Often called the Soviet answer to 2001, but Tarkovsky had something different in mind. Where Kubrick looked outward, Tarkovsky looked inward. The sentient ocean of Solaris doesn’t offer alien contact — it offers a mirror, manifesting the crew’s deepest guilt and longing as flesh. The long, lingering shot of water plants swaying beneath the surface is Tarkovsky at his most hypnotic. A film about the impossibility of truly knowing another, and the weight of what we carry.