Solaris (1972 film)



A 1972 adaptation of the Science Fiction book by Stanislaw Lem, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.


 * Arc Words
 * Bus Crash: Hari dies/goes away/something off camera.
 * Casual Interstellar Travel
 * Contemplate Our Navels: There's a scene on the DVD called "The Meaning of Life" for god's sake...
 * The entire film is this.
 * Despair Event Horizon: Hari, although it's a blink and you'll miss it sort of thing. She goes from being mildly unsure of her identity to drinking liquid oxygen.
 * Driven to Suicide: Hari again, although it happens almost completely out of the blue.
 * Also Gilbarian.
 * Dull Surprise: To say that this movie is emotionally flat would be drastically overstating the amount of energy displayed by the actors.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Solaris.
 * Fetus Terrible: One idea about Solaris.
 * Futuristic Superhighway: Sort of subverted. The highways Burton drives through are actually the completely undisguised central expressways of contemporary Tokyo, filmed to make up for the missed opportunity to film something more futuristic that Akira Kurosawa had been hoping to set Tarkovsky's crew up with. But it still works even if you know what it is ... and just imagine what it might have looked like to Soviet audiences at the time, who had almost no such roads to drive (if they had cars, that is).
 * Gainax Ending: Whoa boy, big time. Pretty much everything is Left Hanging and the main character decide to return home. We think he's on Earth, but then the camera pans up and it is revealed that he is on an island on Solaris. Or he did leave, and this is just a copy of him and his home that Solaris made.
 * Genius Loci: Solaris, or at least its ocean could very well be a massive intelligent organism.
 * Humanoid Abomination: The visitors. They look just like ordinary people, but they are unimaginably strong and they are pretty much impossible to kill.
 * Idiot Ball: Too many examples to name.
 * Jerkass: Sartorius
 * Killed Off for Real:
 * Leave Behind a Pistol: Gilbarian did this literally.
 * Leave the Camera Running: Welcome to Andrei Tarkovsky, and this is one of his more kinetic movies.
 * Made of Iron: The Visitors. According to what we're told by Snow, they can survive being shot, overdosed on narcotics, and other injuries which humans would find painful is not mortal.
 * Mind Screw: All the freaking time, especially the Gainax Ending.
 * Mysterious Waif: Subverted with Hari. The main character knows her as his ex wife who kills herself, but nobody knows why or how she shows up.
 * Nietzsche Wannabe: Sartorius talks about existentialism, the lack of greater meaning, and the ultimate futility of life.
 * Not So Above It All: Satorius
 * Oddly Small Organization: For such a prestigious and open field of science, the fact that they only had a space station crew of three is rather odd.
 * Overly Long Scream
 * Please Don't Leave Me: Hari to Chris. Later on, Chris to Hari.
 * Quest for Identity
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: Becomes An Aesop of all things.
 * Sanity Slippage: Possibly everyone, even the audience
 * Smash Cut: A particularly brutal one cutting from the "30 seconds of weightlessness" to
 * Starfish Aliens: The ocean is supposed to be some sort of alien, as are the visitors such as Hari.
 * The Stinger: The very last scene.
 * Super Strength: The Visitors
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Kris and Hari. Kris is a sweaty, balding middle age man while Hari is definitely very beautiful and looks about nineteen.
 * Unusual Euphemism: The Visitors are people conjured out of peoples' memories.
 * Used Future
 * Vanishing Village: Overlaps with Mind Screw and Gecko Ending.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy: Implicated at the end that this is one of the things Kris wanted all along
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
 * What Is This Thing You Call Love?
 * Yandere: Ultimtately Hari.
 * Zeerust: Most of the facility save for the obviously industrial areas.