Solyaris (1972)

	Directed by: Andrei Tarkovsky	COUNTRY USSR GENRE Drama/Science Fiction NORWEGIAN TITLE Solaris RUNNING TIME 168 minutes
	Produced by: Viacheslav Tarasov
	Written by (based on a book by Stanislaw Lem): Andrei Tarkovsky Fridrikh Gorenshtein

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Hari	Natalya Bondarchuk
Kris Kelvin	Donatas Banionis	½
Dr. Snaut	Jüri Järvet	½
Dr. Sartorius	Anatoli Solonitsyn	½
Henri Berton	Vladislav Dvorzhetsky
Kelvin's Father	Nikolai Grinko
Kelvin's Mother	Olga Barnet

Review

Andrei Tarkovsky's cold, atmospheric science fiction takes us out of our current worldview like few other films are able to. It's a futuristic film, though more in tone and realm than in sets and gadgets. As portrayed by Tarkovsky, even a conventional wood house by a lake seems otherworldly. Unfortunately, the Russian filmmaker isn't quite able to communicate the alienation and potentially unfathomable disparity between our human lifeform and the forces our protagonist is up against as strongly and evocatively as one could want. Tarkovsky is deeply fascinated by the existential and ethical aspects of the story, but he doesn't exploit Stanislaw Lem's alluring source material extensively enough. And it is not the indirect narrative style or the long takes that are the problem, but rather the thematic issues the Soviet filmmaker chooses to highlight. The result is a deep and rich film with an eerie atmosphere that doesn't quite deliver on a cerebral level.