Stalker

Rating:
Summary: Tarkovsky the greatest filmaker of all time.
Review: Wow wow i can only sit back in awe at the genius that was andrie tarkovsky.This guy created true poetic beauty with basic equipment and political interference,offten improvising things out of the blue.The mind just boggles at how much talent and vision this guy had.If your a genuine lover of true poetic beauty and deep examination of the human psyche then discover the world of tarvosky.Your life might just be changed forever.

Rating:
Summary: Toss the nut
Review: Masterful. Tarkovsky takes the viewer by the hand through a philosophical and emotional minefield. Never have I encountered more suspense in a film. Never would I have suspected that this effect could be accomplished with such brevity of imagery and dialogue. The setting is a lavish dystopia. The camerawork is excruciating. The music score is well matched. Don't let the one clunky scene early in the film at the border crossing stop you, either. This film is worth the glitch. Or perhaps the glitch is a trap? It's hard to know for certain when you enter the world of Tarkovsky. So fire up your TV and "toss the nut" with the Stalker.

Rating:
Summary: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Review: Problem number one is that Tarkovsky's script is very wooden. In this film, characters with allegorical names like Writer and Scientist are liable to sit down while under threat of machine-gun fire and say "How can I know what to call that which I want? How can I be certain that that which I want is really that which I want, and that I do not want that which I do not want?" or gaze gloomily on a sand dune and say "This is all someone's foolish invention, and you all want to find out whose. But whose conscience will ache from your discovery?" or assert that "There is no Bermuda Triangle. There is a triangle A-B-C which is congruent to a triangle A'-B'-C'." This film is like that for most of its two and a half hours.

Problem number two is that the symbolism used by Tarkovsky very frequently has no emotional effect. Consider, for example, the scene in which Writer takes a crown of thorns which conveniently happened to be lying on the floor of the room he was in, says "I will not forgive you," and puts it on his head. First, this is too blatant, too dependent on the reference, to produce a great emotional reaction in the viewer. Second, the cynical, occasionally vulgar Writer is in no way like Christ. Nor is he that great an opposite of Christ, since he isn't particularly evil or demonic, either. The figure of Christ is irrelevant to his character, so the comparison can't really be made literally or ironically. Why, then, show him as Christ?

Several times in this film, Tarkovsky shows a body of water with various objects floating in it. These include guns, books and religious icons. Now, Tarkovsky always liked to fill space with objects in order to induce a sort of organic or realistic atmosphere. For example, in his film Solaris, he filled the rooms of the cosmonauts with books, vases, ashes, and other objects. But in that film, it served to make the cosmonauts seem more like people, to give them outside interests, to maybe show their intellectual lives a little. Putting icons, books and guns into a river, on the other hand, accomplishes no such thing. Similarly gratuitous and unexplained is the image of Stalker throwing bolts tied to bandages in order to find the "correct" path through the ZONE. Regarding this, I recall an unintentionally funny quote said by some intellectual while viewing those scenes - "That's _exactly_ what life is like in the Soviet Union!" Indubitably!

Another thing Tarkovsky likes to do is quote things. Here, passages are read out of the Bible, and poetry is quoted on two occasions. The problem is that scenes from the Apocalypse don't seem too relevant to the rest stop of the film's characters in a peaceful landscape. But even when these quotes are applicable to the situation depicted on the screen, they don't work - for example, a passionate love poem, designed to show the love Stalker's wife feels for her husband, is recited in a completely flat, droning monotone, devoid of feeling or even volume, that saps it of absolutely all of its vitality and fire and makes it tedious to listen to.

Problem number three is the central philosophical conceit. Tarkovsky's big films (Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker) are united in their borderline contempt of science and love of religion. The underlying message eventually comes down to the notion that one has to believe in god because otherwise one will never find happiness or achieve self-actualization. Of the three films, however, Stalker is by far the preachiest. Those who believed the talk about Stalker being a "science-fiction epic" should beware, since the science-fiction framework is used primarily to create analogies to religion. Here, god is represented by the magical Room at the heart of the Eden-like ZONE, from which people have been expelled. Writer and Scientist are the two unbelievers, whose lives are naturally vapid and meaningless due to their lack of belief. Scientist, as expected, is the worse of the two - he goes to the ZONE out of a desire to exact petty vengeance on a colleague, and wishes to destroy the ZONE - but both are fairly disagreeable. Stalker is the holy fool who believes in the magical powers of the Room and has a purpose in life. The unbelievers preach their nihilistic atheism to him, claiming that there is really no ZONE or Room, and depart to finish their meaningless and vapid lives. Stalker is filled with righteous anger at their lack of faith. Then the director steps in and shows Stalker's invalid daughter moving objects using telekinesis, thus showing that the ZONE is not a fiction after all. So Stalker is proven right and everyone else is proven wrong, because Tarkovsky said so. The debate is thus reduced to asking if there is a god with the premise that there is, and asking if one should believe in god with the premise that one will be unhappy and bitter if one does not. Well, then.

To say the characters are unsympathetic is to miss the point, since the characters as people are unimportant - they are allegorical constructs used to advance the central philosophical conceit. Those who already adhere to this conceit will probably find something to like about this film, although I don't know if all of them will like sitting through all of it. Serious cinema scholars will doubtless have to see it once, due to the reputation Tarkovsky's work has accrued, but by doing so, they will be heading down a road where entertainment is the enemy, sermons fill the air, and accessibility lies dead on the wayside. I won't deride this film by calling it "pointless," because Tarkovsky clearly had a point in mind, but I honestly do not see how it can be called a masterwork.

