47

SIMULATED ENVIRONMENTS: SUCCESSIVE PHASES OF THE IMAGE IN TARKOVSKYS SOLARIS

When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation.

The first impression many viewers have of the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky centers on the difficulty of interpreting his work. He embodies the antithesis of Hollywood. The films of Andrei Tarkovsky are well known to critics and viewers alike as ambiguous explorations in spirituality and epistemology. His films are difficult to place, enigmatic to a degree, and elaborately coded with symbolic detail. In the following pages I will apply Baudrillards theory of the successive phases of the image to Tarkovskys Solaris (1972) to show how he transforms natural environments into simulated ones chronologically through the film. In this way, viewers are made to question assumptions about the status of their own environments and their desire for

48 natural reality. Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lems science fiction novel, follows psychologist Kris Kelvin as he travels through four progressively simulated environments that symbolize the successive phases of the image. It is a science fiction film that defies generic conventions. It relies on imagery and extended ambient exploratory sequences that create a vivid sense of place: the idyllic natural, industrialized urban, simulated space station, and utopian simulacrum. The film begins on Earth with Kelvin, who prepares for his journey to the Solaris space station. In the opening sequences Tarkovsky sublimely evokes nostalgia for natural environments, which will be played with throughout the rest of the film. We get the sense that Kelvin has returned from an urban setting to a childhood home, the dacha, in order to say goodbye. At the dacha, we are given exposition as to the problems on Solaris; the scientists are experiencing hallucinations. Kelvin has been requisitioned to travel to the station to decide whether or not to shut down the mission. Two extended travel sequences ensue. One follows Kelvins friend Berton on his journey from country to city. The other documents Kelvins trip to the Solaris station. While these sequences seem apparently unnecessary to the plot

49 progression, they develop an intuitive rhythm for the film and the viewers sense of place. When Kelvin finally arrives at the station, it becomes immediately evident that something is amiss. The place appears deserted and in shambles. The mysterious space, along with its enigmatic survivors Snaut and Sartorius, provides few answers as to the circumstances of the mission. Kelvin must experience the place for himself. As he orients to his new surroundings, we realize that Solaris holds vast mysteries and that the answers are highly subjective. Kelvin clashes with the others in his personal perspective since he views the situation as a psychologist rather than a scientist. This position allows him to experience the hallucinations personally, but also exposes his repressed memories of grief and regret. The film explores vivid spaces and situations, balancing between scientific and spiritual perspectives. Relying on imagery and ambiance, the film opens itself up to a multitude of readings, each of which are equally valid: Solaris invites several parallel, and even contradictory, interpretations. It can be read as a Swiftian satire, a tragic love story, a Kafkaesque existentialist parable, a metafictional parody of hermeneutics, a Cervantean ironic romance, and a Kantian meditation on the nature of human consciousness. But none of these readings is completely satisfactory, and Lem intended it to be so. The simultaneously

50 incompatible and mutually reinforcing readings make the process of interpreting the text a metaphor for the scientific problem of articulating a manifestly paradoxical natural universe.1 The following reading will interpret Solaris as a journey through spaces: the environmental progression from nature to simulacrum. The film can best be described in abstract terms, since it relies so heavily on philosophical conceptions. The environments could easily be interpreted as imaginary spaces with more symbolic than literal meaning. This interpretation draws on the films juxtaposition of reality versus imaginary, strengthening the relationship between the latter and the simulacrum. In the first part of the film we are made to feel comfortable in a natural environment. The long sequence presents Kelvin in nature, contemplating and inspecting the pond, the reeds, the wind, and the forest. Kelvin visits his fathers dacha, which symbolizes family and familiarity. This sequence evokes home: the ideal image of the present and unmediated reality. Simultaneously, Kelvins docile attitude drudges up feelings of unease. The presence of an unexplained box and his ritualistic burning of photographs and papers imply mysteries in his past, demons with which he must grapple. In the opening moments, a symbolic
Istvan Csiscery-Ronay, Jr. The Book is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lems Solaris, Science Fiction Studies 35 (March 1985).
1

