Episode 337: First Contact? (Tarkovsky's "Solaris")

0:00Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. It's a young man's game, underwater welding. You can't do it for too long. Takes its toll. Who are you? Who are you?

0:44I'm a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man. They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man.

1:01Anybody can have a brain.

1:05You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamerl Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, I'm back in Houston. Christopher Nolan's odyssey has come out to huge box office and, for the most part, critical raves. How are you feeling about it? First of all, we miss you already. The Ithaca is lesser without your presence.

1:34I have to go plant an oar. That's right. I guess they know of the sea in Houston. I'd just go for East Texas, I think. They might not.

1:47I'm a little nervous. I mean, I'm thrilled that mostly it's great reviews. But knowing us, it's very possible that that's not predictive at all of how we're going to feel. Yeah. I mean, we're not the target audience who just did a bonus series where we went through book by book. Never mind me, who teaches it every two years. It's like, I don't think how we feel about it will be a reflection of how any other people might feel. But I'm also nervous. When are you seeing it, by the way? I'm seeing it in a little less than a week, a Monday night.

2:19Okay. I'm seeing it, I think, the night before. So neither of us have seen it yet. Have you read about it? I've tried to not read too much about it. I caught some praise on Twitter, then I sort of got off of Twitter. But people are talking about it. And this is the other thing. It's like so many people are actually talking about it. So I was just talking to one of my colleagues who just saw it last night, and she couldn't help but tell me her opinion. And I was like, gosh, I didn't even want to hear her opinion. Yeah, what you're doing is what I do for virtually every movie that comes out.

2:49But this one, I have been reading things about it. And I also did something that's really the polar opposite of how I like to approach a movie, where I looked at a variety article that said all the differences between the text and the movie. And I did that because I just don't want to be in the movie being like, oh, my God, he left out the Achilles meeting in the fucking underworld. Are you kidding? That's such a like crucial thing. And I think I would be bad, both like it would be a bad experience for me, but also maybe people around me.

3:24If I kept doing that, you know, I'm honestly kind of shocked that you did this, but I get it. I mean, you're emotionally invested in a way that not even I am since you've been teaching it for so long. So whatever takes you out less, whatever's less likely to take you out. And the funny thing is, I don't think it is the responsibility of a director to faithfully adapt a text. Like, I think that's I have a very clear opinion about like cinema. We'll probably talk about this in the next segment when we talk about the movie Solaris, Tarkovsky's Solaris,

3:56that I don't think that there is an obligation on the part of the filmmaker to faithfully represent the book. And yet, I don't know, like, I think I'm too, I'm acting, I'm already like ruined it for myself. I'm too neurotic about it. I should just go in and just enjoy the fucking IMAX, like, awe-inspiring spectacle that I'm sure is going to be there. Like, that's something I'm 100% sure of. I'm excited about the IMAX aspect. But I don't know if it said this in Variety. It might have, like, saved this. But I'll just tell you right now, he gave the Cyclops two eyes.

4:26Yeah. I don't know. No, but he doesn't do the nobody trick. He doesn't do that. I caught that. You caught that, too. But now you're spoiling our listeners. Okay, sorry. Yes, that's right. I shouldn't drag my listeners down into my own private hell.

4:40Yeah. But last thing I was going to say quickly about whether he has to be faithful to the text. I feel like with the Odyssey, there is a bigger burden to be faithful because you can do, as, like, a gajillion people have done, versions of the Odyssey that you don't call the Odyssey and do whatever you want. But the minute you're touching the, like, pillar of the Western canon, you know. I don't even agree with that. Like, I really don't think he has that obligation. I also think it's a fool's errand.

5:11Like, it's not going to be seven hours. So, well, I was going to say something else I learned. But, like, there's one difference that I totally get, even though I think it's a huge shame. But unless this is going to be, like, a, you know, a six-hour, like, three-part series or something, or, like, Twin Peaks of the Return, which is also an Odyssey kind of remake, you need to, like, make choices. The only thing that really bothers me is that he didn't cast an actual Greek man, you know.

5:41That's what it is. The Twitter discourse is really unbelievable, or at least what my algorithm shows me. There was one that said, Christopher Nolan had one job to depict a historically accurate Odyssey. He failed.

5:58Like, it's so weird because, like, it doesn't even make sense. Like, what would that be? Like, Cersei, that's not how you really turn a person into a pig, you know. The historically accurate Odyssey would just be, like, some old man telling the story around a campfire. Yeah, exactly. It'll be like, you can't, yeah, a blind man. Like a blind man, yeah. If Homer was blind. Like, really what all these things are saying, if you had the Annie Hall subtitles, is it should be an all-white Odyssey. Yeah, as the Greeks, the pinnacle of the whites.

6:31Okay. Anyway, so today we are going to be talking, this is kind of part two of VBW Madness, the winner of that tournament, which had us talk about first Solaris the novel, which we talked about last episode. And I actually thought that was a pretty good episode, having edited it. I know you never listen, but you should. No, I just know in my heart of hearts that it was good. Yeah. And then in the second segment today, we're going to talk about the movie, the Tarkovsky movie.

7:02And, yeah, I think, like we said, we may talk about the Soderbergh for a bonus episode at some point soon. Yeah. Because now I'm really kind of curious. Me too. And I think next episode, main episode, we're going to talk about the Odyssey more broadly, having both seen the film. So a lot of adaptation talk, you know, what does it mean to adapt something for the cinema? But first. We're going to hit all of your favorite buttons. We're going to talk about AI and your beliefs about AI. And we're going to do it via measurement of a true latent construct, which is where do you fall, Tamler, on AI?

