Solaris (1972)

This made for really good accounting midterm study avoidance. I did the "Rented Criterion DVD" special, where I watch a super-long art film and then start it over right away to watch the commentary. Good six hours in toto.

Innumerable watch checks but they don't count because I was watching at home and I got clocks everywhere. Also, Tarkovsky's whole aesthetic was to shoot entire scenes in one long take. Partly motivated by only having enough film to get a scene that way (necessity of course being the mother of invention), the result is a real feeling of the passage of time in each scene, which might be bad if your movie is Transformers but isn't bad if your movie is about three guys seeing ghosts on an enormous space station.

And there's a totally great five-minute scene of a dude driving through what's supposed to be the "city of the future," except it's 1972 Japan. The commentators said this may have worked for a totally alien, futuristic city from the eyes of a relatively backward Russian audience and culture, but Western viewers were probably really confused. The new spin on this is, Tarkovsky clearly seems to think there's something *wrong* with people becoming slaves to technology, but I'm all for it! More iPhones!