.
Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) monologue in the space station's library
“Science? Nonsense! In our situation, mediocrity and genius are equally useless. We have no interest in conquering any cosmos: we want to extend the Earth to the borders of cosmos. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. We don’t need other worlds: we need a mirror. We struggle for contact, but we’ll never find it. We’re in the foolish human predicament of striving for a goal that we fear, that we have no need for. Man needs man.”
Such is the outstanding speech in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (Russian production awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes Festival in 1972), a film adaptation which loosely follows the plot of Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris (Poland, 1961).
Though needlessly long and overly slow, this movie -probably unforgettable- is an elegantly performed surprising postulate about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and alien species. Its many brilliant dialogues, snaring musical theme, the strength of its characters and the excellent interpretation of its actors (among which Jüri Järvet, playing Dr. Snaut, deserves being highlighted) powerfully captured my attention to an almost hypnotizing degree. Upon ending, I was utterly mesmerized not only by its visual qualities, but also -or perhaps mostly- by the extremely rich food for thought that the story provides.
Solaris is a philosophic essay on man’s anthropomorphic limitations; a meditative psychological drama proposing the futility of attempted communications with extraterrestrial life. The plot occurs mostly aboard a space station orbiting the far-distant planet Solaris, covered with an ocean that is single planet-encompassing organism. In examining this oceanic surface from a hovering research station, the scientists are, in turn, being studied by the sentient planet itself, which probes for the thoughts of the humans and has the ability to recreate their secret or guilty concerns in material human-like forms. After years, the scientific mission has stalled because the scientist crew have fallen to emotional crises, and a psychologist travels from Earth to the space station to learn and evaluate the situation—yet soon encounters the same mysterious phenomenon like the other scientists aboard.
One of those must-see movies which, unfortunately, very seldom reach the limited, greedy capitalistic film production and distribution oligopolies of our Western societies.
.
Cálida y algo ventosa, invitaba la tarde a pasear y saqué mi abatida osamenta para airearla por las calles del castizo barrio de Carabanchel. Me guiaba, en esta ocasión, la arisca desnudez de la tapia que, infranqueable, rodea el abandono de la finca Vista Alegre, cedida a beneficencia en el año de 1887 siendo rey Alfonso XIII y regente su madre, María Cristina. Al doblar uno de los recodos del perímetro desemboqué en el anacronismo de una pequeña plaza donde agonizan, asediados por el cemento y el asfalto, acaso los últimos restos del antiguo municipio: el viejo ayuntamiento, dos o tres casas centenarias y la secular parroquia de San Sebastián Mártir, junto a cuyos cimientos han desfilado ya más de quinientos años de historia.