7:41We're looking at a quiz called the AI Compass that asks you 15 questions about your opinion on AI. And it will categorize you into one of 30 archetypes. So I thought it would be fun for us to take the quiz just live right now. And, of course, we'll put a link to the quiz so everybody can take it. Have you looked at any of these questions already? I have. Yeah, I have. So you've taken the quiz? Yeah. But I'm going to take it anew and see if there's reliability. I'm going to do a Crombex Alpha on my own.

8:12Okay, good. Just some of the archetypes that you can be just looking at it now for the first time. On one end is the Luddite. It doesn't work the way they claim. It's making everything worse. And you'd like your internet back, please. Like, I already know that. Like, that's probably what it's going to be. And then the profit is on the other end. AI is the most important thing that ever happened to our species. And it's going to be glorious. Well, the first part of that, Bob Wright agrees with. Not the second, necessarily. You have tabs open about longevity research.

8:44And you've mentally spent the UBI checks. You know what that is? No. Universal basic income. Yeah, so like, yeah, you know that soon we won't have to work as a species. And I'm sure that the thing they'll do is give everybody a generous UBI. Yeah, I thought it was like a bladder infection. All right, let's start. Should I, how about I read the questions and. Sure. Yeah. Go ahead. Number one, are AIs conscious? Do we have responsibilities toward them? And there's always five options.

9:14The first is, no, it's a next word predictor. This is embarrassing. Not now, but it might be possible someday. There's something going on in there, but it's not the same as human experience. They deserve moral consideration, roughly comparable to humans. And finally, they're the next stage of the evolution of intelligence on Earth. So I definitely, I'm going to say the first one, but, you know, I don't think it's just a next word predictor, but I do think it's embarrassing to ask this question. I'm with you on this. Not because I think it's a next word, like it's really complex, but conscious is not

9:47where it's going. Or where it is right now. Or where it is, or like, I personally don't think where it's going to go. I don't think so either. Number two, creative work. AI generated art, writing, and music. What's happening here? Option one, laundering other people's work through a statistics engine. Two, a cheap imitation that's flooding the internet with slop. Three, a useful drafting tool that still needs a human hand to matter. Four, a genius new creative medium like photography was. Five, the democratization of creativity itself. I don't even know exactly what that would mean.

10:20How could it be the democratization if like, we're not doing it? But, so this is a tough one. Like when I write my long article on why the validity of the scale is in question. Like on the one hand, yes, it's laundering other people's work through a statistic. It's engine, and it's definitely flooding the internet with slop, but it also might be a useful drafting tool for some people. Yeah. These aren't like well separated options. So I think I'll go with the one in the middle, a cheap imitation that's flooding the internet

10:52with slop. Okay. I'm going to go with a useful drafting tool that still needs a human hand to matter. Okay. But with sympathies to the other options. Okay. Number three, what will AI do to employment? One, mostly generate busy work for consultants, net effect, noise. Two, automate some tasks, create others the usual churn. Three, displace millions of workers and concentrate wealth further. Four, free people from drudge work and create new kinds of jobs we can't predict yet. Five, end the need for most human labor. What comes after is the real question.

11:23So this one, I have a clear answer for me, and it's the second. Automate some tasks, create others the usual churn. Yeah, me too. We shouldn't be agreeing so much, but it's pretty clear. Yeah, I know. It's bad for us to do. Number four, what's AI doing to our information environment? One, it's a glorified autocomplete making the internet worse. The epistemic disaster isn't AI being powerful. It's people believing it is. That sounds like an AI generated option. Two, generating confident-sounding garbage at scale.

11:56It's an epistemic disaster. Three, making things worse on net, deep fakes, SEO spam, hallucinated citations. Four, a mixed bag, better search and analysis, worse misinformation, wash. Five, on balance helpful, it's easier than ever to research, fact check, and learn. Six, a revolution in knowledge access. Everyone now has a research assistant. This is a tough one. I think one of the things that is perhaps useful is, you know, the way you can, like, use it to kind of follow up questions on searches.

12:27I think, like, making things worse on net might be right just in terms of, like, how people who haven't generated their own intellectual habits and lives already. So, like, for a lot of young people. But for people who have done that and who know, like, to take this stuff with a grain of salt, what to confirm, what to follow up on, I think it might be very useful. So maybe I would even say mixed bag wash. But I don't think it's a wash when you take into account, like, what it's going to do to

12:59our youth. Yeah. So which one are you going to go with? Maybe I'll go making things worse. But I'm tempted to do a mixed bag. Well, do making things worse because I'll go a mixed bag. Because I think it's actually hard to know. It definitely does make research and analyses better and easier, I think. But definitely worse than this information. But yeah, I'm also not 100%. Making things worse on net might be right. Okay. Five, what do you make of the companies building AI? One, a bubble built on vibes, VC money, and GPU hoarding.

13:32It'll pop. Two, over-promising, under-funding safety, and moving too fast. Typical tech. Three, a real industry building, real products. Some hype, some substance. Four, building something genuinely important, even if the business models are still shaking it out. Five, the most consequential industry since semiconductors. It's either, number one, a bubble built on vibes, VC money, and GPU ordering. It'll pop. I do think that, but I'm not an expert in the financial future of this.

14:03So it's either one or two. What do you do? You know, my gut was over-promising, under-funding safety, but I actually think it's a real industry building, real products. I think it's a lot of hype, but I think there's some substance. So I'll say three. All right, I'm going with one. All right. Six, could AI pose an existential threat to humanity? One, no. This is sci-fi panic by people who watch too much Terminator. Two, honestly, it's fine. It's a tool. The anxiety is way more dangerous than the technology. Three, not from technology itself, but from how people misuse it.

