August 26 movie: Solaris. I probably should have waited a couple of weeks, or even a couple of days, to watch the commentary. But I couldn't stop thinking about the movie and really wanted to get some perspective on it. Plus I wanted to get the movie on its way back to Netflix.
I had heard that the commentary was outstanding, and it was. Criterion seems to always have wonderful commentaries. This one was done by the co-authors of a Tarkovsky biography. As you might expect, they provided deep, thoughtful commentary, answered many of my questions, and many others I hadn't even thought of. And there was an unexpected bonus: the commentary narrators had a great sense of humor. For example, at one point they quote Tarkovsky as saying that Solaris would have been better if he had dropped the science fiction element. The narrator drily observes, "that raises the question, what would be left?"
They explained the lack of special effects: partly Tarkovsky's lack of interest in the "science" part of science fiction, and partly the severe budget restrictions put on Solaris by the Soviet government. They said the budget wasn't big to start with, and was cut in half by the end of the project. The low budget also put Tarkovsky very short on film. Which meant that most scenes were filmed in only one take. That is astonishing.
They also explained the only part of the movie that I didn't enjoy: that interminable scene of Burton driving in and out of tunnels. Due to the budget issues, Tarkovsky decided to show "the city of the future" by filming at the World's Fair in Japan. But it took so long to get the passport issues worked out that he missed the World's Fair. So he filmed driving around the streets of Japan instead. At that time it was difficult to get permission to leave the Soviet Union. He had to use the footage, and so much of it, to justify the trip. Really fascinating to think about making a movie -- not just a movie but a monumental achievement -- under such crazy restrictions and issues.
The rest of my observations are spoilerish and so I will put everything behind a cut.
The biggest unanswered question to me was the ending. Specifically, what was ambiguous about it? It seemed very clear to me:
While he is with Hari, Kris says that he never wants to leave Solaris. After her death, he muses on returning to Earth, and says he would never be happy there. Snaut tells him it's time to return to Earth, and Kris looks out the window, towards Solaris, and smiles.
We next see Kris at his father's house on Earth, except it's not really his father's house, it's a replica on Solaris. This seemed obvious to me. For one thing, elements like the smoldering fire and the floating balloon are just as they were when Kris left a long time ago (suggesting that Solaris has created the scene by reading Kris' memories of it). Also, it's raining inside the house (we've seen before that Solaris sometimes gets the details wrong). Finally, the soundtrack is the creepy electronic music associated with Solaris. After Kris is reunited with his father, or rather the manifestation of his father, the camera pulls back to show that the house is indeed on an island in the middle of the Solaris ocean.
The commentary people agreed with my interpretation, and also suggested two more: first, Kris did return to Earth and saw his real father again. The surreal elements -- the rain indoors, the bonfire, balloon, and the image of the house on an island -- are metaphorical. I don't find that convincing because every time we've seen the ocean before, it was actually the ocean, not a metaphor. In fact, it seems to me that except for Kris' fever dreams, everything that happens in the movie is really happening. That's what makes the dreamlike quality so powerful. Why would Tarkovsky suddenly make such a big shift at the end? I don't buy it. It would be sloppy, and he seems to have much better control over the film than that.
The second and more intriguing interpretation is that Kris never went to Solaris. That entire part of the movie was an interior journey, not a physical one. The bonfire is still lit and the balloon still there because no time has passed; Kris never left home. In this version the rain indoors and the view of the island are also metaphorical, as is everything that happened on Solaris. I find this interpretation more plausible because if it's true, then Tarkovsky didn't just start throwing in surreal metaphors at the end. Instead almost the entire movie is a series of surreal metaphors; you just don't know it until the end.
This is plausible, but it's a bit too "It was all a dream ... or was it???" for my taste. I find this kind of ending almost always unsatisfying. And so I am going to go with my first instinct: everything which appeared to happen really did happen. Kris stayed on Solaris, which gave him a replica of his father and family home. I think this ending flows naturally from what came before. It hangs together well with the rest of the movie. But who knows, maybe I'll feel differently the next time I watch it.
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