Say That to My Face Again Stalker
More Tarkovsky brilliance
Stalker may not be my favourite of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, that belongs to Andrei Rublev, which is from personal opinion the greatest Soviet film e'er made. It's besides not his nearly attainable(Ivan's Childhood), if anything only Solaris is more divisive. However Stalker is still an outstanding film, it loses momentum ever so slightly at the end but not enough for information technology to hurt the film.
As with all Tarkovsky films, Stalker is brilliantly made. Information technology is grittier and more muted in colour than with his other films, but notwithstanding maintains that hypnotic dream-similar quality that the cinematography in his films have. The scenery is evocatively atmospheric, mundane only in a good way. Tarkovsky'south direction again is nearly-on impeccable, showing a mastery of visuals and mood. Stalker is hauntingly scored but never in a likewise obvious manner, while of all his films to me information technology was Stalker that had the most thought-provoking writing. Not all of it is easy to sympathize at beginning but a lot of the lines actually makes i call back a long while after. The story is not for everyone, with some finding the deliberate pacing too much for them but the storytelling is actually very suspenseful and there is a spooky atmosphere throughout, the motion-picture show is deadening simply the suspense, atmosphere and cinematography kept this viewer glued to the seat. The acting's of the kind with the actors having times where they don't say a lot or annihilation merely their trunk linguistic communication, eyes and expressions communicate an awful lot, which is every bit as powerful as when speaking.
Overall, an outstanding movie if not Tarkovsky's best or virtually accessible. If you are a fan of Tarkovsky, or at to the lowest degree familiar with him ,you shouldn't accept too much trouble getting into Stalker. nine.5/ten Bethany Cox
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Gloomy, depressing, and way overlong
Alert: Spoilers
STALKER is another long-winded picture from Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, this fourth dimension a science fiction yarn in the same guise as SOLARIS. The setting is a post-apocalyptic landscape in which a couple of characters work their way through a devastated world looking for answers in a place known as the 'alien zone' which may contain extraterrestrial life. The best function of the film is the authentic setting; discussion has information technology that the genuinely radioactive Estonian locations resulted in the early deaths of a number of the crew members, not to the lowest degree the managing director himself.
Sadly, STALKER is one of those films that goes on interminably and as a mood piece this just doesn't concur the attending. Had Tarkovsky made the running fourth dimension more reasonable (i.e. under half what it is) it might take been more interesting, but as it stands it's just an countless ramble through the wilderness with few answers at the terminate. I found information technology gloomy and depressing, non to mention sleep-inducing.
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long, surreal and Russian
The moving picture starts in black and white. The Zone has been cordoned off by the military and police. Information technology's an area affected by something unknown or aliens or a falling star. Within the Zone lies a Room where wishes are granted. The Stalker is a homo with special attributes who guides others into the room. His wife pleads for him to stop. He leads the Writer and the Professor into the Zone. The movie gains its colors afterward crossing the police blockage. The questioning Writer wants to regain his inspiration. The Professor is repose and more concerned virtually his backpack.
This is for people who love reading long, depressing, poetic Russian novels. The premise is very fascinating but it is way too irksome and too long for me. I lost interest afterwards the movie gains its colors and the three characters wonder forever in the Zone. It'south a lot of long quiet scenes and dialog that doesn't involvement me. It takes too long to go to the Room. I guess it is suppose to transmit the fourth dimension and difficulty of the journeying merely I find it repetitive. I need it to have a much tighter middle.
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a country of reality
a state more than a place. a space of truth. and its bitter cost. the fascination of a trip in the traces of self define. words as stones. looks as veils to encompass the reality. the girl. and the ash of desires, temptations, fears , retentiveness, humanity limits and pride. at first sigh, simply Tarkovski. equally a king and magician and primary . in fact, similar each movie made past this great manager,Stalker is the film of the viewer. like a mirror. like a large cage. like a dialogue with himself. and this modify everything. and this does the flick more a masterpiece. mayhap a cathedral. or a belfry. or a room in the lights and shadows of a presence escaping to any definition. because it is but a confession. about small things, about organized religion, nearly purposes, about hope. and the Christianity as echo.
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Not among Tarkovsky'southward worst or all-time
Alarm: Spoilers
And if yous put together this review with the corporeality of stars out of x I give this film, you probably already know what my opinion is on Tarkovsky. He is a definite contender for being the nigh divisive filmmaker from all the highly successful ones. Some dear his arroyo, others detect it incredibly boring and for them it is not doing much. I am agape I count among the latter. This Soviet movie in the Russian linguistic communication (yep! don't fault information technology for a modern mediocre thriller that may accept Jennifer Lopez, mother of three, beingness attacked past a lovesick psychopath) that has its 40th anniversary this year is not gonna change anything almost that. Similar basically all other Tarkovsky works, it is incredibly long at over 2.5 hours and it feels that way I must say.
I can't say besides much nearly the cast hither. Maybe Russian flick fans are more familiar with them. So permit'south talk a chip about the film itself. I would say that in terms of manner and visual aspects, it is not a bad movie, then perhaps a scrap on the style over substance side. I did like the get-go more most everything afterwards. This yellow-themed dangerous situation at that place with the iii men existence on the run and their hunters (symbolized by the motorbike rider) non far behind had a little claustrophobic atmosphere to information technology and I enjoyed that. After xl minutes or so, there is quite a break thematically and this is generally seen through color really entering the picture as the trio of "heroes" including Bill Nighy and peculiarly Woody Harrelson Soviet lookalikes is somewhere in green deserted no man'due south land and all the danger and threats now generally come from themselves towards each other every bit the group mentality is put to the examination on several occasions. Only in that location are other dangers too still like people beingness worried about mines etc. Let'south keep in mind (no pun intended) that this motion picture is set during the days of big political/military turmoil. We have a lot of talk most "the Zone" and unfortunately as much as this is in the center of the motion-picture show, it never actually won me over as a crucial identify or mayhap even the big defining background of the motion-picture show, non merely locally, but likewise in terms of political turmoil. I even so think this function in the green was maybe when the movie was at its all-time, but far from slap-up besides, simply considering mostly everything else was so forgettable.
