Solaris (1972): The Alien Ocean

Space Race

The space epoch continues with this mind-blowing masterpiece by Andrei Tarkovsky. This movie is based on Solaris (1961) by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. Tarkovsky’s filmmaking style has mysticism and poetic visual settings. The movie Solaris (1972) is the Soviet version of space exploration, similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but on a different spectrum of storytelling. The film has a gripping story and psychological drama with great performances by Soviet actors.

The Alien Ocean

The Soviet space station is orbiting a distant planet; Solaris is the name of the ocean, which scientists believe has as a conscious mind. The research hypothesis is that this ocean has a cerebral system that transmits bio-magnet radiation that can affect human consciousness.

The ocean can extract memories when exposed to radiation, and whoever is affected is experiencing hallucinatory complexities.

The real question is, who initiated the chaos from the beginning? It all started when the space team aimed to explore the ocean with X-ray beams. In response to the X-ray, Solaris triggers its bio-magnetic radiation and delves into the human brain. In other words, Solaris infiltrated the human brain and surveilled the memory cortex to comprehend human consciousness.

Memory Recall

I discussed hyper-reality in the 2001: A Space Odyssey movie review, where humanity is one part of the matrix’s mega-structure. Tarkovsky focuses more on the aspect of hyper-reality, though with the indulgence of human connection and relationships rather than the space race for extraterritorial contact.

Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) travels to the space station to investigate the reason behind hallucinatory complexities with the members of the space station. But Kris immediately becomes delusional; as the Solaris radiation penetrates Kris’s cerebral cortex, it extracts memories and formulates an actual humanoid, Kris’s late wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk).

Kris ignored Hari in the past, but he gets a second chance to connect with her. Hari is only a reflection of Kris’s memories and not a real person. But Kris is affected by sleep deprivation. For him, Hari is real, and he does not want to lose her again. Kris and Hari’s relationship shows that nothing is more important than the people. We cannot take beloved ones for granted. We contemplate when we lose them.

Endless Loop

The unsettling experience of Hari’s resurrection gives a more profound sense of Tarkovsky’s approach towards enduring time and space that one lives. To emphasize the relationship between an actual and virtual loop of memories, the reappearance of Hari is a present moment; however, for Kris, it is a fantasy. When viewed from Snaut's (Juri Jarvet) perspective, the more time Hari spends with Kris, the machine will become more human as it is composed entirely out of Kris's consciousness. In order to stop this, Kris has to come out of this matrix and leave the space station. Snaut points out that no matter how far we can go in search of new life in other planets, we all fail because humans need humans.