The 3-D Experience and Hero’s Journey of Avatar

By Peter Krämer

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (2009)

Great Expectations

In April 2009, an article in the New York Times entitled ‘Fan Fever is Rising for Debut of Avatar’ opened with the following statement: 

In an old airplane hangar …, James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that may

a) Change filmmaking forever

b) Alter your brain

c) Cure cancer.

The writer was obviously having fun with these exaggerations, which were inspired by the larger-than-life persona of the filmmaker and by his many public statements about his latest project, ever since it had been announced to the press in January 2007: ‘Mr. Cameron has done his share to feed the hype with his repeated assurances that a coming wave of 3-D cinema … would have the power to penetrate the brain in a way that movies never have.’ The writer’s choice of words here is interesting, perhaps designed to evoke the colloquial term ‘mind-fuck’, while also mocking Cameron’s machismo (only a very special kind of man would want to ‘penetrate’ people’s brains). 

Yet, beyond its humorous hyperbole, the article also appeared to register a widespread and sincere belief in the possibility of radical change. Referencing both the religiosity of American society and the recent election of the country’s first African-American president, the article stated that Avatar was ‘stirring up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the Rapture’, and that the film’s ‘technological wizardry is presumed by more than a few to promise an experiential leap for audiences comparable to that of The Jazz Singer, the arrival of Technicolor or an Obama campaign rally.’

When Avatar, which had originally been scheduled for a May 2009 release, belatedly appeared in cinemas around the world in December that year, it certainly told a story about dramatic change: parts of a distant moon’s ecosystem are severely damaged by the operations of a mining company; a humanoid alien tribe has to deal with the destruction of its ancestral home; for the first time in many generations the moon’s scattered tribes unite so as to be able to confront the threat; the neural network of trees, which constitutes a kind of brain for the planet’s ecosystem and is revered as a Goddess by the natives, gives up its usual practice of non-interference and helps to eject the operatives of the mining company. All of this is explored through the central storyline of one of the employees of the mining company who uses a specially grown body as his avatar in the world of the natives, then takes their side in the conflict before he finally abandons his human form for good so as to be reborn in the alien body. 

In addition to telling this complex story about dramatic change, Avatar also initially lived up to the expectation that it might in fact change cinema. In the run-up to its release, there had already been a marked increase in cinemas with 3-D projection capabilities around the world; some of this expansion had clearly been fuelled by the announcement of a live action 3-D release (almost all 3-D releases in recent years had been animated) by one of the world’s most successful filmmakers. When Avatar then went on to break all existing box office records, both in the United States and in the rest of the world, with a particularly strong performance in 3-D cinemas, there was a perception that the popular habit of cinemagoing, recently under a particularly strong threat from alternative leisure time activities, had been given a new lease of life, and, furthermore, that it had been transformed forever, insofar as 3-D could now be expected to become a new standard, rather than the exceptional attraction it had been heretofore. 

Now, if one were to claim that cinema was reborn through the 3-D technology of Avatar, which allowed audiences to inhabit cinematic space in a compelling new fashion, such a claim would constitute a curious echo of the very story the film tells about its protagonist being reborn through the avatar technology which allows him to inhabit a new body and through it a new world. Such echoing can also be observed when the circumstances of the film’s release are considered. Its original May release date derived from Hollywood’s practice to set up its major releases for a high impact before the summer holidays which will hopefully translate into a long run during these holidays. Once it became clear that Avatar would not be ready for this early date, the only obvious alternative was a release in December which would allow the film to profit from increased cinemagoing during the Christmas holidays and also set it up for consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other organisations handing out awards in the first few months of the new year. 

Logo for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009

In the end, the precise release date chosen for Avatar coincided with the final stage of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, which was widely regarded as a catastrophic failure. Thus, as a film about environmental issues, Avatar could, in very general terms, be said to have profited from the public interest in, and intense media reporting on, climate change across 2009 which culminated on the very weekend that the film was first shown around the world. More specifically, the film’s story echoed real-life developments in at least two striking ways, first by imagining a future humanity which has destroyed the ecosystem of its home planet and now sets out to do the same on another planetary body; secondly by imagining an alternative way of life. Here, human-like beings are shown to live in harmony with nature and to achieve a kind of global unity in their attempt to defend themselves and the ecosystem they are part of against destructive forces. 

The most high profile attempt yet to achieve global unity so as to take action against global warming fails at the very moment that Avatar begins to draw audiences all over the world into its story. One might go as far as saying that, whereas politics fails to achieve global unity and bring about necessary change, this film does not only offer a vision of such unity and change, but through its impact on individual viewers and its international success also laid the groundwork for potential real-life personal change and unified global action. At the very least, a substantial proportion of the world’s population now shares the story that Avatar tells. It is conceivable that such sharing will contribute to an awareness of the shared fate of humanity and indeed of the Earth’s ecosystem, and perhaps even to the willingness to take action on its behalf. 