Every bit the trio progresses on the route to their target location, farther obstacles ascend. On 1 occasion, one of the characters is seemingly killed (I thought turned into a bird even) in a desert-like location, merely not much later he reappears in what I would not exactly phone call the most realistic plow of events. Oh well. It is however a science fiction movie and this was probably, at to the lowest degree with elements, genre-wise my favorite from Tarkovsky, but I all the same would have liked better explanations on some occasions. This is also a problem I have with the filmmaker in general, non only here. He dives so deep into metaphors and symbolisms all the time that information technology feels he almost forgets to narrate a convincing story that could have yous interested, let alone at the edge of your seat, and with these running times, honestly it is pretty crucial. Information technology feels every bit if he implies that everybody in the audience is immediately fully aware of the characters and cares for what happens to them, merely there is no profound presentation who they are and most of all why would we be interested in and treat them.
Now when the gang eventually arrives where they wanted to get (or idea they wanted to get), information technology is all as bleak and unspectacular as it was all the fourth dimension before. There is not really a sense of arrival, a sense of mission completed to it all, which honestly would have surprised me anyway. It would have gone against the style and tone of this moving picture, but it still could have been squeamish for a change. The way things really turn out, everybody feels just every bit lost and on their own every bit they were during their journey and before that if not more. The frame with the adult female from the life of i key character, who appears early on on and very tardily too, is cracking, just as well non besides memorable. However, the ending with the kid that has telepathic abilities was nice and even if what it did was a bit repetitive already, my eyes were glued to the screen there. Again though the problem is that there is no path leading us at all to this graphic symbol and the gift. And so overall, it just isn't my preferred option of movies I must say. Then again, that is a subjective approach. If you like Tarkovsky, and I was genuinely surprised constantly how total the theaters were for his moving picture retrospective, then you will mayhap appreciate this one here also. After all, it is amidst his highest rated here on imdb and also among his almost famous, even if there is no fashion I can empathise why it sits comfortably in the imdb top250. I also don't retrieve it is a motion picture that gets much better on rewatch. Don't spotter.
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Without a Inkling, An Intriguing and Metaphoric Film Very Difficult To Be Understood
In a not specified time, at that place is a place called `The Zone', surrounded by the surveillance and protection of armed guards and forbidden to exist visited. Its unknown origin is attributed to meteorites or aliens. Only some men, called `Stalkers', are able to successfully trespass its borders and achieve a place in its inner called `The Room', where all the secrets and innermost hopes and wishes come true. A writer, who lost his skills, and a mysterious scientist are guided by a Stalker, when the journey begins. Today I take just seen `Stalker' for the first time. I plant it intriguing, merely unfortunately I have not actually understood its essence. I became very disappointed, just afterward glancing other IMDB users reviews and the message lath, I realized that there are indeed much more questions than explanations. Further, I found this story too much hermetic and boring for my taste and the images are not very articulate in the quondam Brazilian VHS. I do not have much experience with Andrei Tarkovsky movies, therefore I intend to read some reviews, maybe run into `Stalker' over again and then I may write my own review. I practice non want to exist polemic, merely I believe that a picture show that needs additional reading or discussion to be understood has some problem in its evolution. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): `Stalker'
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"Don't stick your nose in someone's underwear if you don't empathise it."
Alarm: Spoilers
How many of yous kept waiting..., and waiting..., and waiting..., for something to happen - for the big surprise - for anything at all? When this movie finished, I had to concede that director Andrei Tarkovsky is perhaps the master of saying nothing in the longest amount of time possible. On meridian of that, the dialog was breathless and went absolutely nowhere. If I wasn't a stickler for watching an unabridged film for the sake of writing a review here, I would take given up well before the half style mark.
Now lest I sound a bit out of sorts hither, I'd like to point to a few other reviews by those who seemingly purport to empathize what this was all nearly. 1 states "It'southward like a verse form written with objects. Nosotros must feel before we try to understand". Another author says that the movie has 'a well thought out and concise perspective'. And one more, who claims "The scenery is evocatively atmospheric, mundane but in a expert fashion".
Note that not one of these folks said anything that offers any assist in following the story or what information technology'due south well-nigh. In fact, if you become to the FAQ folio for this picture on IMDb, in that location's not a discussion of explanation mentioned most what's going on, different other esoteric films that tin be translated in some meaningful way. I would bespeak to films like "Inception" and "Donnie Darko" to make my point on that.
So what we seem to have here is an existential, dystopian Seinfeld episode about nothing. My summary line is an actual quote from the 'stalker' in the movie, warning his swain travelers by advising them to stick close past his side, lest they fall prey to some hidden danger in 'The Zone'. By the time this thing was over, after all listen-numbing one hundred lx two minutes of it, I had to concord with the words of The Professor who at one point near the end of the story said "...it makes no sense to me at all".
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somewhere between "No Leave" and "Down by Law"
Andrei Tarkovsky is widely understood to be one of the most important directors in the history of cinema. His works often focus on metaphysical and philosophical topics. "Stalker" is an example. At first the movie reminded me of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist play "No Exit" (well-nigh a agglomeration of people trapped in an existential hell), equally the Stalker, Writer and Professor had trouble escaping the blockaded region of the Zone. Every bit the protagonists headed for the heart of the Zone, the picture show began to remind me of Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Police", about three men who escape jail and wander through rural Louisiana. Once the protagonists reach the Room, the movie really takes off.
