More Tarkovsky needed

Solaris Forum topic created by Leostaris, September 7, 2002

Comments

[Yeti]

Yeah, that's sometimes a tough one to swallow. Who knows, though, what kind of turmoil they go through in their own personal life. I mean, who wants to go around being a dictator? All those people hating you, always watching your back. People like that, though, are sociopaths anyway, and so by definition, wouldn't it make sence that they can never be "happy", or at least satisfied?

[viragpali]

Hello,

It is just a little thought. The Criterion 'Solaris' edition features quite a few deleted scenes + there is a 'Solaris' trailer on the RUSCICO/Artifial Eye 'Stalker' DVD featuring additional footage that was cut by Tarkovsky perhaps after the initial screening (or probably just before that). [It is another similarity to Kubrick's '2001'.]

As soon as I can afford to get a faster computer and with a DVD burner, I am planning to replace those edited out parts, because they would add a lot to both the plot [e.g. Kris and Hary quarelling during a meal period] and the film's sci-fi content [e.g. a longer shot of Kris's spaceship appraching the station, a nice top view of the landed spaceship, etc.]. In short, what I would like to achive is to get an "original, uncut version" of 'Solaris'.

What do you think about it, please? Also, as I have no experience in such procedure, would it be technically feasable [e.g. by-passing Macrovsion, copying and pasting several minute-long foottage into a long movie]? As for the copy-right or moral issues, I do not think that I would violate any of them by simply "restoring" a work that had, at some point, existed [and I would not do it for profite either it, just for my own pleasure].

Has anyone seen those deleted scenes? Any feedback or suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Gryka]

Viragpali (nice name, btw :^) ): the best website and forum for information on ripping and authoring videos that I know is this one: afterdawn

From experience, the commercial software, unless it is extraordinarily expensive, doesn't cut it. Experiment with what is available in shareware to learn the process. It's not simple. I've seen many "copied" dvds (without changed format) and they are most of the time not watchable.

The other issue: copyright. Yes, you will be breaking the law when you copy the film. No matter what your intentions, Criterion sold you the disk under a contract that stipulated you will not copy the disk.

Having said that, every time my husband took a dvd to watch on his business trips, he brought them back damaged. So, nowadays I move the film and all the extras onto a hard drive and erase it when he gets home. It maybe breaking the law, but it's much less expensive. Still, I'm breaking the copyright law, I just can live with that fact.

[viragpali]

Thanks, Gryka, for the information

On one hand, you are absolutely right on the copyright issue. I also respect the law (and I always collect original editions). On the other, I am frustrated by the levy [sp?] fee, which is being added to blank CD's, audio tapes, and I assume, DVD disks (at least, here, in Canada). It is practically a tax, or more exactly, an unfair penalty, that I have to pay for compensating the media business for their loss caused by pirate copying. My concern is: why do I - who does not make pirated copies [e.g., I only save my own work on to a CD-ROM] - have to pay this fee *instead of someone else* , who does misuse these products for illegal copying [of a music CD, for example]? And as I do pay for the loss of income caused by illegal copying, I may claim the right to copy whatever I want, since I have paid a compenstion for those business companies already.

The other issue is if the 5-year-jail penalty would be issued for everyone who breakes the copyright law, no one would be on the street in North America. I mean, strictly speaking, taping a TV or radio broadcast is illegal, since by paying for the cable you buy only the rigth to see the [live] program only once.

The other thing is that by buying a copied product instead of the original one, a loss can caused for the distributor of the original product, so enforcing the copyright law makes perfect sense. However, no such loss is caused to anyone if I copy my own products, that I also avoid distributing or selling.

[Gryka]

You're right of course, Viragpali. But there is little we can do about this absurdity other than whine I suppose.

Recently a 12-year old was charged for swapping music online. The lawsuit was filed against the girl, her parents and grandparents, because she used their PCs to swap music with others. The family decided to settle and pay $2,000 penalty. The next day, Sen. Durbin from IL, who sits on Senate Judiciary Committee, commented sarcastically to the questioned RIAA president, "So, you must be now heading to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects, right?" You know, his comment was right on the money. A law that makes most citizens (children or adults) into criminals is not a good law and the fact that it's implemented to its full extent means that our society is spiraling towards totalitarianism.

All of that swapping and illegal copying would go away (or stopped being a problem and became an advantage) if the music and film industry stopped being fixated on creating mega-hits and instead decided to make money on variety of movies and music. But diversity is one course that is not taught in MBA schools (hat tip to Yeti). I still remember Keller here in Chicago, which in the 80s and 90s was the prime recruiting grounds for the infamous now Anderson Consulting, where the students were judged on "Anderson style presentation," a cookie cutter thing that made everyone immediately fall asleep (including the presenter).

