Rev Left Radio - "Solaris" by Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cosmic Exploration of the Human Psyche

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Breht got invited onto Left of the Projector to discuss Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's famous sci-fi film from 1972 "Solaris" with Evan and Amanda. Together, they discuss and analyze the film, exploring the human condition, the subconscious, modernist subjectivity, alienation, our fear of death, the Cold War, spiritual experience, the central importance of Love, Stanley Kubrick, and much more in the process.   

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Rev. Left Radio. I am Brett O'Shea, and today I am going to share on our feed an episode re-recorded with Evan from Left of the Projector and Amanda, who is a recurrent guest on Left of the Projector. Evan, Amanda and I sat down to discuss the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's famous sci-fi-slash-fi-slash-fi film Solaris. I believe it's from the 1970s, kind of an old film. Some of you might have already seen it. Some of you might not have. You can listen to this episode without having seen it and still get a lot out of it. Of course, we would encourage people to check out the film. And then you come back and listen to this episode as well, or listen to this episode first and then check out the film, whatever.

but it's a great film and I think we had a really truly wonderful discussion and even in the prep for this episode you know I was listening to different analyses from different people reading essays etc and there's lots of good stuff out there on tarkovsky's film because he's famous artistic director but I still feel that in the course of this conversation there's some genuinely sort of unique analysis that I didn't find anywhere else and it just came up sort of organically in our discussion so I'm quite proud of this episode it touches on a lot of aspects beyond politics and beyond mere filmmaking. The human condition gets explored quite a bit in Tarkovsky's film as well as in this conversation about it. And, of course, this was a collaboration with Left of the Projector, so I'm on as a sort of guest. And, of course, Left of the Projector put it out on their feed. A few days ago, we're going to put it out publicly on our feed as well so that as many people as possible can hear it. But I highly, highly recommend if you like this episode,

If you like film in general, just looking for a new podcast or all of the above, highly recommend people go check out, subscribe to Left of the Projector on any of your preferred podcast apps and check them out because not only do they do wonderful, interesting stuff, but we're going to do more collapse with them going forward. In fact, I love this film by Tarkovsky in our discussion so much that even inside this conversation we're already planning to watch more Tarkovsky films throughout the year and have a couple more episodes like that. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Evan from Left of the Projector as well as Amanda on Andre Tarkovsky's Solaris. Enjoy. Sit back in your seats, get something you eat. You watch this movie. Don't like to. Can you see it? Well, we'll let you hear.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I have your host, Evan, back again with another film discussion from the left. This week, we're delving into something I've wanted to discuss for a long time, and that is Soviet cinema. It's hard to believe I've gone almost 100 episodes without getting to some of these classic masterpieces out of the Soviet Union. But we will correct that omission today by discussing one of the most famous films in Soviet history, and that is Solaris, directed by Andre Tarkovsky. And to discuss this truly stunning work of art, I'm joined by Amanda, who you may know from past episodes such as Knives Out, among others. And for the first time

of the program, honored to have Brett O'Shea, host of Rev Left Radio, Gorilla History, Shulis in South Dakota, all of these, especially Rev Left. I have to say that it was kind of opened my eyes as I was reading and learning about the Left. So, honored to have you on. And thank you both for joining me today. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be on. I ask you Brett to kind of pick a movie. So in full disclosure, I usually send out guests a list of movies from anything from like, you know, random comedies to more serious films and you immediately chose Solaris. I'm wondering what, you know, maybe drew you to pick it and, you know, if you have any history with these kinds of films. Sure. Yeah. No, I've had periods of my life where

I, you know, get more or less into, you know, various forms of art and film has been something that's been with me since, you know, I came into adulthood. So I've had my Kubrick phases. I've had my film noir phases, my Hitchcock phases, where I kind of dive into all those things. And when you're interested in that stuff, you know, you'll come across things that talk about the best directors of all time or movies that are kind of like this, et cetera, especially when you're delving into Kubrick, the Tarkovsky comes up over and over again. And so he's always been high on my list of some of a director that I wanted to explore. There's the Soviet element, which I found fascinating as well for my own obviously political and historical interest reasons.

And so I've always wanted to, but have never committed to it, never doveen into it. And then when you reached out and said you wanted to do a film and gave me that wonderful list of all these awesome films, it just jumped out at me immediately. And like, here's my chance to dive into Tarkovsky. And after watching Solaris, I loved it. And now I'm incredibly excited to continue to watch Tarkovsky's films and hopefully watch all of them, you know, over the next year. so because I yeah I absolutely loved it so because of you I'm now getting into Tarkovsky

watched my first Tarkovsky film and hopefully it's it's nowhere near my last so thank you yeah that's awesome and I too have watched some Soviet movies this was the first time I watched a Tarkovsky movie all the way through I once tried to watch Solaris and just didn't make it through and like I said Amanda you and I have been discussing doing a soviet movie you know for a while and then you mentioned that you had done a class at school talking about Soviet films so I don't know Was this the first time you'd seen this? And I don't know if you wanted to also, you know, maybe give some of the background on this class and, you know, what kind of what made it fun for you? Yeah.

Well, this is the first time that I've seen Tarkovsky's films. Well, that's a lie. Actually, I did watch Stalker a lot slower pace than I'm used to. That's probably another one of like more famous films. But the class that I took was mostly just like focused on. the correlation of Soviet history through the phases of the Soviet Union and how film really influenced a lot of that. Early Soviet cinema, of course, is, you know, silent films about like strikes and, you know, taking over the White Palace and stuff like that. And it kind

goes into like the industry of how they were able to build up their, build up the Soviet film industry. And so it was mostly, like, the class is mostly focused on, like, narrative rather than the art form of Soviet cinema, which is kind of a miss. But, I mean, with a 10-week term, it's kind of hard to cover everything. Maybe a good, a good starting point to think about the Soviet industry versus, I guess you could call it the Western American film industry as it was coming up in the 20th century. I kind of maybe separate from some of European film because I think it was a little bit, maybe more of a, there was more of an art form within the Europe, you know, Italian cinema. You can look at lots of directors there. But in looking at this movie as

more of a art form, I mean, for anyone out there listening who had a chance to watch it before listening, you probably noticed immediately at the beginning of this movie, there is over four minutes action that's happening, a very simple, beautiful camera work sounds can being conveyed before you even get to a single line of dialogue. And I know, and I hate to do this, but throughout the episode, we're probably going to slightly lean on the Stanley Kubrick 2001 film from four years before 1968, because Karkovsky really was looking at this movie, Solaris, as a bit of a response on his end to creating a science fiction movie that was different from the way that the American director Stanley Kubrick was creating it. So I guess this kind of leads me to maybe two questions

is sort of how did you feel as you were sort of watching the beginning of this movie? And did it have kind of evoke something which did for me as a very different feeling that when I turn on, even a more arty American movie, whether it's a modern one or a Kubrick film, it just had this feeling that was impossible for me to not feel as I'm seeing the water flowing in this sort of pond and you have the sound of the leaves crumbling under the feet of the character we haven't even learned about yet and the horse running through. It is just impossible to escape the work of art that you're watching. And so I'm wondering how you both maybe felt as you're watching this. I know that's maybe a hard thing to put your finger on, but I think in a movie like this,

there is a sense of emotion that's being evoked that is different than most films that probably the average American audience. To begin with, this is a word recording, I think, January 14th, so I don't know, people living in the Midwest will know that over the last couple of days we had an incredible amount of snowfall, you know, frigid temperatures yesterday at negative 30 here in Omaha with the windshield. So when I watched this film, I had this wonderful little experience of watching it during a blizzard. So I was by myself in my cold room with my little space heater.

You know, the snow beating on my window and piling up on my windowsill as I'm watching this film, which really put me in an interesting headspace, a perfect headspace to sort of engage with this film. I said, I think I posted about it on my personal Instagram story where I said, you know, I just started watching this with the blizzard beating on my window and I feel nostalgic for something I can't articulate or understand. And that's the sort of feeling and mood that sort of descended upon me as I watched this film. and the opening shots are hypnotic, you know, and maybe we'll get to this, but one of the, one of the many themes that Tarkovsky explores in this film is, in some sense, our alienation from nature, and to immerse us in nature, to remind us of the beauty of nature, to remind us that we are nature, right? We bubble up out of nature, and we're alienated from nature, and so far as we're alienated

from ourselves, and that's an interesting theme that plays throughout this film. But I found the overall film to be, you know, sort of disorienting in some ways, hypnotical, certainly existential um i i saw it as like a haunting portrayal in part of of loss and grief and literal alienation like you know you're going to an alien planet with an alien life form um it couldn't be more uh you know on the nose with regards to that but you know so there's gorgeous visual aesthetics which tarkovsky is known for and telling a story through you know visual artistic expression and of course visual art itself plays a huge role in the film you know there's these famous portraits one of which is um what was it hunters hunters in the snow that famous painting um i actually

i had a wonderful opportunity the last summer to go to vienna austria for free and to because i couldn't afford to do it myself and to go into a museum and see that painting in real life so i saw the original version of that painting like six seven eight months ago and you know the blizzards happening outside my window and and again that's that's the the piece of art that harry the you know the sort of apparition, the neutrino composed figure, becomes human staring into that piece of artwork, which I found, you know, interesting. Another element is the sparse, I don't know how you say that, sparse soundscape, you know, it's with a few exceptions, like when you're in the Japanese highway for fucking 30 minutes

straight, it's very loud, you know, but for the most part, even walking through nature, there's only a couple birds chirping in space. It's very quiet. And I think that speaks to another aspect of this film, which, you know, might not be talked about as much as perhaps it should be, which is Tarkovsky's personal interest in German mysticism, in Meister Eckhart, and that entire world, you know, and Meister Eckhart has this famous saying, you know, hearing is the language of the soul. And you get that with the soundscape of the film itself. You also have focusing on ears throughout the film, if you've noticed that, like the dead body, they zoomed it on their ear when Kelvin first sees the dead body. And then later they zoom in on Kelvin's ear really closely as he's sort of giving. It's like one of his final monologues or something, which I found to be very interesting.

