dragonyphoenix

So I’m watching this film called Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky mainly because it’s a classic. I eventually, maybe about an hour in, turn on the commentary because my main reaction is “WHY IS NOTHING HAPPENING!”

But the commentary isn’t all that much better. There are two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, and I have no idea who they are because I didn’t go back to the beginning.

Let me fill in a bit of the plot to explain my problems with the commentary. Back before the story starts a pilot, Berton, had been involved in a search and rescue for a lost scientist. Flying close to Solaris’ surface, he saw a child, which turns out to be a replica of the lost scientist’s child, but this replica is 4 meters (13 feet) tall.

In another scene, the main character, Kelvin, has a visitor. Now he’s on the space station. There are supposedly only three men there although Kelvin’s already seen a midget and a young woman. He’s in a boarded up room. The woman looks exactly like his dead wife (more on that later). The commentary suggests we don’t know if she’s his dead wife, somehow brought back to life, or if she’s a replicant created by Solaris. Um, guy? We already know that there’s a copy of the lost scientist’s kid and we know that copy isn’t the original because 1) the original was seen later on Earth and 2) the original isn’t 4 meters tall. Obviously this woman, called a visitor in the commentary, is a copy! Why aren’t we supposed to understand that?

One of Kelvin’s first reactions is to shoot her off in a space ship, send her into orbit, make her go away. Let’s recap. Kelvin’s world has been turned topsy turvey. He’s on a space station that should only contain three people but there are visitors running about and he’s seen two of them already. He’s boarded up his room so even if she hadn’t been someone on the station, she couldn’t have gotten in. The commentary suggests that, because the woman’s pretty, in this situation any man would go all lounge lizard and say “Hey baby” as he pats the bed beside him. This is a guy who’s freaked out and doesn’t know what’s going on. I’m not a man. I don’t know how men react, but it seems unlikely.

Also, according to the commentary, we’re not supposed to realize she’s Kelvin’s dead wife. Before leaving for the station, Kelvin left his daughter with his parents. So we know he’s been married. We’ve also seen a picture of the woman. While we haven’t been explicitly told this is the wife, it wasn’t a real stretch. If he was merely divorced, he’d probably be leaving the daughter with his ex-wife. So it’s also not a stretch to say that the wife is dead. So why in the commentary are they saying we don’t know, until Kelvin tells someone in a later scene, that she’s his wife and that she’s dead. It’s pretty blatant.

I’m generally a fan of Criterion Collection’s commentary but for this movie they are just not on the ball.