Shot and edited in long takes, tableau stills, and slow zooms, Tarkovsky eases the viewer into a contemplative and brooding mood that mimics Kelvin’s, whose great reluctance to leaving Earth is demonstrated in this melancholy farewell to nature. We are introduced to our protagonist Kris Kelvin, the sombre and reflective psychologist, as he wanders pensively around the lake by his parents’ house. Although this theme is certainly carried through in Tarkovsky’s adaptation, I would argue that Solaris also presents a rich exploration of man’s encounter with the absurd, through its both its narrative and cinematic language. Lem’s novel deals with the question of man’s incapacity to communicate with the non-human, to relate or connect with animals or any other ‘alien’ species. Solaris, in its exploration of identity, death, man and the cosmos, thoroughly illustrates the existential argument of the absurd outlined by Camus in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. Using Sisyphus as a metaphor for existential anxiety, Camus argues instead that we must reconsider the absurd, and conclude that “the struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart”, and “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. He is doomed to endlessly push a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to let it roll back down so that he may start the task again. In the ancient Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned to an eternity of futile suffering by a punishment from the Gods. Yet, Camus argues that suicide-insofar as it springs from a fear or a rejection of the absurd – is ultimately a mislead attempt at freedom, and in the proceeding chapters he continues by explicating an alternative response to man’s fraught condition, advocating that true freedom lies in a confrontation of the absurd, as opposed to a surrender to it.
He calls this irreconcilable contradiction ‘the absurd’. He begins his case by recognising that man’s existence is fated to suffer a fundamental disharmony that arises from his inability to reconcile his essential need for reason with the final meaninglessness of life. In his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ from 1948, French philosopher Albert Camus addresses the subject of suicide, asserting that this “one truly serious philosophical problem” is in need of thoughtful consideration. Upon his arrival at the station, however, Kelvin discovers the mysterious powers of the planet Solaris for himself, and his rigid concepts of truth and reality soon begin to shatter. Despite receiving a grave warning from a former ‘Solaristics’ researcher, psychologist Kris Kelvin resolves to accept the mission, and eventually leaves the Earth behind for a journey to the mysterious planet. After some confusion surrounding a succession of mysterious reports from the crew aboard the ship, a psychologist is called to visit the station to perform an evaluation of the crew’s mental stability, and determine the progress of their mission.
The film primarily takes place on-board a spacecraft orbiting the planet ‘Solaris’. Tarkovsky’s filmic adaptation wrestles at length with complex existential questions of identity, cracks open multiple planes of reality, and questions the limitations of man’s scientific search for Truth, and his philosophical pursuit of purpose.
An existential sci-fi thriller, a psychosomatic drama and a swelling romantic tragedy, Tarkovsky’s 169-minute masterpiece is a dense philosophical meditation on life and death, science and art, mind, memory, emotion, illusion, and the mystery of the cosmos. Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 cinematic tour de force Solaris (based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name) boasts a reputation of being no less than one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made. “‘Art and nothing but art’, said Nietzsche, ‘we have art in order not to die from the truth’”
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