And of course, in medieval mysticism, I'm going a little off the rails here, but stay with me. In medieval mysticism, the sun, soul, S-O-L, represented the soul, S-O-U-L. And so I think fundamentally what we're seeing in this film is even though we're ostensibly going outward into the cosmos, Tarkovsky is taking us inward, into the self, Solaris, right? It's not a, it's not a, and we'll get to this as well, a science fiction, classic film about going out and, you know, AI and artificial intelligence and human civilization, extrapolation, extrapolation. onto the cosmos, but is really by going outward, we're going inward. And that's the journey that Tarkovsky is taking us on. So understanding this film as a journey into inner space and not outer space, I think is also really fundamental to sort of grappling with its main themes and what is trying to, what is trying to convey. But there's a lot of those things that I think are

extremely important. Ear was something that I found very haunting and almost unsettling. And I think one of the thing I wanted to say about it, and part of this, maybe I did, didn't ask it is, it's considered like a science fiction drum. I mean, I hate looking at Wikipedia and saying, like, what does this film categorized as? Because it's very subjective. But this movie is almost kind of like a horror movie, but not in the same sense you think of a gory horror movie. It's this horror where you're forced to look inward. You're forced to look at something. It makes you very uncomfortable. That's those silences in this movie. There's at least four or five times this movie where it fades to black for more than a few seconds. That's usually

consider like the kiss of death in a movie. You can't fade the black in the middle of the movie, three, four times. And so it just makes me feel uncomfortable throughout. And I think that enables you to look at yourself as you're watching it and feel this haunting humanity. Yeah. Overarchingly, this film is less about science fiction and more about humanity. You know, the love of humanity, the love that drives our need for change in societies and within our society. And within our ourselves. It's very interesting that I feel like there's a lot of practical effects in this film. It does rely, like, really a lot on sound and mirror reflections, images, you know, very simple imagery. Like, the beginning of the film, like, from the start, you know, it almost starts

as if it's, like, in the middle of the story, you know, and you're in this, like, kind of countryside. you're trying to like kind of figure out who's who and then the the film of the uh i guess he's a cosmonaut or you know the guy that what's his name not chris chris is the main character but the other guy that the younger version of him you don't really recognize him as a younger version or even just him telling this story and so you're kind of almost disoriented just from the beginning of like trying to figure out where is this another planet is this the planet earth um that was like some couple of things that I was wondering in the beginning, but overarchingly, like, I feel like it is horror in a way that it is, you know, making you look more inward into your humanity.

It is important to note that Tchaikovsky, like, to know about him and his own personal life. He is a Russian Orthodox, very religious man. So kind of almost like his response to science is, comes from like almost, I guess, like a spiritual perspective, but not overarchingly religious, I guess. But yeah. So I really, I also did want to mention, too, like how low of a budget this film had. I had read that it was only 1 million rubles which is equivalent to

like $900,000 today I think. Something like that whereas like Kubrick's you know, 2021 was $10.5 million movie budget but then at the same time it's kind of unfair

to compare the two films like 2021 and Solaris is just completely dynamically different films And I think that that we kind of get caught up as Westerners. We get caught up in looking at like the Western imperialist perspective of our media or art and kind of compare it to Soviet, whether it's like a response to us or were a response to them. And it's not always the case. So I don't know.

I don't know what you guys think about like that aspect, how the notion that this movie is. considered by some critics as being a response to Kubrick's film. Yeah, Evan, do you have thoughts on that? Because I have thoughts on other things that Amanda said. Yeah, well, let me, I want to read one quote from, from Tarkovsky that, again, I think is a very good valid point that it's, it's not, it doesn't, that maybe do us as service to be continuously comparing them or saying this is a response to that. I do think that this quote might give a little bit of a framing of how Tarkovsky

saw film and why he made his movies the way he did. And maybe it's not so much a response, but just this is how I make my, how I view cinema as my art and how it might be different from a Western piece. So I'll just read this quote and then I'll let you, you know, if you don't want to respond to this or any other pieces. But he says, for example, if one shoots a scene of passengers boarding a trolley, which let's say we'd never seen or known anything about, then we get something like Kubrick's moon landing scene. On the other hand, if we were to shoot the moon landing like a common trolley stop

in a modern film, then everything would be as it should. That means to create psychologically, not an exotic, but a real everyday environment that would be conveyed to the viewer through the perception of the film's characters. That's why a detailed examination of the technological processes of the future transforms the emotional foundation of a film as a work of art into a lifeless schema with only pretensions to the truth. I think it's a very, I think a lot of the things you both said and kind of how you felt about this movie and as we go through is that there isn't a focus on the supernatural or going out in space, moonwalking, even any of the items that are on the space station they go to surrounding Solaris planet. None of the technology matters to this movie.

What matters is all of the expressions that we have while being engaged in space, being alone. coming deterred with our own mortality, our past, what's in the future, all of these things. So I think that Tarkovsky really built a movie that transcends the just kind of the things that don't really matter in movies that I think is often focused on in America. I'll leave it there. That's important. Yeah. And I think Tarkovsky also called 2001 cold and sterile.

And if you watch that film, it absolutely is. The humans are one dimensional. They don't have emotion. They don't have, you know, any sort of. They're almost like automaton's or, you know, yeah, just like sort of robotic in the way that they're doing things. And, of course, how the AI in 2001 represents that robotic, artificialized intelligence back to them. And this film is much more human. It's going into the human condition in a way that, you know, Kubrick was very intellectual.

And Amanda said something about Tarkovsky having faith and his work being infused with a spiritualism of one sort or another. And I think that is one of the main differences between Kubrick. and Tarkovsky is, you know, Kubrick has these intellectual ideas. He's going to then use the medium of film to express. And I think Tarkovsky's more, he has these human emotions, right, in a sense. He's also intellectual, of course, but he has these human emotions. He's going to use the visual art form of film to convey. And that makes for different experiences in the film.

But that trolley quote you read from Tarkovsky is funny because, you know, we're talking about whether or not this is sci-fi or horror. And I kind of see this as anti-scibly. It plays with some of the tropes. It has the scaffolding of a science fiction film, right? Spaceships, contact with an alien, you know, intelligence set in the near future, etc. But it sort of just takes that scaffolding and doesn't build what we would commonly assume to be science fiction tropes onto it. It uses that scaffolding as an inward pointer to go inward to the human condition, the existential situation, as both of you are sort of alluding to in your different ways. So I think of as an anti-sy-fi or a too cute by half idea I came up with on the right over here is sci-fi but spelled PSY-Fi, right? Psychological fiction. Because although it uses the sci-fi scaffolding, it's really about the psychological things that Tarkovsky is trying to express in the human condition itself. But, you know, outside of trying to label it, it sort of alludes categorization,

has elements of Lovecraftian horror. The ocean is a sort of, you know, effemorty. immoral, intangible being. Is it, is it sentient? You know, is it just a mere? Maybe we can get into that in a little bit. Certainly elements of existential dread. But, you know, it's a psychological and philosophical exploration of the human mind and subjectivity in modernity. And it made me think of this quote. I don't remember where this quote is from, have no clue who said it. But there's this famous quote that it made me think of. It says, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves. And in a sense, you know, that's what Kelvin is doing. That's what the ocean brings out in you, whether the ocean represents the subconscious, pulling the subconscious to the conscious, you know, it is a sort of using the psychological material already inside of Kelvin to haunt him with this, with this apparition of his dead wife and to watch her die again and again, which, you know, is a process that occurs throughout the film. So those are my thoughts on the genre, but I just wanted to kind of make clear what I think that the primary themes of this film are and get your guys' thoughts on it as well.

