索拉里斯

和2009年的英国电影《月球》/Moon一样，《索拉力星》/Solaris （2002）也是一部套用了科幻片外表的剧情片。尽管两部电影都将故事背景设置在了具有开放意义的外太空，然而剧中人物的行动范围却是被限制在一个封闭的环境之内：人类所建造的外太空工作站。虽然太空看似无边无际，然而它同时将身处工作站的主人公们与地球（或更加确切的说人类世界）相隔绝。同样的，两部片子的主人公都是能够接触到最新高端技术的人才。不管是前者的宇航员，还是后者的心理专家，他们所看的、所听的、所接触到的都是普通人所无法亲身体验的。然而，他们毕竟同时有着常人一样的情感创伤和困惑。正是在这似放实收的外太空里，我们的主人公开始对自己人生的反思。在这两部电影里，探索未知世界的刺激和惊险只是一个封面，而真正被摆上台面的议题是对个人存在意义的思考。

记得前两年和好友坐在咖啡店里聊天，曾经讨论过“什么是人生”这样的哲学话题。忘了是她还是我自己给出的答案是：人生就是个不停作选择的过程。而这两部电影中，主人公都面临着这样一个境况。尤其当他们面临着可以重新来过的可能性时，面对未来还是重回过去便将“选择”更加明显且迫切地摆在了主人公的面前：选还是不选（其实所谓的不选本身就是对放弃的选择），怎么选，选择的前因后果……这都主人公所面临的不得不面对问题，而他们各自的人生危机也都是和这一列问题息息相关的。如果说《月球》中的Sam (山姆•洛克威尔/Sam Rockwell)因为一次又一次地被克隆而被“锁”在过去的话，那么《索拉力星》的Dr. Chris Kelvin (乔治•克鲁尼/George Clooney)则是生活在当下。然而Sam最终选择了抛开过去，直面现在；而Kevin则选择了留在过去，重新开始。

就以Kevin为例，他是个丧妻的鳏夫。尽管他深爱着自己的妻子，然而他在一次争吵之后的拂袖离去，使得他妻子以自杀结束了自己的生命。从此之后，他陷入了对妻子的怀念与自责中。而当他被派到太空站的时候，发现原来在那，死去的人们可以以一种物质的形态重新出现。而出现在太空站里的这些有着人形的物质的出现并非随意。因为那些人形的物质都和生活在太空站里的人们的刻骨铭心的记忆有关。而在太空站这样一个闭塞的环境里，人们必须直面自己的过去。他们唯一可以做的选择。要么像同样受困于太空站的Dr Gordon（维奥拉•戴维斯/Viola Davis）那样，将过去抛在身后，坐上飞船回到地球，面对未来重新开始自己的生活；要么像Kevin那样留在太空站，和记忆为伴，甚至于将自己也变成那“物质”，从而代入到另一空间，重新回到过去。

面对未来需要勇气，面对过去又何尝不需要决心？没有人可以说两人各自的选择谁是谁非，因为很多时候选择本就不是一个容易的决定。这也是为什么很多人都会后悔自己所做的某些选择，希望可以有个重新来过的机会。然而，电影毕竟是电影，现实中的人们既无法回到过去，也无法像主人公那样飞到“索拉力星”去和挚爱过的逝者来个近距离接触，以此来抹平内心曾经经历过的情感创伤。我们所能做的，就是好好对现在做出选择，因为不管未来怎样，现在终将成为记忆中的过去， 而这些或深或浅或“沉睡”的记忆会时不时冒出来提醒自己曾经做过的选择。

幻觉与真实之间不再有差别；
回忆与当下之间不再有分离。
在索拉力斯，没有真理，只有存在。
梦中之人，可以超越物质与心灵的边界，来到你的身旁。

我们是人类，还是木偶？
物质左右心灵，还是心灵左右物质？
在索拉力斯，没有答案，只有选择。
人类有了选择，纠正过去错误的选择。

有人拒绝这一切，为了真理，选择离开。
有人接受这一切，为了爱情，选择留下。
在索拉力斯，没有生死，只有爱恨。
人类的情感，超越了时空，超越了边界。

Chris: 我死了还是活着？
Rheya: 我们已经不用再考虑这些了。
Rheya: 我们在一起了。
Rheya: 所有我们做过的都被原谅了，所有的事。

也许这只是奥德修斯返家途中的海女巫们的歌声，
也许这只是我们对记忆中痛苦的慰藉，
也许这只是一个梦，
但是，Though lovers be lost love shall not（爱人虽会失去但爱不会），
And death shall have no dominion（死亡不会支配我们）。

地球？还是索拉力斯？

The Solaris Station

After the premiere of this remake of the Tarkovski movie I read a number of critical reviews, which appeared in American press. The divergence of opinions and interpretations was enormous. The Americans in a somewhat childish manner "grade" films just like children's papers in school. Hence there were critics who gave Soderbergh's Solaris an "A", the majority agreed on a "B" and some gave it a "C".

