> But do films (or any art) have to "make sense"?
In a lot of ways I think it depends on your role, and the role of the film in your experience. If your role is to enjoy, then I hope the film was created with your preferred perceptive style in mind.
If your role is to write a paper on a film, maybe the make-sense films make that whole assignment much easier.
Solaris is a tremendous sensory experience on its own. You can pick up on a lot of the implications by interpreting the film's sensory output as metaphor. From facial expressions to positioning, texture, and sound / music.
A lot of people find that relaxing because the metaphor-extraction process is like a background process for them and it feeds their intuitive grasp of what's unfolding in the "big picture" of the film. They tend to take in and process much of life in the same way.
At the same time, not everybody enjoys that, and it will make some people downright uncomfortable. To be comfortable with a film, maybe they need to be able to piece it together logically for example, or at least be able to create by themselves an explanation/exposition of the contents where one didn't exist before.
Incidentally, I find the sensory-experiential/metaphorical approach (my go-to) much less fulfilling while watching films created by people who are more logical and detail-driven.
For example, I was rewatching _The Spanish Prisoner_ the other day and it was painfully clear that Mamet really wanted viewers to track his labyrinth of aphoristic details.
From a sensory-metaphor perspective there wasn't much to work with, and the film didn't seem to "make sense" from that intuitive standpoint.
But it's less painful IMO, and maybe even more pleasurable, when you know the kind of gifts and preferred perspectives the director is working with, and at least you're aware that you can make a decision to change your perceptive focus, or watch something else. That aspect makes sense to me, and helps me watch films that wouldn't otherwise make sense in this way or that one.