And I think both of you have touched on these. But to make them explicit, there's one element where it's obviously talking about grief, memory, identity, loss, right? These human emotions, the human condition. So that's one. That's one main thing. The second one is that, yeah, I think Amanda said this, this sort of overarching critique of materialism, scientism, and rationalism. And yes, he's in the Soviet Union. He's sort of poking fun at the Soviet bureaucracy. Soviet society was very materialistic, right? I mean, Marxism is materialistic. There is atheism being promoted and displacing religious faith. And all of that is interesting, and it's certainly progressed in a way. But by over and capitalist societies are not immune from this either. During the Cold War, you know, capitalist societies and even to this day, just as materialistic and maybe a slightly different way, but still obsessed with scientism, with rationalism, and with materialism writ large. So that's not a critique of either side of the Cold War. it's a critique of the Cold War and the sort of the ideology of both, which are in one way progressive,

but in another way are held back by our inner immaturity as humans, right? So that's the second one. And then the third one is just this exploration of the human condition and the psyche and this idea of Solaris as bringing out the subconscious and stuff like that. So, yeah, I don't know. I love the film. It covers really, really deep topics and does it in a completely unique way that only Tarkovsky could really do. But just to give everyone a very brief sketch of this movie, because it's very complex, but the plot itself is not very complex, which I think does the movie assert, not the opposite of a disservice.

It's beneficial to have it be very much, there's really only two locations that this really movie takes place. And we talked about the opening. It's kind of a house in the countryside where Chris Kelvin, who's sort of the main protagonist in this movie, lives. He's living with his father. But he gets visited by, you know, this former cosmonaut. you know, that had previously explored Solaris. We don't really have a sense of how long this has been, but it's clearly been decades because in the film they watch together on this sort of fancy TV.

Again, they have technology in this movie, but it's never a feature of explaining it. So we have this guy Byrdon, who is a pilot telling his experience. And this is right before Kelvin, Chris Kelvin, is going to go to the station where there's three other scientists. and he's going to bring his own expertise to understand this ocean or this sentient being. They don't really know what it is that sort of exists on this planet of Solaris. They haven't been able to kind of ascertain what it is. And so really, from the opening scene of about 30, 40 minutes of the movie taking place on Earth, we get a, you mentioned Brett earlier, like a six-minute scene of driving in a car that's like an auto-driving car,

which is it's very weird. don't know what the decision for that was to do it, but it's, it's there. It's Tarkovsky. He decided to do it. And then what's, I think, quite marvelous is that the journey for him to go to space is about 30 seconds to a minute of the movie. But this journey in this car to go to town was like six months. And so he finally arrived at the space station. And it's just like he's just arriving at any old place. It's not considered, there's nothing fantastical about his arrival. He just goes in. He's, exploring, wants to see the other scientists, and we really only have two other scientists that are on the planet or on the station above, and the two of them are Dr. Satorius, and we have Dr. Snout. And we learned that the third doctor very early on had committed suicide and his dead, who had been a friend of Kelvin back on Earth and previously. And then the only other individual that kind of makes any presence, which you also alluded to, Brett, is Hari, which is sort of a recreation, but is very real to everyone who is there.

Hari, which is Chris Kelvin's wife who had also had committed suicide many years before on Earth. So the rest of the entire film takes place within this space station. We really just have the four characters, the two doctors, Chris Kelvin, and then Hari as the fourth person. And so the entire plot of the entire rest of the movie takes place in that small set of the of the station. And I think the buildup to them getting there is very, it's somewhat slow, but it almost just kind of just drops you in. And you as the viewer are almost forced to understand what is happening and what is going to happen in the same way that Chris Kelvin is sort of understanding himself.

And I really appreciate that, as the viewer, having almost no information, despite the fact that they've kind of shared some inkling. And so I don't know how you both saw the, I think maybe we've already talked about them on Earth. I think maybe now it's worth talking about the crux of this movie and the bulk of it being on the station. And how you felt about just the arrival on the station, anything related to just kind of the, they just kind of just drop you off. and then you're in for the ride the same way that the Kelvin is. Amanda, you want to start? So I think that it's pretty telling of like, okay, so, you know, it does rely a lot on, like, practical effects,

which I think is due to its small budget, which I appreciate. I think my, the films that I enjoy the most are, you know, they get the point across without going to, two-inth depths of things. So when I was watching it, the scene when they're going through the tunnels and just the frenzy and the noise so unnerving so unnerving but uh i i was like are they going into space now is this how they get this space

like it would make sense um but yeah and it's just like a blink of eye and they're in space um what i was going to say about it um a few things is like also more practical effects while they're in space i did want to note how cool chris was just like casually walking in with his leather jacket the whole time like that guy is so cool yeah and I think I'm kind of jumping around a little bit because I always think of like the historical context

of like how and why films are made it's not lost on me that like all of the names of the characters are like more Western names you know like maybe Dr. Snott was like the least and it wasn't a predominantly Russian cast which is kind of you know unless in the have it be it and a Russian director, kind of not really done very often.

I mean, there was, there's, Russia's a big country, you know, big part of the Soviet Union. But yeah, that's just kind of what I go into it. And I, I'm thinking about the humanity aspect of the film that like 19, 1976, that was era of like, you know, three years the Soviets were about to go into Afghanistan. We have Bruce Neff, who, like, divested in social programs. So there was a lot anti-humanism going on and more into, you know, the military and stuff like that. Kind of jumping around a little bit. I apologize.

But it is an era of severe ramping of neoliberalism, which I think is a very anti-human aspect of a society. But, yeah, like going into space. I don't really have much else to say. What do you got, Brett? Yeah, no, I like that. I like that materialist analysis of the background society from which this film emerges, right? It's a very Marxist way of trying to wrestle with the film is taking into consideration. Yeah, the background society from which a film emerges, right?

Because we understand ideology. We understand how it works. We understand art and its relation to society more broadly. So, yeah, really interesting stuff. You know, you mentioned the leather jacket. And it's hilarious. Underneath that, he has a mesh sort of tank top. It's like, he's literally getting off.

a interstellar space trip in like a mesh shirt with a leather jacket and he has like a bag like he's just getting off the train which speaks which speaks you know to his his earlier quote about the trolley situation is very funny but if you notice so the the japan highway thing right the the in my opinion the japan's highway and the focusing on it um is like it's loudness sort of exemplifies how modern society is an escape from hearing and it gets louder like as that as that five minutes, six minute scene sort of culminates. It's like almost like I had to take my headphones out and set, you know, it's like it was getting too loud. And I think he's doing that on purpose. Yeah, because, you know, we're, it's a boisterous eruption of sound and color, keeping us eternally distracted and preventing us the silence necessary for us to really hear, for us to really go inward. And it speaks to this interesting concept that comes from a book, a rather famous book by Ernest Becker called Denial of Death came out many decades ago. But the base, one of the basic, um, premises of that book is, humans create culture as a sort of way to sublimate our deep fear of death, being the only self-conscious creatures on earth that know we're going to die. That puts us in an incredibly

unique and scary and precarious existential situation. And cultural production and the invention of culture from politics to economics to art, history, all of it is the way that humans sort of wrestle with their own mortality. And so if we take that idea seriously, then yeah, the highway and we were looking at the buildings and the signs and all the cars. This is modern society, but something's lacking. There's something that isn't quite developed within the human psyche quite yet. So there's this outward development, but there is not a proportional inward development. And so what happens is Japan's scene is very long. You're driving through the streets very loud. The trip to Solaris, if we take it seriously that it's a trip inward,

well, you're right here. There's nowhere to go. So of course it's a blink of an eye. It's the blink of looking inward instead of looking outward, right? And I think that is driven home in the fact that during that quick scene that the trip to Solaris is focused on Kelvin's eyes, the doorways to the soul. It zooms really close in on his eyes. The trip is inward. And I think that's what Tarkovsky is trying to say with that quick trip and with the focus on the eyes. And of course, Kelvin is a psychologist. So he's a psychologist going to help these other scientists deal with their psychological issues of being so close to Solaris, and the whole film is a psychological exploration. The psychologist needs a psychologist, right? I found that very, very funny and

interesting. And then with the apparitions of the people, they say that they're not composed of atoms, like normal carbon-based life forms, but they're composed of neutrinos, which are notoriously volatile. But the force field, they say the force field around Solaris allows those neutrino entities to stabilize. So they're not merely, merely apparitions. Like, They're not merely ghostly, intangible, you know, ephemera. But there's something materially there. Everybody sees the same things. So, you know, it's drawing on their subconscious.

It's pulling something out of all of them. But all of them are able to see the things as material realities, tangible people because of this sort of, yeah, the stabilized neutrino concept, which I don't know much about the physics of that, if that's even reasonable. But I find it interesting, to say the least. So, yeah, all of that stuff is very interesting. and I could go a million different directions, but those are some of my thoughts on what you guys both said. But not just his leather coat and his shirt,

his pants are also like very, they're like, I don't know how to describe them, but they have like leather straps on them. Like this is, I guess, how they send you into space. Like, you don't even,

like only once in the entire movie, is there ever like a space suit? Like anything that's dawn, that's, and I like kind of this disconnection from the science. And I think maybe that's a good segue. It doesn't, maybe come into play with all the different other themes of humanity and all these things.

