Choreographing Embodied Memories: Tarkovsky’s Levitation Scene as a Kairotic Musical Chronotope

Abstract

Tarkovsky’s “Levitation Scene” is a unique moment in Solaris (1972). It starts with a scheduled thirty-second anti-gravity test in the spaceship. The levitation, however, continues for two minutes, this time accompanied by music. Artemiev’s electronic version of Bach’s Chorale Prelude BWV 639 generates an audiovisual choreography in which images, objects, and the main characters themselves dance to music. This moment of intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spacial relationships constitutes what I call here a “musical chronotope,” after Bakhtin. Due to its formal display, this moment of pure listening and contemplation for the audience seems to be detached from the film narrative. Bach’s Chorale weaves the audiovisual tapestry and encloses this special time-space unit, but not only. This is the fourth time this musical excerpt appears in the film. As a refrain, it connects different temporal and spatial references, all related to Kris’s life. The musical chronotope thus becomes an entry point into deeper layers of meaning that permeate the unfolding of the narrative. The kairotic dimension of the levitation scene is closely related to a previous moment of contemplation in the film: Hari’s phenomenological aesthetic experience of Brueghel’s Hunters in the Snow. She brings the painting alive in her mind by adding a sonic environment based on her recollection of recorded images of Kris’s childhood that they watched before. This contemplative moment reveals her memory in action. The absence of Bach’s music during her recollection evinces that these are Kris’s memories, not Hari’s. She is a manifestation of his consciousness sent by Solaris, and, as the levitation scene shows, a vivid embodied memory for him. Instead of shifting from narrative functions, the musical chronotope is at the core of the main character’s journey in search of (previously lost) human bonds.