Barnes & Noble

The great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky is the guide on a sci-fi journey into the psyche in Solaris, a profoundly spiritual adaptation of a novel by seminal science fiction author Stanislaw Lem. The story of a psychologist (Donatas Banionis) who's sent to a space station above the planet Solaris to investigate reports of bizarre phenomena, Solaris strays far from the standard sci-fi template, using minimal special effects and eschewing technical jargon. Instead, the film revolves around a strange encounter with the mysterious power of Solaris' ocean, which manifests itself upon the psychologist's arrival as a loved one from his past -- perhaps hallucination, perhaps not. But scientific explanations are beside the point; what matters to Tarkovsky are the emotional and spiritual ramifications of a "Contact" that ultimately has the same sort of archetypal resonance as the monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (a film to which Solaris is often compared). As one would expect from Tarkovsky, the texture of Solaris is exquisite, with brilliant cinematography, a haunting, ghostlike score from Eduard Artemyev, and Bach organ music underlying some truly eloquent metaphysical musings. In the end, Solaris is a masterpiece that espouses a search for truth beyond science and a meditation on our fear of the unknown. Gregory Baird

All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris centers on widowed psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donata Banionis), who is sent to a space station orbiting a water-dominated planet called Solaris to investigate the mysterious death of a doctor, as well as the mental problems plaguing the dwindling number of cosmonauts on the station. Finding the remaining crew to be behaving oddly and aloof, Kelvin is more than surprised when he meets his seven-years-dead wife Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk) on the station. It quickly becomes apparent that Solaris possesses something that brings out repressed memories and obsessions within the cosmonauts on the space station, leaving Kelvin to question his perception of reality. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, Solaris was remade by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. Matthew Tobey

Product Details

• UPC: 037429172124
• Source: CRITERION
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: B&W, Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: Russian
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 2:49:00
• Sales Rank: 85

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