The Remediation of Solaris
In Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris, the protagonist Kris Kelvin, aboard a space station above the eponymous planet, becomes haunted by a “simulacrum” of Rheya, a past lover who had committed suicide years ago. Seemingly, everything about her is real, from her face, her voice, and her warm body. When he first sees her, he assumes he is dreaming and kisses her without a trace of incredulity. Not long after, he realizes that the vision before him is physically real, but not real in the sense that he can explain to himself: “This was not Rheya- and yet I recognized her every habitual gesture. Horror gripped me by the throat; and what was most horrible was that I must go on tricking her, pretending to take her for Rheya, while she herself sincerely believed she was Rheya” (Lem 60-61). He then decides to lure her into a shuttle, on the false pretense that he will accompany her, in order to ship her into space. While encouraging her to put on “flying overalls” for the journey, he makes a curious discovery as she undresses: “As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decorative” (Lem 62). The simulacrum is a copy of Rheya, dependent on Kelvin’s memory of her, but, as the dress clearly shows, it is an imperfect one.
From the prospective of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s concept of remediation, which they define as “the representation of one medium in another” (Bolter, Grusin 46), the simulacrum (an advanced alien being in the present) can be seen as a clear “representation” of Rheya (a human being from the past). In nearly every way, the representation has been successful. The dress, however, is emblematic of its shortcomings. Being dependent on Kelvin’s consciousness, the simulacrum can only represent Rheya as far as he can remember her; he remembers the image of the dress, but only the surface of it, and the only memories that she possesses are the ones that include him. As Bolter and Grusin state, “the new medium can remediate by trying to absorb the older medium entirely, so that the discontinuities between the two are minimized. The very act of remediation, however, ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced; the new medium remains dependent on the older one in acknowledged or unacknowledged ways” (Bolter, Grusin 47). Just as new media depends on old media in order to exist, the “new” Rheya has attempted to “absorb” the original Rheya, but “remains dependent” on the latter. Using the image of the dress, Bolter and Grusin’s concept works metaphorically, but when looking at the various forms of media used to adapt Lem’s novel, remediation functions on a more immediate level. The late Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky was the first to adapt the novel to a film on the big screen (a TV film was produced in 1968) in his 1972 masterpiece. Thirty years later, Steven Soderberg filmed his Hollywood version as more of a “re-make” of Tarkovsky’s film, rather than an adaptation of Lem’s novel. In 2011, the Icelandic-based experimental musicians Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason produced an alternate film score to the Tarkovsky version. Despite the various forms and styles of these artists, they all depend on Lem’s novel, whether in “acknowledged or unacknowledged ways.” Each piece strives to stand on its own (and in many ways they do), but they ultimately remain imperfect simulacra of their original source.
In the case of Tarkovsky’s film, the content of Lem’s novel has been borrowed, but it loosely follows its original source. According to Bolter and Grusin, “the contemporary entertainment industry calls such borrowing ‘repurposing’: to take a ‘property’ from one medium and reuse it in another. With reuse comes a necessary redefinition, but there may be no conscious interplay between media. The interplay happens, if at all, only for the reader or viewer who happens to know both versions and can compare them” (Bolter, Grusin 45). From a narrative angle, either work is able to stand on its own, i.e. a person doesn’t need to read the book in order to understand the film, and vice versa. However, Tarkovsky needed the book in order make his film. In order for him to adapt the novel in a different medium, he took many liberties with the source material, some of which didn’t sit well with Lem.
In Lem’s novel, he creates an alien world that is ripe with beauty and palpable dimension. He accomplishes this not only with images of the planet, such as “its surface wrinkled with purplish-blue and black furrows” (Lem 4) and “thick foam, the color of blood, gather[ing] in the troughs of the waves” (Lem 8), but also using imaginary theories and books based on the planet, such as the Einstein-Boevia theory and Historia Solaris. These attributes, in turn, contribute to the sense of immediacy that the reader feels. In an interview with Lem shortly after the film was released, he stated that “the whole sphere of cognitive and epistemological considerations was extremely important in my book and it was tightly coupled to the Solaristic literature and to the essence of Solaristics as such.” Regarding Tarkovsky’s film, he continues, “Unfortunately, the film has been robbed of those qualities rather thoroughly. Only in small bits and through the tracking camera shots we discover the fates of those present at the station, but these fates should not be any existential anecdote, either, but a grand question concerning man's position in Cosmos” (Lem). It’s certainly true that Tarkovsky chose to overlook Lem’s concept of “Solaristics,” and he seemed to be more concerned with Man’s relationship to his own psyche, rather than with his “position in the Cosmos.” Overall, Lem had “fundamental reservations” with Tarkovsky’s vision. He further stated that he “would have liked to see the planet Solaris which [Tarkovsky] unfortunately denied me” (Lem). This claim is not exactly accurate. While there aren’t any close-up shots of the “furrows” and “waves,” there are many aerial images of the planet that are seen intermittently throughout the course of the film. As a whole, Tarkovsky’s film is very under-stated and subdued, and the shots of the planet, used sparingly and effectively, contribute to the film’s dimension, and, like Lem’s aforementioned theories and books on Solaris, provide the viewer with a strong sense of immediacy.
