Sci-Fi '72: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

The fourth film in the original Planet of the Apes motion picture cycle is also the most overtly violent and controversial entry you'll discover in the classic, five-strong franchise. 

Schaffner's original Planet of the Apes (1968) offered an anti-nuke, pro-peace message to top them all with that trademark, shocking Statue of Liberty climax. The fallen, rusted Lady Liberty was a tragic visual reminder that man had ruined himself and his posterity over clashing fleeting political ideologies (CCCP vs. U.S.A.). "God damn you all to Hell!" 

Even Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970) -- the sophomore series entry which ended in the Earth's final obliteration -- was anti-violence in thematic thrust. The first sequel gazed at the polarization between races -- in this case simian and mutant races -- and suggested that if we didn't all learn to "get along" (and get over our naive belief that our team is God's Chosen...) our world would become but a burned-out, lifeless cinder. Dark? Indeed. But encouraging of violence....certainly not. The film even featured the equivalent of college-age, Vietnam War Era, pro-peace protesters. Only in this topsy-turvy world, they were intellectual chimpanzees... 

By contrast, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes -- written by Paul Dehn (and based on characters by Pierre Boulle) -- is dramatically different in both tone and theme from these cinematic predecessors. 

The best of the four sequels to Planet of the Apes -- and a great science fiction film even as a stand-alone venture -- director J. Lee Thompsons' film suggests in unblinking, brutal terms that in the case of subjugation, oppression, slavery and injustice, violent revolution is the only solution to rectify the problem. In the words of the film, despotic masters won't be kind until they are "forced" to be kind. To force kindness, your people have to be free. To have freedom...you must possess power.  To possess power, you must revolt!

This notion of violent revolution as panacea to matters of social inequality in America didn't just arise from the ether. Like all great works of art, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, released 50 years ago in 1972, strongly reflects the time period during which it was produced. And from 1965 through the early 1970s, the United States suffered a number of debilitating, disturbing and violent race riots in many of its most populous urban areas. Some African-Americans took up arms, looted merchants, and destroyed property in an attempt to express their grievances with the social injustice they witnessed and endured. 

The Watts Riots occurred in Los Angeles in the year 1965, and 4,000 rioters were arrested by the police. 34 rioters were killed, and over 1,000 were injured. A political commission convened after the riot judged that the outbreak of violence had been caused by the following conditions: racial inequality in Los Angeles, a high jobless rate, bad schools, heavy-handed police tactics, and pervasive job and housing discrimination. 

The LAPD chief at the time of the lawlessness didn't exactly help calm things down either. He referred to the rioters as "monkeys in the zoo," according to Social Problems, 1968, pages 322-341.

The Watts Riots did not represent an isolated incident, either. There was also the Washington D.C. Riot of 1968, the Baltimore Riot of the same year, and the Chicago Riot too. And -- perhaps most dramatically -- there was the "Detroit Rebellion" of 1967 which lasted for five days (during a hot July) and saw 7,200 arrests, 40 million dollars worth of property damage, and over 2,000 buildings burned to the ground. The root causes of this violent spree were -- again after the fact -- deemed the same as those that had been observed in Watts. Unemployment by blacks doubled that of whites (15.9% to 8%) in Detroit; the community had little access to adequate medical facilities; there was distinct "spatial segregation" in the city; and 134,000 jobs had been lost over the previous decade-and-a-half. 

In toto, half-a-million people were involved in the various race riots of the late 1960s. To contextualize that sum total, this number is equivalent to the number of American soldiers serving in the War in Vietnam. (Planet of the Apes as American Myth, Eric Greene, 1998, page 79). This huge figure alone should put truth to the lie that the riots were but isolated incidents, or somehow simply involved career criminals. Clearly, this was a social movement, not a crime spree.

From this turbulent era of violence, riot and protest was formulated Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, a sci-fi film which projects an ape slave uprising in technological North America in the far-flung future year of 1991. 

As also suggested by author Greene, the film's text is actually "key for re-reading the Watts Riots as a justifiable reaction to intolerable oppression, rather than just an outbreak of lawless abandon." (Planet of the Apes as American Myth, Eric Greene, 1998, page 16). In Dehn's script, the rebelling apes are even specifically referred to as "rioters."

Shot on the futuristic-looking campus of the University of California at Irvine, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is set in "the future," in an America that has transformed itself into a rigid, fascist state. Nightly curfews are enforced rigorously. Heavily-armed police officers patrol the streets. American citizens are subjected to torture by the State (via a device called an authenticator) without any respect to due process of law. Announcements to citizens by the "Watch Commander" play regularly in the background on the heaivily-guarded city streets...the ubiquitous voice of Big Brother. Labor demonstrations and gatherings are ruthlessly put down by military police.

