Solaris Review: A Slow Burn Space Movie That Won’t Hold Your Hand
Max keeps insisting that Solaris is one of the greatest films of all time and I keep insisting that it’s boring. Since apparently neither of us will back down, I’ve decided to write this review to explain to him exactly why Solaris deserves its reputation: it’s dense, but leaning in and letting Andrei Tarkovsky think out loud for two and a half hours is an art form he doesn’t appreciate.
Made in 1972 (Britannica), Solaris was one of the last true space movies made before space suddenly became hot in movies again during the 1980s. It rejects many of the ideas that space movies bring with them thanks to more commercially successful titles. Forget dog fights and destroying satellite stations in space, forgetting rapidly escalating atom bomb threats from countries that no longer use them.
| Director | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| Year Released | 1972 |
| Runtime | 2h 47m |
| Original Language | Russian |
| Our Rating | 10/10 |
Everything you expect about space is challenged here, as Solaris exists as much as an exploration of philosophy as it does the science of space and extraterrestrial life. It landed on our sci-fi films from the 1970s that you need to watch list because, honestly, it’s everything you love about that decade of science fiction films distilled into a perfect paradox: daring, artistic, and completely sure that you’re intelligent enough to keep up.
Memory Is The Final Frontier
Solaris works because, rather than being nostalgic, memory haunts every aspect of this film. Tarkovsky is working through some hefty concepts about what memory is and how it constitutes consciousness itself. The planet Solaris starts manifesting objects from the memories of the researchers at the station come to life—literally.
[Spoilers from here on out.] Hari, Kelvin’s wife who killed herself years ago, comes back to life, and Tarkovsky really leans into questions about what it means when your dead wife shows up at your space station miles away from home. She’s not a copy, she’s certainly not digital and Kelvin can touch her and interact with her.
The ground shifts under your feet when she tells him that she remembers everything that happened after she killed herself and he didn’t kill himself. When she tells him she’s pregnant with their child. These aren’t copy memories she’s dredging up but new experiences that only she can access.
Why? Because Solaris doesn’t give Kelvin and Hari’s memories physical form. Solaris ingests them, recreates them anew down to the subtlest physical tic. So while Solaris may manifest Hari from Kelvin’s memories, she is her own person, with her own agency. She may be built of his memories and guilt, but she is not the sum total of his ability to process her death.
We find ourselves asking big questions about identity here. Are Hari and Kelvin’s wife the same person? Is she an accurate representation of who his wife was, or is she an imagined memory projection? Film doesn’t give us the answers to these questions because the questions themselves say more about our capacity for understanding identity and consciousness than an answer could.
Solaris makes us examine what it means to know something, to recreate something from memory—and then pushes that idea as far as it can go. Science fiction at its best doesn’t ask easy questions with easy answers. Solaris turned inward to examine human consciousness instead of looking outward to space and alien life. The human mind becomes its final frontier.
Rejecting Hollywood Ideas About Space Movies
Forget everything you think you know about science fiction and space thanks to Hollywood and jump in with both feet. Solaris will push back against your ideas of what you should get out of this type of film. Just when you think Tarkovsky is going to give you some conventional exploration of grief and marriage you understand something radically uncomfortable about what you’re watching.
By building its mystery slowly around Kelvin’s wife Hari waking up from the dead, Tarkovsky forces us to examine our expectations for communication and connection. Hari can respond to Kelvin and act independently, but she can never tell him where she came from or what she is. Like the scientists at the space station, Kelvin and Hari can never really communicate with one another.
Their relationship serves as a metaphor for the unknowability of other minds. All we have access to are the behaviours and communications others provide, nothing more. Hari can never really tell Kelvin if she’s his wife come back to life or something else, just as Kelvin can never really know how humans came to be created from Hari’s memories either.
The crew reacts negatively to Kelvin having Hari around, but we understand their concerns because they’re haunted by their own memories made manifest as well. The conversations Kelvin has with his psychologist boss Gerson (Nikolay Grinko) about Hari, about whether or not he should try to let her go or kill her again ring with agonising desperation.
This slow burn absolutely pays off as Hari helps Kelvin make his peace with…well, I don’t want to spoil that. But what matters about Kelvin’s resolution with Hari is how Tarkovsky subverts expectations. Solaris has done this from the start asking you questions about the nature of memory and identity. The ending might not provide answers, but it will help you understand the question better.
