Stalker

Andrei Tarkovsky is a rarity among filmmakers in that he creates films that resemble elaborate (and always smartly written, beautifully shot and superbly acted) puzzles. The pieces are always scattered, and Tarkovsky relies on his viewer to bring the final element of the puzzle along with him. SOLARIS explores the boundaries of consciousness and the sense of grief (and it uses the titular planet as a metaphor for God). ANDREI ROUBLEV is a multi-layered voyage into religious belief. STALKER, however, is far more spiritual and existential than both of them.

A teacher and a scientist wish to go to a restricted patch of nature - the mythical conscious "Zone" - to make their wishes come true. To enter the area and survive its numerous danger, they hire a man sensible to the Zone's thoughts and actions, a Stalker. What they find there turns out to be very different from what they expected, as they come to discover who they truly are.

There's only so much you can say without getting drowned in details that would appear heavy-handed on paper but flow seamlessly on screen. Quite often, Tarkovsky reduces his characters to silence, letting their movements and eyes convey their thoughts and feelings and letting the viewer bring his own thoughts and beliefs to the film. One of STALKER's many treats is that it invites you to get carried away into your own thoughts, flowing with the images as it provides new questions to ponder... In that sense, the film is very much like a philosophical poem: a very simple surface covering innumerable layers of meaning. Yet the images Tarkovsky provides - whether filming landscapes or wide-shots or simply peering into his actors' extraordinary faces - make this almost hypnotic.

STALKER is a treasure: an invitation to go on a mental ride with a poet and philosopher. A film that makes you wonder more about yourself yet without making you anxious. The few existing films like STALKER are the reason why cinema is called "art"!

The characters at the heart of Tarkovsky's "Stalker" are people who embark on an arduous journey only to discover that they had no idea what they wanted to gain from it. The central character is a "stalker," a man who makes a living by illegally escorting people through a restricted area to The Room, a place where their greatest wish will supposedly come true. Exactly why the area is restricted is never made perfectly clear; in the novel this film is partially based on, "The Roadside Picnic," it was a site where aliens briefly landed, and The Room was an object they left behind almost as if it were refuse. But Tarkovsky would rather not settle for such a flat explanation. To him, The Room is a place that means different things to the people who journey there, and the stark, ravished landscape they must journey through consists of the phobias and anxieties that they can hardly bear to face. The expedition the men experience is a long and often maddening one, and there are many scenes where the camera lingers on a beautifully composed shot so that the viewer can take time to understand how the characters fit into the settings and how those settings form both natural and supernatural obstacles.

Andrei Tarkovsky was an artist who did not like giving solid answers to the questions his films posed. He sculpted his stories so that viewers who had the patience and self-discipline to stay attentive all the way through could draw their own conclusions. If there is any specific meaning to "Stalker," it is that we have to fully understand anything for which we are willing to alter our lives.

I value Tarkovsky so much that I have saved this film. Watching an important film for the first time is such a profound experience that one should pace oneself. Conceptual gluttony may not be a sin, but its unwise if you take film seriously. It provides yet stronger reasons to hang around.

I've saved this film for 30 years to watch for a special birthday, and opened it carefully. It did not disappoint. I recommend it to you as something worth saving. I think it is something best encountered after enough life to register — it surely does not surf energetic hope as most films do.

Some background, if you do not know Tarkovsky. I rate him as among the three filmmakers now dead who have influenced me. Recommendations at this level can only come from personal reports of the great 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.

There are three men here: a scientist, a writer and the guide. The journey is abstract, as presented visually through the most hypnotizing environments you will ever touch. These are textured spaces, always strictly architectural and derived (by wear, use and penetration of the wild) from ordinary built structures.

The journey is presented in a way that can be seen as a general Godot-inspired existential drift. On reading observations from others, even serious thinkers, this seems to be how most people experience this. I would like you to consider a deeper experience.

Elsewhere, I heavily criticize movies that depict mathematical or artistic breakthroughs and they might as well be depicting a sporting success. "Beautiful Mind," "Good Will," and "Pi" come to mind. The problem is that actual search, actual conceptual risk — which is the idea 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 boat, probably because no one involved has been there.

Tarkovsky has, at least as a guide. He not only understands the angst of living in abstract webs of fluid risk, but knows the internal collaborative tension between the writer and the scientist, and between each and the outside world of reified happenstance, and also among all those and the edge of family and love. All of these we can literally see. It is an absolutely miraculous experience. Save it for when it can matter.

This is quite different than other Tarkovsky works I think. It is more 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 body and place of in "Nostalgia" and "Mirror," which themselves are apart from the even more open notion of self and nation (as religion) in "Andrei Rublov."

For this reason, I will advise working up to this because the biggest disaster would be for you to see this for the first time and not place yourself in it. Break yourself first.

My rule for rating a film 4 out of three is that no more than two per year and two from each filmmaker. Andrei has two others rated 4, which I think are essential. This is more powerful and personal than those, but consequently more elusive.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Some have claimed that "Stalker" is not a science fiction film. I'd say it's more of a science fiction film than most of what Hollywood passes off as part of the genre, most of which are simply action films with a sci-fi bent. Stalker is science fiction in the vein of the genres greatest writers like Phillip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem. It's pure science fiction, based on science, metaphysics and speculation, not some action fantasy or space opera that fits into the genre on the technicality that it takes place "in the future" or "a long, long time ago". The film is slow...very slow but it has to be to put you into the mindset of the film. After the opening 30 minutes the pacing actually draws you into the film in a more personal way more than any Cyborg-post-apocalyptic-hell crap Hollywood could spew out. This film is truly sci-fi, and truly great sci-fi.

There have been some comments about this film's length. I am initially reminded of the scene in "Amedeus" where Mozart is told that his composition has "Too many notes" to this he replies "There are just enough..." This film offers great insight into the inner workings of not just the creative mind but the social will of mankind. If you are a viewer who enjoys film please disregard the whining of those who don't enjoy investigating thoroughly the possibility of a well thought out and concise perspective and please watch this masterpiece of modern film. The director leads the viewer through some profound aspects of humanity with such brilliance and in my opinion swiftness that to pass it by would be a shame.