'Solaris' double take: Each version has their merits and majesty

Both versions of Solaris are seeking rarified air in cinema -- science fiction that is both emotional and thought-provoking. Those kinds of films almost always fail financially (think Blade Runner, which was a huge flop back in 1982) even if they eventually find an appreciative audience.

The one significant exception to the rule is Stanley Kubrick's 2001, but generally speaking when people go to a sci-fi film they are expecting certain trappings of the genre.

Perhaps that is part of why I find 1972's Russian adaptation of the Stanislaw Lew novel Solaris so beguiling.

It is almost aggressively uncommercial -- to call it glacially-paced would be an understatement -- and its characters are mostly passive, non-emotive types. Yet the movie is a compelling meditation on life itself.

The remake, released in 2002 and directed by Steven Soderbergh, is terrific in its own right, but will perhaps always live in the shadow of the original. And while the remake takes great pains to pay homage to the original, it's far more accessible and streamlined, and it features a dark, brooding performance from George Clooney that's almost unlike anything he's attempt before or since (save for, perhaps, the unjustly maligned character study The American.)

Both films (which tanked in the U.S. despite critical acclaim) actually work well in tandem, and can even be seen as communicating with each other -- expanding on the themes of love and identity, humanity and regret.

Solaris (1972)

The premise is both startlingly simple and daringly complex. In the near distant future a space exploration discovers a strange planet which seems to feed off the subconscious of humans and presents them with facsimiles of people that populate their brain.

In both films the protagonist, curiously named Kris Kelvin, is haunted by his dead wife -- and he is forced to decide whether to banish this virtual copy of his lost love or live the rest of his life as a relative lie.

These are heady concepts to be sure, and both can be accused of veering into pretension, but if you can concede both films slow-burn takes and heavy-handed dialogue, you can be treated to some truly profound life questions, the kind that cinema asks far too rarely.

I've said this before and I'll say it again -- I am always more willing to embrace a movie that has ambition and scope than a film that is lazy and that panders to its audience. Both films could have allowed themselves to lapse into Alien-rip-off territory. But while each has unsettling, even disturbing, moments, they both wisely center their tensions on the characters instead of on some fantasy boogeyman.

And although the 2002 film is much shorter and straightforward, both films aren't afraid to linger on silences, faces, and atmosphere. They don't go down easy, so I wouldn't recommend them to anyone interested in light viewing.

But, if you are looking to see something beautiful, that aspires to make you think about what makes our emotions and state of mind real -- these two films have a lot to offer.