"The Saving Bitterness of Nostalgia"

I need the viewer to have a sense of the beautiful Earth. So that, having plunged into the fantastic atmosphere of Solaris unknown to him, he suddenly, having returned to Earth, found the opportunity to breathe habitually, so that he would feel achingly easy from this familiarity. In a word, so that the viewer feels the saving bitterness of nostalgia. Kelvin decides to stay on Solaris. This is where I need the Earth, so that the viewer more fully, deeper, more acutely experienced all the drama of the hero’s refusal to return to the planet, which was and is our ancestral home.

Andrei Tarkovsky. Interview with Olga Surkova