Retrospective: Andrei Tarkovsky’s "Solaris" Hits Fifty

This essay was originally published in Mars’ Hill, volume 26, issue 10. You can read the full issue here.

It seems impossible to examine the history of science fiction cinema without mentioning Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), which turns fifty years old this year. Adapted from Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel of the same name, the film was born out of a time of intense creative and personal difficulty for Tarkovsky through the constant interference of the Soviet authorities on his creative work. Nevertheless, Tarkovsky managed to craft something extraordinary. It premiered at the 25th Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix award of 1972. 

Solaris has remained a defining work of sci-fi filmmaking. It both captures the moment and context of its creation but with a unique craft and artistic merit that has allowed it to endure. It seems fitting with its encroaching anniversary to take stock of Solaris’ complicated history and what it means to the genre as a whole.

Set in the distant future, Solaris is about humanity’s relationship to its first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence: the organic, sentient, but unknowable ocean covering the titular planet Solaris. However, decades after a space station was created to survey the planet, research on Solaris has proved futile. Dr. Kris Kelvin, a psychiatrist, is sent to the station to study the skeletal remaining crew members after reports of hallucinations and strange sightings. Soon enough, the power of Solaris begins to affect Kelvin when he is haunted by visions of his late wife. Tarkovsky’s work on Solaris began in 1968 both out of appreciation for Lem’s writings as well as necessity. Andrei Rublev (1966), his second feature film, was barred from release by the Soviet government and his screenplay for what would become Mirror (1975)—then titled A White Day or Confession, depending on the source—was rejected. Adapting the work of an author who had seen great commercial and critical success in the U.S.S.R. appeared to be a safe choice.

Still from Solaris.

Solaris, a text deeply rooted within the time of its creation, is often mentioned in the same breath as Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), another sci-fi drama released only four years earlier. Solaris is often referred to as, to quote film critic Phillip Lapote, a sort of “anti-2001,” two sci-fi epics made on opposing sides of the Cold War. Adding to the West-East divide between the films, Tarkovsky openly disliked 2001, calling it a “lifeless schema with only pretensions to truth.” Kubrick, however, had a great admiration for the Russian’s work. Lapote invites us to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the films, viewing them as “cousins” rather than “opposites.”

Filled with cutting-edge visual effects, gorgeous mise-en-scène, and cryptic, mysterious narratives that offer themselves to many varied interpretations, Solaris and 2001 represent a distinctive turning point in the landscape of pre-Star Wars sci-fi filmmaking. By the 1960s, technology had finally progressed to the point where filmmakers could voyage beyond Earth with their stories. Sci-fi was no longer a slave to alien invasions of Earth and man-made horrors that dominated the B-movies of the 50s, but it began to embody the boldness of the Space Race. It had been happening on television with Star Trek and was now creeping onto the silver screen. Not only that but 2001 and Solaris challenged the genre’s filmic manifestation to be more than light pulp entertainment. Kubrick and Tarkovsky push for the philosophical in their work. They use the exaggerated world of science fiction to explore complicated issues of meaning, humanity’s place in the universe, and our relationship to the divine.

Critic Roger Ebert refers to Solaris’ philosophy as “inward,” contrasting to 2001’s “outward” approach. 2001 is concerned with expansion, discovery, and finding the answers to the great mysteries of the universe. Solaris prefers the internal mechanisms of the human soul. It is an exploration of grief, loss, and love through the relationship between Kelvin and the Solaris-produced manifestation of his wife. In step with Lem’s work, although Lem was not kind to Tarkovsky’s film, Solaris is a personal and humanistic philosophical pondering.

What Solaris and 2001 started in the 60s and 70s continues to the present. Christopher Nolan, perhaps the most famous of Tarkovsky’s successors, has taken Solaris to heart. Elements of its story appear in Inception (2010), and its themes resonate with the subject matter of Interstellar (2014). Interstellar could be seen, further, as the intellectual child of both 2001 and Solaris. It filters highly personal stories about family and loss through the lens of exploration and discovery. As Interstellar voyages into the beyond searching for the beings higher than humanity, all it finds is our own weakness.

“We don't want to conquer space at all,” says Dr. Snaut, one of Solaris' principal characters. “We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don't want other worlds; we want a mirror.” Tarkovsky extends the bounds of Earth into space. As we venture further into the unknown, Earth keeps calling back to us.

Still from Solaris.

Tarkovsky’s work, Solaris most of all, is deeply empathetic to the human experience. This is often a strange concept for contemporary viewers because of how alienating Tarkovsky’s work can be. He specializes in excruciatingly slow paces and shots that go on for minutes at a time. Stalker (1979) famously has fewer shots than there are minutes in the movie. To Tarkovsky, this is all intention. He calls his approach “sculpting in time,” using the very tangible passage of time to capture authentic experience. “Art, like science,” wrote Tarkovsky, “is a means of assimilating the world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of man’s journey towards what is called ‘absolute truth.’” Solaris is full of truth. It contains profound statements about love, life, and death as it questions what it means to be human. Tarkovsky, here, demonstrates his mastery of the cinematic form and command of emotional language.

“My discovery of Tarkovsky’s first film was like a miracle,” said Swedish master Ingmar Bergman, best known for Persona (1966) and Seventh Seal (1957). He continued, “Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

Following Solaris, Tarkovsky would only make four more films. His final two works, Nostalgia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986), were produced outside of his home country during his left-imposed exile from the Soviet Union. He died in 1986 at the age of fifty-four. With just seven feature films, Tarkovsky managed to accomplish more than filmmakers with dozens of films to their name and left an unmistakable mark on the art of cinema. He was admired and idolized by his peers for his medium-defining work, and his legacy remains one of the most important in cinema.

“Solaris is no ordinary [sci-fi] film,” wrote Akira Kurosawa, director of Seven Samurai (1954) and Ran (1985), on his experience visiting the set of Solaris. “It truly somehow provokes pure horror in our soul. And it is under the total grip of the deep insights of Tarkovsky... It seems to me to be sweat and tears that in his heartbreaking agony he squeezed out of his whole being... Every shot of Solaris bears witness to the almost dazzling talents inherent in Tarkovsky.”