But one that maybe comes more first and foremost is you mentioned Amanda that Tarkovsky is a religious person and then you have Kelvin coming to space as a psychologist to talk to the other people there, I think is an astrophysicist and I'm blanking on what the third one is. And so there is this immediate contradiction of someone who's there to look inward at someone's mind, as Kelvin might be, versus the people there who are there for physical, tangible evidence of science. So there's already this contradiction, I think, between science and, you know, psychology or the mind, the body, how one is actually experiencing it. I don't think that the scientists that are there, snout, and the other one really are able to articulate any of this. feeling that's happening. And I don't even know that Kelvin is able to really articulate how he's feeling. And so maybe at the very end of the movie, we get a little bit of understanding,

which we'll get to. So I don't know what you thought about how that they use science. I mean, one of the only scientific mentions in the entire movie really is they, he forces, uh, uh, Calvin is forced to take the blood of Hari, his wife. And he takes that he draws the blood to kind of bring him down and back to reality. reality, to understanding, like, to be grounded. And he sees that the blood exists. It can be replicated. And I don't know. I don't know, maybe I'm making sense, but how you perceive the, the science of this in the, and I guess this goes back to your comment, Brett of you call this sci-fi. So, like, that really is more to the point. Like, it's kind of like, to me, it's a

contradiction of science fiction versus this site psychology. Yeah, that's super interesting. Well, let's see where I should go with this. Well, so let's just think of technology at the time and the Soviet mindset. So, you know, the Soviets are, and just like the Americas, in the hot house of the Cold War, but also because of their own independent need to develop their economies, technology, etc., are obsessed with science, the space race, right? All of these different things. So we have to remember, too, zooming out that socialism in the Soviet Union took a backward, semi-feudal society. and in a few decades, unprecedented in human history, as far as developmental time spans go, took a backward semi-futal society and in a few decades turned it into a world superpower competing with the U.S. in the space race.

I mean, we sometimes don't fully understand just how amazing that is. And in the process, it's producing amazing science and technology in a society in that context has to be hyper-focused on technology and its development. And the techno-optimism, as naive as it sometimes is, that can come with it. And I'm sure all of you are familiar with going back and reading old Soviet citizens' predictions of the future. They were utopian. They really, they saw themselves as part of, you know, this progress of humanity that socialism is the next step in human development. And the technological development that was coming under the context of socialism and the Soviet Union was going to produce this amazing utopian sort of world in the future. You know, when socialism finally wins out. And there's like an old capsule online. You can go back and just like read a bunch of regular Soviet citizens talking about, you know, what do you think is going to happen by the year 2020 or 2000? And, you know, of course, the history went a different way. The Soviet Union collapsed for a bunch of reasons over bureaucratization, revisionism, etc. But, you know, that they were in that mindset. And so technology is playing there. But it's always, it's in the background for Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky pushes it back to bring the same.

psyche to the foreground. So those are some of my opening thoughts about technology. I don't really, I'm not exactly sure where to go next with it, but I'd love to hear Amanda or your thoughts on it. Yeah. I mean, the revolutionary optimism. That's what you speak of, is that revolutionary optimism. In my early 30s, I went to Texas and I went to the Johnson Space Center. I think that's in Houston. I'm not sure. And they had, you know, these kind of replicated. historical moments. So, like, there's that moment and I'm not sure, I don't remember what year it was. I feel like it was somewhere like the 50s 60s. I should have just looked this up so I could sound smart. But anyway, there's like that moment where like the U.S. astronaut and

the Soviet cosmonaut, they like meet up. Like they kind of like shook hands in space. It's kind of a historical moment that they actually had to recreate for a picture opportunity. So there was, Yeah, like the great race to space was, I felt like it was such a healthy competition. Like the only like imperialist U.S. versus Soviet, the superpower competition, you know, was to get to space. And so I think about that a lot when when I'm thinking about like the history of like the Cold War and the race to space. I think about like that moment if like almost it was like a hopeful time. I feel like a lot of, like, post-1952 Soviet Union was about kind of like, hey, rest of the world, like, we're Soviets, you know, but like we're just like you. We like art.

We like, you know, we like these things and just kind of like a, in a way kind of pandering to the West for acceptance because, you know, Cold War. That's not fun for anybody. especially to the Soviets, who were the central, you know, the focal point of that. Another thing, gosh, I had so many, many different thoughts about this. But overall, overarchingly was that revolutionary optimism. And also, mind you, during this time with Brezhnev and the divestment and social programs and the investment allocation to more militarization of the Soviet Union, we also have like a huge shift in the economy um so at the same time there was you know the overarching like

yes the future is socialism but at the same time over the years i feel like it's so hard not to feel this way post-1952 you know what happened in 52 uh the soviet union kind of starts to push back that that end goal of socialism for all that you know like that that plan uh more and more and Khrushchev, you know, what he did, kind of ramping up like the start, the beginning of the end, in a way. There was this revolutionary optimism, but at the same time, as you could see in a lot of the cinema of that era was looking back but also looking forward. And I feel like some people held on to that idea of that socialist's future and that revolutionary optimism. and I still think that a lot of those people still exist, you know, that you go and you talk to people in the Soviet Union today.

They wish that it was still the Soviet Union. But there were some people that also kind of, I don't know if it was mostly just like Western influence or neoliberalism, but just kind of getting fed up with like how long the project was going to take. You know, you kind of lose that ideology when you don't yield the results. Because mind you, the Soviet Union is the very first in all of human history to do this sort of project. So it had successes and failures. It was essentially still an experiment overarchingly.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. I loved your point about the humanist or the humanizing aspect of art as like, you know, bridging this gap between the West and the East, Russia and the U.S., the Soviet Union and the American bloc. like we're human too you know because in the in the u.s this is hot they're atheists they're communists these are dehumanizing terms we are defined by by being the opposite of what they are and that is an inherently dehumanizing process and the art from both ways coming over is one of the ways that we reconnect with our with our own humanity and there's a sense in which and perhaps tarkovsky is thinking of this when he's making a film like this that the human element was lost sight of in perhaps

both cases you know the collapse of the soviet union and even to the u.s to the this very day is anti-human to the core. There is no sense that the American project is geared toward human happiness or or the well-being of its citizens or advancement for human civilization. It's raw naked power and greed and extraction and domination. And without that human element, without realizing what we're in the business of building civilization for, right? We become, we dehumanize ourselves. We dehumanize our world. And we live in this, you know, in the feud, like this techno-dispopian reality where the technological outward progress of human culture has, as I've said earlier, and I'll probably say it again, outpaced the

internal development, such that we're alienated by our own creations. We live in a hyper technological world of our own creation that feels more alien and more distant than ever before. And that gap is worth thinking about and exploring. And if the Soviet Union collapsed, I don't consider it the U.S. beat the Soviet Union. I think they're both collapsing. The U.S. is just lagging behind, right? Give the U.S. another 30 years, and it too will collapse because some of the same rot is at play here. And I think we're living in the 2020s through some sort. I don't know where it's going to end, but some sort of collapse, if not of the entire American project, then of its empire. Certainly we're at the end of neoliberalism. What comes next? Who the hell knows? but I don't I don't have this triumphalist view I'm obviously I'm a Marxist so that probably speaks to why but I don't have this triumphalist view that the US beat the Soviet Union I think the Soviet Union was ultimately defeated from inside pressure inside contradictions revisionism etc more than anything else and I think the US is being eaten away in the exact same way so the US through the 90s like sat on its laurels and was on its high horse and like hey we won and then 9-11 happened and then the war on terror and then you know the financial crisis and then Trump and the pandemic

and everything has been a downhill slide since then. So maybe for 10 years, the U.S. got to celebrate its quote-unquote victory, but it's a hollow victory because the U.S. is collapsing as well. So, yeah, I really like those points. And the human element being lost sight of and Tarkovsky really interested in bringing that human element fully back in and telling us, you're not mature enough to do these things you want to. You want to go out and contact other life forms?

Where's the intelligent life on earth? Look at the genocide in Gaza. Look how we treat each other. Look at the homeless people right now all across America, the richest country to ever exist in human history. And you're telling me you want to live forever and download your consciousness and go out and meet the aliens and take your place among the stars. Get real. Grow up. And I think that's what Tarkovsky's telling us in so many words here. Yeah, these are these are all excellent pieces.