51 image appears that will reverberate through the rest of the film: a natural object forced into an unnatural setting. A horse retreats to its stable after galloping majestically through a field. This image creates an unsettling feeling as well as an ominous foreshadowing of the denaturalization to come. Gradually, simulated and industrial symbols intrude. Inside the dacha there are various objects connoting history, civilization, and progress. A long sequence involving the television detaches us from the here and now as we receive the exposition. The presence of art objects reflects the vast history of Western civilization as we are made to ponder demuseumification.2 The interior space of the dacha creates the impression of the reflection of a profound reality.3 In the next extended sequence of almost ten minutes, Berton rides to the city along highways, through tunnels, and finally through a complex urban road system. The landscape becomes progressively more simulated, allowing the viewer to adapt to the industrial world. The city is also the here and now, but one that masks and denatures a profound reality.4 Looking back, we can consider

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994) 11. 3 Ibid., 6. 4 Ibid., 6.

52 the change in environments as more simulated than the countryside. However, the cityscape is still familiar. Though intended as a science-fiction landscape of the future, the city functions in the film to heighten the viewers understanding of progress. This travel sequence moves from the rural (past) to the urban (presentfuture). Nostalgia has already set in. A subsequent travel sequence shows Kelvin on his way to the Solaris space station. These shots transition from the reality of what we know on Earth to a dislocated, simulated environment that masks the absence of a profound reality.5 Immediately the imagery introduces the station as a simulated environment. Referencing the natural environment of the dacha, air vents suck up the fog from the space vessel in the docking bay. To read this metaphorically, the station, a mechanized environment, rids itself of natural phenomena. But the inhabitants seek to reinsert natural things into their environment to humanize it, to familiarize the sterile simulation. The scientists post photographs and artifacts in their rooms. They try to make the unreal setting more real by making believe that theyre still on Earth, fooling themselves to forget that theyre floating in space. In a later situation, Kelvin places paper strips on an overhead air vent to
5

Ibid., 6.

53 simulate the sound of wind rusting leaves. While the sound familiarizes the space, it also creates an imaginary response in the auditor that connects the simulation with the real. In Kelvins desire for the natural, he relies on the imaginary to transform the simulated environment of the station. As a sensory trick, the paper strips fool his ears but not his heart. In similar attempts, the scientist Snaut fills his room with memorabilia of the natural: art reproductions, a photograph of a horse, and a case of butterfly specimens. Despite their best efforts, the inhabitants of the simulated environment cannot make it into a home: The opposition manifests itself on two levels. On a purely technical level, we are presented with the images of the cozy, earthly house and the distant, impersonal experimental station. On a symbolic level, we can identify the juxtaposition of the familiar, safe world of the home with the alien, mysterious interiors of the foreign territory.6 The move from natural to simulated environments displays a symbolic shift, which at once could be interpreted on historical, ideological, and personal levels. The most polarized image appears in the space stations library. The room is decorated with nostalgic memorabilia: art reproductions, classical sculptures, and old books. The look of the room echoes back to the interior of the dacha, but in a fundamentally altered form. In this place, there are no windows. Most
Roumiana Deltcheva and Eduard Vlasov, Back to the House II: On the Chronotopic and Ideological Reinterpretation of Lems Solatis in Tarkovskys Film, The Russian Review 56 (Oct 1997): 534-5.
6

54 tellingly, a similar, perhaps identical, classical bust appears in both the dacha and the station library: The sculpture connects the two spaces and, along with the other details, introduces the notion of highly subjective time, reinforced by the emphasis on the total isolation from the outside world.7 This parallel could be interpreted as a statement of the desire for familiarity and the nostalgia for the natural. In order to make the sterilized space station into a home, the scientists surround themselves with earthly objects and memorabilia. Ultimately, they make their environment into an unreal, fantasy setting. The simulation cannot be humanized in its essence. The scientists blend fantasy into the simulation in order to facilitate their desire to return to the real. The last sequence on the space station implies travel, as in the earlier literal passages from country to city and Earth to the station. This time the travel is subjective, moving from the simulated (space station) to the simulacrum portrayed through Kelvins hallucinations. In an extended dream sequence, Kelvins room on the space station merges with the dacha. This imaginary transportation functions to move Kelvin physically and psychologically to the final stage of simulacra. The story progresses to the point where viewers question the truth of the narration itself. As viewers question the truth of the telling, they can
7

Ibid., 537.

