Solaris - the Russian one obviously

I'm always going on about 'proper' science fiction, so when I actually get around to watching a film in that genre I feel under a self-imposed pressure to enjoy myself. 'Solaris' is a Soviet production from the 1970s, in which a cosmonaut - Chris - is sent to a space station to investigate reports of strange goings on. The space station was once a thriving hub of activity where scientists and military experts studied a mysterious alien planet - Solaris. Public interest in Solaris has waned though, and only 3 scientists remain.

The film opens with a series of 'mood' scenes that are a little pretentious. Lots of water and leaves and such like. We quickly move on to a terrestrial setting in which the viewer has to work hard to piece together this vision of the future from the snippets of dialogue and information provided. Characters talk of 'Solaristics' without ever being specific - at no point does a 'scientist' turn up and explain the premise. Even the background to the main character Chris, which becomes so important later on, is only hinted at. We know that Chris is to travel to Solaris to investigate the situation there, and that everyone has reservations about what he might find.

When Chris arrives at Solaris he discovers one of the scientists dead and the others warning him to not trust what he sees, even though they mysteriously warn him that what he sees will be real. It seems that Solaris is more than merely a planet, rather a unimaginable alien intelligence that manifests in the oceans of the world below the station. Solaris is somehow reaching out to the workers on the station either in an attempt to communicate or to drive them away - whatever it is, the consequences are material and disturbing. When Chris awakes from his first night sleep on the station to discover his dead wife Hari in the room - we know something strange is happening.

The best thing about these 70s style science fiction films is the way that they treat their stories as an excuse for soul-searching and philosophy - rather than reaching for the laser guns. In a science fiction film from the Star Trek mould, a character confronted with an apparition of a long dead lover would probably look for the scientific explanation and spend the rest of the film working out how to 'send them back' or 'fix the universe'. Just like in last year's 'Moon', the protagonists in 'Solaris' are aware that they're very tiny fish in the cosmic ocean. They have no hope of understanding - let alone stopping - Solaris, such is the mind-bending enormity of its alien presence. Instead of working out how to 'put things right', Chris has a crisis of humanity, in which he begins to believe that this apparition of Hari is as good as the original. What does it mean to be human? If you were confronted with a perfect copy of another person, what is the moral difference between them?

This is of course what science fiction told well can be about - by throwing off the shackles of the real world a writer can explore deep subjects with ease. 'Solaris' is a film that many will find unbearably slow, and I'm prepared to admit that several scenes are very pretentious, but it's a classic of a genre that has over the years often been distorted into little more than excuse for action set-pieces. I recommend that fans of science fiction seek it out.

Also, I love the poster for Solaris that I've stuck at the top of this review. It's
sparing with its imagery but captures perfectly the film's central premise of Chris' moral delimma over Hari's humanity. They're both looking in the mirror, and though he's concentrating on her we can only see his face. It's telling us not to worry about who or what Hari is, but how Chris reacts to her. Nice.