It'southward worth noting that this is non a picture show for those who are used to action flicks. It contains long shots and goes long periods without dialogue. If you're going to spotter this movie, you lot'd better have a long attention span. This holds true for the other Tarkovsky movies that I've seen. That's improve, in my opinion. The concluding affair that we need is another picture contributing to ADHD.
If I were going to postulate the gist of the movie, I would say that we have to seek our own answers for the meanings of our lives. These men go along an expedition hoping to accept their innermost desires fulfilled, only to find that the place has trash everywhere. Mayhap our innermost desires have to come from united states of america directly, every bit opposed to some esoteric entity.
Maybe that's just me. Whatever the gist is, "Stalker" is a swell movie. Ane of the all-fourth dimension high points of cinema, like "Denizen Kane" and "Dr. Strangelove". Definitely see it.
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Bizarre Russian Science Fiction
A guide known as The Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) leads two men, "the Writer" (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and "the Professor" (Nikolai Grinko), through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.
Tin can yous believe the film contains 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of more than than ane minute and many shots lasting for more than four minutes. There is no question that the photographic camera lingers, and no surprise that the film is considered to be tiresome by many people (early audiences and critics definitely thought and so).
Almost all of the scenes not prepare in the Zone are in a high-contrast brown monochrome. What does this mean? That is for you to make up one's mind, but it does add an element of fantasy to the picture.
The manager reportedly said, "I am but interested in the views of two people: 1 is called Bresson and i called Bergman." Aye, folks, this is art and not entertainment. If you lot happen to be entertained, that is even better.
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Stalker
Warning: Spoilers
I remembered seeing the iconic image of the human with thorns on his head in the book of 1001 Movies You lot Must See Before You Die, this Russian film was rated well by critics likewise, so I hoped it was deserved as an addition, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror). Basically near a grey and unnamed urban center is "The Zone", an alien place surrounded past barbed wire and guarded by soldiers, this forbidden and deserted wilderness has all sorts of foreign things going on, including things moving about, but the place apparently brings the ability to fulfil people'south innermost desires. A man called Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), over the objections of his married woman, leaves early in the morning, leaving the wife with their disabled daughter, to run into with 2 men. He is one of but a handful of people that has the mental gift, and risks imprisonment, leading people into the Zone, taking them to "The Room", the place where secret hopes of someone could come true. The two men are known as The Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn), who has a burned out pop career, is cynical and questions his talent, and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko), a quiet scientist concerned more about his knapsack than the actual journey. They have both agreed to put their fate in the easily of the Stalker who guides them into the Zone, going across the various landscapes and obstacles in their way, merely to approach the Room they must be indirect, it is drawing about that the rules for them alter when the Stalker is facing his own crunch. Alisa Freyndlikh as Zhena Stalkera, Stalker'south married woman and Natalya Abramova equally Marta, Stalker's daughter. The cast are fine, the use of colour, going from muted sepia colour in the real world into vivid colour for the Zone world is clever, there is certainly a sense of paranoia and a spooky atmosphere throughout, it does I suppose make you question i's own beliefs and values, it may be very strange and non easy to follow, but it is an interesting scientific discipline-fiction drama. Practiced!
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the most erebral' science-fiction film always made, but as well one of the rarest to challenge perceptions and stimulate the senses
Stalker is, based on the amount of science-fiction films I have seen yet, or at least those that could be considered true to whatever tin can be considered function of the genre, peradventure the talkiest, the one with the least amount of any kind of action, and 1 that moves at a pace that might brand Godard a lilliputian squirmy in his seat. These however are all positives for manager Andrei Tarkovsky's goals with what could be considered a masterpiece, to utilise the term once over again. Information technology's a dumbo flick, but within this density layers of interest that many of today's scientific discipline-fiction films wouldn't even call back to consider much less try are present and live.
Its visual prowess is some other big piece of what makes Stalker such a triumph. Never do nosotros get cuts also quick or shots that get by in the blink of an eye, far from it. Tarkovsky is putting the audition through long shots, equally in surpassing five minutes, requite or have a minute, and the craft is hypnotic; he uses his skills very simply in pans and tilts and subtle zoom-ins and outs, and there's even a few shots, like the pan upwardly in close-up over the un-real/real objects in the river with metaphorical significance leading to the hand, that are some of the most haunting in all of cinema.
It's not an easy trip through what is actually a very simple premise: a stalker, Aleksandr Kajdanovsky, is going to take a writer and a philosopher through the dangerous terrain to the zone, where anything innermost in said person can be realized. Bated from the surpassing of the guarded gates into the entrance, where there are gun-shots and the like, Tarkovsky isn't interested in "activity" things happening, but themes expressed squarely through narrow, representative characters and mood. This mood is 1 that is wrong if looking at the back of the video box, which compares the ambiance and realm of science fiction to that of Blade Runner.
In the sense of information technology breaking clichés, sure, it'south like, but that'south really all on a shallow level. Tarkovsky'south blueprint for the picture is tantamount to existence hyper stylized, but never also noticeable in the sense of it looking 'fake'. At that place may be a moment or two where the zone does wait similar a ZONE from a not-quite nuclear fall-out, similar the 1 room with sandy dunes on the floor. Merely it's as well right out of Russia, with manufacture and decay of the period all in direct view. The hopelessness is conveyed not just through the humorlessness of the characters, merely in the zone itself, which looks like it's been non constructed completely by the coiffure.