Some reviewers, like the one from the "New York Times", claim the film was a "love story" - a romance set in outer space. I have not seen the film and I am not familiar with the script, hence I cannot say anything about the movie itself except for what the reviews reflect, albeit unclearly - like a distorted picture of one's face in ripply water. However, to my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space...

         I cannot say anything reasonable about its creation - the book somehow "poured out of me" without any previous planning and I even had difficulties with the ending. However since I wrote it over forty years ago, from today's perspective I perceive it in a much more objective and rational way. I am also capable of finding analogies to other works, located in high regions of the world literature. Melville's "Moby Dick" could serve as an example; on the surface the book describes the history of a whaling ship and Capitan Ahab's pernicious quest for the white whale. Initially the critics destroyed the novel as meaningless and unsuccessful - after all why care about some whale the captain most likely would have converted into a number of cutlets and barrels full of animal fat? Only after great analytical efforts the critics discovered that the message of "Moby Dick" was neither animal fat nor even harpoons. Since much deeper, symbolic layers were found, in libraries Melville's work was removed from the "Adventures at Sea" section and placed elsewhere.

         Had Solaris dealt with love of a man for a woman - no matter whether on Earth on in Space - it would not have been entitled Solaris! Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, an Americanized Hungarian specializing in literary studies called his analysis "The Book is the Alien". Indeed, in Solaris I attempted to present the problem of an encounter in Space with a form of being that is neither human nor humanoid.

         Science fiction almost always assumed the aliens we meet play some kind of game with us the rules of which we sooner or later may understand (in most cases the "game" was the strategy of warfare). However I wanted to cut all threads leading to the personification of the Creature, i.e. the Solarian Ocean, so that the contact could not follow the human, interpersonal pattern - although it did take place in some strange manner. The method I used in the novel to demonstrate this was the particular outcome of the interest of people, who for over one hundred years have been studying the planet Solaris and the ocean covering its surface.

         One should not speak of a "thinking" or a "non-thinking" Ocean, however the Ocean certainly was active, undertook some voluntary actions and was capable of doing things which were entirely alien to the human domain. Eventually, when it got the attention of little ants that struggled above its surface, it did so in a radical way. It penetrated the superficial established manners, conventions and methods of linguistic communication, and entered, in its own way, into minds of the people of the Solaris Station and revealed what was deeply hidden in each of them: a reprehensible guilt, a tragic event from the past suppressed by the memory, a secret and shameful desire. In some cases the reader remains unaware of what has been revealed; what we know is that in each case it was capable of incarnation and physical creation of a being the hidden secret was connected to. Ocean's actions lead one of the scientists to an emotional distress that ended in a suicide, others isolated themselves. When Kris Kelvin initially arrived at the Station he was unable to understand what was going on: all were hiding and in the corridor he encountered one of the phantoms - a giant Black woman in a reed skirt with whom the suicide Gibarian presumably had been conflicted.

         Kelvin's recklessness and imprudent behavior in the past had not prevented the suicide of his beloved woman Harey. He buried her on Earth and in a sense he buried her in his mind as well - until the Ocean made her come back at the Solaris Station.

         The Ocean appears quite stubborn in his ways: the creatures, a kind of remorse of the Station's scientists, cannot be gotten rid of - even those sent into space come back... Kelvin initially tried to kill Harey; later he accepted her presence and tried to play the role he had to abandon on Earth - of her beloved man.

         The vision of the Planet Solaris was very important for me. Why was it important? The Solarian globe was not just any sphere surrounded by some jelly - it was an active being (although a non-human one). It neither built nor created anything translatable into our language that could have been "explained in translation". Hence a description had to be replaced by analysis - (obviously an impossible task) - of the internal workings of the Ocean's ego. This gave rise to symetriads, asymetriads and mimoids - strange semi-constructions scientists were unable to understand; they could only describe them in a mathematically meticulous manner, and this was the sole purpose of the growing Solarian library - the result of over a hundred years' efforts to enclose in folios what was not human and beyond human comprehension; what could not have been translated into human language - or into anything else.

         One of the reviewers admitted he would prefer to see Tarkovski's Solaris one more time. Others speculated that while the producer won't make a lot of money and there will be no crowd at the box office, the film belongs to the genre of a more ambitious science fiction - since no one got murdered and neither star wars, nor space-werewolfs nor Schwarzenegger's Terminators were present. In the US an atmosphere filled with very concrete expectations usually accompanies the release of every new film. I found it interesting that although my book is quite old - almost half a century means a lot in present times - someone wanted to take the risk despite the fact that the plot did not meet the abovementioned expectations. (Along the way he might have gotten scared a bit, but the latter is a pure speculation on my part.)

