Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is based on the novel by Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. The film, which won the Grand Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival has been called, “Russia’s answer to 2001.” The story is about unusual phenomena reported to be taking place on the planet Solaris. Cosmonauts on the space station on the edge of the mysterious planet have died from some connection with the convoluted surface of Solaris. The amorphous surface of the planet, an all-encompassing, dense, cloudy sea, turns out in fact to be a living entity that does not communicate directly, but rather materializes fantasies from human lives. Through hallucinations, the scientist (Donatas Banionis) called upon to investigate, delves deep into a fantasy world of his own moral conflicts. It is his moral parable that raises the films thematic ethical questions.