Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on January 05, 2007 at 23:03:20

In Reply to: This is an incredibly good summary, David! Bravo! posted by Victor Khomenko on January 5, 2007 at 13:45:49:

Victor,

The reason for my reservation about whether or not Kelvin develops is that I tend to assess character development by changes in behaviour, before and after. We don't get the 'after' with Kelvin, just the before and during the process that we believe will be developmental.

I think one of the strengths of the film is that it leaves us hanging there—we don't know what happens to Kelvin. We don't know whether he really changes as a person or not, or how he changes if in fact he does change. I think if we had been shown an 'after' stage, we would be let off the hook, firstly because the question of whther or not Kelvin changes would be answered and secondly because we would have been presented with a solution to the issues that we could accept or reject.

As it is, we aren't presented with a solution in the form of a changed or unchanged Kelvin. I think one thing is for certain in Solaris: any change or growth that occurs in Kelvin is a direct result of the decisions he makes during the course of what we see in the film. We may not know what the outcome for him is, but I think we each come away with our own idea of what it would be. We just have to live with the fact that we aren't going to be shown whether we're right or wrong. I think that's a very dramatically strong form of ambiguity and it certainly contributes to the film's impact for me.

David Aiken