#soviet cinema

Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)

Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)

“Remember Tolstoy? His suffering over the impossibility of loving mankind as a whole? How much time has passed since then? Somehow I can’t figure it out. Help me.“

Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)

“See, I love you. But love is a feeling we can experience but never explain. One can explain the concept. You love that which you can lose: Yourself, a woman, a homeland. Until today, love was simply unattainable to mankind, to the earth. Maybe we are here to experience people as a reason for love.”

Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) 

“See, I love you. But love is a feeling we can experience but never explain. One can explain the concept. You love that which you can lose: Yourself, a woman, a homeland. Until today, love was simply unattainable to mankind, to the earth. Maybe we are here to experience people as a reason for love.”

russian-and-soviet-cinema:

So, this is future and you are Pirx, one of the most famous and respected pilots in the dangerous field of spaceflights. Your team was given a mission to launch two satellites into Saturn’s rings, but this is not why you are on this ship. Your real mission is to evaluate each man from your crew and write a report about them after you return to Earth.

You see, at least one of your five teammates is a nonlinear android. Or maybe there are two of them, or even three. Perhaps, even four? All you know is that some of them are humans and some are not. Your employers said that this is so that your prejudice against nonlinears doesn’t factor into your evaluation of the quality of their job. All they want to know is whether androids make decent spacemen or not.

You preemptively don’t trust anyone on your team just in case, and spend most of your time trying to figure out their identities. Some seem more suspicious than the others. Some are openly wary of you. Some feel safe until they start talking. Some claim they want to help. Some might just try to destroy you and the rest of the team, one way or another.

Then again, you kind of expected something like this to happen all along, didn’t you?

Inquest of Pilot Pirx is a joint Polish-Soviet (specifically, Tallinnfilm and Dovzhenko Film Studios were involved in the production) 1979 film directed by Marek Piestrak; based on the story “The Inquest” by Stanisław Lem from his short story collection More Tales of Pirx the Pilot.

If somebody feels like watching it with subtitles in Spanish, this link is for you.

alfred-borden:

Do you know yourself?
As much as anybody does.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, 1979
Dir: Vladimir Menshov
DoP: Valentin Chernykh