Solaris

Based on a novel by the noted Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Tarkovsky’s Solaris is often described as the Soviet 2001; Globe and Mail film critic Jay Scott once called it “Star Trek as written by Dostoevsky.” The film’s plot has a troubled, guilt-ridden scientist sent to investigate strange occurrences on a space station orbiting Solaris, a mysterious planet with an intelligent Ocean capable of penetrating the deepest recesses of the subconscious. Confronted on his arrival by the incarnation of a long-dead lover, the protagonist is forced to relive the greatest moral failures of his past. Solaris is magnificently mounted in widescreen and colour, and offers a fascinating, felicitous marriage between Tarkovsky's characteristic moral/metaphysical concerns and the popular format of science fiction (a genre for which the director expressed no particular affection, but to which he would return again — more obliquely, just as cerebrally — in Stalker and The Sacrifice). Steven Soderbergh ventured an admirable American remake, starring George Clooney, in 2002. “Solaris ranks with the best of Tarkovsky's work, which is to say it ranks with the best movies produced at any time” (Scott). Colour, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles. 167 mins.