I was originally spurned on to meet information technology not only considering of seeing Tarkovsky's Solaris and Andrei Rublev- the former also an experimental feat of intelligent, emotionally complex sci-fi- but because of a couple of clips featured in the documentary The Debauchee's Guide to Movie theater. In it, Zizek uses Stalker to describe how there can be a world, or a grade of a globe, where the ideal of Godlessness is given full form into a earth without belief, and where decay and industrialization are all at that place can be seen. But so at that place is too the 'Zone', which is too in line with the thought of there being order, of hope, yet as well the total despair in getting something otherworldly. Does the Zone need man beings as much as human beings need the zone?
Questions like these, as well equally what it ways to exist a creator of art, as the writer goes to lengths describing, in a mail-apocalyptic surroundings, or what it is to actually enter into an conflicting construct, or what may exist an conflicting construct, as what may be illusion is stronger than that condign a reality, or what the stalker has in responsibility to himself, others, and humanity at large, come up repeatedly. So, at the to the lowest degree, Stalker can't be considered as a piece of work without a idea procedure to it. Quite the contrary, there'southward even a poetry to all of the thoughts and visuals that continue coming upwardly, be they through the conversations on the way to the Zone, or in that "climax" on the precipice of the "Room" where the potential of destruction comes at a heavy price post-obit all that's happened.
Tarkovsky even tops himself from Solaris by making human need and suffering and, as a human construct, the fantastical imaginings of what is "out at that place" as here, paramount and affecting. Fear, greed and ego, and a desire for some pocket-size level of any sense of peace through any medium is available, is what Tarkovsky suggests and prods, but never outright answers; it comes equally a great shock and relief at the end, when the male child Monkey shows an unusual 'moment' at the tabular array.
This being said, Stalker won't be for everyone, surely non the Star Wars geeks looking for pomp and circumstance against motifs out of the old Due west. It might fifty-fifty experience as well long and plodding by those who put 2001 at the top of their favorite picture show lists. Only it besides has an astonishing appeal to those who may gravitate to it, where ideas and scenery, reflections on society and a specific take on a dark alternate time to come, get at a very high level of sophistication and artistry.
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Ordered, Recalled
tedg 27 March 2009
I value Tarkovsky then much that I have saved this film. Watching an important pic for the kickoff time is such a profound feel that i should pace oneself. Conceptual gluttony may not be a sin, but its unwise if you take picture show seriously. It provides yet stronger reasons to hang around.
I've saved this film for thirty years to spotter for a special birthday, and opened it advisedly. It did not disappoint. I recommend it to you as something worth saving. I recollect it is something best encountered after plenty life to register — information technology surely does non surf energetic promise equally most films practice.
Some background, if you practise not know Tarkovsky. I rate him as among the three filmmakers now expressionless who accept influenced me. Recommendations at this level can only come from personal reports of the not bad voyage into the unknown and how the filmmaker has led one through dangerous, oracular terrain. It is what Tarkovsky does for me, as the most cinematic of the greats. And it is how this story is framed.
At that place are three men here: a scientist, a author and the guide. The journeying is abstract, as presented visually through the nigh hypnotizing environments you will ever impact. These are textured spaces, ever strictly architectural and derived (past wear, utilize and penetration of the wild) from ordinary built structures.
The journey is presented in a way that can be seen equally a general Godot-inspired existential migrate. On reading observations from others, even serious thinkers, this seems to be how virtually people experience this. I would similar yous to consider a deeper experience.
Elsewhere, I heavily criticize movies that describe mathematical or artistic breakthroughs and they might likewise be depicting a sporting success. "Beautiful Mind," "Good Will," and "Pi" come to mind. The problem is that actual search, bodily conceptual chance — which is the thought in these movies — is fully cinematic, strongly shaped by internal narrative and highly visual in the sense of escaping the images of worn dreams. These movies miss the gunkhole, probably because no one involved has been at that place.
Tarkovsky has, at least as a guide. He not only understands the malaise of living in abstract webs of fluid risk, merely knows the internal collaborative tension between the author and the scientist, and between each and the outside world of reified happenstance, and also among all those and the border of family and dear. All of these we tin can literally see. It is an absolutely miraculous experience. Salvage it for when it can matter.
This is quite different than other Tarkovsky works I retrieve. It is more than removed from experience of life, more deliberately unrooted in the flesh. It transforms sex into rougher refinement of urge. It will be less accessible than, say, the meditations on the trunk and place of in "Nostalgia" and "Mirror," which themselves are apart from the even more than open notion of self and nation (as organized religion) in "Andrei Rublov."
For this reason, I will advise working upwards to this because the biggest disaster would be for y'all to see this for the starting time time and not place yourself in it. Break yourself first.
My rule for rating a film four out of three is that no more than two per twelvemonth and two from each filmmaker. Andrei has two others rated four, which I recall are essential. This is more powerful and personal than those, but consequently more elusive.
