Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris, in which a psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet with an alien intelligence and meets his dead wife there. It is the full movie, uploaded by Mosfilm.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as a masterpiece of emotional, contemplative science fiction, and draws analogies between its alien ocean and AI.
“the film's a masterpiece that I highly recommend”HN comment, 2025
Tarkovsky's Solaris, emotional and relatable sci-fi
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Anyone else prefers Solaris over 2001? Both are great movies for sure but somehow Tarkovsky made everything more emotional and relatable. I love 2001 but to me Solaris is on another level (and Stalker too) If you have never watched it's on Youtube this video (Mosfilm is generally one of the GOAT Youtube channels with their uploads) There is an older upload on their other channel if you want different subs linklink (2 parts because of the original 2 reels)
Strongly recommendsthranceApr 2025
“the film's a masterpiece that I highly recommend”
Tarkovsky's Solaris, public domain on YouTube
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2 years prior, in 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanisław Lem's Solaris to the big screen in the Soviet Union, which may have contributed to Dick's paranoia. Anyway, the film's a masterpiece that I highly recommend, and since it was published before 1975 it is not subject to copyright. You can find it on YouTube [1]. [1] this video
Cites ithaunterJul 2022Full comment
That's because they have 2 accounts a russian and a global english one. Russian link Global link Usually both channels have subtitles but generally the global one is burnt-in while the russian one is selectable from the Youtube interface. Also the russian channel has much much more uploads. And movies differ too to some extent. For example, Solaris is a single title in the global english channel (restored vesion) this video Whereas it's 2 part title as it was originally back then (2 reels) linklink Last but not least check geoblocking link For example Solaris is geoblocked in the US, both versions this videolink
Cites ittriskaMay 2023
“The final scene of Solaris may as well have been created by Midjourney”
Final scene compared to generated imagery
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Solaris in particular seems more relevant than ever with the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI services that do not understand what their creations mean to us, and often create eery simulacra of life. The final scene of Solaris may as well have been created by Midjourney: this video Quoting from the book: "QUESTION: Do you mean, for example, that the hands didn’t move as human hands would move, because the joints were not sufficiently supple? BERTON: No, not at all. But . . . these movements had no meaning. Each of our movements means something, more or less, serves some purpose . . . "
Cites itMichaelMoser123Jul 2023
“You can watch it on youtube”
Alien ocean as mirror, analogy for LLMs
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> The question is, when will we feel that those things actually deserve to be thought of as being full-fledged, or at least partly fledged, "I"s? this LLM thing is more like a collective "we", it is making a prediction in the sense of the relevant training data, it probably wouldn't say anything that contradicts the consensus. Maybe the LLM's are just a mirror of our society. And our society doesn't seem to assign a lot of value to individualism, as such. i think that might be similar to the movie Solaris by Tarkovsky. The movie is starring an alien ocean, which is some sort of mirror, that is showing us who we are (maybe it has a different meaning, not quite sure about it). You can watch it on youtube: this video (i think you also get this theme with Stalker - this zone is also telling us who we are)