Bolter and Grusin make a distinction between immediacy and hypermediacy, which they view as analogous to “transparency and opacity” (Bolter, Grusin 19). Both of these concepts are tied to the experience of the viewer, and often occur simultaneously. Using Tarkovsky’s film as an example, the viewer feels immersed within the world that is presented (immediacy), while at the same time feeling pleasure in the experience of watching a film (hypermediacy). Both the novel and the film have examples of where immediacy and hypermediacy co-exist. There is one particular scene that the novel and film share, which is when the character Berton (Burton in the English translation of the film) is questioned about Solaris by the Commission of Enquiry. In the novel, the interview is read by Kelvin in a book (Lem 78-86). In the film, the interview is seen by Kelvin in a black and white film. In the case of the novel, the reader feels a sense of immediacy, because it feels as though we are right there with Kelvin, reading over his shoulder. In the case of the film, the viewer feels a sense of immediacy for the same reason, just within a different format. Paradoxically, both instances give us a feeling of hypermediacy, as well; a book within a book and a film within a film gives the reader/viewer an increased sense of awareness toward the form that we are immersed in.
Another example pertains to images of the planet, itself. When speaking of the ‘oceanic formations’ of Solaris, such as ‘tree-mountains,’ extensors,’ fungoids,’ ‘mimoids,’ ‘symmetriads’ and ‘asymmetriads,’ ‘vertebrids’ and ‘agilus,‘ which Kelvin claims to be “artificial, linguistically awkward terms, but they do give some impression of Solaris to anyone who has only seen the planet in blurred photographs and incomplete films” (Lem 111), the reader, once again, feels immersed in the specifics of the world, while simultaneously being hyper-aware of the format. When the reader is informed that these words to describe the planet are invented by people within the book, it becomes that much more apparent that Lem is the one behind it all, inventing the inventors. Using books within the book gives Solaris a true sense of authenticity and transparency, but the more they are mentioned, the more the reader feels the weight of the book, itself.
Tarkovsky, using the film format, has the luxury of not having to describe things through “linguistically awkward terms.” As far as specifics go, Solaris is unquestionably more well-rounded in Lem’s novel, but, in the film, a single image of the planet can give more of a sense of immediacy than several pages of thorough description. A little over an hour into film, shortly after Kelvin first approaches Dr. Sartorius, the former gazes through one of the myriad windows of the space station. For about twenty seconds, Kelvin (and the viewer) watches the movement of Solaris’ ocean. Once again, we feel that we are right there with Kelvin, watching the image of the strange planet, and this provides a sense of immediacy. However, we also know that Tarkovsky, the director, is behind it all, “watching the watcher,” and this provides a sense of hypermediacy. As Bolter and Gruin state, “what we wish to highlight from the past is what resonates with the twin preoccupations of contemporary media: the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity of media themselves” (Bolter, Grusin 21). In the case of Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the opacity of the film is reinforced by the fact that it is a remediation, indebted to an earlier form. From the perspective of Tarkovsky, himself, “the deeper meaning of Lem's novel does not fit within the confines of science fiction. To discuss only the literary form is to limit the problem. This is a novel not only about the clash between human reason and the Unknown but also about moral conflicts set in motion by new scientific discoveries” (Tarkovsky). Despite the fact that Tarkovsky might have had a different interpretation of the “deeper meaning” of the novel, there was never a point where he wasn’t dependent on Lem’s text.
Steven Soderberg’s 2002 version of Solaris is a somewhat unique case. Despite the fact that the end credits pay homage to Stanislaw Lem, it doesn’t seem to depend on the novel all that much, at least directly. Soderberg’s film is, first and foremost, a remediation of a remediation. This becomes painfully obvious when considering that it doesn’t add any scenes from the novel that Tarkovsky hadn’t included in his version. Furthermore, it concerns Man’s “position in the Cosmos” even less than its predecessor, makes no mention Solaristic theory, and puts even more emphasis on the human element, particularly the love story, to Lem’s chagrin: “To my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space... This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space” (Lem). In Soderberg’s defense, the concept of remediating a remediation is intriguing not only formally, but also thematically. In The Philosophy of Steven Soderberg, Michael Valdez Moses stresses the notion that Soderberg’s “‘remake’ of an earlier film is not merely incidental to [his] larger aim. Its status as a copy of a copy that was, in turn, a visual translation of an earlier novel represents in formal terms what it (Soderberg’s film) presents thematically and dramatically: the story of a planet capable of projecting and reproducing an infinite number of ‘facsimiles,’ a narrative about characters who continually reappear as new avatars or manifestations of themselves (and yet who are always the same).’” Along these lines, Soderberg is known as a director who shamelessly pays homage to established genres and past directors, and is a staunch skeptic of the concept of ‘originality.’ Moses further states that “Soderberg can be said to channel the voices of the dead (those of his predecessors); he first absorbs and then entirely refashions their cinematic visions until he can claim them as his own” (Moses 283). Fittingly, Soderberg’s film, the second film adaptation of Solaris, can be compared to the second simulacrum of Rheya, who, as real as she seems to be, acknowledges that she is a facsimile: Kelvin says to her, “Is there anything the matter? You’re crying.” She then says, “Leave me alone... they aren’t real tears” (Lem 135).
