[HN Gopher] Solaris movie review and film summary (1976)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Solaris movie review and film summary (1976)
        
       Author : walterbell
       Score  : 90 points
       Date   : 2023-04-01 14:43 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.rogerebert.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.rogerebert.com)
        
       | pohl wrote:
       | Just yesterday I learned something about the translations of this
       | book:
       | 
       |  _Note, there are two translations of Solaris. The bad one is
       | from 1970, which was translated from Polish to French and then
       | from French into English. All physical print versions of Solaris
       | in English use this translation. In 2011, the first direct
       | translation of Solaris into English was published in audiobook
       | and ebook. It 's only available digitally, but this is the one
       | you want to read._
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/12932gh/my_review_...
       | 
       | I wonder if this is why, among all of the Lem books I have
       | devoured, Solaris was one of my least favorites. I'm going to
       | have to give it another shot.
        
         | cubefox wrote:
         | You beat me to it by one minute. The problem with bad Solaris
         | translations exists at least also in German.
        
       | pmoriarty wrote:
       | I'm a huge fan of Tarkovsky. _Stalker_ and _Mirror_ are two of my
       | all-time favorite films, and _The Sacrifice_ is great too, but
       | _Solaris_ was a huge letdown.
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | If you enjoyed the movie, I absolutely recommend reading the
       | novel by Lem. It is less mystical and much more
       | analytical/philosophical than the Tarkovsky movie. (And the
       | ending actually makes sense, which I found to be somewhat of a
       | weak point of the Tarkovsky adoption.)
       | 
       | But be sure that you read the new English ebook translation by
       | Bill Johnston! The old Kilmartin/Cox translation was a
       | retranslation from a French translation, and it's not good.
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | One interesting problem in the book is only hinted at in the
       | movie. It is basically a form of moral philosophy science
       | fiction.
       | 
       | The issue is this: According to traditional Christian morality,
       | God can forgive all sins (salvation). Like the fact that Kelvin
       | was partly responsible for the suicide of his wife. But Kelvin
       | doesn't believe in God, this is an outdated thing from the past.
       | So he is left with secular morality, where the only person who
       | can forgive him is the person he affected. But his wife is dead,
       | she can't forgive him anymore. So Kelvin has to live with his
       | guilt.
       | 
       | Except...
       | 
       | Solaris seems to offer him something unbelievable, namely a
       | second chance: A recreation of his wife, so that he can reconcile
       | with her. But if she forgives him, what is this worth? Isn't she
       | just a copy, a different person?
        
       | bvrmn wrote:
       | Author literally gives a plot description. Review itself is a one
       | paragraph. It's not a kind of review one can expect from a movie
       | critic.
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | This review would have needed to fit in a newspaper at the time
         | of publication.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _would have needed to fit in a newspaper_
           | 
           | For comparison, Ebert's 2002 review of the remake [1].
           | 
           | [1] https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002
        
       | hulitu wrote:
       | > Solaris movie review and film summary (1976)
       | 
       | Looks like a review written by a 10 year old.
        
         | walterbell wrote:
         | Who won the Pulitzer Prize a year before this review.
        
           | coldtea wrote:
           | A pretty low bar.
           | 
           | Then again the intended audience is the average movie goer,
           | so the level of analysis is adequate.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | Yeah. Without seeing the context of the review, it's hard to
           | say why it seems a bit thin. I'd just note that newspapers
           | and magazines routinely ran capsule reviews of things they
           | considered of lower interest to their audience--which Solaris
           | would presumably have been for Chicago Sun Times readers.
           | 
           | Ebert certainly had a _serious film critic_ side but he was
           | mostly pretty mid-brow.
        
             | walterbell wrote:
             | 1976 was during the Cold War, still a decade away from fall
             | of the Berlin Wall.
             | 
             | 2003 review had more depth,
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35429240
        
       | initramfs wrote:
       | I am not going to try to compare the 2002 Soderbergh film
       | version, but I like how they both compare the human mind to an a
       | nearly unknowable alien (ocean of clones that appear on the ship)
       | 
       | I haven't read or seen the full 1972 version, but does anyone
       | know if this line is in Stanislaw Lem's book?
       | 
       | ""We're proud of ourselves. But when you think about it, our
       | enthusiasm's a sham. We don't want other worlds. We want
       | mirrors." -it is from the 2002 screenplay, but I am curious if it
       | has any analogue in the Polish book or Russian film.
        
