Solaris vs Solaris vs Solaris

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+ 1 L

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/p/polaris/album-music-from-the-adventures-of-pete-pete.jpg

Nevertheless...

http://www.atariage.com/2600/boxes/b_Solaris_Red_front.jpg

Never played this, afaik.

http://www.atariage.com/2600/boxes/b_Solaris_Red_front.jpg

Yeah, the atari game isn't so hot.

Lem himself thought the tarvkovsky wasn't faithful - basically it focuses on the romantic/psychological elements, almost ignoring the scientific and epistemological ones, the idea of a truly incomprehensible alien 'other', which is really the central theme.

http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/qsolarisq-by-tarkovsky/176-lem-about-the-tarkovskys-adaptation

Science vs humanity vs romance. Haven't seen the earlier film version (has anyone?).
Lem's take on Tarkovsky is awesomely cranky!

I disagree - I think Tarkovsky discusses the epistemological problems precisely by not trying to explain Solaris. The inability of the scientific establishment and individual scientists to deal with the limits of knowledge remains on screen. I also think the psychological framework is central to the book - the discussion of the brain's inability to check itself for insanity manages to cover both problems simultaneously.

I think lots of novelists, while being aware that their readers will have different readings of their work, are horrified when they see someone else's interpretation given flesh.

x-post

Well u know I can understand being precious about yr baby.

the book, easy. hate Tarkovsky's version, never bothered with Clooney's.

he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment.

oh snaps. love Lem, such a darkly funny dude.

Voting Solaris

Science vs humanity vs romance. Haven't seen the earlier film version (has anyone?).
Lem's take on Tarkovsky is awesomely cranky!

10 minutes of the '68 version with english subs
http://youtu.be/Y3vWid1xAYw
looks stagey but interesting

http://www.walyou.com/img/solaris-1.jpg

???

Roadside Picnic vs Stalker vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I actually love all three of the major versions. Never even heard of the 68 tv one before.

The Tarkovsky is freshest in my mind, but I think the Soderbergh version intentionally evades the larger epistemological issues by focusing on a more insular or hermetic and flashback based approach--basically removing the "objective correlative" that exists in the other two. so it's basically presenting the experience of being beset by grief and guilt and the suffocating and sterile environment that one finds oneself in as a result of that.

so while something big is obviously lost in that approach i think it's a more emotionally unsettling film than, say, Melancholia

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I actually love all three of the major versions. Never even heard of the 68 tv one before.

ummm, Tarkovsky or you're a troll

LEM

Lem! *bangs knife and fork on table* Lem!! *pushes everything off table in one motion and jumps up on it* LEM!!!!!!!!

I'll be interested to read the new translation of the book, the existing one is a bit clunky.

Is the new translation really all that? Maybe it is time to just man up and learn Polish

Think Natascha McElhone is being given short shrift.

I demand a recount..

http://www.cinemovies.fr/images/data/photos/G6131626944885.jpg

That was perfect casting.

Glad the temptation was resisted to call this thread POLLaris

i have fallen asleep whilst watching both the movie adaptations, and most likely whilst reading the book too

the same thing later happened to the Strugatskys when Tarkovsky made Stalker based on The Roadside Picnic and dished up the sort of stew nobody understands but the stew is duly sad and gloomy instead

heh

i feel like there's something very defensive in lem's framing of it as a grand epistemological question, because i get the feeling that the book shies back from that. i don't know. it seems like the book's big what-if is 'what if there existed some process of physics which would - in a manner not motivated by any kind of essential consciousness - throw up convincing simulacra of human beings', with the question being then whether human consciousness is of any innate value. but i don't know if that's a very interesting what-if, because the whole narrative just leaves the decks stacked. and tarkovsky's framing it in more 'human' terms and certainly more social ones is a more valuable way of illuminating it, maybe.

the book has pleasures of its own, though. the accounts of 'solaristics' are fun in a what-everyone-took-from-borges way. it's more recognisably a big dumb object effort and i enjoy those.

Lem. Tartovsky flick was okay, never saw the Soderbergh.

Xp I think you've misread the book's what-if there. It's not some process of physics that's throwing up these simulacra, it's some conscious being, in an effort - perhaps - to understand us, but our motivations and very existence even are as alien to it as it is to us. The same theme of utterly alien consciousness, and even more generally of things forever beyond our ken, is also dealt with in 'His Master's Voice', where he approaches it from a political rather than psychological angle.

well, that's an even duller what-if. -- i read hmv pretty much the same way but think that book does a better job of it. -- it's also utterly depressing.

Altho I suppose whether human consciousness is of any innate value is definitely a question one can take away, they're both pretty bleak takedowns about our estimation of our own place in the grand scheme of things.

like basically i think the kind of utterly alien consciousness tarkovsky would like his book to be about is a contradiction in terms? so whenever i read it i end up trying to make it fit into my version of it, even as that doesn't quite work.

Oops didn't see yr post before mine, yeah they're not cheery books. Dull? Idk it's not something often espoused in sf and i think the way he tackles it is pretty masterful.

i thought the remake was great aside from the wacky stoned bearded doofus who seemed to be a distant cousin of the wackier less-stoned bearded doofus from The Abyss.
it was very T and O too but it's 10 years old so i guess that wasn't such a 'thing' back then.

Glad the temptation was resisted to call this thread POLLaris

Damn, I wish I had thought of that.

Roadside Picnic is better than Lem's Solaris.
And Stalker is better than Solaris (Tarkovsky-wise)

But that's a different question, I suppose.

Natalya Bondarchuk is hotter than Natascha McElhone (and a better actress too)

Maybe, but the latter has those jeepers creepers peepers for the extra added unworldly effect

Think I may up preferring the prior translation of Solaris the same way I prefer the under-thirty-minute Capitol Beatle albums

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Solaris won!!!

I was worried there for a second.

It's polls like this that me proud to be a humanoid.