"He's a visual director, not a narrative one," my buddy said after Solaryis was over, and this about sums it up. As storytelling the film is a muddle. Who is that little boy with Burton in the beginning? What happened to Kelvin's mother? Why do the Solaryists get only one visitor at a time, and sometimes none at all? And some of the conversation is tiresome too; a lot of the time it does sound, to borrow one character's phrase, like second-rate Dostoevsky.

But visually it is as interesting as films get. Tarkovsky has the uncanny ability to make you see still objects in a new light, as with the Brueghel painting, for instance, or the underwater objects scene in "Stalker." Some people complain about the pacing, but I find it refreshing to see someone take his time and just linger over the things in front of him (people who think Solaryis is slow, by the way, should watch the just-mentioned "Stalker," or "Day of Wrath" by Carl Th. Dreyer, both of which make this look like Die Hard 4).