Audiences and Their Avatars

The title of James Cameron’s science fiction epic resonates with ancient myth and with contemporary cultural practice: an avatar is the shape an Indian God takes when walking among humans, and it is a player’s audiovisual representative in the electronic world of a computer game. In the film’s story, Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-marine, is employed by a mining company to enter the dangerous jungle outside the fortified human compound on the distant moon Pandora. This is achieved by projecting his consciousness into an artificially grown body, which mixes human DNA with that of Pandora’s intelligent humanoid species, the Na’vi. In this way, Jake, who has come down from Pandora’s heaven as one of the ‘sky people’ - the Na’vi designation for humans - can walk among the Na’vi, and he can temporarily lose himself in the adventures he experiences in their world. In the course of the story, Jake learns a lot about the capabilities of his new body and about the Na’vi and the other life forms he interacts with, and this provides him with an increasingly critical perspective on the human world he comes from. In the end, he is willing and able to leave his human body behind so as to live permanently as a Na’vi on Pandora. The player thus exchanges what he took to be his reality for his game world; the one who came down from the sky joins the web of life on this new Earth.

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

Through its mythical and gaming associations, the film’s title also comments on the very nature of the cinematic experience. As viewers and listeners, members of the audience descend from their own reality into the fictional world of the film, using its protagonist as their avatar. Like gamers, they may concentrate on learning about this world and confronting numerous challenges within it, which in turn allows them to engage with it ever more intensively. While they have no actual control over the actions of their avatar, like divine beings audience members may feel that this whole world is at their service, and that everything is ultimately organised for their avatar’s convenience. So what are the implications of Jake’s decision to switch permanently into his avatar’s body and thus stay in his gaming world? Where does this leave the audience for whom Jake is an avatar?

Similar questions are raised by the film’s opening sequence. The film begins with the camera flying over a dense forest, and a voiceover explaining that this was a recurring dream the protagonist (Jake Sully) had when he was in a veterans’ administration hospital. Given that this is a 3-D movie and that initially it was shown on the largest available screens (including many IMAX screens), the opening emphasises one of the main attractions of widescreen and 3-D technologies, namely the possibility to create a heightened sense of movement through space. Jake’s dream has been the dream such technologies have pursued ever since they were widely introduced in the 1950s. Right from the get-go, Avatar confirmed to viewers that this dream has now become a reality.

At the same time, the opening scene offers references to a particular tradition in Hollywood filmmaking. In recent decades, thoughts of war veterans and jungles are most likely to evoke the Vietnam war and in particular Hollywood’s numerous representations of that conflict in films primarily of the 1970s and 1980s. If one makes this connection, then the dream flight over the jungle landscape represents more than simply the age-old human dream of flying, or the specific desire of an injured soldier to compensate for his restricted mobility in a hospital with the heightened mobility of flight; it also entails a potential threat, because American soldiers might just start firing into the jungle, dropping bombs and setting fire to it (which of course they do later in the film).

Finally, the opening scene is presented as arising from within the protagonist’s consciousness, and it does so in two ways: first it is said to be a dream of the soldier lying in a hospital, secondly the voice-over narrator explains that it is a dream he used to have in the past; even the dream is now only available as a memory. Hence the flying scenes are twice removed from narrator’s present reality: they are memories of past dreams. Yet, for the viewers (especially those in a 3-D IMAX cinema) they take place very much in the present and may well have the power to affect them physically. There is a gap, then, between the narrator’s highly mediated connection to the flying scene and the viewers’ immediate experience of it. One might expect that this gap will be closed in the course of the film (as indeed it is). 

This expectation is also raised by the conventions of Hollywood storytelling: We can assume that, if a dream is so clearly stated at the beginning, the protagonist who has this dream will strive to make it a reality, and that eventually he will achieve this. We can also expect the distantiation created by the voice-over to fade in the course of the film, so that the sense of present tense overrides the fact that everything presented in the film is in fact a memory. In this way, then, Jake’s experience of his own dream will catch up with that of the audience. (Indeed, the voiceover of the protagonist looking back into his own past can in places be mistaken for, and is eventually dissolved into, the present-tense commentary that Jake records for his video log.)

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

A Hero’s Journey in 3-D

Let’s take a closer look at the kind of change the story of Avatar focuses on. Hollywood cinema is centred on the transformation - the personal growth, psychological maturation etc. - of the stories’ protagonists.  According to script guru Christopher Vogler, filmic protagonists go on a journey (a hero’s journey) into a ‘special world’ which mirrors, in a highly exaggerated and fantastic manner, the everyday concerns of their ‘ordinary world’, and which allows them to resolve internal and external tensions and conflicts, so as to emerge from this adventure as more rounded, more socially integrated individuals. 

Films such as Avatar first establish an ordinary world for the protagonist - a world of family, community, work, which is comparable to our own world. This world is full of problems. In Avatar’s case, it is characterised by Jake Sully’s low social status, his inability to carry out his previous job due to partial paralysis and his lack of qualification for the new job he is given, his loss of the cameraderie with fellow soldiers and the initial hostility of his new boss, the death of his brother, and the absence, or active destruction, of natural surroundings. Once this ordinary world is established, the film transfers Jake to, and immerses him - and us - in, the special world of the jungle of Pandora. Cutting-edge film technology is used to make the ‘special world’ as extraordinary as possible.

