Solaris
Classic
Drama
Science Fiction
Cerebral
Adaptation
InternationalThe review
Nearly three hours of slow, patient cinema, *Solaris* is routinely counted among the greatest science fiction films ever made — and it is easy to see why. Tarkovsky builds the film from long, drifting takes and painterly compositions that treat water, mud, and swaying grass with as much reverence as the cramped metal corridors of the space station, while Eduard Artemyev's electronic score and Bach's chorale hold the picture in a state of quiet awe. The performances are keyed to the same register: the psychologist's muted grief and the strange, bewildered tenderness of the woman who materializes beside him give the film its aching center. This is science fiction as interior drama, made in explicit and deliberate contrast to the cold technological spectacle of the space epics that preceded it.
The film's ambitions come with real costs, and reviewers have been honest about them. The opening act — an extended Earth-bound prologue before the station is even reached — is the most common point of resistance, and even admirers concede the picture's middle can feel interminable: the dialogue is deliberately dry, the plot advances in fits, and the science of the setup matters far less than what the situation does to the people inside it. Viewers expecting momentum will find little, and the film's famous ambiguities extend to its ending, which invites rather than resolves questions about what has been real all along.
What critics genuinely dispute is not whether the imagery and ideas deliver, but what the film is ultimately about. It is routinely framed as a reply to *2001: A Space Odyssey*, and the comparison cuts both ways: some find its humanism richer than that film's cosmic abstraction, while others rank it below Tarkovsky's own later work. The source novel's author publicly disowned the adaptation, complaining that it traded his story of an unknowable alien intelligence for a space-bound drama of guilt and love; defenders counter that turning the alien encounter into a confrontation with memory is precisely what makes the film endure. Few films carry this much disagreement over their essential meaning — and few disagreements have done less to dent a reputation.
Who it's for
Viewers with patience for slow, contemplative art cinema — Tarkovsky completists, readers of philosophical science fiction in the Lem tradition, and anyone who responds to film as visual poetry rather than plot delivery. It rewards a second viewing enormously, and its meditation on grief and memory has a long afterlife with viewers who let it in.
Who it's not for
Anyone expecting conventional sci-fi adventure or action, viewers who check out during long takes and sparse, dry dialogue, and Lem purists — the novel's own author rejected the film. If you found *2001* slow and sterile, this will likely test you; if you found it profound, this is probably your wavelength. — suicide themes · psychological intensity · disturbing imagery · brief nudity
Birds of a feather...
- BookSolaris (1961)
An adaptation of the novel, sharing its philosophical core: an encounter with an alien presence that defies human understanding, and the way that encounter forces characters to confront grief and repression. Both are slow-burn, atmosphere-driven works that refuse conventional closure.
100% - FilmStalker (1979)
Same director's philosophical science fiction, using genre as a vehicle for meditation on memory, guilt, and the limits of rational understanding, with identical patient long-take style.
95% - TVThe Leftovers (2014)
A profound meditation on grief, memory, and the impossibility of real contact with the Other. The alien ocean as a mirror of trauma parallels the Leftovers' exploration of how we project meaning onto inexplicable loss.
90% - FilmBlade Runner (1982)
Like Blade Runner, this is a melancholic, inward-looking sci-fi meditation on memory, grief, and the difficulty of truly knowing another being, wrapped in an eerie, oppressive atmosphere.
90% - FilmMemento (2000)
Memory and guilt become external, tangible forces in both works, blurring the line between past and present. The slow, meditative pacing and refusal to explain the supernatural elements echo Memento's philosophical unease.
88% - BookDoctor Zhivago (1957)
Tarkovsky again explores the inner life under cosmic and impersonal pressures. The film uses a mysterious alien ocean to dramatize memory, grief, and impossible love, with a slow, poetic visual style and non-linear structure that echo Zhivago's emotional atmosphere and philosophical reach.
72% - FilmClose Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Both are works of science fiction that use an alien presence to mirror human longing and emotional trauma, exploring the inability to fully know an Other and the cost of trying. They share a thematic focus on obsession, memory, and the spiritual dimensions of encounter, though Solaris leans into melancholy and ambiguity where Close Encounters finds hard-won optimism.
70% - FilmWild Strawberries (1957)
Tarkovsky's meditation on memory, guilt, and the impossibility of undoing the past resonates with Isak Borg's own confrontation with his buried regrets, though filtered through science fiction.
68% - FilmIkiru (1952)
Both center on a person confronting grief, memory, and the limits of understanding, using a contemplative pace and deep psychological exploration rather than plot-driven spectacle.
68% - FilmEverything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Both explore grief and guilt through a speculative curtain that turns the protagonist's emotional baggage into something tangible. Solaris is slow and meditative where EEAAO is maximalist and absurd, but they share a deep interest in how love and memory can become a haunting that must be confronted.
60% - FilmPather Panchali (1955)
A shared interest in grief and memory processed through patient, contemplative cinema. Both films use natural imagery and long takes to make loss feel tangible, and both reflect on the limits of understanding. Solaris is more metaphysical and sci-fi, while Panchali is grounded in social reality, yet the emotional and tonal match is real.
56%