It's unclear whether Lem was satisfied with Tarkovsky's screenplay prior to the studio demand for revisions. But the fact that he had creative input with respect to the former, and apparently didn't become highly outraged until after the latter, seems to indicate he was at least "okay" with the original product.
Well, I take that back. The quote from Lem at the bottom[1] indicates he had a level of dissatisfaction even prior to the studio interference. Lem wanted the central point of the novel to be emphasized: That an intelligent alien life form may be so severely non-anthropomorphic or unlike terrestrial biology in general that humans cannot understand what it is trying to communicate, or what its MO is stemming from.
Tarkovsky, on the OTOH, seemed to roll with the revisions, being well familiar with how one always has to conform to and compromise with studio demands (there was no A24 back then). And those changes didn't really conflict with what he was trying to do:
- Tarkovsky's film is about the inner lives of its scientists. [...] Tarkovsky concentrates on Kelvin's feelings for his wife, Hari, and the impact of outer space exploration on the human condition. [...] The film was Tarkovsky's attempt to bring greater emotional depth to science fiction films; he viewed most Western works in the genre, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as shallow due to their focus on technological invention.
Of course, my feeling about 2001 is that its professional detachment is part of what made it unique, or one of several components that differentiated it from the many sci-fi movies of that era and before that unfailingly catered to romantic (amorous and sentimental) melodrama. (Sans any conflation with 1972 Solaris. Even Lem coughed-up C&P rather than comparison to a novella in a pulp magazine from the 1930s.)
- - - footnote - - -
[1] Stanislaw Lem: . . . as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels — he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. This phenomenalistics [sic] of Harey's subsequent appearances was for me an exemplification of certain concept which can be derived almost from Kant himself. Because there exists the Ding an sich, the Unreachable, the Thing-in-Itself, the Other Side which cannot be penetrated. But in my prose this was made apparent and orchestrated completely differently... I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.
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