And I think to maybe take that last point, Brett, to kind of the next, I don't want to call it the next phase. of the movie. But the next sort of, we've, you know, we're now, Kelvin is now kind of starting to experience. You mentioned the apparition of his, now his dead wife coming back and sort of, I don't want to say, I almost wanted to, I almost said haunting, but I almost do feel like it is a little bit of a haunting nature because they are all, no one could explain to him what he would experience. And I think it speaks to just the idea of how we experience lost and, grief. No one can tell you how you are going to experience grief or how you experience or will experience love or loss or sacrifice. So I think it speaks to these human emotions that no one could

tell him, Chris Kelvin, the protagonist, how he would experience seeing his dead wife and how reliving her dying. I think she dies several times in different ways throughout the movie, but comes back and they leave these weird. I love some of the little notes and kind of getting more technical is like her little scarf blanket on the side of the chair. And then she comes back and there's a second one on the side of the chair. And then it gets stuffed into a cargo hole and we see it again. So there's these memories and these markers that remember your human experience. So I wonder as we maybe get into a slightly more philosophical piece of this is we have this ocean of Solaris that we don't really understand. No one is understanding what it's

doing. Is it taking these memories and turning them into reality so you can relive them? Is it trying itself to understand the human experience for itself? Because his wife, Hari, learns things as she's alive and around humans more. Just like how children, as we grow up, we learn about the human experience and how to do things by being with other people, how to, you know, she learns how to sleep. She learns how to eat. She has that scene later in the movie where she doesn't know how to drink water. But she's learning to love. I know I'm saying a lot of different things here. But I guess the question is, how do you maybe understand or how you felt you understood what the ocean of Solaris was trying to do? And maybe what does that tell us about

our own experience of how we should be more inward, as you've been saying a lot, bread, is how do we look inward in ourselves in a way that none of these scientists and most people are unable to do because of just the external forces of having to live and survive and the capitalist excess and all of these things, the noise that's around us. Yeah, sure. I'll take a first stab at this. And it kind of goes into this question you put on the outline. Of course, we're jumping around, but the use of mirrors, right? So we have this whole idea of this being a journey into our inner world, Solaris, the soul, going inward.

And Snout has this quote that stood out to me, and I'll read it and see what we can make of it. Snout says in the film, quote, science, nonsense. In this situation, mediocrity and genius are equally useless. I must tell you that we really have no desire to conquer any cosmos. We want to extend the earth up to its borders. We don't know what to do with other worlds. We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror. We struggle to make contact, but we'll never achieve it. We are in a ridiculous predicament of man pursuing a goal that he fears and that he really does not need. man needs man and that's how the um the quote ends and what i think is this is this is you know the the mere motif is like made explicit in actual mirrors looking at your reflection looking

inward over and over again catching eye contact with yourself but then i think also art in this film and because art is what harry looks into and becomes human and they have that scene in the library where they start levitating because there's like 30 seconds of weightlessness and that is sort of, you know, Tarkovsky's visual attempt to show us the transcendence of love and that Hari is becoming human through her engagement first with art and then her feeling of love, which I think is sort of beautiful. But if we take even art to be some sort of a mirror, then perhaps Solaris isn't a separate intelligent entity.

Maybe it is a mirror of sorts. And what you look, what you see when you look into that mirror is the stuff behind your conscious mind. it's your subconscious it's your grief it's these memories that you're repressing it's your fears your desires and that's what it brings out so a normal mirror you see the external surface of yourself you see your face you know you see your body your clothes but this is a mirror that shows you the inside and so i don't actually think that solaris and you know this is just pure speculation everybody has a different interpretation but i don't see solaris as an actually sentient being

or a separate intelligence i see it as the ultimate mirror and that's why it's so disturbing right that's why that's why it's haunting and that's why it's horrific because it is a it's an inside mirror and that's what ultimately I think that's what it represents yeah and I'll just add one quote that I think also talks about the mirrors this is when like you said there's actual physical mirrors in the movie and then there's also just almost every scene at some point there's some glass or reflection of something in there and you never kind of get the same reflection except there's a scene where harry and uh Kelvin are in the room I think this is when she returns the second time, she's looking in the mirror together and she says, I don't know

myself at all. When I close my eyes, I can't recall my face. Do you know yourself like all humans? And I mean, that is, it's really haunting. Like that is just, do we know ourselves? And I think that's speak to your point, Brett, of what we need to look beyond just the eyes that we see in the mirror to like get a glimpse of our souls. And I think that's a good way to look at it. That Solaris isn't necessarily sentient. It's almost like it. it's doing the job of it being sent to it. Like, if you believe that it is, it'll force you to look inward in some way, you know, like, because they constantly have the shots of it, like the, like the melding around and, you're kind of mesmerized it, mesmerized by it,

and it's going to cause you to look inward. But in the reality, they're all doing it themselves. They're the ones doing the work, quote, unquote. I don't know. That speaks like it more of like psychological kind of, but you should go ahead of man I for it. Yeah, I mean, the reflection of, you know, looking inside of yourself as individuals. But I think also Tarkovsky is saying to his society, his people, to also look at yourself and, you know, and I guess where we are, what we're doing. And that's probably why there was, you know, it was a little iffy being released in the Soviet Union. I think they held off on releasing it for a few years. Because, of that and that's also ultimately what pushed him to immigrate I think to Italy I think is where

he went and he'd filmed like his last three films there uh but overall oh another scene okay I have to talk about the scene here for forget so there's a scene where he's sitting in a chair like in that like kind of conference room with I think the older doctor's that doctor snout and he basically is asking the question like what is the meaning of life in a way I don't know if that's the exact words that he does, but it's a very pensive and reflective moment. And it honestly reminds me of another movie in a scene overarchingly with the theme of the movie is Holy Mountain by Alejandro Woldorowski.

And it's like the exploration of what is the meaning of life. But it's a very small part of the whole story. But I think that that is an important question in the film and like the development of his character in understanding Solaris and what he's even doing there and what he's experiencing, experiencing the death of his

life over and over again. And yeah, I really, really liked that scene particularly, really stuck out to me quite a bit. Or he's just like, what's the meaning of life? He says, he says that exact line. He says, what's the, he says the meaning of life and he says, that's a banal

question. And he says, when man is happy, you shouldn't have to be, he These questions should be asked at the end of one's life. We don't know when that life will end. Why are we in such a hurry? You know, we shouldn't ask these cursed questions. Things should be a mystery. So really it is a very much, I don't remember which one of you mentioned earlier of the,

of this being kind of a sense of, did you probably said earlier? Maybe it was with, I lost that part. But yeah, you got it. No, yeah, that quote, he says, yeah, you were both saying like only unhappy people ask such questions. You know, this obsession with like, what does stuff mean and all of that? And I know in like periods of depression or existential crisis that I've experienced in my life, those questions are all you think about. But when you're actually engaged in life, when you're actually, you know, losing yourself in the world by going out and being in the world, those questions aren't appearing to you. You know, when you're in the middle of really good sex or you're eating great food or you're with your friends laughing around, you're not tormenting yourself about what's the purpose of my life. And so I, at that that that I think speaks to this inherent discontent in the human condition that Tarkovsky's exploring um but this I kind of want to if you give me a second to kind of flesh out this idea of this this imbalance right between inhumanity between its outward development and its inward

development which I think is crucial to this film it really makes me think of um you know Elon wanting to go to Mars or these Silicon Valley freaks trying to live forever right the alienated pursuit of external knowledge and life expansion without the wisdom, the maturity, and really the worthiness of achieving those things, right? We do not understand ourselves, yet we seek to be gods. And the mirrors, as we said many times, are begging us to look inside, to reflect, instead of desperately flailing outward in some abstract search for truth out there. So being alienated from ourselves and from nature, we sort of distract ourselves with this

search for other life forms and new planets to colonize. But in those desperate searches, it's revealed the need to know more about ourselves and to integrate our advanced societies back into harmony with nature. And I think that's, you know, the film opens with this beautiful visual exploration of nature begging us to come back. You don't need to go out and, you know, colonize new planets, terraform Mars. Come back to right here because there is beauty and there's harmony and there's lessons to be learned from nature itself. The less we know about ourselves, right? The more fervent we are. in our search for other life forms, right? The search itself becomes a dark mirror, a mirror we sort of look past instead of into. The less we take care of our own planet, our own beautiful Garden of Eden, right? The more fervent we are in our search for another planet to colonize. The search itself is a dark mirror. If we can terraform Mars, you know, can't we act as good stewards to the earth?

What does it say about a species who, while actively destroying its own world, is obsessed with the idea of finding another? And would we be worthy of going to another planet having destroyed our own? You know, are we just going to destroy this one? What's the point? It really reminds me of like the teenager, you know, like the 16-year-old who can't keep their own room clean or remember to brush their teeth, pining for the moment that they can move out and get into their own place. I have a niece who's kind of going through this growing pain where she's incredibly like

sort of naive about financial realities and how difficult it is to maintain rent and to buy a car and a car payment. but she really wants that freedom and of course she deserves it and she will get it but it's that it's that it's that it's that asymmetry and that that imbalance between you know her internal development and what the external world is really gonna is really going to be like and i feel like if we can look at human progress as like the single lifespan we're in our teenage years we're growing into ourselves you know we're doing exciting things we're going out in the world and building things like like a like a like a teenager would but we lack the maturity and the internal development to have the wisdom and the compassion to really take those things to a further extent. So we need to continue to develop our internal lives. Like the angsty teenager needs to continue to develop internally to be able to meet the outside world as a mature adult. And I think humanity is in our adolescent stage, very outward focused, very egoic. But we need to be humbled, you know.

