Hidden Flick: Trapped In Time – Pt. 1

Indeed. The nut of it all. The pursuit of enlightenment yields ultra long periods of prologue and epilogue in one’s life, and the middle, the spine, the meat of the story of one’s life can often feel almost trapped in time, isolated from the history, the back story of the life led which resonates, and then drifts away, replaced by another, and another…

And so we come to Solaris, a film that was helmed by a Russian director, known for his career-length study of the universe of the mind, and the desire to understand the poetic pathos which weds art and life, and man and his fate. How much role does free will play within Tarkovski’s cinematic studies? Well, plenty, but even more importantly, the filmmaker seemed to acknowledge that there was, actually, a greater force that guides, nurtures, and sometimes pulls an individual from a wretched life, and onto the realm of the truly beautiful, the truly sublime, to find out what it all means, and embrace the cosmic majesty of some greater whole, some greater purpose, and yes, some hidden truth.

With this early 1970s science fiction film, surprisingly enough, made in the Soviet Union, at a time when that legion of nation-states was not known for creative expression, Tarkovski re-unites a husband with his deceased wife, and they dwell within a universe that seems magical—heavenly and tangible, at best; haunted and tortured, at worst. Solaris, also, comes the closest of all Hidden Flicks to the real reason one ponders the meaning of life: to touch the face of something alien, something not of this earth, something truly larger, more ethereal, and more profound, than oneself.

Solaris shows a glimpse of blissful eternity, and then fades into the mists of history, trapped in time, and not knowing what to do next, but to be, to always be, without beginning, or end, drifting away, transformed into another image, and another…

To be continued.

– Randy Ray