How does 3-D technology function with regards to the hero’s journey? And how does the film itself reflect on that technology and that journey? It is certainly the case that 3-D effects allow viewers to immerse themselves deeply in the natural world of Pandora, and motion capture (or ‘performance capture’) and computer generated images bring its alien beings to life. However, a word of caution about the importance of 3-D for the film’s impact is in order: Both in cinemas and on DVD and television, the vast majority of the film’s viewers worldwide saw the 2-D version. And although Avatar was by far the most successful 3D-Film in history, the expectation that its success might make 3-D a new standard for Hollywood releases has not been fulfilled. Nevertheless, I want to concentrate on the particular contribution that 3-D makes to the experience of the film.

Before entering the cinema auditorium, we are given 3-D glasses, which we have to use to cover our eyes so as to be able to enter into the world of the film which is going to be projected onto the screen. If we were to refuse to wear them, watching the film would be an exceedingly unpleasant experience. Putting on the glasses reminds us of how utterly dependent our cinematic experience is on technology. It also constitutes another threshold we are crossing in the transition from our everyday world into the world of the film adventure (other such thresholds are the departure from our homes, the purchase of the ticket, entering the auditorium, the lights going out). Each threshold serves to emphasise how different our cinematic experience is going to be from everyday life. At the same time, the donning of glasses brings us closer to the people who are going to share this experience with us. Not only are we all converging on this particular cinema auditorium at this particular moment in time, but we also cement our connection by all donning these glasses, creating a uniformity of appearance. But the glasses also serve to distance us from each other, insofar as looking at each other rather than at the screen is discouraged by wearing them.

3-D IMAX cinema audience

Now, in the story of the film, after a long journey across space, a group of people arrive on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. Before they set foot on this planet they are told that they have to wear a mask on their face which will enable them to breath. The mask is a reminder that their presence on this planet is heavily dependent on technology, and that they have moved far away from their previous existence. It also serves to emphasise their shared humanity in contrast to the natives who require no such technological support to breath. Of course, they are not required to wear the mask all the time because they can move within the man-made environments constructed on the planet; in other words, instead of wearing a mask, they can inhabit a technological construct that is like living inside a giant mask. Still, whenever they cross the threshold between their built environment (buildings as well as vehicles) and the outside world, they all have to wear the mask, which makes them look alike and also creates a distance between them, a physical barrier between one face and the next. The necessity for human characters to wear a mask thus echoes in quite a profound way the necessity for viewers of the 3-D version to wear glasses. 

At the same time, the wearing of the mask expresses the tension at the very heart of the film’s narrative: in it humans confront an environment that is dangerous to them, developing a range of strategies for how to deal with that danger. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies: first, the mask and the built environment; second, the avatar programme. Both are heavily dependent on human technology. In a surprising twist, towards the end of the film, a third strategy arises which is no longer dependent on human technology: the permanent transfer of a human mind into the avatar, brought about by the planet’s neural network. The avatar programme thus constitutes a transitional stage - inbetween the initial stage of a fundamental physical separation between humans and environment, and the final stage of full human immersion in that environment. One might even say that the avatar programme marks that moment when a cinema audience, awkwardly conscious of the glasses in front of their eyes and thus of a physical barrier between themselves and their surroundings and also of their dependence on cinematic technology, loses itself in the 3-D cinematic space their glasses allow them to see and in the story unfolding in that space, with the film’s protagonist acting as their own avatar. 

While the transition from an awareness of one’s own body, of a technological process, of the real space of the auditorium and the people in it, to an immersion in fictional space and story is typical of all cinema experiences, the 3-D technology enhances the transformative nature of this transition. The use of the word ‘avatar’ in the film’s title, and the way it is literalised in the story, marks this heightened sense of transformation by suggesting that viewers can physically enter into a different world (as gods walking among mortals, as players in a computer game). Yet, the term also is a reminder of the fact that this entering into a different world is only a partial and temporary experience (the gods will eventually return to the heavens, the players never actually leave the physical world around them and they can not play on forever). 

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009)

All of this is mirrored in the story of the film. On the one hand, the story emphasises how physically liberating and stimulating it is for the protagonist to inhabit the avatar body (here his disability serves to heighten the difference between his everyday existence - which is, of course, characterised by a restriction on mobility similar to that of the people in the cinema auditorium - and the technologically facilitated experience of the avatar’s world - once again mirroring the viewer’s technologically facilitated experience of the cinematic world). On the other hand, this experience is constantly disrupted (initially in a planned fashion, later through violent outside interventions), and the reminders of the needs and vulnerability of the human body left behind become an increasingly important issue. The story comes to focus ever more on the nuisance and danger of having a human body, and it culminates in its abandonment. 

