Solaris (1972 Andrei Tarovsky)

Two weeks ago, my littler brother told me about how we might see aliens in our generation, according to stephen hawking. (my response: who is stephen hawking??) so after some you-tubing, i realized that it must seem so obvious to someone like hawking, who lives and breaths cosmology, that we should colonize other planets ASAP for their resources and that when other aliens come to us, they will want our resources  ("If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans").

And this is when I decided it's time for a good sci-fi. This one is slow-moving, moody, eerie, and emotion-building. Normally, thanks to Netflix, I like to spread out a movie in two or three days, watching a little each day. I carry it with me; it becomes a part of my week, my thoughts, my dreams, rather than a 2-hour affair. Solaris is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, but I saw it in one sitting. It didn't feel that long...others might disagree. Others might also object to the low-budget set and visual effects. But that kind of fanfare excitement was not what I was expecting when I wanted a "good sci-fi." The movie carried me in to its world; it absorbed my imagination, so I was able to believe what it was implying, hinting at, even without the special effects to spell it all out before my eyes. So even now, I can still think about Solaris, what "reality" is like on that planet, that ocean. Mysterious.