The Stalker
Equally, it may be that as malfunction of one kind or another covers the world, we may have a hard time distinguishing the Room, the Zone, and the local multiplex. Sometimes wry scepticism is a more appropriate tribute than po-faced reverence, especially given that Tarkovsky leaves ample room for doubt.
Any claim made for the Zone "the quietest place in the world," says the Stalker is countered by the suggestion that it's a bit disappointing "smells like a bog," says Professor. In an interview Tarkovsky even raised the possibility that the Zone did not exist and was merely the Stalker's invention. Though it's easily forgotten, there's often a touch of comedy - even slapstick - in Tarkovsky-land.
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Deep in the Zone, on the threshold of the Room, the three guys are pondering the mysteries of existence when a phone rings. No, this is not the clinic! I've seen Stalker more times than any film except The Great Escape. I've seen it when the projectionist got the reels in the wrong order I was the only person who noticed , I've seen it on my own in Paris and dubbed into Italian in Rome, I've seen it on acid remember that sequence when the solid ground begins to ripple?
Like the Zone, it's always changing. Like the Stalker, I feel quite at home in it, but whenever I see the film I try to imagine what it might be like, watching it for the first time when it seems so weird. Consider the first 15 minutes. After a credit sequence showing an oldish guy drinking in a gloomy bar, we peer through an interior set of doors into a room. Inside already, the camera takes us deeper indoors.
Danger! High-radiation arthouse!
It's as if Tarkovsky has started off where Antonioni left off in the penultimate inside-out shot of The Passenger and taken it a stage further: It's slower than Antonioni, and without the colour. It has a kind of sub-monochrome in which the spectrum has been so compressed that it might turn out to be a source of energy, like oil and almost as dark - but with a gold sheen, too. The camera pans across the people in bed and then tracks back.
Not a long take by Tarkovsky's standards, but still, one takes the point. The rumble of heavy transport - accompanied by an anthem to Homo Sovieticus - causes a glass to rattle across a table. The man wakes up and gets out of bed. Unusually, he sleeps without his trousers but with his sweater. Another weird thing is that, although trying not to wake his wife, he puts on his trousers and his boots before clomping quietly into the kitchen. His wife was awake, it turns out, or has been roused by his movements.
It would be interesting to compile a list of the first words spoken in films and run the results through a computer. In this instance they are spoken by the wife: No wonder he wants out! But of course we're also getting the big theme introduced: In effect, Tarkovsky is saying to the audience: Stop looking at your watches, give yourself over to Tarkovsky-time, and the helter-skelter mayhem of The Bourne Ultimatum will seem more tedious than L'Avventura. The wife expands on this notion of time - she has lost her best years, grown old - and you're reminded again of Antonioni, because the plain truth is, she's no Monica Vitti.
Then she lays a whole guilt trip on him, but the usual terms - you only think of yourself - are reversed.
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She begs him to stay, but he's got to do what a holy fool's got to do. Tarkovsky's films have always invited allegorical interpretation, and certain viewers might be tempted to view the Stalker's impending trip in the light of recent history. Is the Zone an idealised image of the UK with its generous welfare system, a land of milk and honey with many opportunities for those willing to pick fruit for six quid an hour?
Stalker, a somber futuristic fantasy from the Soviet Union, attempts to build an apocalyptic vision out of the most impoverished materials imaginable. A true existential parable: The Zone being a genius dramaturgical blank canvas around which Tarkovsky wraps another of his epic musings on what it means to be human. Stalker traces a mysterious, metaphysical odyssey undertaken by three strangers uncertain of their own desires' boundaries. Aa lengthy, talky quest for meaning, punctuated by long takes and huge moments of silence.
Ultimately though, it's a rewarding one for sure, especially once you fall under the spell of its hypnotic filmmaking.
Stalker is in truth about the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union-and therefore, the end of the 20th century and the socialist experiment. Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky's finest masterpiece, the Russian director's film is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality. It may be a tough sit-through to some as it is not as emotionally engaging as Tarkovsky's magnificent Solaris, but it is hard not to be mesmerized by this stunning metaphysical and philosophical allegory about human desire and search for happiness.
Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker is a brilliant film that I would rank among his very finest works. This is my third film I've seen of his, and aside from the previous two, Andrei Roublev and Solaris, Solaris being my most favorite of his films; I would say that this is my second favorite. Brilliantly crafted, Tarkovsky always brought a subtle, yet engaging touch in the way he made his movies, and that's what I love most about his work. With the other pictures that I've seen, he would tell simple, yet grand stories, evoki9ng a sense of storytelling that was reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick in a way.
In fact, I would describe him as the Russian Kubrick. Stalker is a great movie that seems a bit bleak, but is very captivating, as it is shot beautiful black and white, which adds a melancholic surrealistic atmosphere to the tone of movie. Clearly, Tarkovsky tried to capture a certain vibe, and you feel it here. If you love foreign cinema that are breathtaking in scope, films that make you think, and has a simple, yet very good premise, this is a film not to miss. After Solaris, is Tarkovsky's second greatest work, and it's a film that resonates with the human consciousness. This is a superb movie, a flawless piece of cinema, and one of the finest movies that I had the pleasure to watch.
Watching more and more of Andrei Tarkovsky's body of work, you begin to realize how great he was at telling superb stories with brilliant performances and incredible direction. His films are works of art, and with Stalker, this is a journey that is worth taking as we travel with the two characters as they travel in search of what they're looking for. This is simply put, filmmaking at its very best, and if you love exceptionally well crafted cinema, then you ought to watch this phenomenal film. The film is long, but it never feels boring because there is just so much in the film that you never realize how long it is.
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The film is a journey, one that makes you think, and it's a masterwork from a director who has constantly crafted truly superb pictures. Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the rare filmmakers whose filmography is flawless because he hasn't made one bad movie.
Stalker is a Soviet science fiction art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. With Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko. A guide leads two men through an area.
Dazed, shaken and poignantly moved. Mesmerizing, not by the magnetic scenery itself, but by own thought. My least favorite Tarkovsky thus far. So talky, so ambivalent, so I really should afford this a second and third chance as I was stuck reading the subtitles most of the first viewing.
I do not relish the thought. More Top Movies Trailers Forums. Season 7 Black Lightning: Season 2 DC's Legends of Tomorrow: Season 4 Doctor Who: Season 11 The Flash: Season 5 This Is Us: Season 3 Saturday Night Live: Season 4 The Walking Dead: Weekend Box Office Results: View All Photos 1. Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, an allegorical science fiction film like his earlier Solaris, was adapted from the novel Picnic by the Roadside by brothers Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky. The film follows three men -- the Scientist Nikolai Grinko , the Writer Anatoliy Solonitsyn , and the Stalker Alexander Kaidanovsky -- as they travel through a mysterious and forbidden territory in the Russian wilderness called the "Zone.
Objects change places, the landscape shifts and rearranges itself.
It seems as if an unknown intelligence is actively thwarting any attempt to penetrate its borders. In the Zone, there is said to be a bunker, and in the bunker: The Stalker is the hired guide for the journey who has, through repeated visits to the Zone, become accustomed to its complex traps, pitfalls, and subtle distortions. Only by following his lead which often involves taking the longest, most frustrating route can the Writer and the Scientist make it alive to the bunker and the room.