This was the most widely seen of Andrei Tarkovsky's films outside of the Soviet Union. However, Tarkovsky himself reportedly considered it the least favorite of the films he directed. He considered it an artistic failure because the film's need for technological dialogue and special effects prevented it from transcending its genre, which he believed his movie Stalker (1979) did better.
This is not the first adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's novel, as Solaris (1968) was made four years before, and was much more faithful to the book. Andrei Tarkovsky wanted a film based on the novel but artistically independent of it, by adding greater emotional depth to the science fiction genre. Lem, however, was scathing of Tarkovsky's version, and complained that he did not write about people's "erotic problems in space." Tarkovsky, in turn, stated that Lem did not fully appreciate cinema, and expected the film to merely illustrate the novel without creating an original cinematic piece. He further explained that he used Lem's existential conflicts of man's condition in nature and the nature of man in the universe as the starting point for depicting the characters' inner lives.
In Kris Kelvin's room, it is possible to see an icon painted by Andrei Rublev, the Russian painter who inspired Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966).
In addition to Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "Hunters in the Snow," the painting that is meditated on in the library, four more of his paintings can be seen displayed there during the weightless scene: "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," "The Harvesters," "The Gloomy Day, beginning of Spring," and "The Tower of Babel."
It is quite common to hear this movie compared to (and being called 'the Russian answer to') Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Contrary to what is often believed, Andrei Tarkovsky had, in fact, seen that film before shooting Solaris. However, where Kubrick named Solaris as one of his beloved films, Tarkovsky criticized 2001 for being "sterile"; in a 1970 interview (before making Solaris), he stated: "For some reason, in all the science-fiction films I've seen, the filmmakers force the viewer to examine the details of the material structure of the future. More than that, sometimes, like Kubrick, they call their own films premonitions. It's unbelievable! Let alone that 2001: A Space Odyssey is phony on many points, even for specialists. For a true work of art, the fake must be eliminated."