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Sunday, April 2, 2023

SOLARIS (1972)

After IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62 and ANDREI RUBLEV/’66, the greatest Soviet films of his era, Andrei Tarkovsky turned insular & obscure in a series of increasingly self-indulgent art house perplexities.  Fashioning himself into a sort of one-stop Ingmar Bergman/Stanley Kubrick, the artistic/philosophic contortion an ill-fitting low-wattage stance that did his very real qualities no favor.  Ironic, too, as Tarkovsky no Kubrick fancier.  (Doubly ironic since a main impetus here was to make an Anti-2001.  Triply ironic as SOLARIS’s mass appeal, it was Tarkovsky’s one truly popular title, came thru a deceptive ad campaign selling this as a Soviet 2001 Head-Trip movie.)  Donatas Banionis (think lethargic Paul Sorvino doughboy) is the psychologist called to a floundering space station.  Once a bustling space module, now all but deserted, staffed only by a pair of depressed scientists and one very corporeal ectoplasm, the doctor’s own late wife.  Yikes!  How to study strange oceanic activity with such a distraction.  And what does ‘she’ want?  Banionis’s attempts to send her to safety back on Earth (blasting, medicating, freezing) go all GROUNDHOG DAY as she keeps coming back like a song.  And now, he’s the one getting sick.  The film has its champions, Steven Soderbergh & George Clooney lopped off an hour in a 2002 remake (not seen here) that divided opinion between those who hated it and those who really hated it.  So what happened to Tarkovsky after those first two films?  Best guess is that friend & collaborator Andrey Konchalovskiy (a filmmaker not without Pop sensibility) played Paul McCartney to Tarkovsky’s John Lennon and kept him from falling off the deep end.  And it’s just possible Tarkovsky knew it since his next big project, a film on PETER THE GREAT, brought Konchalovskiy back into the picture.  Alas, the film was suppressed by Soviet authorities and is, even now, after five decades, currently in post-production.  (So they say.)  Could a third Tarkovsky masterpiece be waiting in the wings?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Tarkovsky ain’t known for his sense of humor, but check out those Soviet Space Module pajamas!  Gold piping & embroidery on white linen.  Hilarious.  Poor Banionis has one scene where he wanders around in just the top half.  Scariest thing in here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  As mentioned, ANDREI RUBLEV and Tarkovsky’s outstanding debut IVAN’S CHILDHOOD.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/ivanovo-detstvo-ivans-childhood-1962.html   OR:  Early Tarkovsky collaborator Andrey Konchalovskiy went on to a prolific, if uneven, international directing career.  One of his best as recent as 2020's DEAR COMRADES.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/dear-comrades-dorogie-tovarishchi-2020.html

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