14:34Surveillance, weapons, control. Four, a small but non-zero chance. Worth taking seriously without panicking. Five, a serious risk that's being recklessly ignored by the people building it. Six, the most dangerous technology humanity has ever created. So, like, by existential threat to humanity, I take it that means this will make humanity go extinct. Yes. So then I'm definitely taking one. No, sci-fi panic. Yeah. I'll take two. Honestly, it's fine. It's a tool. Anxiety is way... I don't know if the anxiety is more dangerous than the technology, but I think neither.

15:08So dismissive we are. Seven, how much do you actually use AI in your own life? One, I avoid it on principle. Two, I've tried it. It's fine. I don't think about it much. Three, I use it regularly for specific tasks. It's a decent tool. Four, it's become a daily part of how I work and think. Five, I can't imagine going back to work without it. Yeah. Like, this is the one that scares me, like, how I would answer this in a year. But for right now, I'm clearly on I've tried it. It's fine. I don't think about it much. Yeah. And I'm at I use it regularly for specific tasks.

15:38It's a decent tool. Definitely not a daily tool for me, unless you count the undesired Google results. Yes, that's a daily encroachment. Yeah. No, I hate all that shit. It's so bad because sometimes like those, for some reason, those Google search results are like worse than just like using chat GPT or something. And if you know what you're looking for, you can see sometimes that it's just wrong right away. Yeah. Which should make you wonder about sometimes. Exactly. It's the. You aren't qualified. Gelman amnesia. Yeah. AI in healthcare. This is question eight.

16:10AI in healthcare. What's the real story? What's the real story? What's the deal with AI? One, hype. The hard parts of medicine aren't pattern matching. Two, some useful narrow applications, but nowhere near the sales pitch. Three, already saving lives and diagnostics. The best is ahead. Four, will transform medicine as profoundly as antibiotics did. I honestly don't know this at all, but I'm going to say the second one, but this isn't really based on much. And, you know, given how I think just normal diagnostics in medicine can be really, really

16:46bad, especially now, I think like if you're comparing it to that, it might be useful. I don't know. So I'm going to say two. So, yeah. And I'll say three, already saving lives and diagnostics. Again, I don't know. Like I would be lying if I said I had expertise, but it does seem as if that's an application that's made some progress, like better at reading scans just because you can feed it so much information about scans that have been read. That's maybe optimistic, but yeah. Number nine, training data and consent.

17:18AI models are trained on data scraped from the internet, much of it without permission. One, it's straightforward theft and should be illegal. Two, it's ethically questionable and the creators deserve compensation. Three, complicated. It's how all learning works, but the scale changes things. Four, fair use. You can't own facts and patterns. Five, a non-issue. Human artists learn from everything they see too. This is a tough one that I don't know if we've talked about very much. No. You know, I think, you know, Vince Gilligan had a famous little clip where he called it

17:51the world's most expensive plagiarism machine, and there is a lot of stuff. Like, I mean, I know I'm currently in a class action lawsuit, which I'm sure will yield zero, or it'll yield like something where I would have to fill out 12 forms to get $4. I think it's anthropic taking books without permission and putting them in. I don't know even the details. I was just told, hey, you might as well try it. You could get a couple thousand dollars. So apparently they took all of my books and put them in.

18:22And I don't know. That's like, you know, even people have to buy the book technically to be able to read it or, you know, take it out of the library, which means. So the fact that they're doing that is at the very least ethically questionable. So I think I'll do that one. Yeah, Google famously sort of just scanned all the books that it could and said, we'll worry about it later. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm mixed on this too. I'll say complicated. It's how all learning works, but the scale changes things. But I don't think it's because that's how all learning works that it's complicated.

18:52I just think that somewhere in the middle, like feasibly, it's- So why not two? The one I did. Because I don't know that creators deserve compensation. I mean, I guess that just depends on whether they make a lot of money from any one creator. I don't have the intuition that people need to get paid if AI ingested it. Wait till they start doing like AI versions of your beats. You know, that's a good example because beats are sampling so much anyway. And I'm not going to pay those fucking artists.

19:24Yeah, but I don't make money from them like for that reason. Well, for many reasons, but yeah. And you kind of do. And I kind of do. That's true. All right. I'll put two. Actually, it is ethically questionable. Ten. Students are using AI to write their essays and do their homework. One. It's a plagiarism machine that produces C minus work. Schools are panicking over a souped up thesaurus. See, this is where it's like combining two answers that are just double barreling. It's not producing C minus work. It's producing like B work.

19:54B, B plus. Yeah. And schools are allowed to panic over even that. Two. It's destroying the entire point of education. Three. Three. A real problem that schools need to address, but not the end of learning. Four. The assignments need to change, not the students. Five. This is what a calculator was to math class. Adapt or get left behind. Six. It's the best thing that happened to education. Personalized tutoring for everyone. I like to adapt or get left behind like, oh, yeah, if you didn't adapt to the calculator, you were fucked. Fucking abacus Dave is what they call to me.

20:25It's destroying the entire point of education. Very clear cut for me. Yeah. I'll say a real problem that schools need to address, but not the end of learning. Because I'm optimistic about our children. Eleven. How should government handle AI? Regulate the companies wasting resources on it, not the technology. It's not powerful enough to need its own framework. That was one. Two. Ban or heavily restrict it until we understand what we're dealing with. Three. Regulate it like pharmaceuticals. Prove it safe before you ship it. Four. Sensible guardrails, but don't strangle innovation. Five. Mostly stay out of the way. The technology is moving too fast for legislation.