55 no longer distinguish between the reality and the simulation in a similar way as Kelvin. Lastly, the pre-eminently ambiguous and subjective image of the movie appears: the simulacrum of the dacha on Solaris. The symbolic environments come full circle. Kelvin returns to the natural environment, but details have changed. There is an overriding surrealism in this last sequence: rain falls indoors, characters seem distant, and the sky is overcast. Kelvins pastoral fantasy connotes the thematic nostalgia for nature and the desire for simplicity. The place is no longer real, but a product of his memory, hallucination, and ultimate desire. It is a purely narcissistic simulacrum, which exists not in the imaginary but on the surface of Solaris: The planet Solaris becomes a macrocosmic mirror of the human image. The Solarists' obsession with the mysteries of Solaris dissolves into the broader struggle to understand human reflection and identity.8 Viewing the Solaris dacha as a simulacrum implies that the desire for fantasy and nostalgia has transcended and obliterated the real. Kelvins decision to stay on Solaris distinguishes his ideology. His decision also implies an overall message to the film, insofar as a viewer will agree with

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., The Book is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lems Solaris, Science Fiction Studies 35 (March 1985).

56 this particular reading. Finding refuge in the fantasy of his desire, the simulacrum, Kelvin reflects the struggle for a real social utopia, implying that the ideal is not attainable in reality. Kelvin desires to return to the natural, the dacha, even though it is a thing of the past that resides only in memory. Baudrillard has suggested that science fiction ceases to be effective in this day and age, since truth and falsity no longer provide the empirical base for reality. He tends to overlook the philosophical underpinnings of much of contemporary science fiction, however: Why bother clothing the present world in sci-fi garb, when the estranging future has already arrived?9 This notion is also present in the film Solaris, since the environments reflect less futuristic than contemporary and historical relevance. The film could be looked at as an allegorical representation of the successive phases of the image rather than a literal sci-fi tale. All of Tarkovskys films rely upon notions of nostalgia: They view the world as in danger of being lost, and see it from the point of view of someone striving to hold on to it.10 In Solaris, Tarkovsky commits personal history to the

Phillip Lopate, Solaris, Criterion Collection (Nov 2002), http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=164&eid=259&section=essay (accessed 27 May 2007). 10 Chris Fujiwara, Solaris, Cineaste 28 (Summer 2003).

57 status of memory, and collective history is shown as highly temporal in the transportation from one place to another from one phase of history to another. In the film, the four spatial planes connote separate physical and ontological meanings. Passage from one to the other is stressed in extended travel sequences. The progressively simulated environments are shown over a short temporal period. One could interpret the film from Kelvins ideological perspective: finding refuge in the fantasy of his desire while totally neglecting the truth of the real. The message stresses the primacy of the imaginary as the last vestige of hope: The only universe man can truly explore exists inside his own head11 Kelvins last and only vestige is his desired fantasy, where he has omnipotence over relationships and the environment. Solaris is a kind of historical opus through humankinds journey. It tracks progress from the natural through the simulated all the way to the complete simulacrum. Kelvins desire for the return to the real, the Solaris simulacrum, parallels a real world cultural movement toward this same venture, just as Baudrillard has theorized. Does humankind desire to reside in the simulation? Is the collective imaginary a contemporary simulacrum? The film speaks of

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movies as Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): 280.

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58 humankinds reliance on the imaginary as a vestige of hope in a simulacrum divorced from collective history. Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.. Csiscery-Ronay, Istvan Jr. The Book is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lems Solaris, Science Fiction Studies 35 (March 1985). Deltcheva, Roumiana and Eduard Vlasov, Back to the House II: On the Chronotopic and Ideological Reinterpretation of Lems Solaris in Tarkovskys Film, The Russian Review 56 (Oct 1997): 534-5. Fujiwara, Chris Solaris, Cineaste 28 (Summer 2003). Lopate, Phillip. Solaris, Criterion Collection (Nov 2002), http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=164&eid=259&section=essay (accessed 27 May 2007). Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Movies as Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Solaris. Dir. Andre Tarkovsky. Perfs. Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis and Juri Jarvet. Mosfilm 1972.