Solaris (1972)

This boring endurance test could be titled the Russian 2001: A Mind-numbing Odyssey. I should have known what I was about to get myself into when I realized that Andrey Tarkovskiy was the same director who tortured my attention span with Stalker. While Kurbrick’s science fiction film is slow, it’s also visually mind-blowing and seems to be going somewhere. Tarkovskiy seems intent on making a film without any narrative push and to present a hero as uninteresting and underdeveloped as a walking painting. I know there are many fans of this film and I’ve read some positive reviews but there is no way I could have sat through this in one sitting. And what kills me is that the story is actually really cool. I love the idea of a guy going up into space and seeing a copy of his dead wife. I love the various ideas this film explores. I even think the last image is beautifully haunting and impressive. Yet in the end what I saw was a film without tempo, a drama without heart. Grade: C