In an interview concerning the musical project based on Solaris that he and Daniel Bjarnason created in 2011, Ben Frost stated that “I always felt that Russian composer Eduard Artemyev’s score compounded the external, science fiction elements of the story rather than exploring the internal, the human” (Nolan). At least three things can be inferred from this statement. First, by attempting to explore “the internal, the human,” the purpose immediately distances itself from Lem’s text, which strove to explore “a human encounter with something that... cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images” (Lem). Second, because he makes a reference to the film composer Eduard Artemyev, this project is clearly based on Tarkovsky’s film, rather than Soderberg’s. Third, because he mentions Artemyev rather than Tarkovsky, this project can be seen not just as a remediation of film, but a remediation of sound. Most notably, Artemyev used analog synthesizers to compose the film score, while Frost and Bajarnson used a multi-step process that included electronic music software, along with a reinterpretation of the electronic music by the Polish orchestra Sinfonietta Cracovia. For the live performances, Brian Eno, the English musician and visual artist, manipulated Tarkovsky’s film so that a series of images dissolve into one another and are seen to be moving almost imperceptibly. Essentially, the project is “a re-imagined soundtrack for a film so still as to become almost absent, a story in sound, and an exploration of an interior cosmos. It is music written by human beings, removed and mutated by machine intelligence, then translated once more by human beings” (Unsound).
In Frost and Bjarnason’s project, they further removed themselves from Lem’s novel than either Tarkovsky and Soderberg had done, yet paradoxically the form in which they practice seems closer to the original source than either of the films. Lem attempted to show a world that could not be grasped in human terms, and music, in essence, is more ethereal and more indefinable than words or images. Electronic music software, especially, is capable of unpredictable movements, which, at times, exceeds the range of human thought. Just as Ben Frost stated that “listening to [the Sinfonietta Cracovia] perform ostensibly ‘digital’ effects and voicing ghost harmonics that all of a sudden existed as written notes and phrases... felt extremely alien” (Unsound), Kelvin must have felt the same way when the simulacrum talked in a human voice and cried “real” tears.
While considering the remediation of Solaris in various formats, as unique as they are in very different ways, it becomes apparent that each work remains dependent on its original source. In this sense, none of the pieces discussed can ever be called true ‘original’ works of art. While speaking of repurposing, Bolter and Grusin stated that “remediation is both what is ‘unique to digital worlds‘ and what denies the possibility of that uniqueness” (Lem 50). Similarly, as the novel progresses, the second simulacrum appears to have become a true individual, one that is separate from the original Rheya. When she asks Kelvin if she looks like her, he says, “You did at first. Now I don’t know” (Lem 146). In a sense, she has become real to him, perhaps even more real than the original. In the end, though, she asks the character Snow to kill her mercifully by a process of “disintegration” (190). The more “unique” she became to Kelvin, the more it became apparent to her that she wasn’t.
Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard. “Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation.” Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000, pp. 21-50.
Lem, Stanislaw. Solaris. 1961; New York: Walker, 1970.
Lem, Stanislaw. “The Solaris Station.” Stanislaw Lem - The Official Site. http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/soderbergh/147-the-solaris-station
Lem, Stanislaw. “Lem About Tarkovsky’s Adaptation.” Stanislaw Lem - The Official Site. http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/qsolarisq-by-tarkovsky/176-lem-about-the-tarkovskys-adaptation
Lopate, Phil. “Solaris: Inner Space.” The Criterion Collection.
“More Details of Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnson’s Music for Solaris Revealed.” unsound.pl. Unsound, n.p. nd. Web. http://unsound.pl/en/general/news/show/more-details-of-ben-frost-and-daniel-bjarnasons-music-for-solaris-revealed.
Moses, Michael Valdez. “Soderberg, the Remake, and the Dream Factory.” The Philosophy of Steven Soderberg. ed. Parlmer, R. Barton & Sanders, Steven. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2011, pp. 281-305.
Nolan, Fred. “Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason - Solaris.” Fluid - Radio. October 17, 2011. http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2011/10/ben-frost-and-daniel-bjarnason-solaris.
Soderburg, Steven, dir. Solaris. Twentieth Century Fox, Lightstorm Entertainment, 2002. Film.
Tarkovsky, Andrei, dir. Solaris. Creative Unit of Writers & Cinema Workers, Mosfilm, Unit Four, 1972. Film.
Tarkovsky, Andrei. “Tarkovsky About Solaris.” Stanislaw Lem - The Official Site. http:// english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/qsolarisq-by-tarkovsky/178-tarkovsky-about-qsolarisq.