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Soderbergh's Solaris is based more on the original Stanislaw Lem novel than on the Tarkovsky film, or so I hear.
If you've got to see just one on the big screen, I'd say Andrei Rublev. When I watched Solaris on tape, it seemed perfectly at home on my TV screen--visually, it was shot like a television miniseries, with lots of medium and close shots.
Andrei really uses the aspect ratio--it's a more detached method of storytelling, composing the shots for the wide screen, with lots of wide-angle shots, very rarely moving in for the close-up (except at the very end, when it switches to color for a dazzling montage of super-close shots of some of Rublev's icons, literally showing us the man's brushstrokes). It's hard work on a TV screen, where you miss the details, but tailor-made for the more immersive experience of a cinema.
And to see it in a crisp new print, when the VHS version is so dulled... Yes. Go see.
Nice article in today's Boston Globe about this retrospective. Interesting that Solaris was Tarkovsky's least favorite of all his films, as he felt alienated by the science-fiction aspects--and interesting, too, that the reviewer relates Stalker less to SF than to Samuel Beckett: I'd never thought of that, though it seemed obvious as soon as I read it.
If I wasn't so busy (and skint) I'd be there for Andrei Rublev myself. Enjoy! |
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