1979 ‘Сталкер’ Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
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There has been much inquiry over the past thirty five years or so as to what this film is about - the three faces of the human soul, perhaps? Spirituality? Mortality?
"How would I know the right word for what I want? How would I know that actually I don't want what I want? Or that I actually don't want what I don't want? They are elusive things: the moment we name them, their meaning disappears, melts, dissolves like a jellyfish in the sun."
As with the rest of Tarkovsky's masterpieces, there isn't much of a point in trying to write a review for Stalker. Any attempt to put your thoughts on this film into words will remove something special,…
I’m a bit over the moon here, as it’s not often when one of your favourite films is displaced. In this case, Tarkovsky’s own Solaris. I absolutely adored Solaris for its humanistic take on the hard Sci-Fi nugget of illusion and projection. While I haven’t seen the interceding Mirror, which I’ve seen here has lots of love, it almost seems like Stalker is a follow up fuck-you to Stanley Kubrick. Solaris had a humanistic take on great sci-fi questions, although it was less grand is scope compared to Kubrick’s masterpiece. Here, Tarkovsky matches Kubrick in grand scope and interpretation.
This film is impossible to interpret on a single viewing, so I’m just going to register some first takes and let…
I could attempt to say so many different things about this but for the sake of me not repeating what has probably already been said, I'll leave you all with a good ol classic: oh my god.
Mastapiece
"My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?"
Very well might give this a higher star rating once I've chewed on it a bit but I just want to say (very mild spoilers) the reveal in the final scene almost made me scream in the theater
I know this will not be a popular opinion, but I did not like this film.
I found it a crushingly ponderous existential meditation.
The film's plot is about a man who is a "stalker". This means that he is a bit of a tour guide to a location or realm called "the zone". The Zone is explained in the film, but only vaugely. We know it is supposed to be a place where wishes come true. The stalker is taking two people to the zone. One is a writer, and the other is a professor. The three men make the voyage to the zone, pausing along the way to ruminate on the meaning of life.
One of my problems…
No offense but it’s not really surprising that this movie gave a bunch of people cancer.
“this is the most important moment in your life”
much too much to unpack after a long day like today, but i’ll definitely be ruminating over this for a while. the 35mm was absolutely stellar though
"You dream of one thing, but you get quite another."
Stalker is incredibly complex and fairly impenetrable on first watch, so as a result this will be a combination of surface level analysis and dubious conjecture. Needless to say, this is exactly my brand of science fiction: it's heady, it's beautiful, it's unique. It's a film I don't expect I'll fully grasp without reading external analysis, and even then it's so open for interpretation that I hope to never have a completely solid idea of what it means. As the Stalker says, "Hardness and strength are death's companions."
The most obvious thing about Stalker is that it's gorgeous. It presents a dystopian post-industrial vision of Russia which lies in the…
(Episode 12 of the 'I have always wanted to watch that' podcast with guest Paul Keelan)
3rd times a charm, as a venture into the ZONE once more!
"A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something."
Watching Stalker again to get ready for a podcast was such treat, since it got me to pause the film frequently in order to write out my full thoughts and interpretations of Andrei Tarkovsky's existential sci-fi masterwork. This method worked perfectly to help me soak in even more of the beat-down locations we come across along their journey, along with all that rich philosophical dialogue.
Spoiler:
My take…
