In his 25-year career as a director, Andrei Tarkovsky only made seven films. We most certainly would’ve had more from the Russian filmmaker if he wasn’t taken us away from us at the young age of 54. Nevertheless, with nearly half of his filmography in The Criterion Collection, to say the director’s work has stood the test of time would be an understatement. His films are still being analyzed to this day as people around the world discover new reasons to hold his work in such high regard. One such person, a video essayist named Antonios Papantoniou, took Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” and broke down four specific scenes, analyzing how the director tells this story from a visual standpoint. And the manner in which Antonios chose to break down these scenes is pretty fascinating.
The essayist eschews using any form of voiceover narration and instead places text beside the scene, which basically tells us everything we need to know. As the scene plays on, the text identifies the type of shot being...
