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OK, break out the tar and feathers.
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
This long, sometimes hypnotic film is more of a meditation on humankind's yearning to be connected to something than a sci-fi film. True, it involves aliens on a space station, but based on this movie (not the novel), I still don't even know what or where Solaris is, and I watched it three times. The film involves lonely astronaut Kris (Donatas Banionis) who goes to the space station to determine if the Solaris project is worth continuing. Almost all of the people who have been on the station have died or seemed to have suffered some major delusions. Shortly after Kris arrives, he finds his wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk). The problem is that she died on Earth much earlier.
Tarkovsky is certainly a cult director, and I've seen many of his films praised here and elsewhere. He just doesn't strike me as a director who is very inviting. Even though his films present the human condition, the talkiness and extreme length tend to make me feel icy toward him. It's funny because many people feel that Kubrick is a cold director, and he occasionally may be, but he seems warmer to my sensibility. My fave Tarkovsky films are among his earliest (The Steamroller and the Violin, My Name is Ivan), but since they are less-experimental, they are undoubtedly less-personal
Although I do find Solaris exhausting, I also find several unique scenes. The opening in the water-filled countryside is evocative, and then the scenes showing what happened to an earlier Solaris astronaut add some mystery. The scene involving fast driving on a freeway is very trippy, and many of the scenes on the station, especially between Kris and "Hari", even I would consider moving. Then there's the ending, which can be interpreted more than one way, and which I might even consider to make the film cyclical and all a flashback. So, yes, I recommend it, especially to many people here, but somehow the entire 168 minutes just doesn't need to be there. It probably just went over my head or maybe it is a case of overkill in the totality of my acceptance of pregnant pauses. I mean, I did invest about eight-and-one-half hours in viewing it during the last month.
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
This long, sometimes hypnotic film is more of a meditation on humankind's yearning to be connected to something than a sci-fi film. True, it involves aliens on a space station, but based on this movie (not the novel), I still don't even know what or where Solaris is, and I watched it three times. The film involves lonely astronaut Kris (Donatas Banionis) who goes to the space station to determine if the Solaris project is worth continuing. Almost all of the people who have been on the station have died or seemed to have suffered some major delusions. Shortly after Kris arrives, he finds his wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk). The problem is that she died on Earth much earlier.
Tarkovsky is certainly a cult director, and I've seen many of his films praised here and elsewhere. He just doesn't strike me as a director who is very inviting. Even though his films present the human condition, the talkiness and extreme length tend to make me feel icy toward him. It's funny because many people feel that Kubrick is a cold director, and he occasionally may be, but he seems warmer to my sensibility. My fave Tarkovsky films are among his earliest (The Steamroller and the Violin, My Name is Ivan), but since they are less-experimental, they are undoubtedly less-personal
Although I do find Solaris exhausting, I also find several unique scenes. The opening in the water-filled countryside is evocative, and then the scenes showing what happened to an earlier Solaris astronaut add some mystery. The scene involving fast driving on a freeway is very trippy, and many of the scenes on the station, especially between Kris and "Hari", even I would consider moving. Then there's the ending, which can be interpreted more than one way, and which I might even consider to make the film cyclical and all a flashback. So, yes, I recommend it, especially to many people here, but somehow the entire 168 minutes just doesn't need to be there. It probably just went over my head or maybe it is a case of overkill in the totality of my acceptance of pregnant pauses. I mean, I did invest about eight-and-one-half hours in viewing it during the last month.