Solaris

Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky took one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, and made it his own in this visionary 1972 film. It is both richly cinematic, with mesmerising cinematography by Vadim Yusov, and a gripping and mysterious psychological thriller. Donatas Banionis plays Kris Kelvin, a psychologist sent to a space station orbiting a distant planet to investigate the bewildering behaviour of the crew there. But he soon finds out they are plagued by mysterious visitors, at once both alien and strangely familiar.

‘My decision to make a screen adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris was not a result of my interest in science fiction. The essential reason was that in Solaris Lem undertook a moral problem I can closely relate to. The deeper meaning of Lem’s novel does not fit within the confines of science fiction. To discuss only the literary form is to limit the problem. This is a novel not only about the clash between human reason and the Unknown but also about moral conflicts set in motion by new scientific discoveries. It’s about new morality arising as a result of those painful experiences we call “the price of progress.”

Director Andrei Tarkovsky, from an interview in Ekran 1970-1971.