Stalker

Just saw Stalker. What a goddamn waste of three hours I could have spent masturbating to WW2 stock footage. Can someone please explain what the hell is special about this movie? I missed it.

“Can someone please explain what the hell is special about this movie? "

word.

First serious response!

Besides the beauty of the scenery, I enjoyed the philosophy of the film, as well as the ‘show me don’t tell me’ style of characterization. A Hollywood film approaching this same topic would have a scene at the start where somebody is brutally killed by the Zone. Stalker does not show us this, putting us in the same position as Writer and Professor, relying completely on the information given to us by the stalker. We discover Stalker’s obsession and emotional dependence of the Zone and start to doubt the accuracy of his information as well as his motives. He depends on being the one to usher people into the center to have their wish granted, because it is his only power and importance in the universe. We then gradually discover the Zone has a sentient will that pities him as we do.

And the score slays.

“The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.” – Tarkovsky

Good points Jirin. Hard for me to say the zone exhibited any sentient qualities though… other than the wind picking up and a voice telling the writer to halt as he takes the straight path near the begining. I guess a black bird disapears in the sand dune basement scene. It certainly didn’t look all that dangerous other than perhaps getting a bad case of ringworm. The one corpse in the film could of been a person that starved to death.

I suppose the main problems I had with it were: the writer risked his life to get there already knowing that asking the special wish room to grant him a genius intellect would stifle his drives as a writer. Kind of should of thought of that before going. Didn’t much like the professor’s decision to not blow the place up after hearing the stalker’s motivations. He already knew to some degree that this was a lot of people’s last hope. The stalker’s motivations should of strengthened his conviction to go through with it. And did he build the bomb with friends or find it in block 4? Both? My brain got glazed over by that point perhaps. They should of explained the “nut” throwing bit a little better too. Why does the professor know how to tie nuts into bandages without ever coming there? Maybe he had already been there when he built said bomb. Maybe they discussed it off camera… I’ll grant the film that. But since they used a stone to the same effect later in the film maybe they should of just picked up some stones. Perhaps Porcupine taught the stalker a way to do it and that’s all he knew. Could have used a couple less existential soliloquies too. Imagine if this film was in English. The Terrence Malick haters would be on it like stink on shit. I wouldn’t much like it either.

The film and music were beautiful though. Loved the pacing. Had the film not been a sacred cow of world cinema I certainly wouldn’t have come across as I did.

I could care less about the narrative or philosophy in a Tarkovsky film, I generally find neither particularly substantive. The reason to watch his films are for some of the finest aesthetics you will ever see in any film made anywhere at any time in history.

The zone exhibited sentient qualities as it ushered Professor through safely (To Stalker’s surprise) knowing that he was carrying he bomb. Others carrying weapons were stopped and killed long before the center, yet it kept helping Professor survive at points Stalker has observed usually get people killed. The water was lower than usual, the most dangerous part didn’t harm him, he got off track then somehow magically found his way back to the group. This was not random, it was deliberate. I think he changed his mind for a variety of reasons. First, the fact that the Zone let him through suggests that it knew he would not really use it. Second, he took pity on Stalker. Third, he realized that his own motivations were selfish. He wanted to be famous, to ‘Win’ the little competition with the other scientists. That’s why the Zone gave him a telephone: So he could brag, because that’s what he really wanted.

As for the nut, I think it’s better that it was not explained. Expository sequences explaining the mechanics of the Zone would be out of place in the film. They could have explained why Stalker threw a nut to test if a given direction was safe, or why the layout of the Zone keeps shifting and changing, but that would have ruined he mystique, diluted he emotional impact, and turned the film into Inception.

Inception, by the way, would have been a much better film if it explained a lot less.

As for your problems with the characters’ decision making, some of those are just Russianisms.