Stalker

Rating:
Summary: My god this guy is amazing
Review: When I slipped Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker" into my VCR I just layed back, openned up a bag of chips, and began contemplating the useless, insignificant quote left by some small time critic on the box: 'this film is the Slavic equvilant to David Lynch's "Eraserhead" (Who like that's a good comparison).'

But then, instead of turning out like some third-rate American make-no-sense paranoia noir, Tarkovsky's achievment is so ingenious, so visual, so relative, and so downright different that I was just blown away.

The film begins in stark black, white and brown colors. The look is so bleak that it looks faded and unfocused. Tarkovsky introduces us to a man desperate for color and beauty in a society that depraves him of such things. The smoke, rain and mud seem to forbid him to leave his home just as much as his own wife does. With this scene alone Tarkovsky has painted a finer picture of communist Russia than every film combined that has ever tried to capture the country's atmosphere and spirit (I'm largely speaking of American movies).

I could go on and on about this film, but I can't. I can't describe what you see, feel, and how it purminates in the mind. It goes so beyond anything that English or American 'Ambitious' epic films present. Films like "Apocalyse Now" and "Lawrence of Arabia" have a surface, but rarely a living indivualized heart underneath.

This is my first Tarkovsky film, and after watching just one, I have contemplated he is just as brilliant and highly cinema-vocabularic as Bergman, Godard, Ozu and Herzog (at his prime). After witnessing Tarkovsky's work, I have a newfound interest in Russian Cinema, and a newfound interest in Russia in general.
Watch this film, or any other Tarkovsky masterpieces, and I garuantee that the bag of chips will be just as untouched come the end as it was at the beginning.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligence is not enough
Review: After reading alot of these reveiws I tried to imagine what kind of person really likes the stalker. Initially I thought it was appealing only to those with above average intelligence. And while that is probably part of the equation, I beleive there is another equally important something. And that is suffering. This does not mean that all who have suffered will like or even understand stalker. This also doesn't mean those who haven't suffered cannot like stalker. What it does mean is that intelligence will only talk you so far and to go any further you need something else. What will take you further??

This film is not for everyone. For some reason I love it although I'm not sure why. Watch it at least 3 times before you judge.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult to believe it was shot in the Soviet Union
Review: Despite the setting and the idea of the mysterious zone where your wishes come true and to which natural-born guides, Stalkers, can take people, the film has little to do with science fiction. It is a metaphoric tale about people frightened by their own choice of destiny; the style is as un-Russian as a film can get. Understatement is the word; you will not see overblown emotion or people making dramatic statements every step of their way. It is amazing that, ideologically, the director got away with the pictures of barbed wire and dereliction which looked distinctly like home to viewers in the Soviet Union. It is unbelievable that censors went so easy on a film with so many hidden meanings and without a clear-cut politically correct message. The film benefits from Kaydanovsky's very strong acting, it does not feel very long at all and flows beautifully. The tiny role of Stalker's wife, played by Alisa Freindlikh, a prominent Russian actress, is one of her best.

Unfortunately, VHS version does not do justice to supremely soft, understated and subtle picture and cameraman's work. This is best revealed in cinema viewing. Nevertheless, definitely top-notch work. You will be glad you bought this film.

Rating:
Summary: Worth Waiting For
Review: It took me more than a year to track down a copy of "Stalker", and it was well worth it. I had already read "Roadside Picnic", and was wondering how it would be translated to film. Tarkovsky and the Strugatzki brothers have elevated the story to the spiritual realm; the Stalker (wonderfully played by Alexsander Kaidanovsky as a sort of Holy Fool or tormented innocent) brings two intellectuals into the mysterious, deserted Zone-- a place where an alien spaceship is rumored to have crashed-- on a sort of spiritual walkabout and is frustrated that they don't seem to have learned much. They apparently don't get a whole lot out of their pilgrimage, but the Stalker is rewarded with a pet dog (real or symbolic?) and the hope of living in the Zone with his wife and daughter... if they can survive the passage with him... The film is not (as the novel is) explicit about whether or not there is really anything going on, or whether the Zone is an urban legend; it seems to make very little difference psychologically. And the Stalker is appalled that his 'clients' don't seem to share the mindset that would allow them to value their experience. "Stalker" is often a very slow movie, but there are certain things that have to happen in real time, no matter how long it takes on film. A condensed version woudn't have the same effect. Fans of Robert Holdstock's "Mythago Wood" novels should enjoy this very much.

Rating:
Summary: I wish Stalker were as good as the reviewers would have it!
Review: The very fact that this film has inspired so many thoughtful and well-written reviews shows that it definitely has a lot to offer. I'm a little disturbed by the frequently repeated claim that those who find Stalker too slow must be unable to tolerate anything but the likes of Top Gun, etc. While I agree that Stalker has moments of stunning "visual poetry" (e.g., the scene where the three men lie upon the ground, resting and meditating, is among the most arresting and haunting moments I've encountered, in film), I find the overall pace almost unbearably slow. After all, isn't the ability to edit visual pacing one of the most powerful assets of cinema? It might be worth considering that, just as no composer would dare to challenge the audience with three hours of unrelieved largo (even in Indian classical music, where audiences are accustomed to much longer performances than in the west, a slow alap rarely lasts more than an hour), varied pacing is, or can be, a director's best asset. Tarkovsky merely plods, through this film, though I do understand why some viewers choose to justify this as a meditation.

