Solyaris

Cosmonauts on a space-station orbiting a world dominated by a seemingly sentient ocean are visited by 'people' from their past who appear to have been created by the ocean based on difficult or repressed memories. This Russian TV-movie preceded the much better known 1971 Andrei Tarkovsky film version and, although somewhat closer to Stanislaw Lem's eponymous novel, is equally cryptic (and slow-moving). The focus of Lem's original story is on the impossibility of communicating with, or even acquiring a basic understanding of, a completely alien life form (one reason the author chose to make the alien a sentient ocean was to make it harder to anthropomorphise). Basing an entire movie on failing to understand the inexplicable is challenging, so all three film versions (1968, 1971 and 2002) focus more on the relationship between cosmonaut Kris Kelvin (Vasily Lanovoy) and the simulacrum 'visiting' him: Harey (Antonina Pilyus), his wife that committed suicide for which he feels much guilt. Lem was not impressed by the film versions of his story (his comment on the 2002 version was '...the book was entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space"). The 1968 B/W version, which was a low-budget production with limited sets and no special effects, is visually less interesting than 71's colour version, and the story is very slow-moving, but the cast seems good (I was watching an English subtitled version on YouTube) and, even with the shift to a relationship drama, Lem's story remains compelling. All in all: more interesting than entertaining but fans of the genre should find it worth hunting down.