Amazon.com video review:
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
