MovieChat Forums > Solyaris (1972) Discussion > Why does it move to Japan?

Why does it move to Japan?


I was watching this last night and was admittedly a bit sleepy so I maybe missed the reason,but why does it cut from what seemed like the Russian countryside to driving through Tokyo? This really confused me and I was too tired to figure it out and turned it off at that point but I plan to get back to it. Im being a bit lazy I should probably re-watch it and figure it out, but thanks to anyone for explaining.

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I remember reading somewhere that Tarkovsky wanted to give the film a futuristic feel. Back in 72 when the film was made the USSR was still in the cold war whilst Japan was economically striving forward. Japan back then must have seemed very futuristic to the Russian audience. They didn't actually go to Japan, it was there to give the film its futuristic context.

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I remember reading somewhere that Tarkovsky wanted to give the film a futuristic feel. Back in 72 when the film was made the USSR was still in the cold war whilst Japan was economically striving forward. Japan back then must have seemed very futuristic to the Russian audience. They didn't actually go to Japan, it was there to give the film its futuristic context.

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The original plan was to go japan for the world expo '70 to film futuristic stuff on location for the movie but that plan fell through. They went to Japan later anyway and filmed some highways which back in the day still looked pretty advanced in Moscow. Now it looks like a bunch of old Datsuns of course.

-- Mothershytter... Son of an ass!!

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Thanks cooblimey and vladchan for clearing that up. I can see how it might have worked back when it was being made but now it completely feels weird to me and throws me out of the movie. And as this sequence seems to go on for a long time it begins to feel like Im suddenly being shown excerpts from an old short film created by the Japanese tourist board.

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When I first saw the movie, I thought that was Moscow they were driving through, but also doubted if Moscow had freeways then. I thought those looked like Russian Volga cars, but they were Datsuns and Toyota's! And I failed to see the Japanese characters on the freeway and driving on the left side of the road

BTW, did you notice there was no driver in the car with Berton, just a kid in the back seat?

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The movie was supposed to show buildings that look like flying saucers, robots, the works. But the film crew missed the boat with the expo due to red tape. Too bad

-- Mothershytter... Son of an ass!!

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Well, being that they were driving on the left side of the road, the wheel then is located on the right side of the car.

So Berton was driving. Or, considering he was not paying attention to traffic at all, the car perhaps had autopilot.

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That probably explains why that bloody driving scene goes on so long.

They wanted to get their money's worth out of the Japanese footage.

---
It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

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Yeah it`s curious how the drive up to the cosmodrome was given a great deal of screentime while the actual space travel was skipped almost entirely. Here, too, Tarkovsky seems more enamored with the Earthly than the cosmic/interplanetary.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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On the Criterion release of Solaris, there's an alternate soundtrack (in English) with two film scholars that explain some of the goings on in the movie including the trip the film crew took to Japan to shoot the 'futuristic city' sequence. Just hit the AUDIO button on your remote to bounce back and forth, as their jabbering gets annoying after about 5 minutes.

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It really does go on forever.

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That explains a lot. I was confused also and thought maybe they went to japan to go to space from there or something.

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It was capturing the projected Asian domination (in aspects of population, technology & culture) of the future - like in Bladerunner!

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I know it's a sacrilege to criticize this movie, but this is yet another laughable howler that makes the film so dated and removed to a modern viewer. The guy pulls up somewhere in the Russian countryside in a left-wheel drive car for a visit with friends. He leaves abruptly, but on the way home calls his friends from the video phone in his car (you can see the steering wheel in the shot). However, in the terribly laid out screen-over-screen shot (what we might call "green screen" today) he is suddenly in Japan, driving on the wrong side of the road, surrounded by Japanese signage and cars. This is really beyond nitpicking; the rest of the film usually only achieves grim (and boring) when it's reaching for cerebral, and the presence of goofy attempts at special effects makes the overall tone unsettling and cold. 2001 was 3 years earlier, but it was more modest in its special effects strivings, or at least more frequently on the mark. 1John4:4

A thing of beauty is a thing forever. JK/MLG

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Freeways might be mundane to a modern audience but if you stop and think about it a little (and the scene gives plenty of time to do that) they really are spectacular and impressive. Especially to an audience for which large scale freeways and personal ownership of cars is not widespread. The scene could be cut without any detriment probably but it was nice to watch all the same for me

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Fair enough; it dates the film but it's also fair to wonder the same thing about the Pan Am sequences in 2001.

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It's so moronic to talk about the "dating" of a film. So, you're a moron. How can a film not be "dated". SHUT UP about the "dating", idiot!

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In communist Russia they couldn't leave. They wanted to view the world so they asked permission to film in a foreign country.

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By the 70s that wasn't the case anymore. You are thinking Stalinist times.

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