Because all dogs and cats have died (killed by a space plague in 1985), apes have replaced these beloved animals. First as beloved pets but now as slaves. 

These slave apes are "conditioned" to obey human masters, and are punished via "conditioning" when they fail in their tasks or simply don't perform fast enough. 

A populist human movement resists the enslavement of apes...because the simians are (involuntarily) taking away their jobs. GO HUMAN, NOT APE, reads one placard. SLAVES ARE SCABS reads another. UNFAIR TO WAITERS screams one more. 

We saw signs and visceral protests like this in District 9 (2009) too: a nativist fear that ethnic "newcomers" are here to steal jobs, depress wages and tax our already overburdened system.

In Conquest of the Planet of the Ape's dynamite, extended opening sequence -- shot entirely in the shadow of 1970's "futurism" architecture -- the viewer is introduced to the rules and locales of this cold, fascist world. Apes are trained en mass in the public square, running a gauntlet of tasks at the bidding of armed, uniformed masters. They are constantly instructed and disciplined in cruel terms. "Go!" "No!" "Do!" It is the ape's job to serve, but not to question. The slaves are also forced to breed, but not allowed to maintain families.

In keeping with the overarching metaphor of the race riots in America, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes further contextualizes the apes' 1991 slavery in terms of the historical African-American experience in our country.

We see, for instance, a racially-charged image of prejudice: a slave ape obediently shining his master's shoes (a shoeshine boy). We also see apes transported from their native habitats (Borneo) against their will to serve in the United States, via ships. Again, this is an echo of Ghana's "Gate of No Return," and the involuntary journey of many slaves from Africa to our shores...as prisoners. 

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes even depicts slave apes in neck shackles, and auctioned off in a public square to the highest human bidder. If you've ever toured the Old Slave Mart in Charleston, SC, you'll recall that such auctions are not fiction; and that Conquest of the Planet of the Apes does not exaggerate the plight or treatment of slaves in our history.

Conquest of the Planet of the Ape's screenplay draws specific parallels to the African-American slave experience, not merely with these resonant images, but also in the presentation of an African-American character named MacDonald (Hari Rhodes) who serves as the aide to Governor Breck.

McDonald is sympathetic to the ape cause and the ape leader, Caesar (Roddy McDowall) notes that McDonald "above all people," should understand him. "Above all people" is an explicit verbal reminder of MacDonald's racial identity and status as the descendant of a black slave.

Later, one of the oppressive aides in Governor Breck's dictatorial regime notes that the compassionate McDonald must be an "ape lover." Not to be excessive, but this is a variation of the ugly epithet "ni**er lover." Another aide replies caustically (about McDonald), "Don't it figure?" Again, these are veiled, bigoted references to McDonald's skin color and heritage as a black man. Governor Breck even terms MacDonald a "bleeding heart," equating him with the position of civil-rights-fighting "liberal" in this battle.

The villain of the piece, Governor Breck (Don Murray) finally informs ape leader Caesar why he hates apes, and his detailed explanation is one built on the backbone of racial hatred; a belief that the "other" (black man or ape...) is inferior to him. Breck calls Caesar "the savage who must be shackled in chains...You poison our guts. When we hate you, we're hating the dark side of ourselves."

Our question becomes: is Breck referring to the "dark side" of human nature (which certainly doesn't seem to fit the kindly, innocent apes; especially those like Lisa...), or is the governor actually making another coded statement about skin color. "The dark side" might actually be interpreted to mean dark-skinned.

What remains rather audacious about Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is that most audiences -- white, black, what-have-you -- register the subjugated apes (and Caesar) as the unambiguous heroes of the piece; as the wronged party, even though it is the entire human race that stands to lose in any violent revolution. 

Perhaps such reflexive identification with the underdog, with the exploited, speaks to the inherent goodness and fairness of the American people. Intellectually, we immediately reject racism and oppression, and so therefore easily sympathize with the put-upon, subjugated apes. 

Yet, ironically, that's not at all what happened regarding the real life riots of the 1960s. Nixon's "silent majority" found it easier to disregard the rioters as lawbreakers and opportunists than acknowledge them as fighters against injustice; fighters for equal rights in American cities of consdierable social disparity. Of course, a movie allows us to experience things that we don't see or understand in real life. As viewers, we saw in Conquest torture, degradation, inequality and other moral sins. But how many of us went to Watts to live? Or Detroit?

At 88 minutes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is a short, fast and brutal film, but it is also one of the most effective and direct science-fiction movies of the era. Many of the visuals reinforce the pervasive theme of governmental subjugation. 

I'm particularly fond of an artful shot that visually "entraps" Caesar and his kindly master, Armando (Ricardo Montalban) within the parted, uniformed legs of an armed soldier. The images tells us how the State surrounds and dominates the characters.

I also appreciate the manner in which the inspirational Caesar wordlessly transmits his message of total resistance (and then rebellion...) to his kindred ape slaves. Caesar simply appears on the scene (sometimes in close-up; sometimes in medium shot), and then there's a quick pan and zoom to a slave ape...and then the slave ape very actively rebels; dumping garbage, dropping books, even starting a fire. This brand of cause-and-effect shot is repeated again and again in the latter half of the movie, and it's a perfect visual signifier for the notion that you can't kill a powerful idea. Now, Caesar can't literally be everywhere at once; but his message of freedom and liberty transmits at light speed across the slave population. The visual approach reveals how powerful and widespread the idea of liberty can be in a population that lacks it.

The final sequence of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes depicts the specifics of the ape uprising. It is a clash between riot police (with shields, guns, and helmets) and armed, screeching, enraged apes. This extended, and very violent sequence diagrams "the slave's right to punish his persecutor." The sequence ends with mankind fallen, and Caesar assuming command, ironically, from the pulpit of the human civic center. Behind him -- in the background of the frame -- skyscrapers burn out of control. 

Again, given the context of the Detroit Rebellion or the Watts Riots, this image is meaningful. People watching the nightly news during those real-life conflagrations had also witnessed "the night of the fires" as Caesar called it, and wondered: would order be restored? Or was this the dawn of a new order? The order of the oppressed...

20th Century Fox apparently grew concerned that Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was too overtly a political film., and took steps to de-fang the social commentary it offered.

In the original, scripted ending (available now on blu-ray), Caesar announced, basically, that apes would now rule the world just as cruelly as man had ruled it. But a last minute bit of post-production editing changed the tenor of Caesar's pronouncement. After his anger is released,Caesar relents and notes that even the inhuman (the apes...) can prove "humane" in their domination over mankind. It's a quick philosophical turnaround and doesn't entirely work. In fact, your head may spin from the shift. But still, you can understand the compromise. The studio didn't want Conquest of The Planet of the Apes -- in the environment of race riots -- to be interpreted as an incitement to real-life violence.

Still, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes ends on a haunting, unforgettable note. Flames consume the the futuristic city, and the planet of the apes is born. And as the end credits roll, the screeching of the victorious apes continues unabated. No closing music softens this shrill sound. The night of the fires continues into an unknown future...

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes re-interprets the Watts Riots and other race violence of the 1960s as one possible and even legitimate response to entrenched racial inequality in America. Caesar tells Mr. McDonald that the only means left to him and his people (the apes) is, indeed, revolution. "We cannot be free until we have power. How else can we achieve it?"

MacDonald then insists that Caesar's attempt at revolution is doomed to failure. "Perhaps, this time," Caesar replies, indicating that this initial riot will not be the last attempt. This response further contextualizes the race riots in America: they exist not as separate, individual, isolated incidents of rampant lawlessness...but as organized, necessary steps along the pathway from slavery to freedom, to total equality. The result is an incendiary, subversive and endlessly intelligent film; one that asks us to gaze at what Caesar calls a myth: "the idea that human beings are kind."

Like District 9 (2009), Conquest of The Planet of the Apes judges man by the way he treats those populations he controls or dominates. Namely the slaves, the minorities, the immigrants, or the ethnic "others." 

In both films, there's an implied warning to entrenched power (one made much more overt in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes):  

The tables can be turned. 

Or over-turned...

Sci-Fi '72: Z.P.G. (Zero Population Growth)

In 1968, author Paul R. Erlich had an unexpected best seller with a book entitled The Population Bomb.  It sold over two million copies and yet was vociferously derided by the forces of the extreme right and the extreme left in America.  

In short, Erlich's book suggested that if birth-rate trends continued unabated, over-population would cause mass starvation and country-wide die-outs in the 1970s and 1980s.  

Since we survived those years and decades without any such famine or mass-deaths, it is tempting to gaze at The Population Bomb today as just another end-of-the-word scenario that didn't come to pass. At the time of publication, critics widely termed The Population Bomb "alarmist" for what they termed the author's wild "predictions."

But jokes, political agendas, and critiques aside, The Population Bomb remains an initiative that contains at least some kernel of currency in our world today; the idea of Earth's "finite capacity to sustain human civilization," as the author himself put it in a defense entitled The Population Bomb Revisited, available in The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development. 

In terms of film theory, if we recall the axiom that movies universally mirror their social-political contexts, then The Population Bomb is certainly a major "bugaboo" and influencing factor in the late 1960s and early 1970s genre cinema. This period -- pre-Star Wars (1977) --  was a highly inventive one for filmmakers, who veritably obsessed on dystopian futures and apocalyptic scenarios.  

Aside from the brilliant Planet of the Apes films (1968-1973), the social commentary of  John Boorman's Zardoz (1974), and the satirical Death Race 2000 (1975) there were several major films of this epoch that explicitly broached the topic of overpopulation and suggested (mostly horrible...) ways to "sustain human civilization" in the event of planetary disaster.  

Among these  notable efforts were George Lucas's visually-dynamic THX-1138 (1971), the macabre Soylent Green (1973), the colorful and action-packed Logan's Run (1976) and the subject of today's review, ZPG: Zero Population Growth (1972).

In some ways, ZPG was just as casually dismissed by critics of the day as had been The Population Bomb.  

The New York Times' Vincent Canby wrote disparagingly of the film that it was "a sometimes funny (unintentionally), untimely meditation on the earth's over-population problems, set in some future smog-bound England where the World Deliberation Council has decreed that for 30 years there shall be no babies born. Women mad for motherhood who refuse to be content with mechanical dolls programmed to say "Mummy, I love you Mummy," take to giving birth in cellars and stealing each other's offspring."

Even in science fiction circles today, ZPG is rarely discussed or debated, despite the fact that it is an intriguing and rather forward-looking sci-fi film. A grave atmosphere of despair hangs over the entire picture, and the film by director Michael Campus paints an unforgettable portrait of a totalitarian society that controls every aspect of the citizenry's day-to-day life.  

Most importantly, however, ZPG is worthwhile for the main questions it zeroes in on. What sacrifice is too great to save the planet? And secondly, should one generation be the one to carry that enormous burden?

"We conquered cancer and then heart disease...and for what?"

A hovering government craft announces the Zero Birth Edict; and forecasts Blade Runner's (1982) megapolis. 

Set in an unspecified future, ZPG begins as "The Society" and the "World Deliberation Council" announce over a smog-filled metropolis the inception of the "Zero Birth Edict."  For thirty years, no women will be allowed to bear children. Women already pregnant are to be registered with "The Department of State Security."

If, during this thirty year ban on child bearing, a woman does become pregnant, she has two options.  She can report to an "Ab Lab" (an Abortion Lab), or have a home abortion courtesy of a new bathroom appliance apparently installed in all houses.

At home abortion appliance, in close-up.

In the latter case, the pregnant woman need only press her swollen uterus against a kind of belt-like radiation device (glowing red) and hit the "abort" button. 

If, however, a woman should choose to go to term and is discovered, she and her husband (and the child too...) are captured, then suffocated inside transparent, mobile tents, in full view of the disapproving community-at-large.  

Those citizens who report such "criminals" are rewarded with bonus food rations. In the world of ZPG, child-bearing is "the gravest crime" imaginable.

Alas, the "Zero Birth Edict" is only the latest indignity that this unfortunate culture must suffer.  The surfeit of smog in the atmosphere has rendered the air largely unbreathable, and outside, all citizens must wear face masks, or make occasional stops at air stations strategically located throughout the city.

And overpopulation also means long lines to visit the local museum. The wait to get in -- for an hour, no less -- is four years, according to the dialogue. At the museum, you can also see extinct species like cats and dogs...stuffed, and featured in action-poses in dioramas.  

Another grim scene reveals a restaurant overflowing with patrons. Diners-in-waiting stand everywhere, surrounding seated diners, looking forever over their shoulders as the lucky ones eat first.

Despite the difficulties of this future, many companies have discovered a way to make a profit in such dark times. 

 The "MetroMart" is a TV-based department store-- that forecasts the Internet and online stores -- and makes a killing selling artificial Christmas trees and other rarities. And then there's "Babyland," a store where mechanical dolls are sold to men and women who long to be parents.  

The store's motto: "You come to us as a man and a woman, you leave as a family."

One of the best and most horrifying scenes in the film involves Babyland, and the desperation of prospective parents as they meekly accept plastic automatons as their "children."   These child dolls -- who make whirring, mechanical sounds when they turn to look at you -- are the stuff of nightmares. They walk, they talk, they demand attention, and their eyes are as dead as you can imagine.

The heart and soul of ZPG involves a young couple, Russ McNeil (Oliver Reed) and Carol McNeil (Geraldine Chaplin), who break the Zero Birth Edict and decide to conceive a child. They do so, I hasten to add, without really thinking out the consequences for their baby. Because of the Society's law on children, Carol must give birth in an old civil defense bunker. And worse than that, the child can never -- in his entire lifetime -- leave the bunker, for fear of discovery.

Russ and Carol's world has gotten very, very small.

The birth scene in ZPG is crafted artistically, if also in grim fashion.  It is a natural birth, since no doctors can be present. The director, Campus, charts the delivery entirely by focusing on the silhouettes moving over the bunker's stone wall.  It's like a weird cave birth from man's prehistory, a strange futuristic book-end to a long-forgotten and humble beginning.  

There's also a terrific shot in the film of Russ and Carol (pictured above) -- looking defeated -- inside that civil defense bunker. Their world is now tiny; they are visually, metaphorically and literally trapped, even as they seek to escape The Society's Zero Birth Edict.

After the baby is born, the infant develops a fever, and Russ and Carol's neighbors, George (Don Gordon) and Edna (Diane Cilento) discover what the McNeil's are hiding. Now these also-desperate, would-be parents want to "share" the baby, and their demands on Russ and Carol just grow and grow.  

This passage of ZPG is a truly horrifying look at human nature. George and Edna resort to blackmail. They let Russ and Carol know that they could report them to The Society at a moment's notice, if the parents don't cave to their demands. This is ugly but also strangely believable behavior.

Refusing to give up or share their child, Russ and Carol make a last ditch effort to escape their neighbors and the rules of The Society...

"It is as it is..."

 Bonnie is ready to greet her new parents at "Babyland." 

There's not a single action-sequence or consequential effects sequence in ZPG, save for establishing shots of the city and the overhead vehicles that patrol it and catch law-breakers. Yet this 1972 film is fully engaging because of Carol, the character played by Geraldine Chaplin. She is desperate to be a mother, but her society has determined that no woman in her generation will be permitted to play that role.  

There are no do-overs in life. We all get one shot on this mortal coil, and yet Carol -- for the sake of the planet -- is asked to give up her child-rearing years; her only shot. She is in her late twenties, perhaps, so will be too old in thirty years, to become a mother. The joy of being a parent is thus something forbidden; never for her to experience. This situation raises all kinds of moral questions.

Does the good of "The Society" and the need for the human race to endure outweigh the personal dreams and aspiration of one woman, or one man, for that matter?   

And secondly, why is it so hard for Carol to share her joy -- her baby -- with one other couple, once she has staked out her position of defiance?  

Make no mistake, the movie lands firmly on Carol's side: she is right to reject the inhuman State that dominates her life; but there's another side too, that the movie subtly hints at.

 

Carol (Chaplin) and Russ (Reed) conceive a child.

Perhaps what it all comes down to is that Carol and Russ are just regular married folks, even in this crazy, Orwellian future. They want to live free, as they wish, and want to experience what we all do, particularly parenthood.They aren't fantasy heroes, or larger-than-life icons. They're just regular folk.  

They make some big mistakes in the movie, but that fact only makes them all the more human, and therefore touching.  There are times during the film you will grow infuriated with Carol and Russ for their decisions -- and for their lack of planning -- but you also understand their deep desire to be a family.

I wrote above that ZPG is a forward-looking film, and in several ways, it predicts the future world of Blade Runner (1982).  For instance, the opening scenes of the film involve a slow, hovering craft that makes governmental announcements to the populace far below. In Blade Runner, it was a blimp advertising "off world opportunity" but the image in ZPG is very much a primitive version of the one in Scott's (superior and more accomplished) film.

"This is called a gas pump..."

In terms of our society today, well, we've already seen some of strange things come to pass in the last decade, and ZPG is prophetic.

The idea of citizens turning in and spying on fellow citizens in ZPG is oddly reminiscent of the Bush Administration's proposal for "TIPS" post 9/11, the so-called "Terrorism Information and Prevention System" of 2002. It was designed to help "every American become active in the homeland security effort," much in the same way that the Society uses informants to report violators in the film.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are scenes in ZPG during which citizens are indoctrinated by movies that describe how poorly previous generations selected their diets and portion sizes.  In other words, "The Society" of the film tells people exactly what to eat and how much to eat. And, of course, there are those on the right side of the political spectrum who feel that th Obama Administration took the first steps down that same road.

So there's ample fodder here to read the film both as a critique of both right wing excess (particularly in the depiction of the companyies profiting off of the misery of Zero Birth Edict) and left wing excess, namely in the depiction of a Nanny State gone berserk.

But beyond questions of left and right, and of today and yesterday, ZPG is fascinating because of the questions it raises about community vs. the individual.  What would you give up to save the planet?   

Would you surrender your right to become a parent? 

Furthermore, what would you give up for the pursuit of your liberty in general? And if you pursued that liberty, what if you risked the very future in the process?

I can't declare that ZPG is always smart or knowing about the answers to these questions, only that it raises them in a fascinating and frequently terrifying way. Most of all, I'd describe the movie as haunting.  

Late in the film, there is a montage of Carol, Russ, George and Edna playing with the "illegal" child. The images are joyous: the realization of a dream, of an aspiration.  But the montage is scored with sinister, nay diabolical music that grows more and more unsettling as the sequence reaches its crescendo.

In microcosm, this scene gets at the problem of our human condition (and human contradictions).  We want our species to survive, but we also want the freedom to live life our way. Carol and Russ want a baby, period; they don't think about the future. There is no sense of balance, of weighing immediate gratification versus long-term stability. I mean, what kind of life will that baby have in this world, especially if other parents make the same choice as Carol and Russ?

Then the world would end; the planet couldn't sustain everyone. And yes, that would mean an end to the corrupt, Big Brother-esque Society, but also an end to love, and to all future generations of children.

I also appreciate how the film adopts the perspective of the future in several important, satirical scenes set at a museum.  On display in one such sequence is a 1971 gas tank and automobile, utilized as an object lesson for how the 20th century culture used up resources without any thought to the future. A later scene terms industrial leaders "inept" and even "criminal" for fostering the destruction of our environment, and the wholesale extinction of so many species.    

If a future like this does come to pass, it will be us -- the Boomers, the X'ers, etc. -- who are under such a microscope; who are judged for the way we live today. Right now, I'm not certain the future will judge us so kindly, but as always, I hope there's time to reverse that judgment.

Not an easy or simple movie to parse; ZPG is an underrated science fiction gem, and one well worth seeking out.  But don't go in expecting action and special effects.  Here, it's all about the concept and the characters, and a grim vision of the future that I hope is as erroneous as The Population Bomb's was in 1968.

Sci-Fi '72: Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) has often been termed one the greatest science fiction films ever made, and for good reason. 

This Russian film is not merely the tale of a strange alien encounter on a distant space station, but -- according to scholar Peter Wagstaff in Border Crossing: Mapping Identities in Modern Europe -- “a pre-text for reflections on man’s roots on Earth, his place in the God’s world, and his spirituality. Identity, home and attachment to our loved ones form the key themes to the film, for this is what makes us human….”

In exploring these powerful ideas, the film’s unshakable mood is one of “a subtly disquieting sci-fi ambience,” according to critic Paul Meehan (Tech-Noir: The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir. McFarland, 2008, page 135.)

In terms of specifics, Solaris explores the notion of “guests” or “visitors” created by an alien planet. Despite their origin, these visitors seem human and familiar, but can’t be…at least not according to our understanding of the universe. 

So then, how to treat them? 

As memories manifested in the flesh?

As sentient and individual beings modeled on our memories but now walking a new path, and therefore forging a new identity?

Or as -- simply -- Monsters from the Id? As embodiment of guilt, shame, and remorse?

This notion of inscrutable alien beings appearing in human guise for unfathomable purposes has proven to be one of the most enduring in the modern science fiction canon, from TV stories such as Space:1999’s “Matter of Life and Death” to movies like Event Horizon (1997) and Contact (1997).

After a fashion, however, Solaris and all these other similar stories get at an essential truth about mankind: We can’t really conceive of something truly alien. 

Instead, when we explore space, we are actively seeking to find reflections or images of mankind and his earthbound experiences.

This view-point, says Solaris, is limiting.  

We can’t grapple effectively with the mysteries of the universe because we have not yet grappled with the mysteries of our own identities and morality. Stanislaw Lem called these problems the "dark passage" of the human psyche in his literary work.

In the future space age, psychologist Kris Kelvin (Banionis) is tasked with visiting the alien world Solaris, and learning what has happened to the space station crew observing it.  

If he discovers that the planet is dangerous to human life, Kelvin can either remove the station from orbit and cease all “Solaristic” research or bombard the strange alien world with radiation in hopes of negating its strange influence over the human mind.

After saying goodbye to his father on Earth, Kelvin journeys to the space station and finds the disturbed scientists there bedeviled by strange “guests,” physical manifestations from their human memories.  

Kelvin’s own guest soon appears too: his long-dead wife, Hari (Bondarchuk). 

Hari’s presence threatens Kris’s sanity but also his very sense of morality. 

Are these guests created by Solaris actually living people -- shadows of half-forgotten memories -- or some other heretofore unexpressed element of human conscience?  

And why has Solaris sent them?

Is it an attempt to communicate, or something else?

On the surface, the brilliant, open-ended, Russian science fiction epic Solaris concerns mankind’s reckoning with an alien world, and its coruscating, planet wide ocean.  

Scrape the surface, however, and the Tarkovsky film also revolves around humanity’s steadfast inability to understand something “different.”

This is a result of a peculiar brand of selfishness, Solaris intimates. As mankind gazes upon any object or person, he sees only echoes of familiar experiences or memories.

Thus, we are intrinsically self-centered beings.

This notion is deliberately expressed in a line of dialogue in the film, repeated in the 2002 remake, which suggests: “We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror.”

How then, can we contextualize something that originates far away, and boasts a psyche or soul utterly unrelated to us and our experience here on terra firma?

Solaris suggests that such communication between human and alien is not truly possible. This conclusion about man’s inadequacy in the face of alien discovery is borne out in the film’s dialogue.  

“Everything we know about Solaris is negative,” says one scientist.  

 

“Everything has been confusing or incomprehensible,” declares another. 

Even in the scientists’ attempt to understand Solaris’s “psychology,” personal, human assumptions sneak in.  

“It has something to do with conscience,” concludes Gibarian.  

That’s his assumption based on his personal feelings of conscience, isn’t it? 

He concludes that the mystery of Solaris involves morality, because he questions his own morality.  

Again, he is seeing through a lens that he can’t escape, or even, truly, recognize.

In accordance with Gibarian’s remark, some scholars have described the film as kind of “inner quest” to find the path that allows an “ethical person to develop.” (The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film). 

But this is just one interpretation of the film themes, based on one character’s interpretation of the strange events.

I would suggest that Solaris’s real point is more opaque than that. Because man is ill-equipped to countenance a world or universe that does not include him at it its center, man instead seeks to destroy that which he doesn’t understand, or somehow transform it into an acceptable reflection, thereby destroying its essential “otherness.”  

Kelvin’s actions in the film support this theory. 

Part of his mission involves, essentially, lobotomizing Solaris with radiation if it proves to be dangerous to mankind.  But what does “dangerous to mankind” really mean? 

That the planet shows man something about himself that he doesn’t understand, or rather would not see?  

Is it dangerous to man, intrinsically, to be faced -- in the flesh -- with the consequences of his actions?  With the people he hurt, or was hurt by?

Accordingly, at the film’s denouement Kelvin broadcasts his brain encephalograms at Solaris, and it quickly re-shapes itself into a vision from his past, his home.  

Islands of Kelvin’s memory ascend from the planet-wide sea in patterns that conform to his (apparently subconscious) desire to return home. Once more, the truly alien is replaced by something human-oriented, something familiar. 

Kelvin has gotten his mirror, and yet he still can’t accept it totally, because his psyche can’t understand its nature.  But his urge here is undeniable: to kill that which is different and make it a “mirror” of his life.

What makes the events on the space station so terrifying to Kelvin and the others is that there is no way of deducing Solaris’s intent regarding the manifestation of the human-looking “guests.”  

Man’s science can’t determine the agenda, or even the nature of these guests. 

Are Hari and the other visitors alive in the sense that Kelvin is alive?  Even if they are formed only by the colored, personal memories of those who knew them on Earth, do these beings have souls, and therefore possess the spark of life?  

If so, Kelvin is a murderer because he dispatches the first “guest” version of Hari in a space pod, consigning her to eventual death in space. 

Again, the notion arises that man is so afraid of something he doesn’t immediately understand that his first response is to kill that thing.

Worse than that, the guests represent an unresolvable spiritual crisis. How can we be certain that we aren’t all but the sentient “memories” of other beings -- of God himself -- walking this planet, living this life? 

The “truth” about Hari exposes the truth of our existences too.  

We don’t know that we are any more “real” than she is.

Viewers also learn in the course of Solaris that the guests began to appear when the station first bombarded the planet with X-Rays. And secondly that the “guests” are made of neutrinos -- not atoms -- held stable by some force on the planet Solaris.  

One might thus conclude that Solaris sought contact after being contacted first (with the X-Rays) by man, and did so in a manner it thought would be comprehensible to humans.  

But the “guests” represent an imperfect or cracked mirror, and what they reflect upon the human characters is the unsettling sense that it is impossible for a human being to really know another human being.  

Therefore, Hari is not Hari, but a simulacrum originated in Kelvin’s (perhaps faulty) memory of her.  

Such ideas get to the very heart of what it means to exist, to be sentient, and to boast an individual soul. 

Can an alien being or planet reproduce those things which man holds to be the product and providence of divine creation?  

When confronted with such questions, Kelvin and the others want to look away, or squash that which is different and threatening to their self-centric beliefs about humanity and the universe.  

If Solaris can recreate us, down to our souls, of what use have we for God? 

And what use would God have for us?

Eventually, Kelvin comes to realize and accept that he can have Hari back in some form, but again, more questions arise from her presence.  

Can Solaris take away loss and give back love?  

Or is it providing only a facsimile of love? 

Is loving Hari a meaningful and true act, or a willful act of self-delusion?

“Man needs man,” one character asserts in the film, and that conclusion is simply another way of stating that we can’t encounter something truly alien, at least not when our imaginations are so limited, and so dominated by feelings of fear.  

So what Solaris really explores is the idea that in observing something natural, beautiful and beyond our understanding, we actually change, and perhaps destroy that very thing.

Bolstered by lyrical visuals, Solaris doesn’t possess much by way of stereotypical science fiction imagery. Beyond the corridors and environs of the space station, there is very little in the film that one would recognize as conventional special effects or space age production design or technology.

Yet Tarkovksy provides unique, symbolic imagery which substitutes for this kind of de rigueur brand of sci-fi presentation. 

For example, the film opens with a shot of green plants waving and swaying in placid water. The plant-life -- coruscating ever so gently but also constantly -- suggests tendrils reaching out to touch something else, and that’s a solid metaphor for the planet Solaris.  

One gets the sense from this evocative visual of something alive, but also something diffuse and eternal. 

The waves don’t stop lapping around the plants, and as the plants move, they don’t appear to possess an overt sign of individual intelligence or sentience.  

But there is some indication there -- in the repetition of the waves and the movement of the plants -- of some scale of non-human intelligence. There seems to be an order to it.

Later in the film, there is a long and apparently pointless scene of the astronaut Berton -- who has been to Solaris -- returning to the city by car.  

Tarkovsky’s camera follows the astronaut’s car through a conventional, labyrinthine, modern highway network at the foot of a major metropolis.  The scene goes on and on, beyond reason, beyond your patience, even, and is accompanied by weird sci-fi sound effects. 

Berton’s car darts through the darkness of long tunnels, and then comes into the light for several intervals. 

The scene also alternates between black-and-white and color photography.

This scene may prove baffling or be considered unnecessary to some audiences, but in another, wholly symbolic fashion, it seems to represent the ultimate unknow-ability of another person (or entity’s) mind, or sense of “truth.”  

There are occasions of light, punctuated by occasions of dark, and neuronal synapses (represented by the cars) seem to fire and move about at random, heading for unknown and unknowable destinations.

Tarkovsky’s use of color in the film hints beautifully at this unknowability. Film scholar Richard Misek writes that the film does not so much alternate between black-and-white and color as it “ebbs and flows through a range of chromatic alternatives.” 

Furthermore, he suggests that “Color floats through Solaris, unmoored from meaning.” (Chromatic Cinema: A History of Screen Color, page 174.).

What this visual approach suggests then, is the infinite variability of memory. 

Sometimes we remember images of people vividly, and sometimes those images are not so strong. Our memories run the spectrum from black-and-white or sepia-tone to Technicolor. 

But if our memories are not as vivid, then can we create “accurate” representations of the people we know?  Solaris suggests, through its use of color, that we can’t.  Instead, we create facsimiles, just as Solaris seems to create facsimiles.

This painterly approach to film has been duly noted by critics including Desson Howe, who writes: 

“Tarkovsky doesn't script so much as paint and compose; his work is a collection of living paintings, or visual symphonies, rather than narrative movies. Though "Solaris" is one of the late director's most plot-coherent and accessible films, its plot is still a mere conduit for mood, atmosphere and philosophy. With cinematographer Vadim Yusov's deft eye, Tarkovsky also creates some incredible images…His pictures, and his sounds -- such as the symphonic drip of raindrops in a wooded pond -- tell more than just the immediate story; they rejuvenate the mind.” (The Washington Post, June 1, 1990.)

Perhaps Solaris’s inaugural image -- of the almost serene, eternal water -- represents the planet Solaris, and the busy, complex light-and-dark highway of Russia (actually, Tokyo, I believe...) represents the human mind, always on the hunt for answers, always looking for another route to understanding or knowledge. One can detect how these images, and these thought processes – eternal and placid vs. eternally busy -- contrast one another, yin-and-yang like.

No matter the particular interpretation Solaris, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, is a dazzling and memorable science fiction film, and one of the ten best genre movies of the 1970;s.  While many great films imagine what the future will bring, or convincingly portray space battles in another galaxy, Solaris reminds us that when we go to outer space, we will still be human, and therefore saddled with all the same questions of morality and existence that we face now.  

In other words, in the space age we will travel a very long way to meet alien life, but when we finally countenance it, we will still want to see only ourselves in it.  We will still desire that mirror.