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…

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 have seen 2081 motion pictures in my life. I have seen many of these more than once. I am not boasting, nor am I particularly proud that I spent so many years of my life in front of a flickering screen. For many months I've known that I was gradually working my way towards the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, that every time I saw a film I was getting closer to the day I would finally feel ready to experience the meditative wonders of a man whom many consider to be the greatest director of all time.

With that said, Stalker makes that whole journey worthwhile. For every hundred pieces of celluloid tripe you can be fortunate to find…

This is the Tarkovsky I've been waiting for.

As conceptually interesting as Solaris and visually stunning as Andrei Rublev were, there was something missing; a connection to the story and characters that sucked me into the world, that made me desperate to discover the 'why' instead of just going along for the ride. Here, in Stalker, I got my wish - an apocalyptic fairy tale with characters I could understand and a true sense that Tarkovsky is, indeed, one of the greats and can produce a film I instantly want to return to; love at first sight. After a good night's sleep, my brain is still bouncing off the walls about it, so instead of coherency, here's two of the…

"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…

I can't help but think that I would follow every rule the Stalker gave me just to get to the Room. My deepest darkest desires fulfilled, what fantasies return again and again to me, I would fight for these, I would walk whatever line they made me walk. A healthy, happy world is worth the price of following a few rules, even if I do not necessarily understand them. The toxic ideas of freedom set forth by slave owners and rapists have left a legacy of lies in our nation wherein we constantly strive to be "free" while being held in--and reinforcing--chains of poverty, sickness, and violence; this idea that we should have the right to hate-speech or private property…

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…

Scope: Film Club #10 | Pick by: TheKing0fComedy

Stalker unfolds like a philosophical discussion between a Stalker, a Writer and a Professor taking place in the colorful Zone, sealed off from the colorless reality.

The Stalker is an intermediary: he takes whoever asks to the Zone. He provides a freedom that he cannot access and is, at the same time, looked down upon for his job. While the Writer and the Professor provide knowledge that is deemed necessary, the Stalker’s services are inessential despite the fact that they provide the most relief, the best escape, an alternate world where people can go to forget about the hardships of their daily lives.

The Zone is a realm of beauty that stretches…