The sequence I chose is from 51:22 to 59:10 in the film Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
This is the part of the film after Kelvin had his initial discussion with Snout, and is exploring the station trying to figure out what is happening. The first thing about this sequence, and really about the movie as a whole, is that it is very drawn out. Every shot lasts at least 5 seconds more than it needs to (on the low side), which may not sound like a lot, but adds up quickly to a 2 hour and 47 minute film. One of the main examples I’ve chosen is from 51:52-52:40, which is just a single wide shot of him looking around his room. I have no doubt that this scene is vitally important to the movie, but taking a full minute without any cuts of Kelvin just walking around checking stuff out with no music or narration is extremely boring to watch, and serves little actual purpose other than to show he is thoroughly checking out his room.
I would like to pit this scene against a scene from the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, which is the first scene that comes to mind that is about a person exploring a new room. In the scene I am thinking about, Mr. Bond has just arrived in Jamaica, and decides that someone could have bugged his room, or might try and get in later, so he has a little look around to make sure everything is fine. The camera is the first important difference, as it follows Bond around the room, stopping in various locations as he does to signify their importance. The camera angle also changes so we have a better view of exactly what he is doing, specifically when he puts a hair across his closet (to let him know if intruders will come later), and some powder on his briefcase to see if someone will go in there too. This pays off later in the movie, when his traps do indeed work, and he can be sure that someone or some people are watching him, while this bedroom scene from Solaris has no apparent payoff whatsoever.
One critique to this point was that the difference between the bedroom shots could have been because of the differences in genre between the two films. Dr. No and James Bond films are action films, and to appease the people watching it, the scenes and plot devices have to be to the point and snappy, while Solaris is more of a film about the philosophical exploration of what it means to be human. I would like to counter this point with the fact that if a movie isn’t entertaining in itself to watch, then it is unlikely that people will make the effort to watch it. Slowing down a scene to in turn slow down the haste of viewing is a fine artistic approach in scenes of massive importance, where it is imperative that the viewer takes in all the fine details of the scene, however doing it across a whole movie, often in places where it is highly unnecessary such as this bedroom scene, is a stylistically inferior way to make a movie.
Another thing I noticed was that all the hallways either look the same, or they are the same hallway just used over and over again. This can either be to signify the eeriness of this empty station that was once filled with people excited to explore, or simply because they didn’t have enough of a production budget to make multiple hallways to shoot in.
The third detail I noticed was that everyone is a lot older than I thought they would have been based off of the book. I don’t know why, but when reading the book I just assumed that everyone was a lot younger than they appear in the movie. This is mainly because Harey is 18, and I assumed that Kelvin was a similar age otherwise it would have been a bit weird. I think that the way the movie has it makes a lot more sense, because if Solaristics is a dying craft, then it makes sense that the only people who would still be willing to do research are of older age.