This Guest is not simply a physical manifestation, however. She has intelligence, self-consciousness, memory, and lack of memories. She does not know that the original Khari committed suicide. She questions Kelvin, wants to know more about herself, eventually grows despondent when she realizes she cannot be who she appears to be. To some extent her being is limited by how much Kelvin knows about her, since Solaris cannot know more than Kelvin does; this theme is made clearer in Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's 2002 remake of the film.

When we love someone, who do we love? That person, or our idea of that person? Some years before virtual reality became a byword, Tarkovsky was exploring its implications. Although other persons no doubt exist in independent physical space, our entire relationship with them exists in our minds. When we touch them, it is not the touch we experience, but our consciousness of the touch. To some extent, then, the second Khari is as "real" as the first, although different.

The relationship between Kelvin and the new Khari plays out against the nature of reality on the space station. He glimpses other Guests. He views a taped message from the dead cosmonaut, filled with information and warning. Khari, it develops, cannot be killed, although that is tried, because she can simply be replaced. Physical pain is meaningless to her, as we see when she attempts to rip through a steel bulkhead door because she does not know how to open it. Gentle feelings are accessible to her, as seen in a scene that everybody agrees is the magic center of "Solaris," when the space station enters a stage of zero gravity and Kelvin, Khari and lighted candles float in the air.

The last sequence of the film, which I will not reveal, invites us to reconsider the opening sequence, and to toy with the notion that there may be more Guests in the film than we first thought. It is a crucial fact that this final shot is seen by us, the viewers, and not by those on the space station. "The arc of discovery is on the part of the audience, not the characters.," writes the critic N. Medlicott. That they may be trapped within a box of consciousness that deceives them about reality is only appropriate, since the film argues that we all are.

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