20:57Six. Let it rip. Regulation is just protectionism for incumbents. I don't even know what they mean by that. So I think regulate it like pharmaceuticals maybe, but I don't even know what we're talking about here. You know, like this is a tough one for me. I don't want to say sensible guardrails, but don't strangle innovation because I don't know. It's one of those two. Which one do you think? I'm going to go sensible guardrails, not because I'm worried about it strangling innovation,

21:27but because I think sensible guardrails are pretty much the only thing we can do. All right. I'll do the other one. Regulate it like pharmaceuticals. But then in exchange for that, deregulate certain pharmaceuticals. Let us get Vicodin again, you know?

21:44We're not going to win that one. I think I'm ready. I think I can handle it. Fucking patronizing ass governments. Twelve. Will we build artificial general intelligence, a system that can do anything a human can do intellectually? One. No, we don't even understand human intelligence. This is decades away, if ever. Two. Maybe someday, but current approaches won't get us there. Three. We're closer than most people think, and it could happen within a decade. Four. It's essentially already here. We just keep moving the goalposts. One.

22:14For me, no, we don't even understand human intelligence. This is decades away, if ever. I'm two. Maybe someday, but current approaches won't get us there. All right. Thirteen. Who's actually benefiting from AI right now? One. NVIDIA, cloud providers, and grifters. That's about it. Two. Big tech, mostly. The democratization talk is marketing. Three. A mix. Tech companies, for sure, but regular people are getting real use from it, too. Four. Anyone willing to learn how to use it. The tools are right there, Tamler. Five. Everyone, increasingly. It's the most accessible, powerful technology ever built.

22:45I mean, people are getting real use from it. There's no question about that, even if it's just like cooking a big dinner for guests coming over. And I guess I'll do that, a mix. Yeah. I guess I'll do that. Yeah. That's my gut, too. I'm just going to, for the sake of being interesting, do anyone willing to learn how to use it? Oh, that's not what you believe, though. No, it's not. The tools are right there. So, dude, just pick what you believe. All right. I'll do a mix. Yeah. That's what I would have picked. 14, it's 2031. What happened with AI? One, the bubble popped AI is still around, but the hype looks embarrassing in hindsight.

23:15Two, incremental progress, useful tools, no revolution. Remember when people said this about blockchain? Three, steady, real integration into work and daily life, less dramatic than predicted, but meaningful. Four, major societal shifts underway, job markets, education, and creative industries fundamentally changed. Five, we're living in a different world. AI reshaped everything faster than anyone expected. I mean, I do think there will be a bubble. Like, I believe that. I'm not sure what basis I have for believing that, but I think this is going to be a bubble that pops and it could be like the financial crisis.

23:46Yeah. And maybe the, I guess I'll do that one because AI is still around, even though I do think it can be maybe a useful tool, but I'll do that one. I think that's closest to what I believe. I think steady, real integration into work and daily life, less dramatic than predicted, but meaningful. I think it'll become just part of everything. But I think it's like, it sucks like right now. It's being like, I think if you work in a job where they're trying to bring AI into like a corporate workplace, like from talking to people, I think that ends up being much harder than if you just didn't do it at all.

24:18Maybe. I just, I think that, that what will happen is the things that it doesn't work well for will slowly sort of fall off and the things that it does work well for will just be integrated in, in like almost seamless way. So like already, you know, people who record zoom meetings get like note taking, like AI that's like super helpful. Like that's the kind of shit I think it will just integrate itself into. But there's this whole consultant class that is trying to create all these workshops that you have to attend, like, it's just going to be a huge pain in the ass.

24:50Well, my friend who works at a hospital, the thing that he drove him crazy was this woman coming in, making him do this like six hour, like workshop and saying, AI is not going to take your jobs. People who know how to use AI are going to take your job. Like, I don't know how he didn't just burn down the entire place at that point, you know, that would have just driven me out of my fucking mind. Oh my God. Okay. Last question. AI data centers use enormous amounts of electricity and water.

25:21How much does this matter? One, we're burning staggering amounts of energy and water to run a technology that mostly generates spam. This is genuinely unconscionable. Two, the environmental cost would be easier to stomach if we were getting something worthwhile out of it. We're not. And that makes the waste indefensible. Three, it's worth keeping an eye on. But AI data centers use less electricity than streaming videos in 4K and nobody's launching a moral crusade against Netflix. Four, the environmental footprint is real and should be taken seriously, but the potential benefits in medicine science productivity operate on a completely different scale.

25:51And five, the environmental argument is wildly exaggerated by people who already are opposed to AI and went looking for the most sympathetic reason to say so. You know, like I feel like I believe all of these to some extent, you know, like it's, this is a very poorly phrased question because we are burning, I think a ton of energy and water. I don't think we're just generating spam, although it is generating a lot of spam. You know, I've heard those things about streaming and video in 4K and, you know, as someone who enjoys doing that, I wouldn't want to stop that.

26:24So if that's true, but like it doesn't tell you which of these things is true. So I guess I'll do the middle. It's worth keeping an eye on if they're right that data centers use less electricity than streaming video in 4K. That also could be for now because there aren't that many data centers, but soon there will be. Yeah. It sucks because I think the environmental effects were wildly exaggerated by people who are opposed to AI. Yeah. You know, so there's all this like overestimation of how damaging it is. And there's people who have reported that an almond farm uses way more than a data center.

