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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

I love Stalker, and I'm a huge Tarkovsky fan, but hated Solaris. It doesn't hold a candle to Stalker.

I also like Tarkovsky's Mirror and The Sacrifice.

Wait, you hated Solaris? It was the first Tarkovsky movie that I watched and I really connected with its themes of the "real" vs "memories". It's hard for me to imagine anyone hating Solaris...

I still have not seen Mirror, though a few of my film friends have told me to check it out for years.

I started watching it tonight, because of this thread. It was my second attempt. I quit about 40 minutes in and started to browse IMDB user reviews in hope to understand it. The 1 star reviews resonated a lot with me. Hate is a strong word but definitely not my cup of tea.

I found the first part with all the meetings and philosophical debates on earth to be boring and hard to follow too, but if you stop there you’re missing out on the payoff of all that exposition. It really picks up once he gets to the space station.

But I found the opening shot of the plants in the stream to be revelatory, a tiny bit of film making that changed the way I viewed life.

Fair enough! You've definitely given it the college try and I won't criticize that!

Out of curiosity, is there anything in particular about it you didn't like or was it a "just not my thing" kind of thing?

I did not feel engaged to the plot. The dialogue felt abstract and kind of went over my head. Someone mentioned that the film is "very Russian" and perhaps that is part of it. I have extremely limited exposure to Russian culture but it feels quite introspective to me. I noticed the dialogue sounding a little like Putin, just sound-wise. Lots of "mmm" sounds which in my language people make when they are considering their next words. Somehow I see a connection there (that probably don't exist, if I am being rational)

You might try the Solaris novel instead. The movie was based on it, but as you know books can be very different.

You might like the original book Solaris better. It has a unique atmosphere, isolation and mystery of the alien planet, and explores a different idea of alien life than we usually get in movies. This is hard to communicate in a movie, Tarkovsky did well, but it does not hold up as well as the book.

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