what is this movie trying to say?

I too felt it was very slow and long but understand why it had to play out almost in a dreamlike slow motion state. If I remember from just one viewing (I doubt I'll view it again) a decision was made by the alien life form to terminate the possibility of her ever again being "reimagined" which is actually pretty horrific to my mind. Did they sense that Hari's reconstitution was actually making things worse for the fellow? Was Hari's evolving self awareness making her as tormented as Roy in BLADE RUNNER? Perhaps Lem suggested that wanted to show that interventional compassion from two utterly disparate life forms can create more grief than happiness.
The last scene suggested that the alien life form was doubling down on the efforts at placating restless and tormented humans.

Great. Do those questions you get bombarded with make you feel BORED???

Planet was extraterrestial intelligence. That is one thing. It deals with our capability to understand something totally foreign. Another thing was that by sheer luck the solaris planet managed to make our dreams become real. IT wasn't a pretty sight after all. Hari we saw was only a construction that become selfaware.

And in the end this film also managed to create a plausible heaven. Pretty cool for one old ruski film.



"You got to bleed for the dancer!"
-Ronnie James Dio
Rest in Peace, my Hero.

From the original text:

"Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labryinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed."

ce n'est pas une image juste, c'est juste une image

"was tht SOLARIS planet Feeding IDEAS from HUMANS and trying to Replicate PLANET EARTH?"

It's trying to understand and communicate with humans, but it's really got no reference points. Just about everything in human experience is alien to the planet.

The other problem is that humans don't understand themselves, let alone one another. This is the tragedy in this film, and in real life.

---
It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

"Home is where the heart is".

Hardly on the bus though.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

Seeing you don't give a *beep* for the answers on your *beep* questions, I don't understand the *beep* reason behind your original *beep* post in the first place! *beep*-*beep*
:D

Now, I think that the first thing you need to clear with yourself are the concepts of "boredom" and "dullness" - these are not actual aesthetic or cinematographic categories. They are reflections of your own personal state during or after watching a film. Think of it as sex - some people like a quicky, some people are more into kamasutra stuff, others are into those kinky SM sh!t. So you'd probably be the guy who humps his wife once a month for 2 minutes and fells asleep right away. But hey - I won't judge you if she doesn't! Just don't go out afterwards telling your friends how dull your sex life is!

Solaris is an extraterrestrial intelligence. As remote as can be imagined from humanity, it is nevertheless the very essence of human nature which, paradoxically, is an alien. Or, rather, our inability to understand our own nature alienates us from ourselves and others. Solaris is the mysterious workings of the human psyche. All the desolation and chaos therein stem from our efforts to either destroy or abandon what we can neither understand nor control.

Kris Kelvin is able to communicate with it by probing his own mind. Essentially, his private thoughts, memories and dreams are reproduced in a physical form that he can actually speak to and reason with. Unfortunately, this physical manifestation of his imagination, Hari, is all too human in that it has no knowledge of what created it. To go beyond this limitation and truly understand our own origins, it is necessary to become one with Solaris. But, possessed by an almost paranoid fear of the unknown, Kris is reluctant to surrender himself completely. That is, until he finally realizes that in order to grow as an individual, he needs to share his experiences with others. In effect, Kris needs love.

For all our great knowledge, the origin of life has remained a mystery. And, if we do not even know what life is to begin with, how can we ever expect to find it elsewhere in the cosmos? To fulfill our own destiny, we must journey not through space, but rather through the timeless void that is our own subconscious. Life, according to Tarkovsky, is a physical manifestation of thought. With the power of our imagination we will forever persever, and ever be capable of raising ourselves to ever still higher levels of conscious.

WE ARE GOD!