26:56Like just growing almonds is like a huge like water waster. Yeah. But I also think that it's the 4K. Like we should be up in arms about all of this stuff if we're going to be up in arms about it. And so I'm going to say it's worth keeping an eye on. There's a real thing. And this is a big thing in Texas right now of communities not wanting data centers anywhere around them. And so I assume there's a reason for that. Yeah. I don't think it's just hype that these communities in rural Texas, they're not predisposed to

27:27a bitch about the environment. Like I think there's something like that it does that's damaging to the local environment. But I don't know. But at least in this case, it's not because of like woke people. They're ugly. They're big. Maybe they're noisy. Maybe there's environmental impact that we're not capturing. Don't say that about rural Texans. And I think that this is the one place where the regulation from the government should really step in. That's easier at least to regulate than whatever the technology is.

27:58All right. Clicking to see my results. Do you have yours? I do. All right. You want to read yours first? Sure. You are, and the title of my archetype is, free subscription tier. Patron Saint Kara Swisher, the Wall Street Journal. It works. You use it. And the jury's still out on the big questions. You're not dismissive. And you're not converted. You're empirical. You'll happily use the free version for what it's good at. But you're absolutely not paying $20 a month for this. There are limits. Except for that I am. No, that's what I'm going to say.

28:28It's an unfortunate way to try to present what I think is probably like your view overall. Yeah. But I like for all of the people who are about to email me to say I'm entirely dismissive about the wonders of this technology. No, this website told me I'm not dismissive. Yes. Okay. The website did not tell me that, although I am not on the furthest archetype. I don't remember what this was, but I am the shrug. I think this captures what I was like six months ago, the shrug. Now I'm very worried about what it's doing in education.

29:00But here's what it says about the shrug. It also says my patron saint is Matt Levine. Do you know who that is? No. I think it's just doing that because I'm Jewish. It knows. Yeah. So here's what it says. AI is a thing that exists and you regard it with detached amusement like everything else. It's overhyped, sure, but so is most stuff. That's fair enough. You'll use it when it's useful, ignore it when it isn't, and you'll find the discourse more interesting than the technology. That's definitely not true.

29:31You are unbothered. Yeah. I think, like I said, this would have been more accurate a bit ago. Yeah. Oh, the shrug at the 10th. That's only the 10th from the end of the spectrum. I know. You could have been the Luddite, the digital hermit, the retired engineer, the conscientious objector, the journalist. Yeah. I feel bad about that. I should be more like that. And mine is just one higher. Free subscription tier is number 11.

30:01Oh, I need to get more Luddite, clearly. But, you know, like... You're going to work on that. I'm going to work on that. All right. That's where we stand on AI, whether we agree or not, because we've scientifically demonstrated that this is where we are. And, yeah. Anything more to add about it? No. But I think that, obviously, the movie we're about to discuss is all about AI. I'll make sure and bring it up over and over again. And soon, you won't need a Tarkovsky. That's true.

30:31Because, you know, AI will be able to just give you a Tarkovsky-like movie. Yeah. We'll be right back to talk about Tarkovsky's Solaris, which I'm very excited to do, because there's a lot to talk about.

30:58We'll be right back to talk about Tarkovsky.

31:28Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. I'm going to start with support this time, because with all the excitement about The Odyssey,

32:00I see that Emily Wilson's translation is number seven on the bestseller list. So whatever we end up thinking of the movie, it's doing a lot of good. And anyone who is interested in reading The Odyssey and having some people to read along with, you should go to our Patreon page. And for just $5 a month, you can get access to all of our bonus episodes, including our most recent series, The Lotus Eaters, which goes through all of Homer's Odyssey.

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34:03All right. Let's get to our main topic. This is Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris, based on the Stanislav Lem book that we talked about last episode. I was surprised to see that Lem is listed as one of the writers also. And I do think he worked on the screenplay and stayed in contact in spite of the conflicts that they had about it, in spite of how Lem would shit on it basically for the rest of

34:34his life. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, on the one hand, I kind of respected if he was like, all right, well, like, I think they started off thinking it was going to be more collaborative. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what he must have thought. Yeah. But Tarkovsky is working under the theory, like the auteur kind of has to have the final say, because I'm not a novelist. I'm a film director and I'm making a film. Yeah. And I think I saw a quote that I thought captured nicely the friction where Tarkovsky said he

35:06thought that Lem just was viewing him as an illustrator of his book. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That he just thought he was going to take the book and do the best he could to put the book on film, but that the primary thing was to be faithful to the book like an illustrator. And, of course, that's not what someone like Tarkovsky of anyone is going to be interested in doing. Because for Tarkovsky, the number one thing I think is cinema and the tools that you have, that you have to be faithful to that above all else.

35:38But what do you think, since we're on this topic, what do you think are the main thematic differences? And we can talk about some of the narrative differences. Yeah. The biggest one for me is that thematically and possibly by necessity, there is just less focus on what the alien is and that theme that Lem apparently came back to multiple times about like the strangeness, the otherness, the impossibility of ever knowing the other. And the book spends so much time on that and, you know, the limits of scientific discovery

36:12and the limits of science itself that I guess just would not have been possible in this medium. Like it would, or at least it would have been difficult to focus on that. And I remember the first time I did this, watched the movie and read the book thinking, well, one of them really is about humans and one of them is really about the aliens. And I think that's the vibe that I get. What about you? Yeah, same. I think Lem is interested in Solaris itself. He says at multiple points, like, I called it Solaris, like, because like the focus is

36:44about Solaris. And I think all the epistemological problems we face trying to understand it, I think that was, as you said, a very big part of the book. Tarkovsky really just kind of gestures at it at one point. But that's not the focus of his movie at all. I think you could make a movie that explored that question. I just don't think that's the movie Tarkovsky, like, I don't think he's the right person for that movie. And certainly I don't think what he wanted to do.

