Russian Language Hall of Fame

First of all i was watching this and digging it then really painful toothache came out of nowhere. I ended up taking a couple of Ibuprofen as i was starting to get a headache, then things escalated . Long story short i ended up super sick; falling in and out of sleep for around four hours then i woke up feeling fine. The good thing about having to stop Solaris and come back to it later was that it was at the perfect time; pretty much 2 minutes into Kelvin first arriving at the station. Thanks to that madness and going right back to sleep after i watched it last night then being out all day i've forgot half of the stuff i was going to say about it.

Just watched my first Tarkovsky the other day: Stalker and i enjoyed but also struggled with it, mostly due to the pacing. Well this was much slower since the characters weren't always on the move like the Stalker ones, it was alot quiter/calmer than Stalker too for the most part. Particularly the first 45 minutes of Stalker with all of the loud machinery, gunfire, etc. The majority of this was calm talking; instead of getting bored by it i was completely transfixed on what they were saying. I thought this film was powerful which was a surprise; i often see Tarkovsky's films called cold and i can definitely see that from Stalker; this worked for me on a very subdued level though. Scenes like just before Kelvins departure at the bonfire with his mum crying and him needing to confront the idea that he'll most likely never see his parents again was very well done. I was surprised how long it took them to get into space; it must've took the film around the same amount of time as Stalker took to get into The Zone. No doubt it was needed particularly for Berton's story but i do think it got better once he went into space. I love that it became much more of a psychological film rather than sci-fi oriented; i didn't know much about Solaris so that came as a welcome surprise since i personally prefer psychological films. Could see similarities to Stalker here; ignoring the ending of Stalker we really don't know whether any of the traps or what the room is claimed to be are real, here it's much the same until later in the film with it not being clear if this is hallucinations or madness or what. I thought it was well done how one of the scientists had killed himself and the other two had clearly lost their minds; the damage was done to them, but we get to see everything actively happen to Kelvin. It's kind of like looking at a before and after picture then watching the effects take a hold of him. Was surprised how fast they got into it, for such a slow-moving film they jamp right into Kelvins hallucinations, i mean 10-15 minutes after he arrived he started seeing Hari and about 30 minutes after he arrived he was completely disheveled sending Hari off in a rocket.

Anyway, great film that'll be high on my sci-fi list. Great performances, visuals, interesting themes and psychological aspects and i loved the ending.