         | Tade0 wrote:
         | It's a heavily modified version of a quote by one of the
         | characters - Dr. Snaut (Snow).
        
           | initramfs wrote:
           | Thank you!
        
         | agarren wrote:
         | I see the following in the English kindle version - seems like
         | it's the same in spirit:
         | 
         | "We're humanitarian and noble, we've no intention of
         | subjugating other races, we only want to impart our values to
         | them and in return, to appropriate their heritage. We see
         | ourselves as Knights of the Holy Contact. That's another
         | falsity. We're not searching for anything except people. We
         | don't need other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to
         | do with other worlds. One world is enough, even there we feel
         | stifled. We desire to find our own idealized image; they're
         | supposed to be globes, civilizations more perfect than ours; in
         | other worlds we expect to find the image of our own primitive
         | past."
        
           | initramfs wrote:
           | Thank you so much! I've always been curious of that-it's
           | stuck with me.
        
       | baerrie wrote:
       | Solaris inverts the space epic dynamic of the human mind
       | overcoming space with new technology. Solaris presents the human
       | mind as the ultimate limit to our exploration rather than
       | technology. For this reason, Tarkovsky puts a lot of time in the
       | movie to exploring the main characters existing mental climate so
       | that as viewers we feel the claustrophobia, the scientific
       | problem of understanding the planet Solaris proven moot in
       | comparison to the constricting consequences of our own mental
       | model.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | > the human mind as the ultimate limit
         | 
         | At least in the American version of Solaris I felt like it
         | asked if what we "know" or remember about a person is real /
         | enough to make a person / how much we can even know.... and by
         | extension what we really know about anything.
         | 
         | And regarding the character in the end who chooses to simply
         | live with those memories/ ghosts created by his memory... maybe
         | he isn't any different than the rest of us.
        
       | nailer wrote:
       | This might be seen as heresy by many but: if you're not a fan of
       | the glacial pace of very old films, you may enjoy Clooney's
       | remake more.
       | 
       | This takes nothing away from the original film, which inspired so
       | much of modern scifi. But if you were raised on modern sci fi,
       | Tarkovsky's original is a hard watch. You might feel the same in
       | the nineties listening to Sonic Youth's 80s grunge, or reading
       | Lord of the Rings after you've read the Song of Ice and Fire /
       | Game of Thrones books, or playing System Shock 1 after growing up
       | on Bioshock and Prey.
        
         | coldtea wrote:
         | > _But if you were raised on modern sci fi, Tarkovsky 's
         | original is a hard watch_
         | 
         | Most good things in art are hard and require some work.
         | 
         | If you want the easy version, you're missing a lot.
         | 
         | You'd be better served to be listening to Sonic Youth's 80s
         | records instead of me-too grunge during the nineties too.
        
           | nailer wrote:
           | I don't know re: Grunge. I feel like in the mid nineties
           | Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins were already
           | taking grunge to new places and Sonic Youth had evolved into
           | something else entirely - Diamond Sea was the first Sonic
           | Youth track I heard and was this weird desolate digital
           | thing.
        
         | andyjohnson0 wrote:
         | > This might be seen as heresy by many but: if you're not a fan
         | of the glacial pace of very old films, you may enjoy Clooney's
         | remake more.
         | 
         | I agree. I have both versions, and while it would be easy to
         | knock the latter given the reputation of the former, I think
         | they're both good in different ways.
        
         | abruzzi wrote:
         | the issue I had with the Soderbergh/Clooney version is it
         | almost stops being about Solaris at all, and is instead just
         | about the individuals.
         | 
         | What was brilliant about the novel (to me) was that it was
         | about our inability to understand of communicate with the alien
         | intellegence, while at the same time, we are unable to
         | understand and communicate with others of our own species. The
         | two threads mirror each other, and almost completely removing
         | one, leaves it a less interesting story. The Tarkovsy version
         | doesn't do a great job of this either, but Solaris plays a
         | bigger role, so you at least get an inkling of the ocean
         | mirroring our own inadaquacies.
        