If the protagonist’s journey echoes that of the viewer, what are we to make of that final transformation? One might say that it simply takes the logic underpinning the cinematic adventure (the transition from the everyday world into an alternative reality) too far so that instead of heightening the vicarious experience the viewer has through the protagonist (and through the 3-D glasses), it actually serves as a painful reminder that such total transcendence of the everyday is simply not available in the cinema. Our connection with the protagonist does not go as far as physically and permanently being able to leave our regular lives and bodies behind. Of course, the film’s action ends precisely at the moment when the protagonist has achieved what is impossible for us to do: The last shot of the film is of his eyes opening and staring at us (and Neytiri - but that is another story); then the story ends (although as soon as the credits begin there is more material from the story world projected on the screen; once again this needs to be considered separately). 

When the protagonist has finally done what is impossible for us to do (to abandon the old body and permanently inhabit a new one), our connection with him has to be severed. After all we are only viewers - and the fact that he stares at us, mirroring our own staring at the screen, tells us that this is all we are, and the contrast between his uncovered eyes and our own eyes, covered by 3-D glasses, confirms our essential difference. At the same time, the protagonist’s face points forward to the moment when we remove the glasses and thus enter into a much more unmediated relationship with our surroundings again. In other words: when Jake awakens in his new body, he prefigures our imminent awakening into the reality of our own body and our actual surroundings. If Jake’s story ends with leaving behind what he has come to regard as a lesser existence, we also ultimately have to recognise that watching a film is a lesser reality than our actual bodies and social connections.

Avatar, dir. Cameron (2009

Sympathy for the (Red-Eyed)-Devil in 2001: A Space Odyssey

By Vincent M. Gaine

2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1968)

Some time ago, Peter Krämer posted some initial thoughts on 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film ripe for philosophical discussion. As something of a continuation of Kramer’s piece, I offer some thoughts inspired by discussions about the film, especially in relation to other viewers’ negative responses.

2001: A Space Odyssey regularly appears on greatest films of all time lists, including my own (nascent) list, as I (arbitrarily) believe it is the greatest piece of cinema ever made. This is a nonsense position of course, because the number of films I have not seen vastly outnumbers those that I have, but I do regard Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction opus as a truly breathtaking piece of specifically cinematic art. By specifically cinematic, I mean that 2001 expresses its themes and transports the viewer through the features of mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography and an exquisite balance between these visual features and its use of music and sound effects (including silence during the space sequences). These features are far more detailed than the more “literary” features of plot and character, and herein lies a major issue for the film’s detractors. The plot of 2001 is simplicity itself – dawn of humanity to the birth of a new species – so those looking for complex narratives had best look elsewhere. The other issue is character, that eternal element that for some is of paramount importance.

I have written here previously about my general lack of concern over character and my bafflement over the criticism “I didn’t care about the characters”. In the case of 2001, I do understand the criticism even though I would not make it myself. The principal characters of the film are Dr Heywood Floyd, Dr David Bowman, Dr Frank Poole and the computer HAL. If you insist, we can include Moon-Watcher in the opening sequence, but both he and Floyd disappear fairly quickly, leaving us with Bowman, Poole and HAL. The criticism I have come across time and time again is that Poole and Bowman provide no character to engage with, leaving HAL as the most sympathetic character by default. This is apparently a problem because HAL is a computer and has an unfortunate tendency to kill people, so the film has no sympathetic characters and therefore viewers feel disengaged.

I suggest that this character arrangement is not only a narrative strength but also key to the philosophy of 2001. The famous opening scene features hominids learning to use bones as weapons as well as using them to kill prey and rivals, a sequence that ends with a bone being thrown into the air before the longest temporal match-cut in cinema history replaces the bone with a nuclear bomb orbiting the Earth. This concern with weapons runs through the whole film, and what is HAL if not the culmination of humans’ obsession with violence and killing? The later film Dark Star (1974) may have actually featured a sentient bomb, but HAL’s homicidal actions are consistent with the dangers of technology. Therefore, it seems entirely significant that HAL is the most sympathetic, identifiable and memorable character of the film. He undergoes development and demonstrates at least the facsimile of emotions such as ambition, ego, fear and regret. Small wonder he is more engaging than the unwavering and unchanging astronauts who accompany him.

But what is the effect of the film engaging our sympathy with this machine? If the viewer feels sympathy for HAL, despite his ostensible status as the film’s villain, then the danger he poses is even greater than his ability to kill. He replaces the astronauts from their mission – the most important mission in human history, now supplanted by humanity’s creation rather than humanity itself – and he also replaces the humans from their role within the film. In doing so, HAL becomes the ultimate nightmare, making humans redundant both as narrative devices and as objects of audience engagement. Much as the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) supplants humanity by imitating both our form and fluidity, HAL replaces us in narrative and dramatic function. 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, dir. James Cameron (1991)

Thus 2001 is not only a space odyssey but a human odyssey, because en route to the birth of the Star Child, the film treats us to humanity’s replacement by our own creation. This is not only the Frankenstein notion of creations rising against us, but the supplanting of humanity within the relationship between text and reader. Therefore, the peculiar arrangement of sympathetic characters is integral to the film’s philosophy as it plays upon audience expectations and manipulates us to care about that which makes us unnecessary. What purpose do humans have in the advance of humanity when we do not even care about those who do it? None, the tools we construct for our purposes have purposed us out of the purpose itself.