37:16There was an interview with Lem on the Criterion disc that I have and watched it on where he basically says, like, Solaris itself was kind of an annoyance to Tarkovsky. Like, he wanted to do crime and punishment on a space station. And it was just like Solaris to him was like a pretext to explore all these things about the human problem and human loss and human isolation. And I think it's funny that Tarkovsky gives what I take to be kind of Lem's perspective

37:49in the Sartorius character to some degree. You know, like Sartorius will say something like, this is just second rate Dostoevsky. Or he'll say at one point, don't turn a scientific problem into a common love story. So I think like it's funny that I think Tarkovsky is kind of giving that view some air, even if, you know, he's making the movie that he wants to make. I think some of that conflict is played out in the stuff with Sartorius or Sartorius?

38:19I think it's Sartorius. Yeah, Sartorius. So that's, I think, broadly right. I think narratively, I think the movie is pretty faithful in the middle and completely different in the beginning because they don't even go out to space until the 43rd minute. It's 43 minutes and something where he's finally in the rocket ship. And of course, the end, which I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about. It's not the same as the end at all. And here's maybe the biggest difference between them. I think Lem is right that Tarkovsky finds Solaris to be an annoyance or an obstacle, you

38:55know, opening on the pond that's in his family home, the Dacha or Daka or whatever they call these Russian family homes, that you see the reflection of that in the pond. The pond looks already kind of mysterious and beautiful and kind of awe-inspiring. And I think like one of the main themes of the movie is that the earth is just as mysterious. It's just as strange.

39:26It's full of reflections and magic. It's all kind of here if we notice and attend to it. But we run, we run away. We try to explore beyond the boundaries of earth, not because earth doesn't have all this stuff to offer, but we're just afraid to kind of reckon with who we really are and what we've done. And one of the, I think the messages once you get to the space station is you can't run away from that anyway, like not even in space.

39:56It'll come back, if anything, harder, more intensely because Solaris, like in the book, acts also as a kind of mirror to the person. And that driving scene, one of the things I love about that, and I know it's a controversial scene, but it's shot, as you told me, in Tokyo, which I thought when I was looking, that look seems like Tokyo. It's just so space-like, like as he's going through there, the sounds and everything, it's like that same feeling that you get in a rocket ship going out to space, you can

40:27get in the car if you just pay attention to everything that's going on. And I've had this experience, like, and it's usually coming out of a movie in the movie theater and then driving home on the highway. It's like, I'm doing it for the first time. Like, it's just so cool. And the sounds especially. And I think the sound in this movie is designed in those opening scenes to be otherworldly, even though it's so clearly on Earth. that kind of has a 47-year-old, but it was a 73-year-old-需要 Dodger, were not a generation-old-风 hit.

40:58Have a great day,bild. I get anласти registwriter maybe I got an ask for it, but I'm really excited. I want people to blow your Year's country on Earth." I know, but I think they have changed in the video. There are mostly many Asian movies that I'm looking at, but that thing wasn't the right, but they could be just kind of striking. But they're actually not going to look back at all mikrooder if they don't see a lot. And most of them have to see theš, it's upsetting to realise. I have a lot of experience. so i think like so much of what this movie is saying is it's here we don't need to go out to

41:32the cosmos like what we have is here we need to turn inward and we need to connect not with aliens but just with our fellow human beings i mean there is a part i guess in the third act that where snout at his birthday party pretty much says that uh we're not actually interested in exploring new worlds we just want to extend the borders of earth yeah and that i think is like the thesis that you're you're describing yeah i like everything you said i am like not sure what i think about what he's saying about earth i definitely think what you said makes sense

42:05but if i got a little bit more of an ambivalence about it i could also read that freeway scene in that you know big japanese concrete and light modern landscape as a criticism of what we're doing to the earth because it's in such stark contrast to the nature scenes in his dad's house out in the country and so it feels like we're trying to turn the earth into something that it's not and the imagery of his mother on that farm like i kept thinking mother earth was something that he

42:37was trying to tell us that like earth is the roots of all humanity it is the source the wellspring of life you know he carries the dirt with him all the way to solaris and it's like he's yearning to be in contact with that but at the same time he's not i which i'm not quite sure what's going on and so i wasn't sure whether he was saying like okay not only are we misguided into thinking that we need to explore new worlds we're actually changing what we really need and what we want from our own planet

43:08into something that we think we need and want which is these like big freeways and and modernity yeah no i think that's there i definitely think there's also a kind of critique in the driving scene of like everything gets progressively more alienating and louder and cacophonous and it is kind of like we're taking this earth and we're fucking it up and even his family home you can see it's by a highway so it's almost like a little mini solaris itself like he has this family home that's like

43:41probably going to be encroached on soon by the highway there so i think that is something you know i do think tarkovsky wants us to return to nature return to the mother although the mother is not painted as a necessarily super sympathetic character no that's why i think there's some weird ambivalence there because he also chooses not to return to earth right not to return to the people he's supposedly connecting with by staying on solaris he's like creating a new version of them to connect with so but i guess i see that as a failure of his character that he does that um not as he is