BTW, have you read Soros article in Atlantic Monthly yet? The Bubble of American Supremacy (The link isn't to Atlantic Monthly, which is here but I couldn't find the Soros article online at the source.)

[guest]

"I also laughed sadly when Bush actually said "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" (italics mine). :rolleyes:"

Oh, really?

Claim: President George W. Bush proclaimed, "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."
Status: False.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.htm

[Glimmung]

Thanks for noting the correction. I had read about this but had forgotten my reference to it in the forum. I direct folks to Snopes with some regularity, so I had that coming. I can admit to a mistake. Too bad our current administration can't.

This, of course, does nothing to alter the incredibly long list of inaccurate, ignorant, grammatically mangled, or chaotically nonsensical things Bush HAS said. One can understand why his handlers rarely let him loose in public. May I be forgiven for believing that a US president should have more than a third-grader's grasp of grammar, geography, and history.

And, anonymous Guest, I just know you were also out there assiduously correcting the people who accused Al Gore of claiming to have invented the internet. Right?

[Yeti]

I think Glimmung has been repused by the unknown guest!

In that vein, I guess you could also say that Glimmung "punked" all the rest of us with that misleading bit of information.

Do you suppose the "unknown guest" is really the Unknown Comic from the old Gong Show?

[Glimmung]

Yeti,

I actually do think Guests's actions rise above the level of repusing. I advanced a statement concerning Bush as true when it was false. I was fair game.

I checked - Guest came to Solaris from a search-engine request for the particular combination of words "word for entrepreneur". Presumably he/she visited many of the 130 or so sites that resulted from the search. I only objected because Guest flamed through anonymously on a partisan mission. We're a public forum only in a technical sense and politics are only an occasional sideshow for us. It would have been more polite to say something along the lines of: "Interesting site. I just thought you should know that your statement about Bush was incorrect - see this URL for the facts. Happy Holidays."

Ever been to snopes.com? First place I go when I see a new internet claim circulating. So many people (all across the political spectrum) accept things uncritically because it fits in with their notions of what ought to be true.

[michael]

Yeah, I've heard that "Bush statement" and must say that it fits him perfectly. I believed it was true too, so I can hardly blame you, Glimmung. I love that guy that does Bush on the Jay Leno show.

Bush said so many stupid things that it's not like his good image got tarnished. He already did a perfectly adequate job of undermining himself long ago.

I sincerely hope the fact that the US troops catched Saddam won't have enough impact on the presidential elections to help Bush win yet again.

I think it was Henry Kissinger who commented once that people can act so irresposibly on the net because it costs nothing. It's not like you're going to track down each person that flames you and make them pay, right? No accountability = no behavioral brakes. Hence the proliferation of flamers and all sorts of trolls.

Returning to the problem of music piracy: if radios aired diverse music then people wouldn't download so much off the net. Those p2p sites are a perfect place to hear stuff you would otherwise never listen to. You can sample different music without the risk of paying for a dud. If broadcasters played more obscure types of music then listeners would just go and buy the record, because they'd know what they're getting. Not to mention that the level of musical literacy would increase dramatically. The one good thing about piracy is that people experiment more and learn more.

The piracy problem will change they entire music business: the way artists are paid, the way people are charged for listening to music and the balance in the types of music that are popular. The Internet will have a more profound impact on the media industries than we can now even begin to forsee. It will just have to happen, because big media honchos will have to face the fact that they'll never stomp out piracy and regular customers won't take kindly to the idea, that they're the ones who are supposed to bear the financial brunt of someone else's illegal actions.

Maybe in the end piracy will prompt some positive change.

[Yeti]

So, how do you know if you're breaking the law when it comes to downloading music? I mean, you can go to a musician's website, and he might list a few songs under a "free downloads" link. If the downloads are free, then is is illegal? I've not done a lot of research into this.

For example, you can download Real Player and search for a musical group, and it lists a bunch of hits, and then you click on them and it automatically downloads a song into your favorites and plays it for you. How do you know when you've broken the law?

[Glimmung]

Anyone out there? Michael? Leo? Viragpali?

This would fit in other topics, but I thought I would put it in the Tarkovsky thread. Spurious has some interesting things to say about Tarkovsky, and quotes him from an interview here:

I get the impression — perhaps I am wrong — that whenever you talk about Western audiences the tone of your remarks turns very critical.