         | justin66 wrote:
         | The newer film stands on its own pretty well, it doesn't really
         | need to be compared against the previous film. There are enough
         | ideas behind _Solaris_ that yet another film could be made
         | based on that material (and probably will be, someday).
         | 
         | The most obvious variation would be shorter still: a film
         | similar to Clooney's remake, but without quite so much
         | development of what was already a dead character (Kelvin's ex)
         | and without the softening of what was objectively a pretty
         | bleak ending. But I think the newer film actually works really
         | well. All the other people who were seated in the theater when
         | I went to see it during its theatrical release seemed to feel
         | the same way. All three of them.
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | I agree, the Soderbergh/Clooney version is fine as well.
           | Though I wish movie adoptions of books wouldn't so often
           | replace bleak endings with less bleak ones. It feels almost
           | patronizing. Like a mother who reads a book to her children
           | for which she thinks they are slightly too young, so she
           | replaces more serious parts with watered down fragments she
           | invented herself.
        
         | eternalban wrote:
         | I'm with you. It's a serious snoozefest. It is not _cinema_ so
         | I disagree about generational shift*. The problem is
         | foundational. It 's a novel, not a film. Interior space of man
         | is not very cinematic from the outside. (Yes, I know few giants
         | of film disagree.)
         | 
         | * p.s.: Take _The Andromeda Strain_ (1971)
         | 
         | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/
         | 
         | imho, an absolute gem of Sci-Fi that still works. This is also
         | a 'slow pace' film, there is also a great deal of matter
         | happening inside the characters' heads, but it still works as
         | _film_. (hn bonus: CalTech and JPL are in the credits.)
        
           | AlanYx wrote:
           | Part of the problem is that there are multiple slow "art
           | sequences" in the film that seem to have no clear purpose and
           | run counter to Tarkovsky's usual dislike of intentional
           | symbolism in film. Some seem like they might have been
           | intended as homages to other sci-fi films, especially
           | Kubrick's 2001.
        
             | eternalban wrote:
             | Apparently he "disliked"* Kubrik's film:
             | 
             | https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/andrei-tarkovsky-solaris-
             | artist...
             | 
             | * "absolutely hated" was also mentioned /g
        
             | cubefox wrote:
             | Which "art sequences" do you mean? The zero g part with
             | Bach and Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow" is one of the most
             | iconic scenes in film history (in my book).
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | I fell asleep to the remake, but was transfixed when I saw the
         | original for the first time around age 7. Sure, it's long, but
         | to me at least it hits much harder. The new one doesn't feel
         | like it is about Solaris (the planet), to me. It feels much
         | less interesting.
         | 
         | Then again I'm old enough to perhaps be more used to the pace
         | of it.
        
         | stephc_int13 wrote:
         | I've seen both the original and the remake and enjoyed the
         | remake a lot more.
         | 
         | The original was IMHO plagued with useless lengths and a
         | somewhat pretentious/cryptic tone.
        
         | smrtinsert wrote:
         | The pace is a key element of Tarkovskys style
        
         | tpm wrote:
         | It's not that the glacial pace is a feature of old films. It's
         | a feature of Tarkovsky's movies and even today some directors
         | use similar techniques.
         | 
         | Fritz Lang's Metropolis has a much faster pace and it's a scifi
         | movie from 1927.
        
         | jfengel wrote:
         | I saw the original.
         | 
         | I'd rather watch a glacier.
        
         | drittich wrote:
         | I think the Clooney film is excellent, and can be enjoyed
         | without knowing anything about Lem's book. And it just might be
         | enough to make you want to dig in to the source material.
        
           | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
           | Will second. Viola Davis' performance is worth it alone along
           | with a character twist.
        
       | bloak wrote:
       | I think there's a (probably US) film that appears to be inspired
       | by "Solaris" but is called something different. Can anyone tell
       | me what it's called because I can't remember and it's annoying
       | me?
        
         | tantaman wrote:
         | Solaris starring George Clooney
        
         | rainworld wrote:
         | Annihilation (2018) borrows heavily from both Solaris and
         | Stalker.
        
       | tehnub wrote:
       | Note, he later added it to his Great Movies list and penned a new
       | essay for it: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-
       | solaris-1972
        
         | walterbell wrote:
         | _> I saw his 1972 film  "Solaris" at the Chicago Film Festival
         | that year. It was my first experience of Tarkovsky, and at
         | first I balked. It was long and slow and the dialogue seemed
         | deliberately dry. But then the overall shape of the film
         | floated into view, there were images of startling beauty, then
         | developments that questioned the fundamental being of the
         | characters themselves, and finally an ending that teasingly
         | suggested that everything in the film needed to be seen in a
         | new light. There was so much to think about afterwards, and so
         | much that remained in my memory._
         | 
         | Much deeper essay, thanks for posting.
        
