I got this film around the time that the remake of Solaris came out, but saw the remake and really didn’t like it at all. And then I tried watching the first adaption (from a Novel by Stanislaw Lem), and didn’t get through 20 minutes. Well lately I have been watching a lot of Kurosawa films, and those are all 3 hours, so I thought I would give it a try again, and I was not disappointed. This is an incredible film, and while it was billed as the anti-2001 a Space Odyssey I don’t really see that. Yes it is more about emotions and delving into yourself than 2001, but still seems a close relative at the least. The sets are amazing, and much of the film is told in very long shots, and I would actually be interested in seeing Donatas Banionis in other films because he was excellent. It is so cool to see such an amazing science fiction epic coming from some place other than the US, and even more impressive with it’s look into the human soul that it came from Communist Russia. Strangely the film jumps back and forth from Black and White and color, which at first I thought had some meaning, but really couldn’t find any in this, maybe a money saver after spending so much on the sets?

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Donatis Banionis stars as Kris Kelvin a psychologist with a dark past that haunts him, who is being sent to the planet Solaris to determine if the mission there needs to be completely scrapped because of the erratic behavior of the scientists and people who were involved, in fact only 3 scientists are left on the station. The Solaris station was set up to try and establish contact with the intelligent life form that seems to inhabit the oceans on the planet Solaris. Something started happening there, and 2 scientists were killed a pilot named Berton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) saw some incredible things that the government bureaucracy refuses to believe. Kris leaves his father, who he has only just started to open up to, after burning most of the papers and photos from his past, except one film he takes with him. Kris arrives on the station to find it in complete disarray, loose wires sparking and trash everywhere, and he has trouble finding anyone. Eventually he locates Dr. Snaut (Yuri Yarvet) who tells him that his friend Dr. Giberarian (Sos Sarsgsyan) has already committed suicide and really won’t talk to him insisting he sleep first. Kris wanders around and talks to Dr. Sartorius (Anatly Solonitsyn) who is rude, and seems to have a midget in his room, and Kris keeps seeing a woman wondering around the station. Eventually he finds empty quarters and sleeps only to wake up to Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) being with him. She is his Wife who has been dead for 10 years. Kris freaks out and gets her to come to the rocket with him and locks her and launches her, and almost gets burned to death in the process. Now Snaut will talk to him, about the Others that come out of their own conscious, though Kris’s is unique because it is someone from his past instead of someone he has only imagined (and his is the only other that we really see). Hari returns, but is obsessed with Kris as she remembers and learns more of her past and becomes more human, and when he tries to sneak off she smashes her way through his door, cutting herself all up, but heals very quickly. Eventually they convince him to take her to Sartorius’s lab where he takes blood samples and realizes that they are right, she is not made out of Atoms, but Nuetrinos, and heals incredibly quickly, but still he loves her and only wants to be with her and not work. Eventually she kills herself because she remembers her own suicide and believes Kris doesn’t really love her, but her body regenerates even after drinking liquid oxygen and he has her again, but then he becomes sick. Earlier Snaut had convinced him they needed to use his brain engram to send to the intelligence under the ocean to communicate and make it stop what it is doing, and he did it. Well now he is sick and put to bed and when he awakens Hari is gone, and no more guests have arrived. It seems the intelligence has gotten the message of his brain waves, and is now creating islands on his service. Dr. Snaut tells Kris it is time to return home. He approaches his fathers house, and sees his father inside, though it is also raining inside the house, and his father exits the house, and he gets down on his knees and hugs him much like he did Hari, and the camera pulls way out to reveal he is on one of the islands on the ocean of Solaris.

Wow, what a heavy and heady film! The sets are incredible. This film so blows the remake out of the water!