Ok then, it's a meditation. . . . I only wish, then, that the exposition weren't so flawed. Case in point: the stalker's wife throws herself upon the floor in agony at his departure near the beginning of the film, only to speak directly and smilingly to the camera, in the end, saying that she loves and accepts him as he is, and wouldn't have him any other way. Likewise, I find the Writer and Scientist hopelessly inconsistent and muddled, as characters, even as I imagine that some viewers will want to say that this is appropriate to their not being able to identify their own innermost wish, in the end. I accept that this sort of thing clearly works for some, but it just doesn't do it for me. Overall, I quite like Zizek's brief assessment in The Fright of Real Tears, where he talks about Tarkovsky's ideological murkiness being redeemed by his ability to interconnect the fate of the human spirit with that of the earth, by capturing the latter's "dank materiality."

Overall, the film is well worth watching, if only because it's so provocative, but due to its plodding pace and muddled exposition, it will remain but the intimation of a masterwork for me. (I was tempted to give the film four stars, since Tarkovsky at least dares so much . . . my actual rating would be something like 3.5, on the Amazon scale.)

Rating:
Summary: incredible
Review: I'm not familiar with Tarkovsky's beliefs or writings but this film still blew me away. It's fairly slow moving, it's long and it's in Russian. Normally that description makes for a waste of 3 hours but not in this case. Instead 'Stalker' is a profound, intelligent, beautiful, interesting journey that hypnotizes you for the entire length. This film had about 3 or 4 shots that are probably the most beautiful visual moments I've ever experienced. It was like watching a painting come to life. Another interesting thing about this film was despite the lack of special effects the mere discussion of 'sci-fi' related ideas kept you interested. Due to my ignorance of Tarkovsky's other works I'm most likely not appreciating this on as many levels as I should. Regardless I was enthralled.

Rating:
Summary: Stalker
Review: The question is possibly Why did Tarkovsky turn to science fiction? Just possibly. Maybe there's an answer in the diaries, or Sculpting in Time. Maybe memory, as we think about it, or as the modernists thought about it, evokes images of the time machine. Cinema is a time machine, certainly. Whatever the reason, that Stalker or Solaris even fare as science fiction is astonishing, or preposterous, depending on the way you look at it. And it is probably witless to discuss "painting" in a Tarkovsky film at this point, but there you have it. It's painting. Or analagous to painting. Or the films maintain a relation to painting that is more or less consistent. The films are meditative, Stalker especially. The films persist. There are people who walk out on Tarkovsky films, at Cannes the year Nostalghia showed lots of folks walked out. "If I wanted to watch rain fall on bottles, I'll peek out the window," etc. In such an atmosphere narrative doesn't matter. The films aren't narrative. Not in a real way. Mirror is about the impossiblity of sustaining narrative. Stalker seems to have a story, and maybe that seeming is the important thing, but the story disappears, constantly, the images wipe it out. Just the focus on images seems to reabsorb the story. Or something. Like the "driving" passage in Solaris that flicks between color and black and white, pointless, absorbant, yet saying, at the same time, something about the nature of transit, standing in as it does for the rocket's blast off, saying something also about the monotony of travel, about highways and overpasses and other cars and their drivers, about blinking signals and the sounds you hear, on the road, with their rhythms, pure rhythms, about pylons, and colors, and the portions of people you see, or don't see, it's more or less about the fragments of life you're passing, and the danger of being on the road, but it's also, in the last of things, about the passage of film through the camera, as well as the projector, the medium comments on itself, saying something about the deathly monotony of it all, transit, certainly, travel, yes, all of it, including film, and taking pictures, there's a meditative, but also certainly exhausted feeling one can have while watching Tarkovsky, which is why those folks walked out (because you can), but there is also an exultant feeling, I don't know. This delirium that's present in the films is an ecstasy of absorption in the image, in the dream image, something authentic, in the image far removed from a capitalist use of nearly the same thing, the face of the star or starlet. The films are structured by their own mysterious, completely internal laws, Stalker most of all. There is something happening in Tarkovsky and Stalker that simply doesn't happen elsewhere, the films exist at the furthest possible reaches of cinema, just as In Search of Lost Time exists at the furthest possible reaches of the novel. We're back again to time. There you have it, I guess.

Rating:
Summary: Journey into the Soul
Review: This is a film not to be missed! Understand what you're getting yourself into before watching, this movie requires you to think and to apply Tarkovsky's view of spirituality and transcendance upon yourself. I love the change from black and white into color(when entering nature)- I've never seen a movie that contained so much focus on the harmony of nature and the human soul and keeping everything within a balance.

Rating:
Summary: Is it possible to have it in dvd?
Review: The first time I saw this movie I was a teenager and I just loved it. Later, when I had the oportunity to see it again, I realized what a masterpiece it is. People who hate it probably are the ones who like cheap action films and Roger Corman type science fiction. It is more of a drama and a fantasy than monsters and spaceships. There are many artistic films that even being good, are sometimes boring. This is not the case, because besides the artistic and visual part (simply magnificent), it has suspense and a plot. But the beauty of the film is such that you want to see it over and over. And each time you do it, you see things you hadn't before.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Film of All Time
Review: I am completely in love with Stalker for reasons that I can't fully understand. There are parts that should be mind-numbingly boring, yet they aren't. The film's essential narrative could be communicated in half an hour, yet not one of the film's mesmerising 162 minutes seems wasted. One would not expect filth and decay to be heart-rendingly beautiful, yet I'd watch Tarkovsky photographing filthy water and discarded nuclear bombs over some [...] filming the Amazon rainforest any day.