It is not so much critical... This is criticising not so much Western audiences but the situation this audience finds itself in, the state of culture in the West. For example, for Russians, even now, culture and works of art have always carried certain spiritual, mystic, or — if you prefer — prophetic significance. A similar understanding of culture has to a very large extent also developed in Poland. Here, in the West, culture has long ago become an object of consumption, a consumer property. What does culture mean for them? Culture is what I can have. As a result of my being free. And what does it mean free? — I am free to have what everyone here has. Does culture exist in the West? It does. Thus I can and I have the right to use it. And what does it mean: I can? Well, just — physically, pragmatically — I can. It won't even occur to him to pause and think: yes you can but are you able to digest it? Let's take Goethe for example — you read Faust — but have you been able to read it? You can, obviously you can, please go buy yourself Faust. Only you'll never buy Goethe's Faust. You'll go to the pictures where you'd rather watch a Spielberg film; and if you go to a bookshop, you'll buy a comic or some bestseller or other which one ought to buy. That's all. You won't buy Thomas Mann, you won't buy Hesse, Faulkner, Dostoievsky. See, this is it: you can buy everything. Yet in order to absorb culture one has to make an effort equal to artist's own when he was creating his work. And this won't even occur to such consumer. He thinks: I can go and buy; all I have to do is pay. This is where the lack of spirituality leads. It won't occur to him that art is aristocratic — in the spiritual sense of the word, I repeat, God forbid I should use it in any other sense.

They say: élitist art. What does it mean élitist? Art always expects everyone should be able to understand, to comprehend it. It awaits this moment. Every work of art is created for this purpose. Yet they say: élitist because it is not immediately understandable. And what does it mean not understandable? Art cannot be... Goethe said that to read a good book is as difficult as to write one. This means in order to understand the author's aim one must perform certain spiritual work. I repeat: a creative artist is not someone who opposes his people, he is an individual who serves them.

Of perhaps more particular interest to us was this:

Speaking of connections with Polish culture, could you tell us why you based one of your films on Stanislaw Lem's Solaris? What attracted you to that novel?

I think very highly of Stanislaw Lem and I like his works very much. I read them whenever I can, everything I can, I read and I like his prose but it so happens that — and I'm sorry to say this — he does not like too much, does not understand, what cinema is. That's why during our time working together we were unequal partners. I loved his books beyond all measure while he was entirely indifferent towards my films. In brief, he would always think that he as a writer... that literature existed.

That literature was most important.

I don't know. Not most important — but that it existed — as a fact. As does music, poetry, painting. But he could not comprehend cinema and he still does not to this day. He doesn't know what it is. There are many people like that, even very intelligent ones, who thoroughly know literature, poetry, music but they do not consider cinema an art. Either they think cinema hasn't been born yet or they do not feel it, they cannot see the trees in the forest — in the sense they cannot distinguish between true and commercial cinema. And apparently Lem does not seriously treat cinema as art. That's why he believed we should have followed his novel in the screenplay, should have simply illustrated it. This I could not do. In this case he should have approached not me but a director who was an "illustrator."

They make those "living paintings."

Yes, we all know the type.

Only they create dead paintings most of the time.

There are directors like this, those who follow the writer scrupulously illustrating his work. There are many pictures of this type and they usually all look alike. Because it's a mere illustration everything is dead there, it has no life, in and of itself it has no artistic value. It's a mere reflection, something secondary to the literary original. And this is what Lem was expecting. If indeed he was expecting this. It is something I cannot understand. It's very strange to presume he had this kind of expectation but it's precisely his attitude towards film art that put him in the position of a man expecting exactly this result, an illustration — although he perhaps didn't want it at all. But he would invariably oppose any divergence between our screenplay and the exact narrative of the novel. He would become indignant whenever we invented a new thread.

At that time we had a screenplay variant which I was very fond of. In it almost all action took place on Earth, more than half of it, i.e., this whole prehistory with Harey, why she "came into existence" over there on Solaris. It was reminiscent of Crime and Punishment and was of course completely at odds with Lem's original idea because I was interested in issues of inner life, spiritual issues so to speak, and he was interested in the collision between man and Cosmos, the Unknown with a capital "U". This is what interested him. In some ontological sense of the word, in the sense of the problem of cognizance and the limits of this cognizance — it's about that. He was even saying that humanity was in danger, that there was a crisis of cognizance when man does not feel... This crisis is on the increase, it snowballs, it takes shape of various human tragedies, also tragedies scientists experience.