         The book ends in a romantic?tragic way; the girl herself wished to be annihilated, not wanting to be an instrument with the help of which the one she truly loves is being studied by some unknown power. Her annihilation takes place unbeknownst to Kelvin - with the help of one of Space Stations' residents. The Soderbergh movie supposedly has a different, more optimistic finale. If this were the case this would signify a concession to the stereotypes of American thinking regarding science fiction. It seems that these deep, concrete ruts of thinking cannot be avoided: either there is a happy ending or a space catastrophe. This may have been the reason for the touch of disappointment in some of the critics' reviews - they expected the girl created by the ocean to turn into a fury, a witch or a sorceress who would devour the main character, while worms and other filth would crawl out of her intestines.

         Solaris was submitted to the next year's Berlin film festival and in Poland the film will be shown only after the festival is over. Polish distributors obtained a copy of the movie, however I am not that eager to see it.

The information that Soderbergh started filming my novel (although no one knew what the film would be like) crated an increase in publishers' interest from different countries. In Germany Bertelsmann took over Solaris, while the Danes, Norwegians, Koreans and an Arabic publishing house (from Syria) - also expressed interest in that title. Publishers also enquire about my other works. However all of this is only a side effect and has nothing to do with the novel itself.

                   Summing up, as Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled Solaris and not Love in Outer Space.

Stanislaw Lem, December 8th, 2002

"How can you be so sure if you don't know whether it is real or not?" If you cannot prove it but you choose not to believe, why cannot I choose to believe?

Like Carl Popper said, scientists have been trying hard to distinguish themselves from metaphysicians, however, science in itself involves a huge amount of metaphysics. Because it is based on a lot of very fundamental assumptions that you can never prove.

This world, I would like to say, is contaminated by materialism. There was once a time we people could tolerate and probably accept the existence of all different kinds of believes and we all tried so hard to understand this world. But now, like what scientists would not like to admit, we adore science too much as the flies' passion on rotten foods. We suddenly stopped thinking. We are satisfied with what we have and we are crazy playing with it. We are not only enjoying it, we want more. Still not knowing what we are and why we are here, we keep a thirst for the things that we don't even know if we are supposed to possess.

All creatures, with or without a brain, do stupid things when they are satisfied. Once upon time we were so happy declaring that we were unique. However, after years, we turned no more than the dirty monkeys in Gulliver's trip. So we came to Solaris, with great ambition and unexplainable confidence. We came here for the entire human race on the Earth, although we still don't have a single clue of what we are on that planet for.

A lot of humanists sensed this huge question mark. Kubrick's 2001 also demonstrated a possibility of getting closer to the keys of big questions by not depending on science too much. If there are most arrogant scientists, the craziest words they could possibly say might be, ok gentlemen, we are familiar enough with our planet. Only the most stupid of the most arrogant believe that we can explain things even out of this planet, such as in Solaris, using what we learnt on Earth.

I know that my interpretation involves some subjective thoughts and feelings. However, I can be sure that Soderbergh doesn't deny the possibility of multiple explanations of the world or the universe and he believes that we have the right to choose among them.

"Hello, Neo. Look, here is a Matrix inside which people live regularly with rules created by God and guaranteed by computers. Also, you have the power of destroying it. What do you think? To be, or not to be?"

Solaris is such an elegant movie with profound retrospection, beautiful photography and reasonably good acting. It is set on a stage that seems so strange but so familiar. It could be Solaris. It could also be inside our mind. Soderbergh reminded us again, that if there is anything that makes us human race so special, it is the spirit we possess. It is that we do something that the creatures who only have a brain cannot understand.

   也许看过这部电影的人，对克里斯与妻子蕾雅的初遇中电梯间里朗诵的那首诗有印象，它在电影中再次出现是蕾雅自杀身亡那一刻攥在手中的一页诗集……
    上网寻找了许久，总算找到了这首出自Dylan Thomas的杰作：
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the seaThey lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
 
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
    没有看过电影原著，因而对其与原著之间纠缠不清的关系不予评论，升华了原著也好，糟蹋了原著也好。我只想说，史蒂文·索德伯格拍出了这首诗的灵魂。“Though lovers be lost love shall not”恋人失散，即便阴阳相隔，爱却依然永存，这甚至令死亡都无可奈何，于是，死亡无法再主宰一切，即便癫狂，却仍能再次清醒，即便沉沦深海，却能再次升腾。当净骨成灰散尽，却在其手肘足底化出璀璨星辰……相爱的人，灵魂将永远以彼此为羁绊，不分离，即便，即便再次相遇的地方，是在那遥远光年外的solaris……