Islands of Memory

"I'm interested in the truth. I'm not a poet."
Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972)

Points for Reflection

Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972)

1. at what points in the plot does Tarkovsky veer away from a normal color scheme? Is there a rhyme or reason to these shifts?
2. what sort of mood does the chorale prelude by Bach, which plays at different points in the film, help create?
3. how frequently does Eduard Artemeyev’s synthesized musical score appear?
4. is Nik Kelvin, Kris’s father, a futurist intrigued by how new technology might improve human living conditions?
5. why did Anri Burton bring a film which recounts, years ago, his failed attempt to recover fellow astronaut Fechner from Solaris?
6. what elements of Nature does Tarkovsky choose to capture?  What might these convey about what Earth has to offer?  Do these elements appear important to Kris, either now or later?
7. does the horse evoke any particular associations, or appear to symbolize some key theme?
8. what lingering effects did Burton’s encounter at Solaris have on him after returning to Earth?
9. does the film Burton’s supplies provide any visual evidence to back up his report of what happened in the skies above Solaris?
10. Burton fast forwards the video record a couple times during playback.  Can you deduce what footage he’s avoiding?
11. what conclusions do the specialists reach about Burton’s experience and report?
12. what core values and personality traits help explain Kris’s response to Burton’s film and Burton’s words of warning?
13. what additional detail does Burton add to what he shared after he leaves Nik’s house?
14. what techniques does Tarkovsky use to suggest that we’re looking at a futuristic Earth?
15. to whom is Nik referring when he says, “If something should happen, I’ll take care of them”?
16. why might Kris burn some of his papers before leaving Earth?
17. what film does Kris take with him?
18. how many details concerning Kris’s space travel does Tarkovsky elide?
19. does the space station appear to be a found set, or created set?
20. what does the ocean on Solaris actually do according to Burton’s report?
21. do the occasional shots of Solaris’s ocean—scattered throughout the film—add credence to Burton’s report years earlier about its activity, or undercut his perspective of what happened?
22. what is Snaut attempting to hide in his office?
23. what is Sartorious trying to hide in his own office?
24. how has the ocean on Solaris altered its behavior in response to human behavior?
25. how does Kris respond to Dr. Snaut’s report of how Dr. Gibrarian died?
26. does the drawing on Gibrarian’s office door provide any important clues concerning Gibrarian’s fate?
27. what of the video note Gibrarian leaves for Kris?  Does Tarkovsky give the audience enough information to piece together what happened?
28. instead of finishing Gibrarian’s video note, Kris leaves the office, taking with him what?
29. why doesn’t Sartorious allow Kris to enter his office?
30. do the little person and woman in blue have mass and density?
31. what does Kris’s questions about the woman in blue, posed to Snaut, tell us about Kris himself?
32. how does Tarkovsky manipulate color to signal the incredible nature of what Kris sees when he awakes from sleep?
33. what does Kris’s response to Hari’s appearance reveal about his character?
34. what does Hari appear to know, and what not know?
35. why Tarkovsky might have ended Part One of the film where he does, instead of waiting five minutes?
36. what explains Kris’s nearly dying at the beginning of Part Two?
37. after Kris’s brief, troubling visit to the hangar, Snaut visits him and seems to know what Kris did though he doesn’t know how he did it.  What does Snaut’s foreknowledge reveal about the nature of what’s happening to all those on the space station?  Can we deduce why it's happening?
38. why does Snaut ask Kris if he threw an “ink pot like Luther”?
39. why does Snaut put paper strips next to the air vents in Kris’s room?
40. is Hari’s clothing on day two of Kris’s visit to the station identical to what she wore on day one?
41. why does Kris take a blood sample from Hari?
42. how similar are Hari and Kris’s mother in appearance?
43. Kris lies to Hari a few times.  How successful are his deceptions?
44. when Snaut reappears, soon after Hari and Kris watch an old family video together, why might Snaut be bandaging his hand?
45. what does Snaut want to transmit to Solaris’s ocean?
46. does Kris love Kari?
47. which shapes Snaut’s comments at this birthday party held in the library: pessimism or optimism?
48. in what ways does Hari’s mind change over time, and why?
49. consider Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Return of the Hunters [also translated as Hunters in the Snow] (1565).  Which parts of the painting does Tarkovsky show, and in what order?  Does the arrangement of closeups appear utterly random?
50. does Hari form her own, new memories?
51. how effective is Tarkovsky’s attempt at conveying 30 seconds of weightlessness?
52. do either snow or fire emerge as a more dominant visual motif, as we move among Bruegel’s painting and clips from the family video, or do they form a balanced counterpoint?
53. can we make sense of why Hari would try to injure herself?
54. what does resurrection suggest about the nature of memory in Tarkovsky’s film?
55. does the film answer Kris’s rhetorical questions about whether “that which his indispensable to life [is] also harmful to it”?  What might the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun “that” actually be?
56. does Kris’s two-part dream towards the end of the film collapse Hari and his mother into the same entity, or concretize their distinctiveness?
57. what function does part one of Kris’s dream—the surrealistic section—serve?
58. how does Kris’s behavior differ amidst his conversation with his mother, compared with the way he presents and holds himself throughout the film?
59. what does Kris’s dream—the one involving dialogue with his mother—signal about their relationship?  What happens in the real world while Kris sleeps?
60. is Kris’s observation about the status of his relationship with Hari, following his awaking from the (partially) monochromatic dream, accurate?
61. what change in Solaris’s activity follows the shipmates’ transmission of Kris’s encephalogram?
62. does the film implicitly support, or question, Snaut’s assertion that, “When man is happy, the meaning of life and other eternal themes rarely interest him”?
63. what technique does Tarkovsky use to transition us towards the final scene which appears to occur on Earth?
64. does the film end with the promise of hope, or not?  What ideas do you derive from the film’s closing, cryptic images?

Solaris (1972)
one sheet

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu