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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

This might be seen as heresy by many but: if you're not a fan of the glacial pace of very old films, you may enjoy Clooney's remake more.

This takes nothing away from the original film, which inspired so much of modern scifi. But if you were raised on modern sci fi, Tarkovsky's original is a hard watch. You might feel the same in the nineties listening to Sonic Youth's 80s grunge, or reading Lord of the Rings after you've read the Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones books, or playing System Shock 1 after growing up on Bioshock and Prey.

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It's not that the glacial pace is a feature of old films. It's a feature of Tarkovsky's movies and even today some directors use similar techniques.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis has a much faster pace and it's a scifi movie from 1927.

The newer film stands on its own pretty well, it doesn't really need to be compared against the previous film. There are enough ideas behind Solaris that yet another film could be made based on that material (and probably will be, someday).

The most obvious variation would be shorter still: a film similar to Clooney's remake, but without quite so much development of what was already a dead character (Kelvin's ex) and without the softening of what was objectively a pretty bleak ending. But I think the newer film actually works really well. All the other people who were seated in the theater when I went to see it during its theatrical release seemed to feel the same way. All three of them.

I agree, the Soderbergh/Clooney version is fine as well. Though I wish movie adoptions of books wouldn't so often replace bleak endings with less bleak ones. It feels almost patronizing. Like a mother who reads a book to her children for which she thinks they are slightly too young, so she replaces more serious parts with watered down fragments she invented herself.

It's been so long since I read the novel, my recollection of the end might be wrong. In my memory Kelvin is still alive at the end of the novel, which makes it technically a less bleak ending than what Soderbergh did (although that last scene in the film puts a more benevolent spin on the situation than is warranted, which didn't quite ring true). But it might be time to revisit all of that, I wouldn't mind reading it again.

Watching the film again is easy, but the novel is an interesting case. Apparently the best English translation (the only direct translation to English) is not available in print, only as an audio book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)

The ending in the book is more rational and disillusioned. Bleak is probably the wrong term. Though for me it is now also long since I watched the movies or read the book.

The direct Johnston translation is also available as ebook, the Kindle version uses it. I just looked at it and the writing is still not super fluent for my taste. But this might be due to the fact that it was a mid-early Lem novel. In his later (especially more humorous) books, his writing style got much more witty and playful.

Thanks. If the kindle version is cheap I'll pick it up.

I think the Clooney film is excellent, and can be enjoyed without knowing anything about Lem's book. And it just might be enough to make you want to dig in to the source material.

Will second. Viola Davis' performance is worth it alone along with a character twist.

>But if you were raised on modern sci fi, Tarkovsky's original is a hard watch

Most good things in art are hard and require some work.

If you want the easy version, you're missing a lot.

You'd be better served to be listening to Sonic Youth's 80s records instead of me-too grunge during the nineties too.

I don’t know re: Grunge. I feel like in the mid nineties Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins were already taking grunge to new places and Sonic Youth had evolved into something else entirely - Diamond Sea was the first Sonic Youth track I heard and was this weird desolate digital thing.

I fell asleep to the remake, but was transfixed when I saw the original for the first time around age 7. Sure, it's long, but to me at least it hits much harder. The new one doesn't feel like it is about Solaris (the planet), to me. It feels much less interesting.

Then again I'm old enough to perhaps be more used to the pace of it.

the issue I had with the Soderbergh/Clooney version is it almost stops being about Solaris at all, and is instead just about the individuals.

What was brilliant about the novel (to me) was that it was about our inability to understand of communicate with the alien intellegence, while at the same time, we are unable to understand and communicate with others of our own species. The two threads mirror each other, and almost completely removing one, leaves it a less interesting story. The Tarkovsy version doesn't do a great job of this either, but Solaris plays a bigger role, so you at least get an inkling of the ocean mirroring our own inadaquacies.

> This might be seen as heresy by many but: if you're not a fan of the glacial pace of very old films, you may enjoy Clooney's remake more.

I agree. I have both versions, and while it would be easy to knock the latter given the reputation of the former, I think they're both good in different ways.

For long paced old school sci-fi, The Andromeda Strain (1971) is a much better watch. I wouldn't even call Solaris (1976) a proper sci-fi movie, it's a philosophical drama set in sci-fi space milieu.

I'm with you. It's a serious snoozefest. It is not cinema so I disagree about generational shift*. The problem is foundational. It's a novel, not a film. Interior space of man is not very cinematic from the outside. (Yes, I know few giants of film disagree.)

* p.s.: Take The Andromeda Strain (1971)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/

imho, an absolute gem of Sci-Fi that still works. This is also a 'slow pace' film, there is also a great deal of matter happening inside the characters' heads, but it still works as film. (hn bonus: CalTech and JPL are in the credits.)

Part of the problem is that there are multiple slow "art sequences" in the film that seem to have no clear purpose and run counter to Tarkovsky's usual dislike of intentional symbolism in film. Some seem like they might have been intended as homages to other sci-fi films, especially Kubrick's 2001.

Apparently he "disliked"* Kubrik's film:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/andrei-tarkovsky-solaris-artist...

* "absolutely hated" was also mentioned /g

Which "art sequences" do you mean? The zero g part with Bach and Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow" is one of the most iconic scenes in film history (in my book).

The pace is a key element of Tarkovskys style

I saw the original.

I'd rather watch a glacier.

I've seen both the original and the remake and enjoyed the remake a lot more.

The original was IMHO plagued with useless lengths and a somewhat pretentious/cryptic tone.

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