Tarkovsky was making a counterargument to popular cinematic science fiction by forcing us to grapple with big questions about human consciousness. Memory haunts every frame of Solaris and very little is explained to us. We have to sit with these mysteries as Kelvin does.
Writing and Cinematic Poetry
Solaris shows us how science fiction can be poetry if you let it breathe. As Kelvin walks through modern city streets to the station it reminds you that he’s in the real world, planet Earth. He looks out at children playing on the grass in fields and you’re reminded that life is happening elsewhere while he floats in space, alone.
Those long stretches of film may feel indulgent at first as Tarkovsky forces you to slow your viewer pace down to match Kelvin’s, but they’re essential in learning what’s at stake. There are barely any fast cuts in this film. Instead, Tarkovsky lets each scene bleed together and hang in the air while you watch it happen.
Tarkovsky doesn’t need flashy space station sets or character spacesuits because he’s far more focused on what it means to be in space. Weightlessness makes the ordinary feel alien. Books line the shelves of the station, carelessly left open by their owners. Pots and pans roll around when the scientists cook dinner, having a life of their own.
It’s only when Kelvin and Hari are truly alone that Tarkovsky allows himself the indulgence of Earth-like gravity. Because in space, humans still act like humans. They float around their bedsheets when they sleep, spinning gently. Books don’t stay put on shelves when nobody’s there to ensure they do. These small details make everything that Tarkovsky doesn’t show us cinematically unneeded.
Film invites you to imagine what’s not shown on screen. Water constitutes most of Solaris’ planet that we see. Large stretches of nothing but water gradually undulate rhythms that look like waves. Ships glide across the surface of its water spaces, rocking back and forth gently.
How does Solaris have breathable air? We don’t know, and Tarkovsky doesn’t feel the need to explain himself to us. Characters move gradually through spaces, staring at walls and taking their time whenever possible. Dialogue drags because these characters are actual humans trying to communicate with other actual humans, and it never occurs quite as we intend.
A love letter to literary science fiction
Solaris works as beautifully on the page as it does cinematically because Tarkovsky was working from a similar medium. Lem’s novel isn’t focused on action or building the world through exciting events, rather its build through Kelvin’s psychological journey as he attempts to unpack his grief at his wife’s death.
The movie mirrors this internal development externally, so while few explosive action sequences exist, there are small mysteries to solve. What is Solaris? Where did Hari come from? How can she exist in this space and act so…powerful?
It never explicitly says that she’s stronger than Kelvin or that the things she can do aren’t possible for him, but as the film jumps back and forth between Earth and space we understand these implicit through comparison. Kelvin never interacts with anyone on Solaris the way that he interacts with Hari. Again, Tarkovsky trusts you to do the intellectual work here.
Solaris meditates on ideas of human knowledge and projection as much as it does grief. It doesn’t solve the mystery of Solaris or explain how it came to be, just as it never quite resolves Kelvin and Hari’s story. We don’t know what happens when she leaves, or if she really will leave.
When you’re invited to fill in these gaps through cinematic poetry, you’re watching literary science fiction adapt by a master of his craft who knows exactly what he’s doing. Kelvin never learns space station or Solaris’ secrets. He only ever comes to understand his grief.
Conclusion: Astronaut Poet-Philosopher Tarkovsky Knew What He Was Doing
My conversations with Max about Solaris tend to end when I’m forced to admit the film works on an emotional level I didn’t think movies were capable of reaching. That’s because there’s poetry in Solaris, and Tarkovsky wrote cinematic verse.
Watching films like Solaris teaches you how to think about movies you’ve seen differently. What’s cinema’s sense of wonder if it can be found in infinite unknowability of human minds as much as it can the vastness of space? Keep your bullshit filmmaking with the answers at the end.
I’ll be dreaming amongst stars Tarkovsky only hinted at, thanks.
Kathleen’s a lifelong reader who believes science fiction is literature, full stop. From her book-filled home in Seattle, she writes about thoughtful, character-driven sci-fi that challenges ideas and lingers long after the last page. She’s a champion for under-read authors and timeless storytelling.