And then it all ripens into a kind of explosion, a jump forward, everything marches towards the future, etc. etc. Explosion — that's very good, I don't deny it, but I'm not interested in this at all. And this novel attracted me only because for the first time I encountered a work about which I could say: atonement, this is a story of atonement. What is atonement? — Remorse. In a straightforward classical sense of the word — when our memory of past wrongdoings, sins, turns into reality. For me this was the reason I made such a film.

On the other hand if we are to talk about this issue of encounter with the Unkown — then again the ontological aspect of it was not important to me, it was instead recreation of a man's psychological situation, to show what is happening to his soul. And if the man remains human — to me that's the most precious thing. It's no accident the hero of my film is a psychologist, the hero of Lem's novel is a psychologist as well. He is an ordinary city dweller, a philistine, he looks just so, ordinarily. For me it was important that he would be just like that. He should be a man of a rather limited spiritual range, average — just in order to be able to experience this spiritual battle, fear, not like an animal which is in pain and does not comprehend what is happening to it. What was important to me was precisely that human being unconsciously forces himself to be human, unconsciously and as far as his spiritual abilities would allow he opposes the brutality, he opposes all that is inhuman while he remains human. And it turns out that despite him being — so it would seem — a thoroughly average guy, he stands at a high level spiritually. It's as if he convicted himself, he went right inside this problem and he saw himself in a mirror. And it turned out he was a spiritually rich man — despite his apparent intellectual limitations we had seen earlier. When he talks to his father he is a plain bore, in his conversation with Berton he speaks in banal trivialities about knowledge, morality, he tells some banal stories; as soon as he begins to form his thoughts he becomes banal. But as soon as he begins to feel something or suffer — he becomes a human being. And this was leaving Lem completely unmoved. Totally unmoved. And I was deeply moved by this. And when the film received a prize in Cannes and someone was congratulating him, he asked: "And what have I got to do with this?" He asked this question with resentment — but one could look at it differently and ask: "Indeed, what has he got to do with it?" If he treated cinema as art he would understand that film, a screen adaptation, always arises on the work's ruins so to speak. As a completely new phenomenon. But he didn't see it that way.

But I am infinitely grateful to him for those days we spent together and talked... He is an extremely interesting man, very pleasant. So if I feel a bit bitter it is not because he treated me and my film that way — it is because he treated cinema this way in general.

By the way, I'd like to ask you to convey to him my best wishes, my regards and heartfelt gratitude. I shall always remember with gratitude the time we spent working together. What I said earlier, however, had to be said at least for objectivity's sake.

It fascinates me that Tarkovsky felt he had located the implicit psychological core of Lem's Kris in the notion of atonement but that Lem was hostile to the idea that there could or should be anything "there" that he hadn't deliberately put there, that wasn't explicit in the text of the novel. How was the inflexible Lem able to construct something as enigmatic, impenetrable, as the Ocean?

To change topics slightly, I've had the chance to view Soderbergh a couple times. I caught Rheya's offending dialogue in full.

...you loved me though. I know that. I felt that. I wish we could live inside that feeling forever. Maybe there's a place where we can. But I know it isn't on Earth, and it's not on board this ship. That's all I can say right now.

The implication that one of the Visitors could suddenly know the Ocean's intentions is fully as disturbing as the film's final line, if not more so.

[Yeti]

Do you think it would be fair to say that Lem approaches the story from an intellectual point of view, whereas Tarkovsky approaches it from an emotional point of view?

Could we draw the comparison that Lem is something like Mr. Spock, and Tarkovsky is like Dr McCoy? Two different viewpoints on a situation, and then we are left in the role of Cap'n Kirk to digest the information that we are getting from the two of them and draw our own conclusions?

--A very interesting interview, Glimmung. Thanks for posting it. I guess I hadn't really thought about the way Kris' dialogue changes from the beginning of the movie to the end. It's somewhat more difficult, because I don't speak Russian, and so having to read subtitles inevitably dithers the feel of the dialogue. I recall that he is certainly more in touch with his emotional side by the end of the movie. I don't have a sence, though, that he is any better off, which is what Tarkovsky seems to suggest.

Kris seems to start out being cold and "bland". Then he becomes driven by his inner turmoil, and in the end he just seems emotionally drained. He's gone from being non-emotional to being highly emotional, to simply being drained. I left the movie thinking Kris was in a state of emotional desolation. (and physical desolation as well, since he was then on a tiny island on the vast surface of the unknowable ocean. I'm not so sure he is any better off emotionally. If anything, he seemed more depressed at the end.

