Rating: 
Summary: Involving and challenging, gentle but powerful film
Review: I saw this in a small cinema after work when I was tired. As such it seemed extremely dreamlike and and events seemed to happen in ebbs and flows like the sea at the centre of the story. It is a difficult film if you are used to passive entertainment from films, as I and many probably are in the main these days. But it is richly rewarding. The dialog is sparing but extremly affecting. The emotional set of the film sweeps through confusion, desperation, sadness and futility but ending remarkably with a sense of hope. The over riding message to me seemed to be that man, unable to come to grips with his own existance and purpose has turned his mind to exploration of the outside at the neglect of the inside......this films shows how the two are linked and inseperable. Splendid stuff
Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant exploration of guilt by a master director . . .
Review: Solaris is usually compared to 2001 by critics whose sensibilities are bound by the concept of genre. In Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem's novel of the same name, Andrei Tarkovsky explores guilt and its effect on the psyche in the setting of a living alien world that tries to communicate with a group of cosmonauts by recreating ghosts from their pasts. Marked by Tarkovsky's trademark camera work and an excellent score highlighted by selections from Bach, Solaris is much more than the Russian answer to 2001.
Rating:
Summary: A serious diversion for people who like to think
Review: Well if you happen to be reading this do yourself a favor and watch this movie. Words cannot describe how this movie might make you feel. You might think it is boring and trite and wonder when the plot will begin or it might cacth you like it did me and give you answers to questions you never really wanted anyone to answer. It is not science fiction, it is metaphysical fiction about the human mind and of all things, true love. Not a usual combination but it does show no matter how far man travels from the earth he always brings his humanity. A very beutiful original and haunting film that really defies a true description. You really must make yourself sit through it you will not be the same afterwards.
Rating:
Summary: forget 2001 space odyssey
Review: and go to the depth of the human soul with this masterpiece. Pure philosophy in a breathtaking "psychoscape". Get lost in this 'non-material' movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing 2001 wannabe
Review: Solaris takes the cake when it comes to throwing in every sort of 2001 effect and no coherent plot line. Racked with tediously long pauses devoid of meaning, Solaris would put anyone not abusing narcotics to sleep or drive them to the stop button on the remote. This movie isn't even worth rewinding!
Rating:
Summary: One of the greates films ever created by the hand of human.
Review: My word, what an excellent science fiction film. In fact, it transcends genre and manages to become one of the greatest films ever made. I can't help but to become engrossed every single solitary viewing. It is awe inspiring. They are talking of an American Hollywood remake, but nothing would do it justice. Not even if 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY helmer Kubrick headed up the project.
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Blend of Fine Art & Science Fiction
Review: For those who miss genuine science fiction and also for the ones who have always wondered what science fiction is, Solaris might be a wonderful treat.Science fiction is not just about future technologies. In my view, s.f. explores (human) intelligence and how it enables us to observe and communicate with the universe around us. In this sense, s.f. celebrates being (intellectually) alive. Solaris is a tremendous achievement, a poetic and romantical masterpiece where love is portrayed as the only activity which will enable humankind to break free from the world of symbols and "see things as they are."
Rating:
Summary: Serious science fiction of a type no longer seen.
Review: This Soviet film was made in 1971, based on the 1961 novel by the great Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. It is the only one of his books to be made into a movie, and worth seeing for that reason alone. The film is true science fiction, serious and meditative. Investigations have been ongoing for years of a single being on an alien planet, so far evolved that it can communicate with us only indirectly. It concludes that the best way to communicate with our limited intelligence is to grant our own deepest desires, sensed telepathically. The "ocean being" creates out of thin air, a la the Star Trek Holodeck, apparently real objects and sentient beings from our own minds. One scientist creates a fantasy sex object, another recreates his long-dead wife, who committed suicide when he insisted on accepting a long deep space piloting mission. However, these creations do not conveniently disappear when you say "off", because they represent truths deep within us, and the alien senses that the truth remains. They are also as flawed as are our own memories and desires. The problems with this film arise when it diverts from the book, which is far more spectacular. In one scene, the protagonists satirize their own rambling on, "a la Dostoevsky", when the scene is not even in the book and they are rambling on. It would be a great film to remake with today's modern special effects, although so much of its originality has been appropriated by others since. The film remains haunting and well worth seeing as serious science fiction of a type rarely seen anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Learning one's place
Review: We find a creature who seems far more advanced than we are. Who we might like to destroy but hardly know if we can. Who can seemingly turn our minds against us. For whom we don't seem to be a priority at all. Of whom our best minds manage only feeble speculations. I saw this movie first and only recently read Lem's story. Tarkovsky got a great start from Lem. It's difficult to compare text and movie. Tarkovsky seemed to have been reasonably faithful to the contents of the book, but added a long introduction as well as his own ending. Both works are impressive. Tarkovsky seems to linger often so a good deal of patience is a prerequisite for enjoying this film. Now that I've read Lem's "Solaris", I'm less satisfied with Tarkovsky's "Solaris". Lem's book moved along well. Tarkovskky's added introduction (including moving up the inquiry of Burton) accomplishes little and the ending may be more explicit than is needed: hasn't Solaris already done enough to impress? On the other hand, Tarkovsky's cast is excellent (I especially enjoyed Hari and Snow) and visually the movie is a treat.