Ted'south Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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Meandering Metaphysics
Andrei Tarkovsy's STALKER is one of these films whose reputation is entirely confined to that of Universiy level film studies . Information technology's a moving-picture show that remains unknown to people who visit multiplexes on a Friday night to watch the latest blockbuster from Hollywood and is rarely shown on network goggle box . I recall its only broadcast on British television was on Channel 4 in 1990 or 1991 . Nevertheless it was well regarded enough to brand information technology in to the the lower reaches of the IMDb Top 250 for a couple of years but I'm rather puzzled equally to why ? Information technology'southward not a film produced for the masses which possibly sums the up inherent irony of communism
The story starts 20 years after a meteorite has landed on Earth and when people have started disappearing in the crash zone the authorities quarantine the surface area which is at present referred to equally " the Zone " . A trio of men sneak through the blockade determined to find out the surreptitious of the Zone
This is communist science fiction based upon a story written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky . Communist science fiction differs quite markedly from its Western counterpart by concentrating on metaphysics , man's human relationship to the natural order rather than plot driven concepts . In many means information technology's introspective humanism rather than listen expanding and imaginative . This type of story would appeal well to Tarkovsky since his volume of wok centres effectually elemental imagery such every bit water and air current . He is a film maker who is the archetypal auteur
The trouble with all this is that information technology makes for a rather unengaging slice of cinema . If you lot're expecting to see aliens you'll be disappointed . There is an argument that science fiction doesn't need aliens in lodge to work and this is certainly true , think of the number of novels by people such every bit John Christopher that feature Earth shattering eco disasters for a premise . But if you lot had three men in Soviet Russia escaping in to a forbidden zone where they walk around discussing the human being condition for three hours so yous'd accept the verbal same story devoid of any science fiction heading . In short STALKER isn't really a science fiction film at all
At to the lowest degree the picture sets out its stall correct from the very beginning . We're treated to the type of camera piece of work seen in films by luminaries every bit Bela Tarr where the camera moves almost for several minutes without cutting . We don't actually get any dialogue until ten minutes in to the running time and if you're bored senseless by then then it's perhaps a good idea to watch something else considering the stride doesn't really improve much
One of the comments on this page states that STALKER is " Like Final Of The Summer Wine gear up in Russia " and that'south a very accurate clarification of the moving-picture show . It'due south composed of three philosophical men wandering most the countryside making profound statements on the nature of existence . Y'all might rub your mentum and nod in agreement but yous might also take to rub your eyes in order to stay awake also
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Vivid - i of the greatest examples of movie house as art
Warning: Spoilers
In a minor, unnamed country there is an surface area called the Zone. It is apparently inhabited past aliens and contains the Room, wherein information technology is believed wishes are granted. The authorities has declared The Zone a no-go area and have sealed off the expanse with barbed wire and border guards. However, this has not stopped people from attempting to enter the Zone. We follow one such party, made upwardly of a author, who wants to use the feel equally inspiration for his writing, and a professor, who wants to research the Zone for scientific purposes. Their guide is a man to whom the Zone is everything, the Stalker.
Superb, profound, thought-provoking movie by famed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. If e'er you needed an example of how cinema is more than merely entertainment just is art, property the mirror up to nature, this is it.
The movie starts as a science-fiction risk, and a very intriguing and engaging 1. While Tarkovsky develops the plot slowly, it is never dull. In fact, the slowness ramps upward the suspense. It likewise gives you lot fourth dimension to adore Tarkovsky'southward splendid camera work. Every shot is perfectly chosen and captured, resulting in the motion-picture show seeming more like a series of paintings than a film. This, despite the simple, basic production quality and the famine of remastered copies (the version I watched was in 240p!).
Equally the movie progresses it moves from existence plot-driven to something much more metaphoric and ends up covering a multitude of macro-level societal issues.
Most prominent, and important, is a argue around scientific discipline vs art vs faith, each represented by the three protagonists. Tarkovsky doesn't have sides, but gives every faction a chance to state their case. What you end up with is a reasonable explanation for each side'southward value in society, and why in that location is friction betwixt the iii.
This all said, the initial instinct with this pic may be one of disappointment. There is no swell resolution in the end, either to the mysteries of the Zone or the debates between the three lead characters. For those expecting closure and a neat tying upwards of the plot, this is probable to be a let-down.
However, if you think about information technology, this is perfect. Tarkovsky retains his neutral stance and leaves information technology to the viewer to recall things through. More anything, he is not providing solutions, or a "winner", just making y'all think about the issues, and life in general.
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Only don't
Alert: Spoilers
My simply guess is that this is some class of torture and people are rating it loftier to perpetuate the torture onto others.
Starting with an abrasive ten to fifteen infinitesimal opening sequence of people standing at a distance, and then the camera moving slowly to a door, then a man lying in bed. The film's nothing more three guys, who were all basically the same guy, walking, stopping and talking and repeat. I oftentimes didn't know who was speaking and I didn't want to know who was speaking. Null happens for 3 hours and it'south about zip. The scene where the guys get into the and then called zone area, was mildly interesting. It isn't the worst picture show I've ever seen, considering information technology isn't vulgar or anything, but information technology's pretty shut. Walk forward, practice something, something happen were my continuous thoughts. Ane of my favourite movies takes place in one room, so I don't need activeness to be engaged, but this simply has no substance.
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must see it !
it is only word. only review. because information technology is tale of each viewer. and, the search of description, the exploration of details, images or words is out of sense. a masterpiece, a great work of unique director.. yes, it is truth. simply like a poem, it is result of emotions, piece of a way to use it as key for the time after its end. a key who is more facts of making most Tallin. a primal who may be more than expression of appreciation. the key of personal Zona and demand of a stalker. a central of a girl looks and confession of a wife. a key in skin of secret powerful desire. or just a verse form afterward survive in a tunnel. Stalker is last discussion of Tarkovski. after Ivan Childhood and Andrey Rubliov, the terminal line. the crumbs of silence. the silhouettes of three men near a dog from another word. Stalker is a lesson. about key small-scale things. Stalker is a pray. and memories from a room in which desire is yourself.
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Stalker
My 3rd Tarkovsky's moving-picture show (after SOLARIS 1972, eight/x and NOSTALGHIA 1983, 8/10), STALKER is a startling middle-opener, set in a sordid clanking state of rural Soviet Union, afterwards the falling of a meteorite, an enigmatic area "The Zone" has emerged, inside there is a room tin grant incomers' innermost wishes, simply cordoned by the government with armies, only with the guidance of so called "stalkers", one can achieve the room. And so the expedition involves one stalker and his ii clients, a writer and a professor, one begs for inspiration and the other conceals an ulterior motive.
