Chris Barsanti

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s addictive, serenely maddening masterpiece of love and obsession in outer orbit, the dead just won’t stay dead. But neither are they alive. Like the vision of Lazarus reborn which Martin Scorsese conjured in such creepy fashion for The Last Temptation of Christ, Tarkovsky’s reanimated souls are never quite of this world. They are human, of a sort, but just enough to make the protagonist here think twice about killing one. Again…

The 1972 Solaris (not the 2002 remake by Steven Soderbergh) will be available next week in a superb 2-disc set from Criterion. Read the full review at filmcritic.com.