Solaris

Expectations prove to be wrong, but also correct in a slightly different way. When it comes to Tarkovsky and his movie magic, I put both hands together before a movie of his in hopes for something that will change my perception of life. Or in simpler words, a 5-star groundbreaking experience. 99/100 The only reason why the score isn’t higher is due to the superiority of Stalker in this context. Solaris commences like events in Mirror, the close encounter with nature and the strong introduction to family play a similar role in both film’s embarkment. I found the few moments on Earth to be quite shaky in terms of the flow of the story or Chris’s reasons to go to Solaris, just makes Part One seem like a regular space movie about abnormal extraterrestrial sightings, nothing more or less. Part Two kicks in and my views had been diverted. There are just so many elements of humanity and our problems such as suicide and love. We see Chris aimlessly wandering around the station, forgetting his true purpose after falling in love with his visitor. Instead he attempts to discover a new meaning, to remove the burden on his shoulders, the guilt that haunts him wherever he goes. Solaris evolves into a Sci-Fi background story that allows human interactions and communication to shimmer in astonishment. Chris slowly understands that the other doctors or scientists aren’t deranged or insane but rather mentally drained from the presence of their visitors. Solaris is not the conventional, Hollywood-big-budget, futuristic technology-show-off, Sci-Fi epic. So don't expect it to be that. It is a visionary work of art that unveils one's journey on cleansing the impurities of his soul. Chris lost his mother, his wife, he was as broken as a man could ever be. So he travelled to Solaris, his real intentions sort of hidden under the deception of a "mission" of trying to shut the Solaris Station down. I thought that this was brilliant, of course it has paralleled similarities to Stalker, but Solaris is The Zone itself, a place where the mind can be freed, to start fresh (a clean slate approach). This is where I feel the ending needs to be stressed upon. So far I've heard from individuals who think Chris remained on Solaris, he never left. Evidently, the final shot of the film does show a secluded island in a large body of water that felt to be the OCEAN, and perhaps due to the beaming of X-Rays into the OCEAN using brainwave patterns from Chris, many islands were possibly formed and one of them rested Chris's father's cabin. To me this serves as the appearance, the small picture. What I truly believe is that Chris returns to Earth, he returns home to his dad. However, the hints of Solaris possession is developed to emphasize that Chris is now a "visitor", he is this new person and he wishes to create a new story for himself. He told his father he wasn't returning home so he is like a phantom of Solaris. He could be dead or missing, but he will exist in the subconscious of whoever he deems to be in. This, I am confident, is how Solaris really ends.