2001’s lack of engaging characters is therefore a vital element of its philosophy, as humanity triumphs over its creation. Significantly, this is by literal deconstruction, as Bowman takes HAL apart piece by piece, HAL attempting to prompt empathy by singing “Daisy, Daisy.” If the viewer weeps for HAL at this point, HAL has won – we now feel for our dying nemesis. Only once HAL is removed from the picture can Bowman encounter the extra-terrestrial intelligence of the monolith, and evolve into the new life form of the Star Child. For humanity to evolve, the film suggests, we must move away from our creations, and that includes being cautious of how we feel about them.

2001: A Space Odyssey, dir. Kubrick (1968)

Solaris, Or, Do We Really Want To Make Contact?

By Paul Johnston

On Earth

As with many of his films, the opening section of Tarkovsky’s Solaris sets the scene for what is to come. Almost inevitably it starts with water. The camera lingers on a leaf floating down a stream, then on the weeds and reeds, pulled into movement by the flowing water. Slowly, insistently, the camera explores the peace and mystery of a world without humans - until we chance on part of a human figure and the camera pulls up to reveal the film’s protagonist, Kris Kelvin. This solitary individual may be vaguely aware of the beauty that surrounds him, but he is unable to draw any sustenance from it. It’s there, but it can’t help or really touch him. He is trapped in a world where there are always things to be done, but not much to be gained from doing them. A black horse trots by, magnificently at home in the world. Kelvin notices it and moves wearily on. In the distance a car draws up at the house and his father calls out to him, but Kelvin would rather be alone. And if the rain pours down on him until he is soaked, what difference does it make? He stands resolute, brooding emptily on his pain but determined to go on. After all, what else can he do?

Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Kelvin is staying with his father and his aunt and, despite the civilised atmosphere, it’s tense. He will soon leave on a mission that probably means he will never see his father again, but it is more than that. There is a sense of conflict and misunderstandings. Kelvin’s mother is dead and the house seems haunted by an absence that both father and son must have struggled with, but which hasn’t brought them together. It’s a large house with three people who are constantly getting in each other’s way. Everyone seems too full of his or her own emotions to have time for anyone else’s.

The arrival of Berton, a friend of the father’s who wants to talk to Kelvin about his mission, is another unwelcome intrusion. There were already too many people before he arrived. He brings his young son, who we see shyly and silently meeting the aunt’s young daughter - at least in this human contact, there is still something innocent and hopeful. The boy is alarmed when he sees the horse, now in its stable, but the aunt takes him by the hand and helps him to see that the horse is a beautiful creature and nothing to be frightened of. Meanwhile Berton insists on having a one-to-one conversation with Kelvin, but the discussion quickly goes wrong and Berton storms off, telling the father that, since their 20-year friendship had to end sometime, it might as well end now. The father in turn lambasts the son, saying that he shouldn’t be allowed into space because things out there are too fragile. The earth has adapted to people like him at a price, but they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. The tentative efforts of father and son to reach out to each other collapse.

Berton’s Unnerving Experience. 

Kelvin’s mission is to the planet Solaris and Berton visits him because he had an experience on that planet that he has never recovered from. Solaris is a paradox and an irritation - it is possible the planet may harbour some form of super-intelligence, but years of research have not been able to get beyond the initial promising but confusing signs. Has humanity finally come into contact with another intelligent form of life or is Solaris just another nondescript planet among countless others? Berton worked on the research station as a pilot and when an aircraft containing two scientists went missing, he was part of the search and rescue mission. His craft got separated from the others and he was sucked into a strange, swirling fog above the planet’s ocean. When he returned, he was in a state of shock and ran to his cabin, frightened at the idea of going outside the space station and terrified even to look out of a porthole.

Some time later when he had partially recovered, he insisted on making a formal statement about a discovery that he believes will change the future of the whole Solaris research project. Dressed in his military uniform and just about holding it together, he describes how, when he was sucked down into the fog, the surface of the ocean began to change and then formed itself into something that looked like a garden. The assembled scientists are shocked - it’s a big claim, but a weirdly senseless one: what would a garden be doing on the surface of a planet millions of miles from Earth? Berton appeals to the evidence of his video camera, which recorded everything he saw - except it didn’t; the film just shows clouds. Now it is Berton who is confused - did he really experience what he thought he experienced? To a sceptical audience and increasingly agitated, he continues his account. The garden was only the start. Shortly, after he saw a human figure, moving and being moved on the ever-changing ocean. But there was something horrible about the figure. It had no helmet or space suit - in fact, it was a child, a baby and huge, gigantic - something like four metres tall. And naked, absolutely naked, but with a horrible, sticky liquid, glistening all over its body. It was an image of human vulnerability turned into something horribly alien, which wasn’t dead but which also wasn’t fully alive.