44:15correctly or even defensibly trying to just keep what he wants of earth but i don't know what do you think i mean i think so too like i was at the end of this not sure what he really thought of chris's way of dealing so i think what is clear is that he has presented the raskolnikov like the crime and punishment guilt of conscience that's weighing on chris as well as the other ones and these are the sources of the guests you know people they feel guilty about on the one hand it seems as if chris

44:49is working through the trauma or the guilt that he's experienced because of the suicide of his ex-wife harry and he is less ashamed of her than the others are of their guests who they never find out like he treats her as like a real thing not he doesn't experiment on her you know she even says at one point he's the only decent one you know he's treated me he's loved me one way of reading that is tarkovsky thinks yeah he's actually worked through some of these psychological problems on the other hand

45:20he seems like extra clingy toward her the more time goes on and he wants her not the original harry like that it's like a replacement and that he chooses the replacement home and father and life on solaris instead of dealing with whatever he had to deal with at home seems like that's not healthy that's a pretty unhealthy way yeah it's like a person who's gone temporarily insane choosing to stay with their

45:50hallucinations instead of like returning to the real world imperfect as as it is so that speech that snout makes i wrote it down so let me read that he says we have no interest in conquering any cosmos we want to extend the earth to the borders of the cosmos we don't know what to do with other worlds we don't need other worlds we need a mirror we struggle for contact but we'll never find it we're in the foolish human predicament of striving for a goal that he fears that he has no need for man needs man

46:21gay but whatever it's a little gay but uh that's the thing i that i think he's running away from is that he didn't properly make connections it seems like not with his father because his father has a lot of ambivalence about him and uh it seems like he's a little bit on the outside of the community and we don't know who the aunt is or the kids but he has clearly nothing to do with that and he is like burns his like mementos from childhood before he leaves which at first i was

46:53like is it because this is a journey from which he can never return you know sort of you know like the this is a long space journey and you're committed to being there for the rest of your life but it doesn't seem that way it seems as if returning would be an option and what he's doing is just eliminating the connections that he has um save for a couple of things that he takes with him yeah like i think it's clear that you can come back because burton came back he's older right obviously yes that's right yeah and i think is it implied that the father was also there at some

47:23point i think it is because he seems to have known burton in a professional context yeah so yeah it's like he has these people here he has burton who has been in contact with the ocean he has his father who also has been involved and he just doesn't really talk to any of them about it no there's a moment where his father's like hey can we talk alone we don't get that much time and he's like yeah i don't know if you've ever seen this in people there are people who it seems like they want so much more of a connection to their father that they have this childhood eagerness in just the

47:57way that they even talk about it and it's clear that he wanted to be more connected with his father but his father was probably distant and he doesn't get that and so it seems as if he's a person who has failed at connections with people and that's another reading that i had which is like it it seems as if this is a man who has realized that his connection to other humans has never yielded anything satisfactory for either him or the other person yeah and there's a way in which he's turning inward but he's getting something out of the the chris version of hari the you know the one

48:33that's in his mind the father that's in his mind the the house that's in his mind the mother that's in his mind yeah it's just that that's solipsistic and it's cheating you know like i don't think he's moralizing necessarily but i think there is a general sense that you can't cheat when it comes to human connection yeah this relates to some of the ai stuff i think that we have it can simulate connection but it can't actually be connection although even some of the stuff that hari says might suggest otherwise i don't know you know i know it's hard to know you know the the more optimistic reading

49:07which i don't think is the one tarkovsky is really offering but he puts it out there i think it's one that lem would have offered is that he is the first real shot at truly connecting with the alien because he is so he's so bad at connecting with other humans here is somebody who has been willing to open up emotionally to the creature that is the ocean and maybe what he's doing is not just running away from humanities and maybe not entirely solipsistic but rather approaching the alien in a way that i

49:42think as as sartorius at one point says or i don't remember if it's not or sartorius that says like hey you might have made the been the first to make an emotional connection to the ocean yeah and in fact i i watched certain scenes again this morning in preparation in addition to watching the whole thing it does seem like something big will happen on the ship between him and hari and you'll cut to those cool shots of the ocean and it seems like there's activity building in the ocean like it's kind of learning something about and it seems to although we don't see the what is it called

50:15and f the encephalogram encephalogram uh the snuffleupagus we don't see him do it and it's like it's a little confusing but it does seem like maybe that worked in terms of getting rid of all the the guests and making it so that they don't come back so i don't know maybe that's yeah i think that is an optimistic read it just so much of the movie is about like the deep regret and and shame that he has for not having connected with anyone successfully and i actually maybe got the slightly different read of

50:47the stuff with him and his father to me it seems like it's more him that's distant than the father but maybe that wasn't true in their childhood i don't know maybe now that the dad is retired he wants to do like a cat in the cradle thing yeah you know there is an interesting parallel when his father is talking to burton is that is that the guy's name um about the house and he says that it's exactly like the one that was my dad's or my grandfather's yes that he rebuilt as a replica

51:17it's just like oh he's doing the earth version of what chris ends up doing out there right exactly and that's why it's so close to that highway you know like and yeah well this relates to what i think is a huge theme in the movie which is the idea of copies and reflections and everything is like a copy of a copy of a copy so that daca right is a copy of the original great-grandfather's house and then the daca we see at the end of the movie is another copy of that and there's a little bit of degrading

51:52of copies uh sort of raining inside exactly right it's raining inside the further you get it's like a zero x copy the more it's going to be faded or inaccurate in all sorts of different ways and there's so many shots of mirrors and i think the idea of art as a form of a copy you know like art trying to express something real but it can't do that it has to do it via art and there's that broigo painting a hunter's painting where it seems like that conveys something it kind of merges with the

