Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8984 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-26
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Russian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 169 minutes

Amazon.com
The Russian answer to 2001, and very nearly as memorable a movie. The legendary Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky made this extremely deliberate science-fiction epic, an adaptation of a novel by Stanislaw Lem. The story follows a cosmonaut (Donatas Banionis) on an eerie trip to a planet where haunting memories can take physical form. Its bare outline makes it sound like a routine space-flight picture, an elongated Twilight Zone episode; but the further into its mysteries we travel, the less familiar anything seems. Even though Tarkovsky's meanings and methods are sometimes mystifying, Solaris has a way of crawling inside your head, especially given the slow pace and general lack of forward momentum. By the time the final images cross the screen, Tarkovsky has gone way beyond SF conventions into a moving, unsettling vision of memory and home. Well worthy of cult status, Solaris is both challenging art-house fare and a whacked-out head trip. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Solaris
Tarkovskij didn't like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, made just a few years before. Tarkovskij's SF, Solaris (1972), is both different and similar to 2001. Like 2001 the takes are very long and the tempo of the film is slow. Despite this, and despite the almost 3 hours, the film never becomes boring. It is very intense and powerful and the long takes and slow tempo have a function. I watched Soderbergh's remake of Solaris first, and the original is far better (though, Soderbergh's film is not bad, especially the soundtrack is splendid). One difference compared to 2001 is the scale: while 2001 deals with mankind and cosmic evolution, Solaris deals with humans and their memories. Also we here have the question (as in Blade Runner) of what being human is about; the "guests" created by the alien consciousness seems to become more and more humanlike the more memories they develop. Just like the replicant's in Blade Runner, and just like Rachel, Hari tries to convince the scientists of her being a real human.

Greatest Sci-Fi Film
Tarkovsky's reinvention of the science fiction genre remains perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made. Psychologist Kris Kelvin, leaving behind nature and his family home and burning his guilt in a bonfire, encounters his dead wife in a space station orbiting the ocean of materialized memories and consciousness which is Solaris. This is a film about lost love, remembrance of things past, and the meaning of life which will haunt you in the deepest philosophical and emotional sense.

Like Stalker, a masterwork
I had seen Solaris in German TV in 1982 and never found it again. Then I was fascinated by it. When I had seen a few month back Solaris with George Clooney, I wondered whether I would find Tarkovskies Solaris at Amazon - and there it was and I bought it. Comparing both, I found them both good.
Tarkovski did marvelous works of which I like most Solaris and Stalker.