He is a changed man from the one we met at the start of the film.
The end of the film implies that Kris stays on Solaris, on an island that replicates his
home on Earth and he reunites with a created version of his father and not the real person.
After his experiences on Solaris is Kris content with his imagined version of reality rather
than the real thing back on Earth?
What is reality anyway? Can it not be what we need it to be?
Tarkovsky is celebrated for his ability to use style and symbolism to tell a story.
The slow pacing of Solaris is deliberate.
Scenes such as the one where Berton drives through a city for almost 5 minutes introduces
a trancelike meditative state in the viewer. This time is an opportunity to think about
what has gone before, what we have seen and been told.
Tarkovsky also goes between colour, sepia and almost black and white and
he does this for dramatic effect and to illustrate Kris’s moods.
Tarkovsky was famously suspicious of the use of colour in films but over time came round
to the idea and used it to his advantage. Colour became another tool to be used in his
language of film.
Solaris is also rich with symbolism, shots of weeds in water, a magnificent horse running
past and lengthy contemplations of paintings all illustrate the beauty of the world.
And with that I conclude my analysis and explanation of Solaris. A film hailed as one of the best
examples of cinema in film history.
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