52:24daca and stuff that he experienced on earth and she seems to understand that harry seems to understand that so like i think that idea just runs through it it's a very platonic idea is there are these the real which for tarkovsky i think probably has to do with love and some sort of like spiritual connection that you can have with the earth and with other people and then you have these successively more distant copies and you know at the end like what he's doing is basically looking at shadows

52:56on the wall of plato's cave or maybe you know something even beyond that i don't know he's he's looking at an ai version a video of shadows on the wall yeah um yet i still can't help but feel that there's some ambivalence there because one of the things that seems right is that harry is getting moved by the art in a way that like maybe what the guests had never experienced before the ocean hadn't experienced before and the power of art to evoke even as a copy seems like something tarkovsky

53:30is going to be sympathetic toward right so like this is what he is doing he is presenting artwork to evoke emotion and the evocation of that emotion is just the emotion is just as sincere an emotion as it would be with whatever quote unquote the real thing would be and it seems again i like i'm it's weird that i'm reading optimism into it but it seems as if toward the end the love that he's feeling for harry and perhaps for the father and the landscape that the ocean has created is going to do something

54:05profound to the ocean or to him or to the relationship between him and the ocean because it can do that yeah no i mean i completely agree with that and so i don't mean to say that just because something is a copy it's bad i think you know when it comes to what i think tarkovsky might imagine to be real it might be unarticulable particular inarticulable inartic inarticulable i just can't say the last it's literally and so art is sometimes either the best way for us to represent it or even more

54:40optimistically it's a pointer it's a way for us to access the real thing which can't be represented in such straightforward or clear-cut ways so i agree with that and i also agree that when she's looking at the painting she is getting more from it than i think any of the humans on earth for sure she doesn't have that kind of world weary cynicism about it like they have about don quixote so it's almost like she has a more innocent appreciation of it because she hasn't been damaged by earth she

55:15hasn't been emotionally crippled and you know i think she says something to that effect at some point you know like i feel more deeply than you do and i think they're they're kind of dead inside all those people and yet she's sympathetic she's like no you're all human just in different ways it really is interesting like i so i watched almost two times this time around and i found myself even after the second time more confused about what's going on with hari than i was at first because i'm

55:46like wait is she having a real insight here is the you know or by extension is the ocean having a real insight and i'm kind of thinking that in the book it's all about humans trying to understand what's going on with the ocean with solaris and i think that what might be happening is tarkovsky representing solaris getting true understanding of humans yeah because that's what tarkovsky is interested in what is humanity yes exactly and i think that's the clear difference between uh lem and tarkovsky is that

56:19ultimately they're interested in different things in this book i'm not saying lem doesn't care about humans or humanities or even that the novel doesn't pay because clearly he does because of the you know he created hari that's why it's so wonderful to see two takes on like obviously tarkovsky saw something in the book that inspired him and you know like even that that lem might not have realized he was putting in there so i think like to get back to what you started off saying um at the beginning of this episode there is no being faithful to the book in a better way or worse way i think tarkovsky

56:54probably was faithful to the book in a way that lem just didn't realize yes exactly that book does have uh these questions about hari and the extent to which she might be the less damaged version of a human being you know i always seem to say this when you're a hammer everything is beginner's mind but she has a little beginner's mind a kind of innocence that ultimately leads her to do something that we consider a very human almost ideal trait which is sacrifice right yeah and that's just something

57:26that none of those other people are capable of they just want to destroy radiate you know yeah okay before we dive into the details do you want to talk about this in contrast to 2001 a space odyssey that's certainly the way that this has been presented as tarkovsky's response to kubrick and yeah they're certainly in conversation with each other i mean we both love both movies but uh do you have any thoughts on that contrast is this being overplayed and we should just accept both masterpieces on their

57:59own terms you know i found it like without doing a whole lot of reading about what tarkovsky was thinking just getting the gist of his complaints i could see the very intentional parallels with changes so 2001 is really clean it's really neat it's really like uh futuristic in in the like antiseptic sense and tarkovsky builds a space station that is just as futuristic but it's dirty it's in disrepair it's like

58:33tarnished in a way that's very like blade runnery blade runner gets all the credit for creating a future that was dirty yeah but this is definitely a dirty future and then infusing the station with like human artifacts like art and the like decor and everything that is just giving it he's i think it seems like he's thinking your sci-fi doesn't have to be stripped of its humanity yeah i think that's right even though it's dirty it's also warmer there's something warm about the ship it's lived in it's

59:05lived in yeah there's uh it's you know it's a contrast and the color sometimes it becomes almost intentionally kind of blue and clinical with his bed having the plastic on it and then other times they're just in a drawing room with candles having like a cigarette and dressed in suits like so it's sort of all over the place and a lot of times the color choices emphasize this difference and i don't know like i haven't gone through this and analyzed every time it goes from color to black and white or that kind of sepia or to a kind of bluish color it goes in sometimes with no clear rhyme or reason

59:43narratively it doesn't seem like right other than the fact that even though it's not i don't think it's explicitly ever mentioned in the film solaris in the book has two suns one of which is blue and the other one is orange and so the nighttime is the blue light and yeah but so so it seems as if he might have taken that as a cue for lighting but that ends up giving yeah one is very cold yeah and also sometimes it's just black and white or sometimes it's like seppy and i'd like to see that because

1:00:15it seems like sometimes it just turns blue for no reason like it's not like a lot of time has passed so we've gone from day to night and you know there's a weird thing when they're at the beginning