As one can predict, the film is teeming with Tarkovsky'southward trademark static/panning long shots, mesmerizing and conjuring up a recondite sense of metaphysics, for example, a steady long shot of various items in the water finishes with the focus on a human mitt, sometimes it's baffling, as viewers (as well every bit the two clients) accept been warned numerous times past the stalker, the identify is precarious, many a predecessor dies mysteriously in the zone, among a big chunk of the time Tarkovsky successfully maintains the stifling suspense to tally with the seedy locale, the movement is painstakingly strung out, so the audiences cannot shun the unknown danger only only succumb to a thorough wallow in the wasteland. Tarkovsky never resort to cheap horror to give vent to excitement or relief, instead, he utilizes a man-fabricated natural surrounding to trap oneself in, and let our own inside demon out to divulge a sense of thrill and frisson.
I don't speak Russian, so it probably hinders my apprehension of the dialog, only if the English estimation could be ameliorate, yet, STALKER seems bit chattier than Tarkovsky's other works, their fence ranges from the philosophy of human beings' psychological trials and tribulations, the socio-political radicalism to the awe and frustration towards the mystery and miracles plus the unselfishness of art, etc. I may not be able to fully cover all the implications from the first viewing, but one can not deny here the luxuriant imagery is louder than words at any rate.
The bandage is too memorable, the monochrome close-ups endow each character with a pictorial touch of their own resolution, the friend-or-foe clan motivates the storytelling and excellently penetrates the harmony of the trio thus overshoots viewers' expectation.
Myself find the supernatural elements take been fascinatingly deployed in this film, handful into many inscrutable shots, sometimes only in a jiffy and most strikingly is the ending, with the daughter of the stalker, heed-controls still objects until one glass falls on the ground but the sound is drowned past the strident train running nearby, which ultimately veils the film with a stratum of mystique that qualifies Tarkovsky as one of the nearly unique and essential filmmaker of all fourth dimension!
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Oh my God, I merely can't
For me, Andrei Tarkovsky has always been the guy who directed that slow and pointless version of Solaris that all the critics loved. I didn't really plan to every scout another of his films, but after reading an article in the New Yorker that suggested Solaris was far from his all-time and Stalker was cracking, I idea I'd check information technology out.
The opening monochromatic scenes expect stunning. It'south really worth watching a flake just to see really great cinematography.
Things movement tiresome from the beginning, merely so they pretty much grind to a halt when characters outset having long philosophical conversations, something I associate more with French films than Russian ones.
Tarkovsky seems adamant to make sure there is non a moment of excitement in the motion picture. He takes a scene of people sneaking through a heavily-patrolled area to reach "The Zone" and drains it of every possibility of suspense, making the whole thing an countless slog.
When they reach The Zone the moving-picture show goes to color and the cinematography becomes drab. And then the last fiddling thing that made the film worth watching was gone.
Then that'south it for me. I don't care how many people love him, I am done with Tarkovsky. Won't get fooled again.
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A couple of great moments in a really tedious film.
Well, the story of a "Zone" that makes your deepest, most unconscious wishes come true is one that holds magical possibilities, but you won't find most of them here. Someone else has already chosen this film boring and pretentious, and I hold. Actually, not to telephone call "Stalker" pretentious would almost be an insult to Tarkovsky himself! (He fifty-fifty brought upwardly the discipline of why music touches our souls at one point). And not to call it tedious would be the aforementioned as kidding yourself; the moving picture is downright unbearable at times, and probably e'er deliberately so. Moments of beauty and revelation exercise exist (similar the realization of the true nature of "The Room"), only they are few and far between. Mostly the film volition endeavor your patience by having its three characters attain in more 2 hours what they could've accomplished in less than twoscore minutes. The catastrophe is mega-disappointing. (**1/2)
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Powerful
Warning: Spoilers
A movie of uncommon depth, 'Stalker' is poetic, philosophical, and brooding - and certainly not standard science fiction fare. In it, a guide (a 'stalker', Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) leads a author (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) and a physics professor (Nikolai Grinko) through a mysterious area of devastation known every bit 'The Zone', in search of 'The Room', which holds the promise of making their deepest desires come up truthful. The Zone is said to hold mortal dangers to those within it, and is too reactive to their presence, shifting in unpredictable ways. The film is highly allegorical though, and while the trio face murky subterranean horrors, they don't seem to be of the alien kind, simply inside the mind instead, those associated with the existential condition, and living in a modern world under a totalitarian authorities. In this the picture show seems to deviate, and in more explicitly dark, introspective ways, from the original novel past the Strugatsky brothers (who as an aside, wrote some fantastic fiction aside from 'Roadside Picnic' - bank check out 'The Doomed City', 'Definitely Maybe', and 'The Dead Mountaineer'southward Inn' among others).
The film is Kafkaesque, and information technology's besides slow and ponderous, also much so for some viewers. I found that the pace and visuals of devastation to be meaningful, underscoring the bleakness of their lives, and allowing for the quiet of deeper idea. The dialogue is fantastic throughout the movie, and clearly shows the struggle of the intelligentsia in this 'brave new world' of Communism. The writer observes that to be effective, he must exist tormented and unsure of himself, that is, the moment he thinks he's a genius and has it fabricated, he's no longer a great writer. Furthermore, "It'south impossible to write, thinking all the time of success or failure. But if no i is going to read me in one hundred years, why the hell should I write at all?" He also describes being put through the wringer, at kickoff thinking he will alter the world with his words, and then finding out that the world has changed him, and will before long forget him, channeling the angst of Russian authors from Dostoevsky to Grossman. The physicist, on the other hand, fears beingness denounced by a fellow scientist, accused of disloyalty to the Party for personal reasons, which was a very real problem under Stalin. He wants to destroy the Room, recognizing that information technology will eventually lead to disaster in the form of absolute ability granted to some lunatic, and how true this is. Meanwhile, the stalker is severely disillusioned past the cynicism and impotence of these intellectuals.
