Solaris
"But we dont know when life will end"
"Thats why we are in such a hurry"
"To ask is always the desire to know."
"Yet the preservation of simple human truths requires mistery."
"The misteries of happiness, death and love"
"To think about it is to know the day of one's death"
"Not knowing that day makes us practically immortal"
With Mirror being my first watch I was somehow confused, triggered and astonished by how Tarkovsky told his stories. A lot to me seemed nonsensical words and a very poor montage.
However, Solaris to me seemed like an incredible sci-fi movie. Definitely not as aesthetically pleasing or photographically perfect as Kubrick's 2001 Space Oddysey but narratively speaking a work of art, in a concept where we are taken alongside a marvellous main actor and character named Kevin, played by Donatas Banionis.
We are taken to Solaris, to prove if this project should be shut down and what has happened to the crew within it and this suspected member to have died in the mesmerizing sea. In a world where grief, agony and our conception of what is here and what is not, Tarkovsky takes us into a universe where not everything is what it seems.
It makes us rethink the fact that everything present is just a construction of our mind. Through a very intelligent storytelling of Kevin's wife getting to be more human, and practically impossible not to assimilate to one as well, a real woman.
With a open ending as well, clarifying that Kevin, trapped in his consciousness actually never comes back to earth. Nevertheless, aren't we all trapped by it?
The only thing that makes us believe we aren't in our own Solaris is the existence of others and our communication with them. But in the end as the film says, we are just a couple billions... what are we then if not communicative beings?
In the light of the above, I really liked the film, its acting, the scenery despite it not being ultra appealing or whatsoever it was flamboyant enough. The score wasnt too present but it didnt need to.
I don't really like optical zooming and the lack of that many still shots or closeups but despite some very evident zooms that kinda annoyed me I liked how the genersl disposition of the camera was used, great film.