Solaris, dir, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Berton can’t cope with his experience, but neither can his audience. The majority conclusion is that, despite all his years of service and his professional discipline, Berton had a hallucination. His experience had no (or virtually no) relation to reality and so has no implications for research into the nature of the planet. Berton’s pathetic protests that he saw it all with his own eyes cut no ice - after all, haven’t we all mistaken a bush for an animal when it is dark and we are tired? Berton should just put everything behind him and move on - nothing or virtually nothing happened and it is certainly not worth thinking or worrying about. Ironically (or perhaps predictably) Berton’s discussion with Kelvin follows the same pattern - Berton feels he has something very important to say, his attempt to explain gets interrupted and the conclusion is that probably nothing happened, and even if it did, it does not have any significance and won’t affect the plans of the people who count. The reality of Berton’s experience - the moment that shattered a lifetime of disciplined professionalism - is denied, derided and discounted. What a ridiculous man!

Actually, he is a generous man. Humiliated (again), and confused and full of doubt, he doesn’t abandon his mission and, after storming off, makes a video call to pass on the information he hadn’t succeeded in sharing. After he left Solaris, he made contact with the family of one of the missing scientists whom he had been searching for when he got pulled into the fog. The scientist had separated from his wife shortly before or after the birth of their son, a child whose features were those of the baby Berton had seen bobbing on the ocean on Solaris. More Berton nonsense? Perhaps, but Kelvin should bear it in mind when he gets to the planet.

So what should we, the viewer, make of Berton’s experience? Later we learnt that the Ocean can project ideas from an individual’s unconscious, so perhaps the garden and the baby reflect what the missing scientists were longing for or were worried they would never see again. But why is this experience so destabilising for Berton? Later, he himself has a son and, although he is a rather preoccupied father, the boy offers him love and comfort, which he appreciates. (Interestingly, the mother is again very absent). In fact, babies and children are wildly out of place in the world of Solaris research and exploration, and in Berton’s world of technical proficiency and professional duty. What place in these worlds for vulnerability, growth and uncertainty? Really there should be no baby, but there is - only it’s a monster. It hasn’t developed, it has just grown; but growth without development is a horrible distortion. This is not a baby that warms the heart - it’s a baby that makes you wish you had never been born. (And why, one might ask, is that?)

More Unwanted Guests

Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

When Kelvin gets to the Solaris space station, there are only two men on it - the loveable Snaut and the ruthless Sartorius. There was a third man - Giberian, a sensitive, philosophical type who was the first person to be sent Ocean-created “guests” and who committed suicide. Why? Sartorius’s verdict is clear - he was a coward. When the team’s research started to generate difficult-to-deal-with effects, he lost his scientific discipline, wallowed in his emotions and then gave up. An alternative explanation is loneliness and fear of madness. Giberian was the first person to be affected, so maybe he thought it was just something to do with him or that there was something wrong with him. There is an element of truth in this, but from a video message he left for his friend Kelvin it is clear that he recognised that others were also likely to get visitors. So perhaps it was the nature of his visitor? But we see her - a young girl in a blue negligee. Hardly a frightening apparition and she seems devoted to Giberian - in the video we see her bringing him a glass of milk. But he pushes her away and doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. Is this a guilty conscience? Is she someone he was involved with or wanted to be involved with in a way he now condemns? Or is it just that her innocence and submissiveness is painfully out of kilter with where he is and whom he feels he is? Whatever the detailed explanation, Giberian's conclusion is that he does not deserve to be alive.

Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Giberian’s response to his visitor is one extreme - he accepts the visitation as a judgement, tries to live with it but is unable to do so. Sartorius goes to the other extreme - he denies the visitors any significance. They are an irritation, a nuisance, and a trial or rather, since those words are already too emotional a description, they are a phenomenon that we must seek to understand and then learn to control. In the face of this crisis, Sartorius jettisons his humanity and clings to his role as a scientist. It is not hard to see whose response Tarkovsky has most sympathy with. At least, Giberian was brave enough and human enough to acknowledge that the appearance of his visitor raised questions about who he was; and if he could not unravel those questions in a positive way, at least he confronted them and make a choice that was real and his, even if despairing.

Snaut handles things differently from both of his colleagues. He is a man of compromise. He does not deny his humanity or seek to block out the reality and the meaning of the visitors; he just tries to find ways to get by. In part, he does this by not taking things too seriously. He pretends that his visitor’s being there is not that unusual, and he keeps himself constantly busy in a manic attempt to distract himself. When he can, he tries to laugh about the situation or see the irony in it. But his struggle is as desperate as Sartorius’s (or for that matter, Gibarian’s); and, while the violence of Sartorius’ denial is repulsive, the pathos of Snaut’s attempt to cope is deeply moving. The man is a wreck and, although his intelligence and his resilience are impressive, it really doesn’t look as if he is going to hold out much longer.

Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Kelvin, of course, is the one who finds a way through. His first response to the appearance of his dead wife Hari is Sartorius-like - he locks her in a rocket and, despite her screams, blasts her into space. But he is fortunate in who his visitor is - or perhaps the Ocean has finally worked out how to choose the right visitor. Kelvin is a well-defended man, but he has one weak spot (or possibly two) - his love for his wife meant something to him and he can’t quite reconcile himself to throwing it away (just as he can’t quite draw the line under his love for his lost mother). Kelvin makes a serious attempt to come to terms with his visitor. That involves taking them both seriously, being open to the pain of experiencing and thinking about things. 

