My Review of Solaris (1972) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 Snaut: "We have no interest in conquering any cosmos. We want to extend the Earth to the borders of the cosmos. We don't know what to do with other worlds. We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror. We struggle for contact, but we'll never find it. We're in the foolish human predicament of striving for a goal that he fears, that he has no need for. Man needs man."

*Spoilers if you have not seen it*

I don't if it was this film or Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1966) that got me interested in ghost stories that are not about or not just about scaring you, but about teaching you something about life. Solaris (1972) is about a lot of things, but I think the theme of being thankful for what you got is very prominent. This is the first–though not the last–of Tarkovsky's "anti-science fiction" films. Though a lot of the action this film takes place away  from the Earth, Earth is the key place of this movie. Of course, this is also a ghost story featuring a lost love...and a sentient alien planet.

We find a cosmonaut-scientist named Kris Kelvin who  is a widower and is estranged from his family–particularly his father. He is given the assignment to assess the strange happenings on the a space station orbiting the mysterious alien planet Solaris. He spends his last day on Earth with his father, aunt, and father's friend Berton who was a part of an early exploratory mission to Solaris, but had a mental breakdown during the course of that mission and retired soon-afterwards. When Kelvin makes it to the station, he finds it in disarray and then things take a turn on him...

[Spoiler-stuff now]

So lets just get into the big twist. The ideas of alien ghosts is genius to me. The alien planet reads your subconscious make people based on who or what you desired most based on your memories of that person. Kelvin's buried love and remorse of his dead wife Hari makes her the "guest" that shows up after he arrives on Solaris. The longer she exist, the more "Solaris-Hari" becomes her own person separate from the one that existed on Earth and more human than the other folks on the space station. We also have to other scientist at Solaris station who have gone half-mad by the "guests" Solaris has forced upon them they offer very different opinions on everything that is happening in the movie.

The film also goes out of its way in criticizing the obsession with Outer Space and the neglect of the Earth. This movie is Tarkovsky's direct response to 2001: A Space Odyssey and movies like it. He felt  that the obsession (even at that time) with human colonization of Space was an attempt to not deal with the human-made problems on Earth. The ending of the movie shows Tarkovsky's opinions on this. The use of rain should be mentioned as well. It has been suggested that the use of rain (or snow) in his films suggested a holy or spiritual presence. Tarkovsky never gave a definitive answer on this, but I tend to believe it.

Reconciling with one's past in order to have a future is not an original theme in films, it's certainly not an original theme in ghost stories, but few films have done it more beautifully than this one. When I watch this movie I feel the pain of lost, but the peace of having reconciled something. Andrei Tarkovsky and his troupe took the best of the Russian literary tradition and translated it to film. The two themes I have just wrote about are just a few that this film goes over and I could talk about more things if I choose. I like movies that give you a lot to think-on.

My Review of The Sacrifice (1986) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 It's the end of the world and I don't feel too good myself. I'm not talking about 2020, but I am talking about Andrei Tarkovsky's final film before he left this Earth. The Sacrifice (1986) is about a man named Alexander who has, like Ivan Ilyich, wasted his life and now realizes that world may be coming to an end soon as the Cold War has taken a turn for the worst and a nuclear holocaust may be imminent. He tells God (who he says he has long had a non-existent relationship with) that he's willing to give-up everything he loves--and his family--to stop this from coming. Luckily for him, he has two associates who can possibly help. This movie is a very meditative parable about life at the "beginning of the end" of the Cold War. 

The fact that this movie has a coherent plot distinguishes it from Tarkovsky's other feature film made in exile: Nostalghia (1983). This film also acts as a response or call-back to 2 earlier films of his: Andrei Rublev (1966) & Mirror (1977). While the use of rain/snow is the most recognizable motif of Tarkovsky, fire is a strong secondary one. The previously-mentioned films and The Sacrifice all use fire in a very pronounced and important way to symbolize a change or significant act. While this this film is more comprehensible than Nostalghia (though that film has a much stronger ending–possibly Tarkovsky's best), Tarkovsky wears his influences of Bergman and Kurosawa in very un-characteristically sloppy form here. It was quaint to watch this film of Europeans pining for an imagined past while living in an unbearable present. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer Tarkovsky's monologues/soliloquies in Russian rather than Swedish.

What trying times that this world (and myself) has been going through as of late! This movie puts it all in that kind of context that only Tarkovsky can offer. I compared this movie to The Death of Ivan Ilyich earlier, but I could also compare it to The Cherry Orchard by the fact that it is asking us what we would be willing to do to survive the end of the world. As I am still in mourning even as I write this, I can only imagine what sacrifice I would offer to stave-off disaster...