Spaced Out

By J.C.

SOLARIS

Directed by ANDREI TARKOVSKI Screenplay by FRIEDRICH GORENSTEIN and ANDREI TARKOVSKI

From Boston to Berkeley and at as sorted points in between, a Soviet sci-fi movie called Solaris has been gathering momentum as the latest cult film. Based on a novel by the Polish author Stanislaw Lem, Solaris has to do with mysterious goings on at a space station, staffed originally by a crew of 85, which has been drastically depleted under sinister circumstances. By the time a psychologist named Kelvin (Donatis Banionis) comes aboard, the station is populated by two disturbed scientists and a host of phantoms, including a dwarf and a nubile young girl in a blue nightie.

The station hovers over the yellow, oozing sea of the planet Solaris. In retaliation for radiation bombardments from the station, the sentient sea creates figures from the spacemen's sub conscious and bounces them back up to the station to haunt the inhabitants and drive them to suicide. Not long after his arrival, Kelvin receives a spectral visitor of his own: his exwife, who killed herself back on earth years before. Kelvin is immediately smitten by a lethal mixture of love and guilt, and his mission -- and the fate of the space station -- is imperiled.

Unconquerable Force. Promising as all this may sound, it becomes apparent after the first few moments that the movie is going to remain stubbornly earthbound. The effects are scanty, the drama gloomy, the philosophy of the film thick as a cloud of ozone. The plot is not all that original either. All through the seemingly ceaseless running time -- nearly 2 1/2 hours, and considerably trimmed from the Russian version -- one is put longingly in mind of Forbidden Planet. A lightheaded piece of American scifi, Forbidden Planet (1956) was a genial reworking of The Tempest in which some American astronauts were trapped on a distant planet. There a wizard, a stand-in for Prospero, conjured up an unconquerable force field of "monsters from the id." Hearing this, one of the astronauts inquired without hesitation, "What's the id?" The people who made Solaris may be beyond such inspired silliness, but pomposity is no fair substitute.

J.C.

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