Ironically (and in a way that creates some difficulties for the viewer), Kelvin is not a very sympathetic character - he is arrogant, narcissistic and a bit superficial. He is the hero of the film, but he is also the hardest character to admire. He does work hard on his relationship with Hari, but it is a struggle for him to admit his feelings for her, and even by the end of the film he still doesn’t seem to have taken on board the idea that a relationship involves two people and that you should at least try to see things from two perspectives rather than just one. So Kelvin and Hari never make it to a happy relationship - in fact, towards the end they are arguing just as much ever. But they do have a relationship and Kelvin does acknowledge both his need for contact and his difficulty in sustaining it. He is a wiser man at the end of the film - still sad, but able to experience his sadness and to try to make sense of it, so there is hope and an openness to the possibility of growth. 

The Problem of Hari. 

Kelvin’s dead wife Hari (or the Ocean’s recreation of her) is at the emotional heart of the film. Philosophically, one might think the big question she raises is: “What makes a living entity a human being?” or “When should we treat a living entity as human?”, but Tarkovsky is not very interested in that sort of question. In fact, Hari is the most human person in the whole film - she certainly serves as a role model for the men as to what being human does (or could) involve. Sartorius, of course, tells her that she is nothing - a matrix, a mechanical reproduction of the past. It is a brutal assault on her vulnerability, and she staggers under the blow; but she doesn’t take refuge in denial and she stays committed to thinking and feeling - unlike Sartorius, who smashes his glasses in pain and frustration and wanders off, muttering unconvincingly about others taking the easy route. 

Are we nothing? And if we are something, can we accept the something we are? The Ocean’s actions pose these questions to everyone on the space station, and the person who grapples with them most directly and most honestly is Hari. As a result, she learns and grows through the film, so that eventually she is much more than the Hari that was. Her first incarnation is child-like - unfazed by the strange situation she finds herself in, she accepts the good things it has to offer and seems to have little sense that anything could go wrong. She cannot explain her need to be in visual contact with Kelvin at all times, but she loves him and she trusts him - until he shuts the rocket door and blasts her screaming into space. Her second incarnation is more knowing and more painfully aware of her need for Kelvin - when he accidentally shuts another door on her, she is torn to pieces by her desperate need for him. 

Hari’s search to understand who (or what) she is has a terrible pathos, which is itself hard to endure. At times - for example, when she suggests to Kelvin that she may have epilepsy - we risk slipping into Sartorius-like complacency and forgetting that her situation of not knowing is not so different from our own. Generally, however, what we experience is sympathy with her pain and admiration for her willingness to face up to the truth. At one point Hari finds a picture of herself and only by looking in the mirror does she recognise who the photo depicts - it’s a heart-rending moment. We may like to think that “finding ourselves” is an exciting voyage of discovery, but as Hari’s experience demonstrates, recognising that you don’t know who you are is a terrifying experience. Instinctively, she turns to Kelvin for companionship - “Do you know yourself?” she asks, to which his defensive and not very convincing answer is: “As much as any Man does”. 

Solaris, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972

Hari’s search for truth may make her seem like Sartorius, but Sartorius does not want to understand, he wants to control. In fact, the response of Sartorius (and the other scientists) to the Ocean shows that it is not knowledge itself that they want; rather what they cannot cope with is not knowing, not understanding. If the Ocean is a mystery, an Other that cannot be subsumed into the reassuring conformity of the known, then it would be better it was destroyed. The Ocean is not seen as something that we might enter into dialogue with; rather it is a threat to the idea that Man knows (or one day will know) everything. Science is supposed to be about going beyond our own limitations and seeing the world objectively, but in Solaris that search for knowledge does not look very open-minded; on the contrary, as exemplified in the character of Sartorius, it looks like a blind and desperate insistence that the only right way to see the world is the way we humans see it.

By contrast, Hari is open to difference. While the men argue over which of them is right, she highlights the different way each of them reacts and sees this as something to accept and to welcome. While Kelvin strives to live in an impossible (and potentially rather bland) harmony with her, Hari wants to face up to their differences in the past and their difficulties in the present. She is also prepared to recognise the wider context of her relationship with Kelvin and the fact that this can generate conflict. After seeing a video in which Kelvin’s mother appears, she says, hurt and confused: “That woman hated me”. Kelvin, of course, wants to sweep everything under the carpet: “But you never met her”. To which Hari replies: “Why are you trying to confuse me? I remember perfectly well how we had tea together. And how she told me to go away”. 

The Ocean’s visitors confront Kelvin and his colleagues with aspects of themselves that they are reluctant to recognise or have anything to do with. Ironically, Hari faces a similar sort of issue in relation to her past. As Sartorius’s laboratory tests confirm, she is not Hari - if you prick her finger to take a “blood” sample, there is no need (and no point) in giving her cotton wool to staunch the bleeding. So how can “Hari” relate to Hari? At some points in the film, she relates with hate and envy - the only way she could be herself would be if she could kill the other Hari and destroy all trace of her. Later, she seems to come to terms with her own identity (and her difference), but is haunted by the fear that Kelvin won't be able to deal with her 'otherness': “I disgust myself. You must find me disgusting too. You do find me disgusting”, she screams. Part of the difficulty of real contact with others is that it puts you in contact with yourself. 