So, yeah, so those are kind of my thoughts on that. And I really like this idea that I always talk about of like going back to the Elon Musk's and the Silicon Valley guys who want to live forever, but they can't even live in the moment. The guy who wants to take all the pills and do blood transfusions to stay forever young is now living in a present moment obsessed with the next moment. So why do you deserve eternal life or radically expanded life when you can't sit down and look inward? You can't actually appreciate the present moment.

You're in this frantic search to trying to prevent this thing in the future, death, that's coming to the extent that you don't even. know anything about life and that and the more desperate you are to live forever the less worthy you are of it because you do you want to know what to do with eternal life if you got it you know and so i think that that interesting psychological pathological um thing that we can see in figures like that is also present i think within humanity as a whole people tend not to uh ask you know they never ask like should we do these things right they don't they don't ask the questions of what's the repercussions of trying to live forever and i think

think this also plays really well into one of the later scenes. I think one of the best scenes maybe in the whole movie. There's lots of fantastic scenes, but it's right before the part where Harri and they sort of float in that moment. They're all kind of talking together. And it's a scene about talking about love. And I think they say, you know, until today, love was simply unattainable to mankind to Earth. There are so few of us, a few billion of us altogether. We're just a handful. Maybe we're here in order to experience people and it kind of gets cuts off because he's sick and they need to attend to him. But it's the sense of if we loved each other or we understood ways to improve the things we already have instead of thinking about, oh,

let's go to Mars and figure out how we can commit, you know, space imperialism, you know, the next phase of whatever it is we're doing, exploration. Because of course, these guys aren't going to just go there and build the stuff themselves. They need someone to do it for them. So, you know, this contradiction, I think you mentioned to Amanda, of like what's happening in the Soviet Union at this moment in history is how can they all these people within this, you know, he mentions there's billions of people. There's many people can do so many great things, but it doesn't always have to be outwardly. You can benefit society simply by working on your own self and being with other people and experiencing all these things. And I think that the

quote unquote OSHA, the sentient being within, you know, Solaris is creating some way for these people to have this internal connection. And it's very hard for them. I mean, I think that's what makes all of them start to go insane is that they've never had to experience something like this. And so I think even just watching it, you feel this uncomfortable. I did. I felt uncomfortable. thinking about these questions of morality. I mean, it is very, it's hard to grasp. It's just hard to, maybe that's why another of them can explain what's happening, because they don't know. They can't scientifically explain love and emotion, which is what Hari is trying to learn. I mean, the idea of learning love is just such a foreign concept for anyone. Like, I mean,

how many thousands of books have been written by psychologists and philosophers about all of these things and no one has an answer. You can go to Solaris and you're not, you're not going to get any answer. And it's the non-human who's the most human, right? Hari comes out to be the most human character, the most vulnerable, the most connected, the most in tune with with her own motions, the most expressive of love. So it's funny that these, the smartest people in the world, right, are the most internally underdeveloped and the non-human is more human than the humans. Again, speaking to this overarching theme. So, yeah. Very interesting.

I come back to the theme that this movie is, it's about love. I just like over, over, over again, there's this quote here in this film review that I found from like 1976, where he says, with Harry's reappearance, however, the whole character of the film changes. Though it now begins to be seen as the source, not of ghosts, but of love. And at this point, Chris begins his return back towards society. What his growing love for Hari will reveal to him is the validity of his father's humanistic and socially divergent viewpoint, for which Stravowski has provided a complex cultural reference. Yeah, we didn't really talk about the father. We briefly, you see in the opening of the movie, and we see a glimpse of him at a film he watches from his childhood. and then we will have to discuss the very last thing in this movie because it's I have to hear

everyone's thoughts. It's one of those quote unquote non-Hollywood, you know, ambiguous endings that I love in film. I love the, I hate the, oh, everything's wrapped up in a nice little bow and we're all going to go home. But I think that the other piece, aside from love, is also just love of his father and his mother. They show his mother in this little film. And he just doesn't, he has all these people in his lives who he should. have had connection with. He realizes that maybe he, another thing, when Hari tells him that he

loves him, he doesn't respond with saying that I love you. It's also this very difficult thing. And I think, as you said, Brett, the only non-human is the one who learns what love is. And I think that it's just so hard for humans to grasp these emotions. And it's, I think that's what makes the movie so compelling to me because it's so real. You look at a movie as we go back to 2001. It's a movie about space and science and the computers and AI and the creation of man. It's not

really about human emotion in any way. This movie is about a human emotion that this is just I think it's everything we've been talking about comes back to it. Yeah. 2001 is like an examination of humanity from the outside in and this is an exploration of humanity from the inside out.

And that's the dialectical compliment that Tarkovsky offers to Kubrick's 2001, I think. But you know, another thing that, you know, Amanda's talking about love and you were too as well, Evan, and, you know, I always struggle with this because when you start talking about love, you can't help but start to sound kind of cliche. And, you know, on a very shallow level, like saying this movie is about love can make people be like, okay, enough's enough. You know, like, stop, this is silly. But love really is the most important thing.

Like love, like when you talk about it, it sounds like you're like a third grader trying to do poetry. But it really is the crucial thing. And our politics, as those of us on the socialist, communist, communist, Marxist left, as much as our detractors see as evil power hungry psychopaths. The truth is, we love each other. We love humanity. We love Palestinians. I love the homeless man on the street. And I don't always feel that way because, you know, in your life, you get very self-focused, my job, my finances, this is what I want.

I'm cold. I want to put on my coat and get warm. And I could really go for a beer right now. We are very self-obsessed. Of course we are. But those moments where love breaks through, and not the conditional love, not the love you have for somebody who does something for you. I love my partner. She loves me back. She's faithful to me. As long as she meets these criteria, our relationship can stick together. And as long as I offer her these things, she'll still love me, right? That's a very childish conception of love. But unconditional, universal love, I think that really is, if humanity is going to evolve, I think that's the fulcrum around which humanity can possibly evolve. What is Jesus telling us, whether or not you believe?

believe in Jesus, whether it's a story humans made up or a real being. What is Jesus saying other than to fully love one another as we love ourselves? That's an impossible task in modernity, because we love ourselves. You know, I always say like people in societies, even secular societies, everybody worship something. And those societies that pretend not to worship anything like our modern society worships things harder than ever. And what do we worship in America? We worship the self. We worship money, we worship things. And that leaves us in a spiritual desert, where we are fundamentally alienated and unhappy, and we can't even fully understand why we're unhappy, but we're always unhappy. It's because we worship the wrong things. And we should work. And if there's anything

worthy of worship, it is this feeling of love. And I don't want to get too weird with it, but, you know, I have a spiritual background, mostly coming out of Buddhism, intensive meditation, stuff like that over many years. And when I've had moments of what I would call spiritual experiences, they are, they are preceded by long periods of deep spiritual existential suffering. And then at the very end of that period of suffering, it breaks open into a brief moment of universal love. And I remember the last time this happened to me, I was, you know, going through a really tough time mentally, existentially, spiritually, losing my father, a miscarriage that we had. It was really piling up. and I was suffering deeply.

And I remember driving through a Target parking lot and all of that suffering sort of culminated. I was by myself in this moment where I just started weeping and all the people with their little grocery carts going in and out of the store, I loved them like my own children. It only lasted for about five minutes. But I wept out of pure love for these complete strangers. And if you can just get a taste of what universal love feels like, you can understand how important, how deep, and how non-shallel and non-closchet, it really is. And I think somebody like Tarkovsky has at least touched that. He knows that. And that, I think, is really, really deep if you can wrestle with it. And I think it is the path forward for humanity and is the fulcrum around which we can develop that inside part to match our outward development, ultimately.

Yeah. And that indication of our love for humanity is what differentiates you from, from, like, Being on the right side of history, I guess, for a simple way of saying it. I also want to point out that we, a lot of people, especially in the Western society, are obsessed with comfort. And that's why, you know, I've heard, you know, what's going on in this newest season of Palestine occupation. The occupation of Palestine and the aggression is that I've heard of people saying, we don't need this much information. we don't we can't handle this much information we shouldn't know this much i can't even comprehend that um but that is comes from one's obsession with comforts i don't know i'm neutral i'm unbiased i don't i don't engage in politics that is impossible to engage not engage in politics everything

every aspect of our existence is politics uh whether you like it or not um but that is the driving force of what differentiates you from those that call themselves leftists and those people there actually on that, the correct path of history, is that overarchingly in those quiet moments when we think about history, we think about current state of affairs, we think about our neighbors, the homeless guy in the corner, you know, like that we feel that love. And I really do appreciate you being vulnerable in that like talking about that in in that um and i do feel feel that way towards people sometimes too just in those quiet moments though those very quiet moments and um it's heartbreaking and it's reinvigorating at the same time that like i am i am on the right

path that like as much as i despise the occupation and wish nothing but those that uphold that viciousness towards humanity. I am overarchingly, I say that word over and over again, overwhelmingly have love for the Palestinian people, for all colonized people that, you know, Sudan and, you know, Congo, all of those people, all colonized people, workers, and oppressed people of the world to unite. Absolutely. And to your point, Amanda, you made a really good point about people wanting to look away. this is too much information. I can't look at it. What's underneath that urge to look away? Fear. Fear. Because what really loving people does is it breaks your fucking heart. And to look at the suffering of other people and to feel that heartbreak is scary. It's overwhelming. You don't know what to do with it. And so you would rather just look away. And that's not even a conscious process on behalf of these people who want to look away. It's a subconscious one. But fear is the thing there. Because to open your heart wide enough is to allow your heart to be fucking shattered. And you have to go through that to get to the other side. That heartbreak is a part of love.

