Solaris
Short description
A psychologist named Kris Kelvin travels to a space station orbiting Solaris, a planet covered by an ocean. The station's crew has been studying the planet for years with little success, and the reports coming back have grown troubling: one scientist has died and others appear to have lost their grip on reality. Kelvin's mission is to assess the situation and decide whether the station should be shut down. Once aboard, he finds the survivors in a disturbed state, and he begins to experience strange visitations himself, figures from his own past appearing before him as if real. He comes to suspect that the ocean below is somehow responsible, acting on the minds of those who approach it.
The film is Andrei Tarkovsky's third feature, following Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev, and he wrote the screenplay with Fridrikh Gorenshteyn. It is based on Stanislaw Lem's science fiction novel. Donatas Banionis plays Kelvin, with Natalya Bondarchuk as Hari, Jüri Järvet, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky and Nikolay Grinko in supporting roles. Shot in the Soviet Union on a budget of about one million dollars, it runs 167 minutes.
On IMDb it holds 7.9 out of 10 from around 105,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.8 from roughly 1,900. A critics' rating of 8.9 from 66 reviews is notably higher than those audience scores, suggesting the film's reputation among reviewers exceeds its general viewer reception.
What's left behind the scenes
- The scenes of the film were not shot in order. Therefore, it turned out that Chris is wearing a t-shirt in one shot and pajamas in the next. Tarkovsky noticed this, but it was too late to reshoot, so he waved it off: “It’s science fiction, after all. Let everyone think that’s how it should be!”
- The scene in the mirrored room was filmed but did not make the final cut; the director removed it from the film. Now, fans of Tarkovsky attribute this mysterious decision to the machinations of censorship. In reality, censorship and editing were not the concern with this scene, and the director’s motives were internal. It is known that he repeatedly objected to elements in films that seemed to him “too beautiful.”
- Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to cast Alla Demidova in the role of Hari, but he was forbidden to do so, as Demidova was on “blacklists” because, in her previous work, Yuli Karasik’s film “The Sixth of July,” she had, as the press wrote, “overplayed Lenin.”
- At one point, Tarkovsky wanted to cast Swedish actress Bibi Andersson as Hari. She even agreed to appear for free, but bureaucratic delays prevented it.
- Both the book and the film itself became the cause of several arguments between writer Lem and director Tarkovsky. In particular, the writer claimed that the director had filmed not "Solaris" at all, but "Crime and Punishment."
- The scene where Burton drives through endless tunnels and interchanges was filmed in Tokyo.
- The film is based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel “Solaris” (1961).
- When Chris views a message from Dr. Gibarian, the filming crew is reflected in the monitor.
- The weightlessness scene was filmed using two camera cranes, one of which held the camera and the other held the actors.
- In the scene where Chris meets his mother, Soviet money is lying on the chair. For example, a commemorative ruble “In Honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of V.I. Lenin” from 1970 and a 3-ruble paper banknote from 1961.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