Rating:
Summary: Solaris Review
Review: A widely misunderstood Soviet film, Solaris, directed by
André Tarkovski from the book by Stanislav Lem, depicts
problems faced by some astronauts in a space station that is
orbiting the planet Solaris in a faraway galaxy.
Of an original group of eighty-five astronauts, only two are
left. Most have fled, others have gone mad and been shipped
back to Earth. Several have killed themselves.
The surface of Solaris is one vast ocean, which is also a
single living mind. This planet-ocean-mind is playing some
kind of awful mental trick on its visitors.
Back on Earth, puzzled space officials send a psychologist,
Kris Kelvin, to investigate. Before leaving the planet for outer
space, Kelvin spends his final weeks visiting his father in a
small house deep in some woods. He immerses himself in the
forest and takes long, silent walks through meadows. The film
moves exceedingly slowly at this point. There are long se-
quences in which nothing but natural events of the forest pass
by the camera lens. Nature-time.
Sometimes the camera follows Kelvin's eyes as they absorb
the surroundings. It rains. He is soaked. Back at his cabin, his
body is warmed by a fire.
Finally it is time to leave. Now the camera is in the front
seat of the car, sitting where Kelvin is sitting. We see what he
sees.
Slowly the terrain changes. Winding wooded roads give way
to straight, one-lane roads. The foliage recedes from the high-
way. Then we are on a freeway. The environment has become
speeding cars, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels. Soon, we are
in a city. There is noise, light, buildings everywhere. The
natural landscape is submerged, invisible. Homocentric land-
scapes, abstract reality prevail. From there it's a fast cut to
space.
Kelvin is alone in a small space vehicle, heading toward
Solaris. Earth is gone. His roots have been abandoned.
Grounding, by definition, is impossible. His whole environ-
ment is abstract. His planetary home now exists only in
memory.
Arriving at the space station, Kelvin understands Solaris'
trick. It enters visitors' memories and then creates real-life
manifestations of them. This begins to happen to Kelvin. His
long-dead wife appears in his room. At first he believes it is
an image of her; then he realizes it is not just an image, it is
actually she. And yet, they are both aware that she is only a
manifestation of his mind. So she is simultaneously real and
imaginary.
Other people from Kelvin's life appear in the lab. He en-
counters the re-created memories of the other two astronauts;
relatives, old friends, toys, scraps of long-abandoned clothing,
technical equipment, potted plants, dogs, dwarfs from a child-
hood circus, fields of grass. Things are strewn wildly about as
the visitors from Earth try to figure out what to do with all the
real/unreal stuff that keeps appearing from their memories.
The space station takes on the quality of a dream, a carnival,
a lunatic asylum.
The scientists consider returning to Earth as the others
have. Kelvin favors this move as he feels his sanity slipping,
yet he realizes that to leave means "killing" his rediscovered
wife. Back on Earth she will be a memory, much as Earth
has become in this space station. She understands this, and it
is a source of anguish for both of them.
No one among the scientists or their mental creations can
control what will happen. Without concrete reality, which is
to say, contact with their planetary roots, they are adrift in
their minds: insane. All information has become believable
and not believable at the same time. It has become arbitrary.
There is no way to separate the real from the not-real. Al-
though the astronauts know this, since there is nothing that
is not arbitrary, except each other, all information is equal.
It is impossible to determine which information to act on.
Solaris has made the astronauts its subjects. They cannot
defend themselves from the images the planet makes concrete.
In the end, the men have no choice but to accept all informa-
tion has real. Kelvin goes through a long cycle of Earth images,
from childhood to his present space-station life. He is in his
father's house again, but he is also in space. It rains again, but
now the rain is indoors. It might as well be. He cannot distin-
guish. He accepts.
Finally, the message of the film is clear. The process of
going insane began long before the launch into space. It began
when life moved from nature into cities. Kelvin's ride from
woods to city to space was a ride from connection to discon-
nection, from reality to abstraction, a history of technology,
setting the conditions for the imposition of reconstructed reali-
ties by a single powerful force. This was taken from a book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander. You can find the book online at Amazon.com
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