There are few actors, simply each turns in a soulful performance, including the iii leads but also the stalker's married woman (Alisa Freyndlikh) - check out her belatedly scene speaking to the camera, and while emotional, getting effectually to lighting a cigarette. The scene where the stalker walks with her through a stark, desolated mural, with their legless daughter on his shoulders, nuclear reactors in the groundwork, and music playing that's reminiscent of Pink Floyd, is very powerful, and stuck with me.
In my view, The Zone and the journey to get to information technology simply represents life in the USSR - a wasteland in the literal and symbolic sense, one with hidden dangers everywhere, and whose rules defy logic, and may alter in an instant. Ane needn't look to extraterrestrials to accept created such a place. The trio never enter The Room, just practise you really believe it exists? A room where all one'due south wishes come true, while living under a soul-crushing totalitarian regime? It's a pipage dream. This journey to Oz is not along a xanthous brick road, but through a nuclear hellscape.
And even so, there is hope, and a bulletin of perseverance. Tarkovsky gives us the Buddhist concept that those that are soft and flexible will survive, whereas that which is difficult and strong is close to breaking, and dying. "When a man is only born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it'south tender and pliant. Simply when it'south dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and forcefulness are decease's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Considering what has hardened will never win." In the piddling daughter'southward paranormal capabilities post-obit her reading Tyutchev's poem on honey at the end, I likewise meet a message of transcendence, that the youth of tomorrow volition exist capable of things that can't exist conceived of today. Can miracles notwithstanding exist, and volition the Russian people someday be free? Powerful.
A few more than quotes: On art: "But imagine some antiquarian pot displayed in a museum. It was used at its time as a receptacle of food leftovers, but at present information technology's an object of universal admiration for its laconic pattern and unique form. Anybody goes oh! and ah! And suddenly it turns out that it's not antique at all, that some joker has palmed information technology off on the archeologists just for fun. Foreign as it may seem, the admiration dies off. Those connoisseurs..."
On music, and meaning: "You lot were talking recently most the pregnant of our life, of the unselfishness of art. Have music, for case. Less than anything else, it is connected to reality, or if connected at all, it's done mechanically, non by way of ideas, just by a sheer audio, devoid of any associations. And nonetheless, music, as if past some miracle, gets through to our heart. What is it that resonates in united states in response to noise brought to harmony, making it the source of the greatest delight which stuns united states of america and brings united states of america together? Why is all this necessary? And above all, for whom? You'll respond: 'For no one and no reason.' No. I incertitude that. For everything in the final reckoning has a meaning. A meaning and a reason."
On love, the verse form 'Dull Flame of Want' by Fyodor Tyutchev: "I love those eyes of yours, my friend, Their sparkling, flashing, fiery wonder; When suddenly those lids ascend, Then lightning rips the sky asunder; You swiftly glance, and there's an end; There'southward greater charm, though, to admire When lowered are those eyes divine In moment'southward kissed by passion's burn; When through the downcast lashes polish The smoldering embers of want..."
Lastly, reflecting a sense of gratitude, only needing more, by Arseny Tarkovsky, male parent of the director. "Now the summer is passed, Information technology might never have been; It is warm in the sun, Just it isn't plenty;
All that I could achieve, Like a five-fingered leaf, Fell straight into my hand, Just it isn't enough;
Neither evil nor good Has nevertheless vanished in vain; It all burned and was light, But information technology isn't plenty;
Life has been like a shield And has offered protection; I have been very lucky, Simply it isn't enough;
The leaves were not burned, The boughs were not broken; The day shines like glass, But it isn't enough.
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Andrei Tarkovsky's Magnum Opus
A film of profound depth & mesmerising beauty, Stalker is intriguing, arresting & powerfully captivating from commencement to finish, and is 1 of the almost dazzling works of science-fiction that overwhelms the senses with its visual & aural elements, and offers an experience that's as haunting every bit information technology is hypnotic and as revelatory as information technology is mysterious.
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev & Solaris), the premise is shrouded in secrecy that advances the narrative without unveiling itself and what makes information technology so gripping is the mystery surrounding the Zone. In that location's an alluring pull & unnerving fear at play hither that keeps the involvement & excitement live and it's what makes all the difference this time around.
We are only given as much info most the Zone equally is enough to continue the plot going, for the film's real aim is to explore the personalities of its trio of protagonists. Through their philosophical musings & arguments, the motion picture addresses its spiritual, existential & metaphysical themes which allows for added introspection, plus information technology too gets vital assistance from its surreal imagery.
The quiet scenery, dilapidated fix pieces & strangeness of the entire location only add to the mystique of the forbidden surface area while fluid movements of the photographic camera, long unbroken takes, distorted image & sound, and a palpable sense of danger envelop the journey with a heightened mood & uncertainty. Performances are top-notch from the acting trio, and its 161 mins runtime is rarely felt.
Overall, Stalker presents director Andrei Tarkovsky at the superlative of his game, and is far more accessible, engrossing & immersive than its plot summary volition have yous believe. Arguably the best movie of Tarkovsky's career and inarguably my favourite of his, this rich, riveting & rewarding odyssey into the homo consciousness is an essential, illuminating & breathtaking art piece that comes highly recommended.
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An experience not a movie
The eternal struggle between Free Volition and Determinism, with a pit cease into the nighttime side of human nature. Terrible name, if you assume names are supposed to be a clue about the motion picture to come up. Contradictions abound. The visuals are then lush and authentic that you will want to take a bathroom after watching. The script nonetheless screams "stage play" in the grand tradition of Waiting for Godot. Unforgettable.
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Poetic
The most interesting and cute Tarkovsky movie I've ever seen in my life. It has an interesting plot, I know it is an accommodation from the volume, but Andrei interpreted it differently. Visually gorgeous.