To support Tarkovsky's claim that Kris has somehow had an "awakening" or "sanctification", you would think that the final scenes might be of him getting his life back together. Maybe packing up his bag and boarding the shuttle craft. Clean shaven, showered, and with a look of satisfaction. That, to me, would indicate a "healed" spirituality. Now, he looks like he will end up on his father's back porch taking a drag on a cigarette, running his hand through his greasy hair and staring into the blankness....

[Yeti]

So,

I was browsing around the web searching for my kin, and I found this website:

www.defectiveyeti.com

How could I NOT check this out?? So I'm looking around, reading about who the heck this guy is, and lo and behold, he's some kind of contributing writer in the Seattle area. And, as luck would have it, he seems to do movie reviews as well. You guessed it, he reviewed Solaris. If you follow the link below, (and I always forget how to make it a hot link), you can scroll down to his review. Within his review, he links another source that compares Solaris with 2001. You may find it interesting.

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/cat_movies.html

So, what are the chances that there would be two separate websites that mention Solaris that have a contributing writer known as Yeti?

In other news, I recently watchd A.I. by Stephen Speilburg. Anyone seen it?

[michael]

I've seen A.I. Teddy is great (I want a teddy like that!), so is the view of NY under water and the futuristic civilization at the end but it is a flawed movie. Especially the saccharine ending and the obvious clash between Spielberg's goodie-two-shoeness and Kubrick's bleak cynisism. I also couldn't get over the stupid heavy metal band at the flesh fair.

[Yeti]

Yeah. I liked Teddy too. My favorite lines are when they get into the helicopter and Teddy says "This is not a toy, David." Or when Teddy is hanging onto the outside of the balloon about to fall and says "I'll break, David." Another notable scene is when David and the real boy are both calling Teddy at the same time.

I thought the whole Flesh Fair thing was a little hokey. I also didn't like the futuristic city that Gigolo Joe took him to. This story seemed to have a ton of potential, and yet it sold itself way short. You're right. It had a ton of clashing elements.

I also enjoyed NY under water. I was actually hoping that the story would be a little more like the movie (I can't recall the name now) where Robin Williams plays a robot that wants to become a man.

I think this was a three hour movie crammed into two hours, and two stories crammed into one movie. I love stories about robots interacting with humans. It's refreshing to think about how illogical humans are, and quite fascinating to study how a non-emotional being reacts to the emotions of humans. That's why I've always enjoyed Asimov's robot stories.

[michael]

I've read Tarkovsky's interview and this is the piece that is very true and it's a pity Lem just doesn't understand it:

"If he treated cinema as art he would understand that film, a screen adaptation, always arises on the work's ruins so to speak. As a completely new phenomenon. But he didn't see it that way."

It looks like Lem thinks that a book adaptation means: take the book and just add pictures and music to it. Well that would be very convenient and easy but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. If it did everyone would be cranking out great adaptations of great books but we know that's not the case - and for serious reasons not just the director's inflated artistic ego and producers' accountant mentality.

I've read Lem's screenplay based on his own book "Chain of chance". He co-wrote it with a friend. Absolutely dead. Abysmal. No structure at all and no life in it. No understanding of cinema language. No identification with main character. The story loses in the adaptation everything that gives it its value as a book. And the parts that just had me rolling with laughter were texts like : "Here just like in the novel from page this and this to that and that". Literally! A script doctor in the US would just throw this out of the window. No wonder the Germans never made that movie (at least I haven't heard a word that they did) even though they bought this "script" and had it translated from Polish into German. I can imagine their astonishment and panic when they finally read what they paid for!

As for Tarkovsky's Kris - maybe he changes but I haven't noticed it. As wooden and boring in the beginning as at the end of the film. Bad script and an actor that cannot find himself in a badly written role imo. No real character arc. In the book the arc is only faked and so it is in T's movie too imo. Lots of words to cover up lack of proper plot and character developement. Still, I'll choose T's Solaris over S's anyday. And I like T's Harey much, much more than S's - except for her outfits.

Damn, will I ever get over this?! ;)

[Glimmung]

I laughed at one line at the "defective Yeti" site. He was discussing the Harry Potter movies, which seem to have been done in the way Lem wishes his novels were adapted: load the novel, then hit the "save as screenplay" button!

[michael]

In the case of Harry Potter movies this could be done, because these books are all about plot. They are perfect for transforming into scripts. In Lem's books their value is hidden in what is thought or said, not in the plot and characters, so this simple method of just writing down the book in script format would never work.