I recently discovered the Mosfilm 100 years in Cinema channel on Youtube. Everything is free to watch and without ads.
And so, straight to Andrei Tarkovsky and to start the ascent to the mighty Mirror I chose Solaris. Unfortunately I don't know if I read just before or just after watching it that in an interview during the making he had mocked Kubrick's 2001. Either way, I am currently rather prickly about the merits of Solaris. As a teen I was mesmerised, but now, not so much. There are small odd echoes of 2001 in there funnily enough, perhaps satirical, and of course there is also the same major theme from his source material, the novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem as with English writer Arthur C Clarke, contact with a conscious off-earth, unseen life-form.
In my annoyance I have spent far too long considering some of the dubious wardrobe decisions, such as protagonist Kelvin in his string vest and leather jacket who looks like he's off to an underground New York gay bar, and the other two scientists who have clearly arrived straight on set from playing dominoes at a railway working men's club in Crewe. Then there are aspects such as the absurd narrative fails, for example Kelvin glimpsing random new people on board the space station and ignoring them, and what about those scenes where there was hair or other debris unnoticed in the film gate before shooting and not re-shot. And as for.... well perhaps my infinite adoration of Kubrick's vastly more profound 2001 mordant re-evaluation of Solaris is sufficient at that.
Apart from mentioning the long takes of camera movements tracking over a flow of water, perhaps the number one of the many haunting Tarkovsky cinematic motifs. They are not up to his usual standard, and seemed almost perfunctory.
And yet. I've been shooting footage along rivers and streams on walks and bike rides over the last few days and it may be both a plain old deferential acknowledgment of just how satisfying that element is, to possibly a need to pastiche it, by soundtracking with some 18th century church organ music and a bit of faux philosophy monologue. So far I've not slid in to the water (which Tarkovsky would undoubtedly prefer, and for me not to come out again) but each time I have found myself looking at the movement and considering the possibilities, pondering which meaning he was so clearly preoccupied with. Who knows, and maybe if nothing else, he would have been patient with that level of uncertainty.