But that's too much for a lot of people. And they would much rather look away. And they'll justify it in a million different ways. But ultimately, it's fear of that heartbreak and fear of opening up to the suffering of other human beings that keeps them wanting to keep their eyes in a different direction. Watch the new Netflix show. Look at your phone. Go on social media and start scrolling. Anything but to sit here in this moment and feel this fucking pain.

And that's something that is in all of us. but we all have a duty to one another to try to overcome that, to overcome that fear, to face that heartbreak, to keep our hearts wide open, and to love other people deeply, because that really is our only hope. I think taking that slightly back into the movie is in two ways. One, it goes back to the highway scene of noise, where you can't bring, that noise prevents you from having these realizations of love. And so you come to Solaris, where there's limited. you know, things that could, what's the word, distractions, there's limited distractions there. And then the second thing, I think even on a more personal level in the movie, you're talking about more on a widely basis of loving a people, loving the people who are oppressed. But in some people's lives, in many people's lives, you're afraid to love even a singular other person. And just like in this movie, we have Kelvin unable to comprehend the love for his wife,

who he now feels guilty for why she killed herself is because he didn't love her enough. He didn't care about her, didn't put her ahead. As you were talking, Brad, there's these things that are maybe in between individual people. But I think Tarkaski has to use the individual of Kelvin and Hary as these stand-ins for this larger world of love to create, in a cliche way of creating the world that we all can actually benefit from. we all can actually live together and all these things. And so I think those are all both great ways. And I think the last thing maybe of the movie we should talk about is the final scene. So the final scene of this movie is a bit confusing because you don't really understand

exactly what's happening. You have a dream of Kelvin. You don't know whether it's a dream, a fantasy, a mixed memory where he sees his mother. And then we kind of go through and we then see where we believe that maybe he's now back on Earth. He's returned home. He's in the house outside that we started the movie at. He's outside in nature. He sees the same lake. He sees the same water. You're like, oh, it's a full circle. We're back to the beginning again. And then we go inside and he sees his father and there's water dripping, which is very strange. And it starts to slowly zoom out. I mean, one thing we

didn't talk about in this movie that I just have to toss in. Like the cinematography of just like the camera, the slow pan, is used to just build the tension that is hard to comprehend. But we have in the last scene, this slowly fading out, and we see an island that appears to be located in this Solaris ocean. And we also briefly learned that they shot gamma rays or x-rays at it, and they claim that it was starting to build these little islands or these life forms within it. And so it leaves you in this very ambiguous note of the same horse running. runs by is in the first scene. We maybe see a connection to his father and then we see him on the ground kind of, you know, beholden in grief and sadness and love to his father in the same

similar camera shot that we see earlier to Hari of just, it's just everything is culminating. And then it just, that's it. It goes to, goes to black and that's it. And so I'm curious what you both make of the ending. And I looked online and there's so many interpretations of how it could be foreseen, whether it's his memory, actually it's happening, it's both, you know, so there's no answer. There's no wrong answers here. Sure. Yeah, I can start if that's okay. Oh, go ahead.

Sure. Well, I just want to step back really quick and make one really quick point about the, you ask a question. We're not going to get to it, of course, but I just wanted to mention this. And it speaks to my overall arguments throughout this episode, which is the decrepit nature of the space station, right? On the inside of the space station, everything is overturned. turned everything is like shitty there's there's litter everywhere and again the on the inside it's a mess right on the outside when you're zooming in on the space shuttle it's glimmering you can see it as like a space station type thing beautiful a monument to human creativity and ingenuity and on the inside of

that spaceship it's a mess because on the inside we're a mess and that's tarkovsky driving that point home as for your last scene yeah incredibly ambiguous not even sure what to what to make of it but i could not help but notice that when he falls to his knees and hugs his father around the waist, that is a visual representation of the prodigal son, right? The biblical story turned into many artistic paintings. If you Google right now, prodigal son painting, you'll see the son prone holding his father around the waist as his father welcomes him back. And what is the story of the prodigal son? It is a story of which a father has inheritance. One son, it responsibly comes to him and says, can I have all my inheritance now, please? And he's like, sure, gives him all the inheritance.

The son goes off, lives a life of debauchery and hedonism, gambles all his money away, and then comes crawling back to his father and saying, you know, I don't have anything left. Please take me in. I think the father finds him like in a, you know, disheveled state on the side of the road and brings him home. The other brother, who was much more responsible with his inheritance, you know, who actually invested his inheritance, took it at the right time, made something out of it, asks his father, why are you welcoming him back he wasted all your money he made a a mockery of of everything you've worked hard for and you know it's it's only rational that i would be rewarded more than this asshole who fucked everything up right and i think what and this is just going out on a big limb here um but you know that i think might speak to the critique of rationalism inherent in this film which is yeah the other son's argument is rational like why would you in re embrace him again you know he fucked everything up he did exactly the wrong things in every way with your money but it's irrational because a father loves his son and a father's going to open his arms and open his heart to his son no matter how fucked up his

son is and again the power of love overcoming the scientific rational logical part of of humanity and and so that's one way to interpret that but when you zoom out he's on solaris so he never went back home in the first place so what does that mean and that i really don't i don't have a good answer except that i mean one possible speculation and maybe maybe, you know, you can give me your thoughts, both of you. But like, he just, he decides to go inward and stay there, right? And, and, and maybe that's an error in itself. Maybe that's also an overcorrection. Maybe the answer to overextending ourselves outwardly is not to totally obsess and overcorrect and fetishize the inward, certainly not to stay and, and be mired in the

inward, but is to balance the two out. And I'm not exactly sure if that's true or not, but it does seem that at the end Kelvin chooses he could go back it's very it's made very clear by schnaut that he could go back if he wanted to uh he chooses to dive inward and completely give in um to the to salaris right dive into his subconscious dive into his inner world um even at the expense of going back to the actual real world and so again that's that's kind of hard though it's ambiguous i'm not quite sure what to make of that those are just some thoughts yeah yeah um yeah the ending his well i mean he does mention the harry that he's like oh i could stay know and so it's probably not a satisfying ending no matter which way we decide that it is and that's

okay um and i think like it would be unfair to assume that when when one does the inside exploration that they have a resolve you know they could just choose to not even really make anything out of it or continue into it. It is a very, like, I think Len, the original author of this, I think it was a novel, did not really like this film, because it wasn't science enough for him.

And Tragalsi criticizes that some of it was too science-y, so they both were not fond of the outcome for different reasons. But I think, like, maybe perhaps having such an ambiguous ending where we don't, as the audience, don't get to have that resolve is just part of it. That's the human experience, too. You know, nothing is linear. And, yeah, best to love Chris and hope he keeps the leather jacket. And it comes back around because, of course, he starts on the farm. he ends up at the farm again but in a different context right at a different level in solaris so i think

that's interesting and i just have to mention this because you're right that there's the the lem who wrote the novel and then tarkovsky takes it and makes it his own thing and it mirrors the thing that happened with kubrick and stephen king with regards to the shining evan i were talking about before we started recording and if you notice in the shining um kubrick's kind of an assley doesn't give a fuck but in the beginning um of the shining as they're driving to the to the overlook hotel or whatever um there's a red car that is pushed off into the ditch and i i believe somewhere and i'd have to go back at just a vague memory but there's a red car in in the shining um the book right by stephen king and kubrick by opening the scene with with that red car crashed on the side as

the family keeps going up to the hotel is his way of saying like if you come here expecting stephen king's novel you're going to be you're going to be uh sorely you know discontent with what happens here. I am crashing. I'm taking the bones of the thing. I'm crashing Steven's red car and I'm doing my own thing. I'm taking it in my own direction. But that's real art, right? They're inspired by a story. They take a story, but their own artistic vision necessitates that they change it. They shift the emphasis. They make something new out of it, as any real artist would have to do. And then the original artist is a little pissed off because it's like, that's not my vision. But Kubrick and Turkowski, you're like, we don't, we don't care.

We're doing our own thing. Thank you for the source material. Honestly, I think if the original authors liked it, they did something wrong. You know, like they didn't put their own spin on it. I think you're correct about the Stanley Kubrick or the red car. I've heard that. Kubrick is also famous for just throwing in little Easter eggs that just, you know, you have to watch the shiting dozens of times before you, or like go online to some Reddit and find someone who did it before you. But I like both of your interpretations of the end.

