Reality gets twisted up in outer space in Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS
SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, August 12, 1:00, 4:10, 7:15
Series runs through September 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the Russian 2001: A Space Odyssey, Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star as a different kind of couple caught up in something very strange that is going on in outer space, unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Dr. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white by cinematographer Vadim Yusov) and scored (by Eduard Artemyev) film that, while technically science fiction, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Nostalghia). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY helps cast a light on far-out sci-fi summer series at Film Forum
Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, Solaris is screening August 12 as part of Film Forum’s “Son of Summer Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror” series, which returns to the indie house for the first time in seventeen years. The festival continues through September 5 with such great double features as Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Thing from Another World and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Psycho and Peeping Tom, The Fearless Vampire Killers and The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the 1958 and 1978 versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1958 and 1986 versions of The Fly, and other creepy classics in addition to 2001: A Space Odyssey.