       | axus wrote:
       | I'm very glad I read the story before the movie review, he really
       | loads it up with spoilers! To make the point that the details
       | weren't what he found interesting.
        
       | redleggedfrog wrote:
       | Ebert's take focuses on the human aspect of Solaris, but the
       | other aspect of both the movie and the book that is just as
       | appealing to me is our inability to understand the alien ocean
       | itself. All the attempts to anthropomorphize its behavior fail,
       | and in the end Solaris research is abandoned because the ocean is
       | essentially inscrutable to humans. This theme is also covered in
       | another Lem book, "Fiasco."
       | 
       | I love the idea of an alien, presented before us, completely
       | available to us to interact with, and we cannot bridge the gap
       | because we and it are so different.
       | 
       | It just leaves you with "What is it doing?!" which is such a
       | wonderful contrast to the deep emotional impact that its behavior
       | (creating the doppelgangers) has on humans. Does it know? Is it
       | coincidence? Is it malicious? So many good mysteries.
        
         | goatlover wrote:
         | The aliens in the Expanse universe are also very alien and
         | difficult to understand. Which makes their technology and
         | civilization (for the Ring Builders) quite interesting. But
         | yes, the point of the book and even the 2002 movie was that
         | Solaris wasn't human, and yet we keep trying to understand it
         | as it if were a mirror. That seeking out alien life is really
         | just seeking out more versions of humanity.
         | 
         | Which was Lem's way of criticizing popular science fiction.
         | Most aliens are either presented as humanoid or monsters from
         | our nightmares. But Solaris is something else entirely. I would
         | say the Arrival aliens are pretty alien as well, even though
         | they do manage to communicate their language to the main
         | character.
        
         | cscheid wrote:
         | > Does it know? Is it coincidence? Is it malicious?
         | 
         | In case you haven't read it yet, you might enjoy Peter Watts's
         | Blindsight.
        
       | kh_hk wrote:
       | Something I felt reading the book that I did not feel with the
       | movie was a bit of horror sci-fi vibes. That alone to me is what
       | makes Solaris one of Lem's top works, on which the crude
       | descriptions add to the suspense and horror.
        
         | zabzonk wrote:
         | the bit where visitor-Hari punches through a metal door,
         | injuring herself, because she can't stand being separated from
         | Kelvin is quite scary, and was a shock to me when i first saw
         | the fil in the mid 70s. and there are others.
        
           | kh_hk wrote:
           | Fair, I do agree. Both the book and the film are truly
           | masterpieces on their own
        
       | sparsely wrote:
       | There's a lot in Solaris (at least in the 1976 movie and the
       | book). In almost all sci-fi which contains aliens, they're easily
       | comprehend-able by humans - they have motivations we can describe
       | in our own language, a physical form that while strange is likely
       | a mashup of earth creature characteristics (after all that's
       | where our vocabulary comes from). Solaris asks what it might be
       | like if this isn't the case, and where the limits of our
       | comprehension are.
        
         | dreen wrote:
         | There is another great story by Lem called Golem XIV about an
         | AI, constructed by the US Military. It is tasked with
         | destroying enemies of the US, to which it says something to the
         | effect of "Why? That makes no sense" and proceeds to give a
         | philosophical lecture, then sort of disappears. Lem was really
         | good at breaking down common scifi tropes and presenting them
         | from a point of view it hasn't been considered, sometimes
         | surprisingly obvious.
        
           | RangerScience wrote:
           | I think I found it!
           | 
           | https://rtraba.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/golem-xiv.pdf
        
           | te0006 wrote:
           | It might be of interest that Lem wrote Golem XIV in 1981,
           | more than _40_ years ago.
        
         | scandox wrote:
         | It's a persistent theme for Lem I guess. Fiasco and also His
         | Master's Voice both investigate very similar ideas about the
         | limits of comprehension.
        
           | fpoling wrote:
           | This theme is even in the Return from the Stars. There there
           | is a failure to understand human civilization 100 years
           | later.
        
       | LoveMortuus wrote:
       | The movie was released in the year 1972. The date in the title is
       | for the article.
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | sort of a haiku almost, this revue. The real movie takes time to
       | develop the base plot, by indirection and example instead of
       | prose description like this review. The "answers" provided in the
       | review as descriptions are basically accurate, but the viewer has
       | to puzzle it out, and it is never said directly by the movie.
       | 
       | This movie has stuck with me for decades. I still refer to it
       | when we get the "Star Trek" irrational exuberance crowd around
       | spending multi-billions on space adventures. Secondly how about
       | those small sats eh? Maybe not every space mission has to be
       | decades long with budgets that match.
        
       | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
       | Incidentally, the Kindle version of Solaris is on sale today for
       | 50% off its normal price:
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Stanislaw-Lem-ebook/dp/B00Q21...
        
         | blacksmith_tb wrote:
         | Which is also the newer translation[1]. For quite a while
         | couldn't be sold in the US as book/ebook due to licensing
         | issues, only as an audiobook (which is how I enjoyed it).
         | 
         | 1: https://english.lem.pl/works/novels/solaris/196-a-new-
         | transl...
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | Which would probably explain as well why _only_ Amazon can
           | sell it. I 've been trying to buy only Kobo as of late, but
           | the book literally does not exist (in English) in their
           | library:
           | 
           | https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=solaris
        
       | AlbertCory wrote:
       | As I (dimly) recall, at the Google Cinema Club
       | 
       | https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o...
       | 
       | I ran a poll once for the movie people most wanted to see. The
       | leaders were Solaris and The Big Lebowski. It was very close, but
       | I, um, "encouraged" some people on the fence to vote Solaris.
       | 
       | Accusations of "election fraud" are misplaced! This is called
       | "getting out the vote."
        
       | raajg wrote:
       | Coincidentally started reading Solaris 2 weeks ago. About 60% in
       | and really enjoying it. Love stories with novel sci-fi ideas and
       | this one tackles a pretty interesting one. Would appreciate
       | recommendations by the same author or other stories.
       | 
       | Other stories that I really liked because I had not thought about
       | those ideas before are: Diaspora (Greg Egan), Permutation City
       | (Greg Egan), Dark Universe (daniel galouye), Three Body Problem
       | series (Cixin Liu)
        
         | cubefox wrote:
         | I read pretty much all of his books. My favorite is "Wizja
         | Lokalna", I've read the German translation, but there is no
         | English one. Other books of his are available in English
         | though: I like The Cyberiad and The Star Diaries, both quite
         | funny. The former is about the adventures of the two great
         | robot constructors Trurl and Klapaucius, the latter about the
         | journeys of Ijon Tichy, a kind of space Munchausen. Tichy also
         | plays the main role in the the later books The Futurological
         | Congress, Peace on Earth, and "Wizja Lokalna" (which doesn't
         | have a translation, as I said.) All these novels are often
         | quite funny, unlike Solaris.
         | 
         | He has also written other great but much more unusual books,
         | such as Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (a Kafkaesque story set
         | inside an underground Pentagon which was cut off from the rest
         | of the world) or A Perfect Vacuum (a collection of reviews of
         | books which do not exist.)
        
       | xamuel wrote:
       | Solaris is my favorite Tarkovsky film. Some observations:
       | 
       | * When they assist the exhausted Kelvin to his room near the end,
       | his body blocks the light but occasionally his body moves so the
       | light can come through and blind the camera. This parallels the
       | discussion about destroying the visitors with a burst of light.
       | 
       | * Burton's extended unexplained car ride is (in my opinion) a nod
       | to the 2001 star-gate. It's quite brilliant how Tarkovsky shows
       | that what Kubrick achieves with exotic special effects can be
       | achieved with everyday footage if we just look from the right
       | angles and play the right soundtrack.
       | 
       | * In the old footage they watch near the start of the film, we
       | see stylistic artwork of important figures in the background.
       | These would certainly be informed by Tarkovsky's expertise on
       | Orthodox Iconography (see his "Andrei Rublev").
       | 
       | * Interesting to compare and contrast the visitors with Kubrick's
       | "HAL". The visitors are purely physical and totally unaware of
       | where they are/what's going on. HAL is purely mental and totally
       | omniscient. Both raise all kinds of interesting metaphysical
       | questions about personality and the soul.
       | 
       | * The swirling water-plants at the beginning and end of the film
       | are evoked by the paper strips the crew hang up on their
       | ventilators.
       | 
       | * Near the beginning, Kelvin stands outside in pouring rain, as
       | if not noticing it, when he could escape it by walking just a few
       | feet. This becomes very meaningful with part of the twist in the
       | ending.
       | 
       | * Young Burton talks about how gigantic the child he saw in
       | Solaris's ocean was. Later, when the visitor is frozen from the
       | dry-ice suicide attempt, we briefly catch a glimpse of her face
       | reflected in a concave mirror which makes it seem monstrously
       | gigantic.
       | 
       | Right now the entire film is available free on YouTube:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LutMHAeCfLU&t=5193s (turn on
       | closed captions unless you speak Russian)
        
         | WalterBright wrote:
         | > It's quite brilliant
         | 
         | And unbearably boring.
        
           | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
           | If you read the book first, then watch the film, it is not
           | boring. At least it was not for me.
        
         | horsh1 wrote:
         | > Burton's extended unexplained car ride
         | 
         | What do you mean unexplained? They clearly were showing the
         | future. The multi-level Tokyo highways were percieved as
         | extremely futuristic by the soviet audience. There was nothing
         | like that in the Union at the time.
        
           | horsh1 wrote:
           | ... Using Tokyo as the vision of the future ten years before
           | Blade Runner and Akira.
        
           | pavlov wrote:
           | Definitely. But the length of the first-person driving scene
           | is unexplained in the story universe, and feels somewhat out
           | of place in Tarkovsky's own body of work. I would agree it
           | conceptually mirrors the "2001" stargate sequence.
        
         | _a_a_a_ wrote:
         | Perhaps all that counts for you but all I'm getting from it is
         | "stuff happens" and you're picking up patterns which may or may
         | not be there, and if they are then so what. It sounds very
         | typical of 70s films. However I have read Stanislaw Lemand
         | respect him so I'm working up the courage to try and watch it
         | sometime. Trouble is I know I'm going to be bored crapless and
         | wish I hadn't.
         | 
         | If anyone can convince me I'm wrong I'd like that.
        
           | megmogandog wrote:
           | If that's your attitude going in you're probably going to
           | hate it. Why bother?
        
             | _a_a_a_ wrote:
             | Because I might not, I might be wrong, might find it opens
             | a new door, for which other people's views are of great
             | value.
        
           | xamuel wrote:
           | >Trouble is I know I'm going to be bored crapless
           | 
           | You're certainly right. All Tarkovsky's films are
           | astonishingly boring. It takes a lot to be able to appreciate
           | that sort of film. Learning to enjoy boredom is one of the
           | greatest things I've developed in my life. It's like a
           | superpower, it enables me to read vast quantities of dry but
           | wonderful nonfiction, for example. I wish I had developed
           | this power decades ago, but maybe that wouldn't have been
           | possible without the necessary life experience.
        
             | megmogandog wrote:
             | Personally I don't find his films boring at all. They are
             | definitely slow-paced, but are totally engrossing for me. I
             | have to assume a lot of the people who praise Tarkovsky so
             | highly also don't find his films "astonishingly boring"
        
             | dmoy wrote:
             | > All Tarkovsky's films are astonishingly boring
             | 
             | Is he the one who did the movie for roadside picnic? If so,
             | yea. Also seemed almost completely unrelated to the book.
        
               | xamuel wrote:
               | Yeah, that film is Stalker (and boy is it boring)
        
               | dmoy wrote:
               | Ah yea that one.
               | 
               | I need to go back and reread the book because I don't
               | remember the book being so boring
        
             | _a_a_a_ wrote:
             | > It takes a lot to be able to appreciate that sort of film
             | 
             | to each their own but why bother? I get a break from work
             | and entertainment from films, I simply can't understand
             | what you're getting out of it.
        
             | bathMarm0t wrote:
             | I think it just requires a reframing of what to expect.
             | Films from Tarkovsky or other capital D Directors "of
             | Director's Directors fame" are less plot driven. Films from
             | older eras are less plot driven / hadn't developed the
             | tempo of modernity (I'd summarize the tempo change as
             | needing to lead the viewer into what's next). Combine them
             | both and you get something that feels like watching paint
             | dry, the catch being the paint dries on 120ft of canvas.
             | You're in the museum and the tapestry moves. Rather than
             | trying to constantly figure out what's next / where this is
             | going (you don't notice this in modern films as the tempo
             | has already fed it to you / shuttled you along to the next
             | plot point), just sit there and enjoy the view. In Stalker
             | the shots are (op/im)pressively long. And I love them.
        
       | dmix wrote:
       | I recently watched another lesser known movie based on a
       | Stanislaw Lem book (by a Czech director):
       | 
       | Icarus XB 1 (1963) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122111/
       | 
       | It also has great set design like Solaris but didnt have such a
       | large budget. I love his style, I should read one of his books.
       | 
       | Edit: the full thing is on YouTube https://youtu.be/WwodJW1ikFo
        
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