In 1968, as the USA and the USSR raced to be the first to get men on the moon, Stanley Kubrick released '2001: A Space Odyssey', a timely meditation on space travel and the limits of human progress. Not long afterwards, in 1972, with America's lunar programme becoming something of a routine, Russian director Andrei Tarkovski released 'Solaris'.

In the film, psychologist Chris Kelvin is invited to investigate strange behaviour on an exploratory mission over the planet Solaris, and has trouble getting any straight answers from the two surviving crew members - but then all of his scientific convictions are shaken when he is visited by his dead wife.

Like '2001' (and the later film 'Contact'), Tarkovski's 'Solaris' is epic in scale, elegiac in tone, philosophical in theme, and it uses the speculative testing ground of science fiction to dramatise fundamental questions of the human mind: is it possible to know what it is like to be an alien?; what are the frontiers of human knowledge and faith?; should a perfectly constructed facsimile of a living being be regarded as substantially different from the original?

Now, at a time when exploration of Mars and beyond is on the agenda, and at a time when technology is rendering our perspective on ourselves and on the world an ever more mediated affair, Steven Soderbergh has made a new, and newly relevant, version of 'Solaris', although the central story (based on the original novel of Stanislaw Lem) remains much the same.

Any attempt to match Tarkovski's poetic vision would risk accusations of hubris, and Soderbergh has wisely avoided trying to repeat, let alone outdo, the spectacular vistas which opened and closed Tarkovski's film (whose final images are amongst the most powerful and transformative in their impact that I have ever seen). Yet in many respects Soderbergh has improved upon his worthy predecessor.

The new 'Solaris' manages to retain the contemplative tempo of the original while halving its length. And while Tarkovski's allegorical world reduces his characters largely to symbolic ciphers, Soderbergh has fleshed them out into credible people with palpable feelings. His decision to put more focus on Kelvin's relationship, past and present, with his wife Rheya, means that his film has a human dimension that makes its otherwise abstract musings both more accessible and also more meaningful. If we are to be convinced by Kelvin's increasing empathy towards the resurrected Rheya, we must ourselves be able to empathise both with him and her - something which is only really possible in Soderbergh's film.

George Clooney has gained a reputation as the Cary Grant of his day - great at comedy and light romance, but something of a ham. Yet here he shows emotional depth and nuance, bringing a real intensity to the scenes which his character shares with Rheya. Natascha McElhone imbues Rheya with a human warmth that defies anyone to believe that she is merely an alien construct (or, paradoxically, that she is just acting her part). And Jeremy Davies as nervous crewman Snow puts in a twitching, edgy turn that is half Dennis Hopper in 'Apocalypse Now', and half Charles Manson - a hallucinogen-inspired performance that would have been impossible in a Soviet film of the Seventies, but which is perfectly suited to this story about humanity's unsteady grip on reality.

If you want laser battles in outer space, then rent 'Star Wars' - but if you prefer a more intellectual journey through inner space, take a trip to 'Solaris'.

Anton Bitel, 17.03.03