This paper looks at how Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Andre Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) make art cinema out of the popular genre of science fiction. Of particular interest is the representation of extraterrestrial space and how it is used to explore key concerns of science fiction, including the relation of humans to technology, humans to aliens, and the present to the future. This paper focuses on the different ways that Kubrick and Tarkovsky construct environments to shape a unique experience of extraterrestrial space for characters and audiences. In the process, each offered a critical engagement with science fictional aspirations at a time when space travel was exciting and new. To compare and contrast the two films,
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2001 opens with a scene of primeval nature, “tracking the roots of human technological ingenuity far back in time for the purpose of comparison and contrast with the potential future” (Rasmussen 2005: 33). Kubrick fragments his film temporally all the way from the past time, where there is no sign of human existence, to the future, where men invent the tools for traveling into outer space. Therefore, primeval nature becomes a measuring tool to show how different a futuristic space might be from the past. In particular, the huge time span between the past and the future heightens the feeling of being in a futuristic space. Solaris, however, depicts a familiar scene of nature that belongs to recent times, and it plays a different role in showing futuristic space. According to Dillon (2006: 25), “… the apparent contrast of natural earth to outer space is also complicated at once, since the waving, watery images with which the film begins recall ahead of time the swirling waters of the planet Solaris. Nature and imagination, or earth and outer space, are therefore not opposites, but clearly related pairs.” As a consequence, when the protagonist steps into extraterrestrial space of Solaris spaceship, the contrast between familiar earth space and alien outer space – the past and the future - is not that marked. In this way, the impression of alienation happens at a narrative and dialog level rather than through special effects as in
2001 opens with a scene of primeval nature, “tracking the roots of human technological ingenuity far back in time for the purpose of comparison and contrast with the potential future” (Rasmussen 2005: 33). Kubrick fragments his film temporally all the way from the past time, where there is no sign of human existence, to the future, where men invent the tools for traveling into outer space. Therefore, primeval nature becomes a measuring tool to show how different a futuristic space might be from the past. In particular, the huge time span between the past and the future heightens the feeling of being in a futuristic space. Solaris, however, depicts a familiar scene of nature that belongs to recent times, and it plays a different role in showing futuristic space. According to Dillon (2006: 25), “… the apparent contrast of natural earth to outer space is also complicated at once, since the waving, watery images with which the film begins recall ahead of time the swirling waters of the planet Solaris. Nature and imagination, or earth and outer space, are therefore not opposites, but clearly related pairs.” As a consequence, when the protagonist steps into extraterrestrial space of Solaris spaceship, the contrast between familiar earth space and alien outer space – the past and the future - is not that marked. In this way, the impression of alienation happens at a narrative and dialog level rather than through special effects as in