Rating:
Summary: Watch the Excellent Movie on VHS, avoid this rape
Review: The movie is fantastic but the DVD quality is super poor. The early low lit images tip off that the transfer is very low quality. There is image shift that makes the film look like a weird experimental animation. The bed in the first scene is literally dancing up and down. If that kind of mind tripping distraction is your cup of tea, buy this overpriced DVD that Criterion Collection will probably release WELL at some point and with some existent extras. Come on, the movie isn't any longer than Seven Samurai and it's on two discs?! Take the hint.

Rating:
Summary: Mindwalk / Dinner with Andre / Stalker Philosophical Trilogy
Review: Mindwalk / Dinner with Andre / Stalker Philosophical Trilogy

Other's have reviewed these movies quite well on their own so I will rather review these 3 as a trilogy because I feel that they are each interconnected in a profound way.

Watch in the following order for these reasons.

1) Mindwalk is more contemporary and accessible I think for most people.
Mindwalk is pretty much a stylistic copy off of Stalker except it has Fritjof Capra's views on the new quantum paradigm replacing the deep conversations in Stalker. So you don't want to view these two back-to-back.

2) My Dinner w/ Andre is certainly a classic, it will always do you some good to see it, especially when bookended by these other two. It sheds insight into the current human condition of "robotism" (to quote E.Fromm). Where Mindwalk works at the surface on an abstract global level Andre works on the intra-personal level. The dialogue focuses on examples of centered around the concept of our personal "work" and dips into mystical acts all the while questioning... how can we be more "alive"? One can envisions Gudreiff and Ouspensky having this same conversation 50 years prior.

At times it's loops back into Mindwalk realm towards the end.

Aside, when I watch this movie I wonder sometimes if this is where Seinfeld got the idea for his show... people just sitting around the coffee shop having discussion, a parody of our robotic natures.

3) When I first saw Stalker I thought... "I've been waiting my whole life to see this movie" and I still feel that way on each subsequent viewing. Stalker then moves the viewer into the transcendental levels of questioning, Of note is it's deep visual metaphors.

When you see the final scene of Stalker you will understand what the true transcendental potential of all the discourse and dialog which you have been privy to for 7 hours is all about.

Aside: Of sad and ironic note, the very radiations which were described in Mindwalk were the cause of Tarkovsky's early demise after filming this movie in a Soviet radioactive wasteland.

There are no easy answers with these movies and perhaps they bring up more questions than you'd like but if you are up for a good brain-enema these will do the trick.

Oh... you might as well top it all of with a viewing of "Mulholand Drive"... you might just understand it after viewing these other 3 films. ;)

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: When I first saw Solaris (an earlier film by Tarkovsky) at the ripe old age of seventeen, I believed I had found my favorite film. Stalker replaced it. I have never experienced so many beautiful images, nor had my brains scrambled by so many profound ideas, and all in one film. It is slow moving. It does not need to go faster. All the ideas, arguments and philosophizing done by the characters keeps the film moving at the pace it needs to go at.

A "ZONE" has formed, no one knows how. Stalkers are people who can get you in and out of the ZONE without getting killed. People visit the ZONE because there is a room wherein your most heartfelt desire will come true.

This is a science fiction film that needs no special effects, and no particularly special sets to make you believe that it is a science fiction film. The three main characters do a wonderful job of convincing you how otherworldly their experiences are.

I cannot praise it enough.

Rating:
Summary: 5.1 audio is still better
Review: Now I've heard both versions. I still think the 5.1 is superior. And for any "purists" out there who prefer the limited mono, go and watch the original film reels of the movie and see if you like that better than the remastered DVD. Things are re-done for a reason. I'm sure if Tarkovsky had had the capability to record in 5.1 digital surround, he would have.

Rating:
Summary: Another haunting Tarkovsky masterpiece
Review: This is serious film, and requires the sort of attention that great literature, poetry,music and painting demand. What would you do if you could fulfil your deepest desire....what is your most profound desire? Slow moving, cryptic, startlingly beautiful, I heartily recommend this DVD release to adventurous viewers. Andrei Tarkovsky creates a world unto itself all revolving around the "solution" to our human condition, with his formidable attention to detail and a visual sense second to none. There are some intriguing extras on this 2-DVD set and the Russian production company is to be congratulated for making this very important film available. Essential for devotees of Tarkovsky, AND for others who appreciate another of cinema's possibilities.

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest films ever made, period
Review: Tarkovsky was, plain and simple, a genius. This is probably his greatest film (I have seen them all, but it is very hard to judge them against one another.)
A note to the previous reviewer who claims the Dolby 5.1 remix is superior. Yes, the mono mix does leave out some gunshots as they enter the train car near the beginning, but that is the only dropout. Everything the 5.1 mix has that the mono mix lacks is stuff that was added to the film later... There are scenes that are supposed to be silent to which ambient noise has been added. A sound effect that I consider iconic to the film (the sound of a train travelling over tracks) has been removed and replaced with a very different, and far less effective sound. The bit of music utilizing Beethoven's 9th Symphony underlying the train noise has been drastically altered; the whole point of it was that the symphony is being covered up by the industrial sounds, sort of smothered. But in the new 5.1 mix, both the industrial sounds and the symphony come through loud and clear.
Anyway, this is a great DVD of a great film; decent picture quality, a good number of extras, well worth the high price.

Rating:
Summary: one of the greatest movies of all time
Review: Note to past reviewer: without the 5.1 Audio, a lot of sound effects are missing as well as most of the music. Try switching back and forth throughout the film. Especially during the frantic attempt to cross into the Zone (before the flatcar ride).