[Edited 14/7/19 to remove some personal content]
Actually, this time round it seemed more of a sci-fi film than a metaphysical one (and no, I'm not trying to draw bright lines between the two). I've never been much of a reader of sci-fi, but I've dipped in from time to time, and once in a while a book in the genre (I don't really remember names, but I think that Greg Bear may've written one or two) has given me a strange, dislocated sort of feeling, as if I really am reading about a kind of refracted reality - plausible but distorted (perhaps the word I'm looking for is 'uncanny' - unheimlich), making me feel as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet. Anyway, Solaris made me feel like that.
See, the first time I watched the film, I was thinking more in terms of it exploring the nature of reality and its interaction with consciousness (phenomenology again, though this would've been before I formally studied 'phenomenology and existentialism', I think), but this time round, Solaris seemed more like a 'sci-fi' concept around which was built a recognisably humanistic moral and rational core (again, not that this and 'metaphysics' are mutually exclusive).
The mood it creates is really something, and it looks and feels exactly as it should. It's artfully done - the way that memories and perceptual streams are shot as formally disconnected yet fade into each other (the device of the visuals dropping away while dialogue continues is an effective one) and also the structuring of the film as a whole, particularly the repetitions...all quite dream-like, or memory-like, or maybe simply everyday experience-like, when you stop to reflect on it.
The sci-fi and the metaphysics are hard to disentangle; the Sistine chapel moment near the end strikes me as a pivotal scene, one way or another. This is such a strange thing for me to write, but I somehow felt in that final scene (the one in Kelvin's apartment, I mean - not the Sistine chapel one) as if I might almost be able to believe in something like heaven, in principle, perhaps - but in the realm of sci-fi or that of phenomenology? Well, that's the question, I guess.
Actually, this time round it seemed more of a sci-fi film than a metaphysical one (and no, I'm not trying to draw bright lines between the two). I've never been much of a reader of sci-fi, but I've dipped in from time to time, and once in a while a book in the genre (I don't really remember names, but I think that Greg Bear may've written one or two) has given me a strange, dislocated sort of feeling, as if I really am reading about a kind of refracted reality - plausible but distorted (perhaps the word I'm looking for is 'uncanny' - unheimlich), making me feel as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet. Anyway, Solaris made me feel like that.
See, the first time I watched the film, I was thinking more in terms of it exploring the nature of reality and its interaction with consciousness (phenomenology again, though this would've been before I formally studied 'phenomenology and existentialism', I think), but this time round, Solaris seemed more like a 'sci-fi' concept around which was built a recognisably humanistic moral and rational core (again, not that this and 'metaphysics' are mutually exclusive).
The mood it creates is really something, and it looks and feels exactly as it should. It's artfully done - the way that memories and perceptual streams are shot as formally disconnected yet fade into each other (the device of the visuals dropping away while dialogue continues is an effective one) and also the structuring of the film as a whole, particularly the repetitions...all quite dream-like, or memory-like, or maybe simply everyday experience-like, when you stop to reflect on it.
The sci-fi and the metaphysics are hard to disentangle; the Sistine chapel moment near the end strikes me as a pivotal scene, one way or another. This is such a strange thing for me to write, but I somehow felt in that final scene (the one in Kelvin's apartment, I mean - not the Sistine chapel one) as if I might almost be able to believe in something like heaven, in principle, perhaps - but in the realm of sci-fi or that of phenomenology? Well, that's the question, I guess.
