Solaris [DVD]

This is the fourth of Artificial Eye’s complete Tarkovsky feature films on blu-ray for the Region B market (see also my reviews of Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev & Mirror). As usual I am generally looking at the quality of the blu-ray – for those who are new to Tarkovsky, please see other reviews for details of the storyline etc.We have the excellent booklet, and a second disc of extras which unfortunately, like Rublev, is back to a half-hour disc. There are two items from the original AE DVD release: a 5 minute interview with Natalya Bondarchuk, which is a delight, and a short film on the work of Donatas Banionis.On the original DVD the Banionis film looked fine and played in 2.35:1 ratio. On the blu ray we seem to be stuck on a squeezed 1.37:1. I have tried every likely setting on 2 different players, but cannot unsqueeze it, so if you have the original DVD, you’d best view it again on that. A pity, because it is a very interesting film especially as we hear Banionis’s actual voice with his strong Lithuanian accent (he mentions that he is often dubbed because of this).Never mind, the film itself is superb: a bit-rate that well exceeds the Criterion release, with a subsequently slightly sharper picture. Actually, I am inclined to think that this is the same transfer as the Criterion: the colours match, the subtitles are similar if not identical, and there are the same negative scratches (very slight, in one short scene) in both editions. As with Mirror, I found several times that the image quality gives a 3-D effect, such is the clarity of the picture.Sound is LPCM 2.0 as all others so far. And as before, only director and title are sub-titled at the beginning.There is one oddity: the chapters (there are 12) don’t recognise that this is a 2-part film, so part 2 starts in the middle of a chapter, which whilst of no consequence if you are watching the whole film in one sitting, is annoying if you want a mid-film break.It is a shame that there is so much free space on the 2nd disc – the 30-odd minute interview with Natalya Bondarchuk from the Criterion edition along with the cinematographer, composer and art director interviews would have been a terrific addition. But here in region B land, we do now have a gorgeous print of Solaris for both discovery and rediscovery so, again, 5 stars for the film.

This movie is a classic sci-fi of russia cinema.

It is hard for me to describe the powerful effect this film had on me when I first saw it. It offers things rarely found in western cinema - philosophy, abstraction, silence and stylish minimalism.The film is littered with beautifully artistic moments. Early on is a an extended car journey sequence with no dialogue, complete with semi-ambient soundtrack, very ahead of its time. The rare 'space' scene as we see the exterior of the station is also simple, covincing and majestic. Frequently scenes end and begin with a view of the planet below, with no irritating framing or foreground, that become pure abstract art, with noise to match.The performances are excellent, though it is the beautiful Natalya Bondarchuk who steals every scene with her compelling portrayal of a sentient being composed of fragments of someone else's recollections. The small cast effectively create an atmosphere of self imposed repression and self denial against which the the only real, honest human is the incomplete, constructed one.The film deftly, elegantly and powerfully deals with love, regret, memory and being. It does so with such subtlety and style as to make one ponder the failings of much modern cinema. As for sheer power, I defy anyone not to be gripped by the unearthly, disturbingly beautiful 'resurrection' scene.If we compare cinema to other forms of art, Tarkovsky's Solaris is to film what Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals are to painting. Regarding those paintings a viewer once remarked that they seem like "the last things you see before you die" - the iconography of the absolute. This film can create a similar, hard to define reaction.It's like the best of Kubrick, but with such soul that even the most commited of atheists (such as myself) can be deeply moved by it.A masterpiece.

Others have reviewed the film at great length better than I am able to, I will merely add a factoid to show the conditions the director had to work under. The endless expressway scene that marks the transition between part 1 and 2 is actually an artefact of the twisted Soviet system. Tarkovsky and his team had traveled to Japan in order to film scenes at a technology fair in Tokyo, but found it was already over when they arrived. Getting permission to leave the Soviet union to visit non-communist countries was very difficult, and seen as a rare priviledge instead of a right. The film team had to squeeze in a certain amount of footage from Japan to justify the trip, or else risk having the next application for a foreign journey denied. Tarkovsky solved the dilemma by inserting a long sequence from the expressway as a bespoke future city.NB -If you want an example of how arbitrarily the Soviet system could crush a director of science fiction films (or any other films), check the career of Pavel Klushantsev (who came up with solutions for filming simulated microgravity before Stanley Kubrick did), -his career went downhill because he allowed a female cosmonaut to shed tears over the death of two colleagues. The Minister of Culture condemned this scene, since a true communist astronaut should be too strong to cry! Tarkovsky was wise to take precautions, even at the cost of making one scene uncomfortably long !! Stanislaw Lem who wrote the novel Solaris also had his problems with the communist system. He would simply hide his thoughts under the radar in the deeply abstract concepts he wrote about, and the censors were generally not smart enough to read between the lines.