Funny thing about Tartovsky's "Solaris"

I was watching Solaris (Tarkovsky's 1972 version, not Clooney's remake) at London's National Film Theatre yesterday. The film perhaps is a little leisurely in pace, but I prefer it to the remake. Anyway, the character Burton at one point drives through what was intended by Tarkovsky (I presume) to be a futuristic city. The film's budget presumably couldn't stretch to the kind of elaborate minatures that would be necessary for the sequence, so Tarkovsky chose to use a contempoary stand-in.

Namely, Tokyo.

I guess that to the viewing Russians of that era, Tokyo probably did look a little alien. Especially the huge amount of cars on the road.

Amusingly, my Japanese wife who was watching the film with me afterwards asked "Why did Burton end up in Tokyo all of a sudden?". Bless.