Solaris, dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972 

Hari has one other problem - she cannot die. Snaut, of course, jokes about this and talks about Satorius working on the Faustian problem of how to find a remedy for immortality; but when he is confronted with Hari coming back to life, he runs away - he cannot stand to watch these pseudo- resurrections. They make a joke of death and even for Snaut that is a joke too far. Towards the end of the film, Hari tries to choose suicide, but all she achieves is a painful death and an even more painful revival. Unlike Giberian’s suicide, Hari’s suicide attempt seems abrupt - an impulsive suicide of despair. She has reached a point where she no longer has the strength to go any further. But she has no choice but to go on. Her suicide would have been less meaningful than Giberian’s, but her inability to die made the attempt transparently meaningless. By the end of the film, she does achieve death, and this time it is a chosen death based on an understanding of who she is and what she wants. Eventually, Hari dies but she dies with dignity, and it is a better death than all her previous deaths including the death on Earth of the real Hari.

Coming Home

At the end of the film, as they reflect on all that has happened, Snaut tells Kelvin that it is time for him to return to Earth. The question is raised of whether Snaut still has a connection to earth (and so whether it will ever be time for him to return), but the focus is Kelvin, and it is clear that he will go back and go back a different man. The theme of homecoming is highlighted in the meditation on Brueghel’s Return of the Hunters painting. Interestingly (and appropriately), Hari is first draws our attention to it. What can a scene of medieval hunters returning to the warmth of their homes in the depth of winter mean to her? 

Pieter Bruegel (the Elder) 'The Return of the Hunters/Hunters in the Snow', 1565

At the beginning of the film, Kelvin has no thoughts for his home - insofar as he seems capable of thinking of anything, it is of his mission and its challenges. Sartorius too has no time to think of home. He thinks only of expanding the certainties of human knowledge until the whole universe is swallowed up. He is typically contemptuous of Giberian’s wish to be buried on Earth - what sense does that make? Is he missing the worms? But from Tarkovsky’s perspective, it is vital to have a sense of where you come from. As Hari looks at the picture, she clearly understands what it is like to come home, although perhaps she feels sad at the thought that there is nowhere for her to come home to or that her sense of what it might be like to come home is something she has stolen from someone else (the “real” Hari).

Kelvin’s sense of where he comes from grows during the film. He (and the other scientists on Solaris) learn many painful lessons, but being so far from the Earth also teaches them to love it and to accept their need for it. Giberian comes up with the idea of tying bits of paper around the ventilation ducts to create a noise that sounds like the rustling of leaves, and, while Snaut and Kelvin embrace this simple innovation openly even Sartorius makes use of it on the quiet. It is a noble thing to go where no Man has gone before, but it looks more like a flight than a sacrifice if you refuse to accept the loss this means for you. How can you know whom you are or what you are doing if you have lost any sense of connection to where you came from?

More positively, Kelvin’s experience of Solaris allows him to see the Earth and humanity as something that can be loved precisely because it is something that could be lost. We like to think that in a sense the world did not exist before we humans became conscious of it; and similarly, it suits our narcissism to see the Ocean as passive and to focus on our efforts to make contact with it. But this is a one-sided and defensive perspective. The unfathomable mystery of Solaris confronts us with a world that does not need us. Sartorius thinks we must understand the Ocean because it is Man’s destiny to understand Nature - as if our not understanding Solaris is Solaris’ or the universe’s problem rather than our own. Kelvin comes to understand that we ourselves are just a small part of Nature, but that still makes us something precious and worthy of love.

Sartre said that hell is other people, but he was wrong. Hell is our difficulty in dealing with our need for other people. This is the slow and painful journey Kelvin takes. He starts the film an intensely lonely figure, but his experiences on Solaris force him to confront the reality of his relationship with Hari. They also bring him back to earlier relationships and earlier losses. It is hard to know quite what to make of Kelvin’s mother and of his relationship to her - she is loving and beautiful, but she also seems slightly cold and distant. Kelvin clearly loved his mother, but while she was alive, he seems to have resented his need for her and when she died, he seems to have felt desperately abandoned. After a radiogram of his thoughts have been transmitted to the Ocean, he falls into a fever and in a strange dream is at last able to have contact with his mother that goes beyond his anger and recognises his need, but in a realistic way that his loving and not-too-bad mother can actually meet.

And then there’s the father. If Kelvin’s relationship to his mother is troubled, what hope is there for his relationship to his father? As with his mother, Kelvin has great difficulty acknowledging what his father means to him or the pain he feels at the distance between them. But, unlike his colleagues, Kelvin has a chance to go home; and the film ends with an image of him accepting his father and his father accepting him. So perhaps life is not just about focussing on your mission and forgetting everything else, maybe it is about feeling things and growing. Maybe contact with the Other is possible and bearable after all.

Solaris, dir, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972