Stanislaw Lem's Solaris is a highly regarded book and Andrei Tarkovsky's film adaption is pretty much spot on, though Tarkovsky being an auteur brings his own touch to the proceedings. The story is about a cosmonaut who is sent to a space station revolving around a mysterious planet in the future. The cinematography and production design are haunting- the spaceship is so different than what we usually see in Hollywood. The acting is restraint and works here. Some people have said there is a sense of pretentiousness and rightfully so as some scenes go on way too long. But hey, this is Tarkovsky we speak of. This is one of the finest hard science fiction films and you should see it at any cost.

This film is reminiscent of the old Star Trek if the captain was a bit melancholic and targetted by alien intelligence. The theme of the film is as if the planet's intelligence reaches the men on the station to keep them there. It uses love, the rematerialization of loved ones to entrap finally our hero. It's a B movie for us but was an A movie at the time for the Russian empire. Some pretty good effects for the time, looking quite cheap by today's standards. The story moves at snail pace possibly to keep us guessing and show us special effects.

Somewhere in Solaris there's a great episode of Star Trek trying to emerge. As it is this movie is, though well acted, badly edited and badly scripted; the first half an hour or more is nothing but lengthy verbal exposition that's completely unnecessary and extremely tedious.Plot: you saw it on Star Trek many times: an alien life-form reads human minds and projects what people imagine into reality; mainly the psychologist's dead(?) wife, who refuses to die any more. The scientists on the Solaris space station make up no end of sub-Roddenberry guff in their plan to defeat the mysterious green glob.Do they succeed? I don't know, I turned it off after two hours. Maybe that's what the scientists should have done, would have saved a lot of trouble.Elaborate sets, Russian 1970's fashion-leather doubling for space gear, and a male lead who makes William Shatner at his heaviest look svelte. You probably need to smoke a pipe or two to get the full benefit of this. I can see why people say it's a classic; the actors have good chops, but goodness me, it's slower than Windows 95 in a deep freeze.

One of the few Sci-Fis from the East side of Europe. Before I go ahead I must mention as a person, whose parents are from a post-communist country, the freedom what Tarkovsky got during this film is shocking. I don't even understand who it could go out in theatres.I must say this is an unusual Sci-Fi way different then the ones from the US. The actors/actresses look like actors, not playing their role (my favourite is Snaut who looks more like an alcoholic than a Scientist Doctor), what could be a result as they got selected instead of applied and got the job. It made me feel it a bit untrustworthy, but the USSR wasn't the number 1 film producer in the 70's.The story makes absolutely sense. During the cold war both sides spent insane lot of money exploring the space, looking for new planet with live on it, so they created this film showing it to us. And as their looking was unsuccessful, they had to call it Sci-Fi. You watch it, all goes as expected, and when you think it finished you see the last scenes, and you don't understand anymore. Or at least me.The last scene really made me confused and I should watch it again (as many other people recommended), but I didn't find it interesting enough so I just get along and live without the full understanding of one of the greatest Sci-Fis. If you're a Sci-Fi person you should't do the same mistake!