I think it's again, I love these kind of endings where you don't feel satisfied, but I think again, that also, I think maybe you both said, is that that's the human experience is you're never, you may be satisfied in some sense, but then there's always going to be something that takes you, you know, something that comes along, whether it's a financial problem, a social problem, that you lose some, all these things are going to come back. So I think we, they give you that little scientific nugget of we've done something to the planet that's now going to create these islands. But we don't know what's going to happen. And then they're saying, like, well, is this him dreaming about that happening? Is he dreaming about the fact that this thing is happening or is this actually what's happening? And again, I think at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Everyone is going to have different interpretations of the end. And I personally just find it to be, it's like satisfying in its being unsatisfactory somehow. I don't know how to really articulate that well, but I, I, I, I don't think, I don't know what Tarkovsky was thinking.

There's nothing online. Just like any good artist isn't going to tell you. It's your interpretation of the thing. You know, that was the only last point about it. And I wanted to mention, too, is the painting that we briefly, you talked about, Brett, the one you had seen in person in Vienna. And I think the, the, I had a note about it is, Hari is seeing the painting and be like creating love.

And I think it's also just the way her interpretation of art in this movie that is art is almost like this meta kind of analysis that he's almost going for where she becomes more human by seeing the art that's created by human. It's all these very cyclical, circular things starting on the farm, ending on the farm. All these, his wife dies, she returns and she dies and she returns. It's just like, you know, the cliche like circle of. life kind of thing. I don't know. It's, uh, it just, it's, uh, it's overall, it's a masterful movie, very complex, very, you can watch it again many times. I think you'll get more out of it.

I like to revisit it again, you know, maybe in six, eight months a year and watch it again and think about all the things that I, we've discussed. I think that's also what makes me learn and worry about movies, hearing people talk about them and then watching them and having them maybe influence or understand things differently. So, yeah, I just want to make, mention a point you mentioned about Hari looking into the hunters in the snow, a painting or whatever. And yeah, like, she could be a stand-in for us watching Tarkovsky's film, right? Studying the human psyche, artistic creation as a representation of the human inward life. And, yeah, sort of learning more through that process, which we're kind of doing here, right?

We're wrestling with these topics. We're now debating ideas of, like, love and humanity and stuff, which is exactly what a good artist will do. Bring that out of you. But have to challenge you. There's no easy answers, just like there's no resolution in life. You know, one thing that I think all of us do, at least I do this, is that we imagine in the future at some point, even though it's vague, that we'll have reached our destination. Like maybe like when in our old age, we'll finally be able to sit back, rest on our laurels, enjoy life. And, you know, and there'll be some sort of resolution, like the last 10 years of our life are happy or something. But of course, that's not true. our life is going to deliver us tragedies and unexpected gifts and everything in

between all the way up until we die my grandparents are in their late 70s and they talk to me about this as well he told me he's like no don't wait until you get older to live your life because this idea that when when you're an old age that work is behind you and now you can finally live only to find that your body is giving out you don't have the energy to do anything you know he's like this whole idea of golden years and a happy life at the end of retirement he's like this is an illusion and i was like i took that very deeply he would know he's 77 years old and uh that that that card that sort of inspires me to try to make the most of my life right here and now instead of waiting for this future point at which i'll finally be happy i'll finally be

content we're human beings that point never comes and if it does it takes a very long time it's like so absolutely i do i do appreciate that But yeah, I mean, like, well, and obviously our generation, retirement. Well, what's that? Yeah. I don't even have a savings account talking about retirement. Oh, fuck. I don't know.

I don't know. Do you do any last thoughts on the movie and? My last words are just a one, thank you both for allowing me to come here. It's a really great discussion. And I actually kind of want to do this again. Like, now that I'm into Tarkovsky, it'd be really fun maybe in like the spring. We could do another Tarkovsky film and maybe, maybe maybe, maybe, maybe, do it every season. I don't know. I'm going to get ahead of myself, but I would love to

revisit Tarkovsky with both of you and then like, see as we watch more and more of his films, what we can continue to to extract and glean from what he's trying to do as a filmmaker and as an artist. So thank you both for having me on. Hopefully we can do something like that. But to the listener, I would just urge you to wrestle with the film like this. You know, be willing to have that ambiguity, to sit with not knowing, to watch a film that is challenging, that you don't fully have answers to. All right, this, I think this is. an interesting thing to do, like reading a challenging novel, it brings something out of you. It connects you in the moment. And it's much better way to spend three hours of your time than

just scrolling on your phone, which is just lost time. Like, can anybody listening tell me a time where they spend three hours scrolling through their phone and something deep and an important happened? Your memory doesn't even remember it. Your mind throws it out as ephemeral nonsense. So we waste our time doing these things. And if you're going to sit down and do something for three hours, make it a Tarkovsky film. Yeah. No, I would love to, like, visit the stalker and Ivan's child and going through those. Because I think as you start going through them, you probably, as you mentioned at the very

beginning, but you went through like a Hitchcock phase or a Cooper phrase. As you watch more films from these great filmmakers, you'll learn about their styles, the way they do things. You'll probably learn things about this movie that we didn't think of as you watch as filmmakers evolved, we're evolving, you know, as all of these things as, you know, these cliche things. But I don't have anything left. What about you, Amanda? No, nothing. I would absolutely be honored. I would really love to do a whole series on Taras. I do need to watch some more of him. Unfortunately, like, the class that I took on Soviet history was mostly just focused on

propaganda or narratives, which was great. It was a good base. But I do really appreciate having more film that is more art-focused with, you know, historical context, of course, within that. This film is extremely, even though it's not originally his story, Tchaikovsky's story, he made it so very personal to himself, and I really appreciate that kind of filmmaking. So I look forward to doing more and see how he developed over the years. I think this was one of his first films, or was it his first film? I think it's his second film. I've closed the third maybe somewhere in the middle.

It's early in his career. Earlier, yeah. Yeah, and just for any, also for listeners out there, you can watch just about every one of his films and most Soviet films on YouTube for free. You can find most of these contents out there just because they've passed the, you know, what is it, the copyright windows of these kinds of things.

So it's very accessible. The movies, these movies, maybe not the most accessible. It's not like watching your newest Marvel movie, which you can turn your brain off and go through just like you would scrolling your phone for two hours. Exactly. I too, you know, there's times where I'm not going to lie, it's nice to turn on a movie that doesn't mean a whole lot. My kids like to watch those kind of movies and I watch them with them. But to really sit and think about these movies, I think really brings you just to a next level

and just like your movie watching experience. And if you're, whether you're a baby leftist, a Marxist, anarchist, whoever listening, I think you can get a lot out of this movie in particular, you know, if you're willing to open up your, uh, your mind, too, I think. So, but yeah, I think I don't have anything else. And I know I mentioned Brett, your podcast. I don't know where if you want to tell everyone for anyone who maybe is listening who doesn't know who you are in your, and your podcast, if you want to quickly just tell everyone. Sure. Yeah. Um, you can, you can find everything I do politically at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. That's the flagship Rev. Left Radio. Um, Red Menace, where me and my friend Allison focus on a theory and reading. texts. And we're also going to do an interesting little series on the German Revolution coming up probably in late spring, early summer, because that's a fascinating part of history that I think even as a Marxist, a long time Marxist, I don't fully comprehend the dimensions of the German revolution and the consequences of its failure. But it's something that we should all sort of wrestle with, because we're still living with the consequences today, as we can see, with Germany's support of Israel and all the chaos that ensues from that. And then my other podcast is like a secret hidden podcast, has It's nothing to do with politics. It's one of those shows you can listen to to get your mind off politics. It's like juvenile humor with my old buddy from high school. We also talk about mental health and he's an active recovery and relapse mode with regards to his alcoholism. So we're on a journey together where he's trying to get sober and has a lot of deep insights into his struggle with alcohol addiction. We also interview people, just people that are in the local area willing to come into the studio here, which is just a little shed in my friend's backyard. where we interview them in person about their own struggles with addiction and mental health.

And I think it's a hopefully funny as well as, you know, inspiring and informative show that is something very separate from my political work. But I still think it compliments it if you're so interested. That's Shulis in South Dakota. Yeah, I enjoyed the one on that about where you just chitalk Bill Maher for a good hour. Got to. I got you. Everyone, yeah. And then, I mean, Amanda, you can find your content.

on all the socials to, which I'll link down below. And, but yeah, I think we owe it to the, to people to come back, you know, months from now and discuss some of the other films. I had, I learned things about this movie that I didn't even consider. So I found this to be really fascinating and very enjoyable. And anyone out there can follow this podcast. And wherever you're listening now, you can like and subscribe. And if you're not listening to Rev Left, you should go back. You guys have, I don't know.

how many years of content, but just, you know, I, just as thoughts as the, the Che Guevara episodes you did and, uh, some of the ones early those, I think that was maybe the first, one of the first episodes, I don't even know. Yeah. First year. All great content to listen to. And, um, we will catch you in the future for another installment of, I think, Soviet films. Thanks everyone for listening.