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Unaware that I was myself. Shortly I awaked, and there I was. Now I do not know whether I was so a human dreaming
It'south been five years (already!) since I saw my last Tarkovsky. I had come to rest with Zerkalo, because here was a man, one of few, very few in the cinema, who can permeate so deeply into the essential mystery of how things motion, and he only made a scattering of movies really so I must make them final, and accept them in when the fourth dimension feels right. My adjacent one might exist in another v years time, simply yesterday night the fourth dimension felt correct for this, one I've been heartily anticipating for years.
This is Tarkovsky entering the mind once more. He never does information technology in any obvious, Inception manner, it's never actually the mind; merely we make it at a place, a source of the imagining, where current of air blows from and rings each affair into being. In Rublev he was the creative person looking to paint the face of god in a godless world that concealed it. In Solyaris he was the cosmonaut. In Zerkalo, a filmmaker who recalled a whole life, receiving visions at the doorstep. Here he's the Stalker who takes united states into the Zone, obvious enough.
Each one is self-referential of class about the very process of stepping into the movie. The Zone as a Tarkovsky movie - full of desolate nature and a mysterious presence that bends logic. We starting time take to cantankerous the iron border where censors (his illiterate Soviet patrons) prevent entry.
This is the border guarded by the irongated mechanisms of reason that has to be crossed earlier we can begin our guided meditation across logic. I manner he does this is by splitting himself into characters. One is a scientist, which is Tarkovsky'due south critique of a mechanistic worldview that reduces a tree to what biological facts information technology tin explain. Another is a writer, a surrogate for Tarkovsky's intellectual self who despairs about the possibility of words to communicate sense. The Stalker himself equally who Tarkovsky feels himself to be most purely, the guide who knows the whims of this landscape and wants nothing other than to bring us to the doorstep of miracle.
Information technology'south his uncanny power, as always, to pave the style for that miracle. Nosotros never enter "the room", every bit information technology were. Only we are brought to the doorstep. He cultivates the infinite that leads upwards to that apperception, this is what people call elusive and dreamlike. Tarkovsky's real piece of work is that he teaches, rewires, the states how to encounter, furnishings this alter in the whole of logic of infinite, so that nosotros go out with Tarkovsky optics to go back out. This is far more valuable, and insightful, than any of the imagery that blends industrial grime, fish and religious iconography (in i memorable instance, with phonation-over from John'south Apocalypse). It's that elements can swirl and reflect in this way.
He does several wonderful things, some of them completely breathtaking like the meditation on music that rings a chord in the listener who responds to it with what we have no other name to call simply soul. He stretches space, seemingly with no endeavour, both in the industrial segment early and then across the Zone. He makes the geography elastic, shuffles boundaries of forward and back. It'south non that this means something again, it's that the place in which you lot can receive _anything_ (which is perception itself) can bent thus. The result is a marvelous sense of heaving. Thunderous views of a railroad train, or waterfalls, crash across the frame. Same thing. It'due south his most sculptural work and so far.
The dilapidated Soviet locales provide aplenty opportunity for gnarly imagery, I just shudder to call back that it was actually filmed in places like we see. Information technology's possible that we're seeing the place that killed him and several more from cast and coiffure.
But there'south also another side that I want to depict my altitude from. In Zerkalo he had reached a point of equanimity that lets become of questions and accepts what is, that for ameliorate or worse a life was lived. This is gone here and replaced with a sense of tiredness and cynicism that narrows down to the personal. At present it'due south not about what is let go of, it's about what is clung onto. None of it is sci-fi of form. Merely as well much is an artist's stream-of-consciousness on what place his own art has. Too much is angsty here. What am I to make for instance of Stalker being escorted to bed by his wife, now a pathetic effigy who complains that no one wants what he has to show? This is a dangerous path to take because it substitutes the struggle to make sense of life, with the struggle to deliver fine art about doing it and complain that no one appreciates it. The latter Tarkovsky is far less interesting to me than the former. I fear he would go worse in this regard, compounded by his exile from home.
I've read about how Tarkovsy was possibly interested in Zen Buddhism and Tao while preparing for this and may accept incorporated influence. At that place is the notion of spontaneous arising in the Zone equally the Zen mind and the bit about how the soft endures while the hard breaks that comes from the Daodejing. It doesn't really venture into either, its preconceptions only prevarication elsewhere. But Tarkovsky fails to make use of the Buddhist wisdom in his own predicaments. Instead of letting become, he clings to the burden of stock-still views. He suffers their weight, for no reason I might add. The title of this post is a Taoist excerpt.
And so in that location are two sides here. The journey to where perception is made fluid and mingles with its reflection and the intellectual brunt of its creator. One soft, the other hard. Maybe in another 5 years I will get to see what gives way in Nostalghia.
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Great settings and mood, very nice moving picture overall
Greetings from Lithuania.
"Stalker" (1979) didn't blew me away when seeing it for the offset fourth dimension just now in 2016. I kinda expected this movie to exist "this kind" after seeing "Solyaris" (1972). And by "this kind" i mean: long, dreamlike movie with some long shots and poetry. It had all of that - and while i wasn't blown away by the overall experience, i must say i admired this flick while i was watching information technology. It also features a great settings and mood - i loved the whole mood and atmosphere in the "Zone".
Overall, "Stalker" is surely not for everyone. This is sometimes (well-nigh of it) haunting experience, with some deep ideas (which i'm certain i didn't get virtually of them), dainty interim and great settings. There tin can be millions interpretations of the whole picture or what 1 or other thing meant, but i think the point in here was for each viewer himself to detect information technology ain answers - as at that place tin't be ane caption to everything.
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Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/reviews/?ref_=tt_ql_urv
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