On either side
of a grimy window pane
in Russian loneliness
by the infinite sea.



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Solaris (Russian: Солярис, tr. Solyaris) is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris (1961), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychodrama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station, to learn and evaluate the situation — yet soon hallucinates like the others.

The Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species. Tarkovsky's adaptation is a “drama of grief and partial recovery” concentrated upon the thoughts and the consciences of the cosmonaut scientists studying an extra-terrestrial (alien) life. The psychologically complex and slow narrative of Solaris has been contrasted to kinetic Western science fiction films, which rely upon fast narrative pace and special effects to communicate character psychology and an imagined future.[1] The ideas which Tarkovsky tried to express in this film are further developed in Stalker (1979).[2]

The critically successful Solaris features Natalya Bondarchuk (Hari), Donatas Banionis (Kris Kelvin), Jüri Järvet (Dr Snaut), Vladislav Dvorzhetsky (Henri Burton), Nikolai Grinko (Kris Kelvin’s Father), Olga Barnet (Kris Kelvin’s Mother), Anatoli Solonitsyn (Dr Sartorius), and Sos Sargsyan (Dr Gibarian); the music score is by Eduard Artemyev. At the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or.[3]