The Polish writer has been in my thoughts for the past week, now that I’ve finally got round to reading Solaris while also having watched The Congress, Ari Folman’s adaptation of Lem’s The Futurological Congress. Reading Solaris was an interesting experience when the story is so familiar from the Tarkovsky adaptation, which I’ve watched numerous times, and the Soderbergh adaptation, which has risen in my estimation in recent years. The novel was fascinating for all the detail about the mysterious planet which the films omit, while also being somewhat old-fashioned considering it was published in 1961. Lem was apparently dismissive of Anglophone science fiction but by the 1950s the treatment of futuristic technology by British and American writers was increasingly sophisticated, even if the psychology and characterisation in their stories still lagged behind literature in general. Lem’s future timeline is like something out of the 1940s, where humanity can travel to distant star systems yet the spacecraft are the cigar-shaped rockets familiar from the covers of pulp magazines. In the station orbiting Solaris the trio of scientists have endless scientific discussions, the video screens are small and monochrome, and there’s even a mention of something being powered by valves.
Solaris may be Lem’s most popular novel but it doesn’t warrant much discussion in this Polish TV documentary after Lem has mentioned his exasperated arguments with Andrei Tarkovsky when the film was being planned. Tomasz Kaminski’s profile runs through Lem’s life mostly via its subject’s reminiscences, although there is occasional comment from Lem’s friends and colleagues in the Polish literary world. The film doesn’t offer a great deal of context either but it does provide a portrait of a prickly character who I’ve never seen speaking at length before. I found it useful to rewatch the Quay Brothers’ biographical film after this one, a shorter piece which fills in a few gaps in Lem’s history while also showing the degree to which his early life was dictated by the upheavals of the Nazi occupation and the Communist era.
There are currently two versions of Kaminski’s film at YouTube, only one of which has English subtitles, and very crude ones at that. Better subtitles may be found at Opensubs but to use those you’ll have to download the video first. 4k Video Downloader Plus is my tool of choice.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• 11 Preliminary Orbits Around Planet Lem by the Brothers Quay
• Maska: Stanisław Lem and the Brothers Quay
• Ikarie XB 1
• Golem, 2012
John the best book I’ve read about Lem in a while is from Polish philologist Agnieszka Gajewska, first translated in 2022. Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanis?aw Lem.
In his novel His Master’s Voice, Lem has a character who survived a massacre during the Nazi occupation tell the story. Gajewska knew the wartime history of the region in which Lem lived and so got interested, doing extensive research. Lem was somewhat reticent about discussing his own occupation experiences and the book is very revealing. Being informed of that context really transformed my view of Lem’s work.
Many hereabouts are probably already familiar with two other interesting adaptations, a Russian TV miniseries from 1968 (happily on YT with english subtitles), and a BBC radio version, available commercially as a download and a CD. Fortunately bereft of huge special effects budgets both concentrate on character and psychological suspense. Not surprisingly the Soviet production junks all of Lem’s satire and cynicism in favor of the usual socialist utopianism. The BBC version is very faithful to the book. Both are well worth seeking out.
Thanks, Stephen, I think I ought to read more of his books before going further into his history. I’ve known about the TV Solaris for quite a while now but still haven’t watched it. Good to know it exists, in any case.
I’m a bit embarrassed to love the “Clooney” version of Solaris, but really, it’s the soundtrack, one of my favourite of all time..
I’ve got the soundtrack on CD. Cliff Martinez is always good value even if the films he’s scoring aren’t. I like the production design as well. Since I first saw it I’ve backtracked a lot and watched more Soderbergh films while also catching up with his recent things. His Solaris has gone up in my estimation as a result but it still has flaws. (Mainly the two leads.) The crew of the station seem even less concerned with the actual nature of the planet than they do in the Tarkovsky film, and this is still the subject of the story as a whole even if there’s a human dilemma at the centre of it. It’s always seemed to me that Soderbergh wanted to make a big SF film like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he reveres, and wound up with Solaris. He might have been better off making something original instead.