This post is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every other week.
PLOT: A guide leads a writer and a professor through a supernatural landscape known as “the Zone” to a secret room that grants wishes.
The film’s first several minutes are presented in washed out sepia tones. The Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) – his name is never given – lives in an impoverished industrial wasteland. The Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and Professor (Nikolay Grinko) -once again no names are given – hire him to take them into The Zone, an area purported to possess supernatural properties. The three of them brave the military blockade, where they are nearly killed, and break through onto the other side.
Suddenly, the sepia tones vanish and the audience is struck by the vivid color of a field full of vegetation. It is one of the most dazzling shots in cinema. I assure you, Dorothy landing in Oz is nothing compared to this scene.
WHO IS THIS MOVIE FOR?: Stalker is essentially Annihilation (the 2018 science-fiction film by Alex Garland) meets 2001: A Space Odyssey (needs no introduction).
Stalker and Annihilation’s plots are, on the surface, very similar. There is a mysterious region that is said to defy the laws of physics. No one knows exactly what is going on in this place but as the characters explore the area they encounter both wonders and threats.
In Annihilation the characters suffer through ecological and philosophical trials but they are also attacked by a mutant bear that mimics a woman’s screams. In Stalker, on the other hand, the character’s troubles are purely existential. There is talk of how the landscape can entrap unwary victims and how one must follow an invisible pathway. However, the audience never witnesses these supernatural consequences. There are no physical monsters, no surreal special effects, no scenes in which the characters are picked off one by one. *
And that is how Stalker is like 2001, commonly considered the greatest science-fiction film ever made. 2001 may contain more physical dangers (like being sucked into the void of space) but like Stalker, many of the threats are existential. There are no killer aliens with space stations threatening to blow up planets. Most of the trials involve identity, evolution and discovery of the unknown.
Another similarity between Stalker and 2001 is that they have both been accused of being boring. These are both extremely slow-paced films with minimal action and scenes that stretch out much longer than you would expect in the science-fiction genre.
So now to answer the question stated above.
Stalker is an essential movie for all true sci-fi aficionados, but while it may have the plot of a thriller, viewers need to rearrange their expectations. This is a film for patient viewers, viewers who are looking for a philosophical discussion rather than a thriller. There certainly are dangers in The Zone, but these dangers don’t come in the form of blood thirsty monsters. They come from a much deeper place.
*I just want to note that this post isn’t meant to be a critique on Annihilation. It’s a very challenging, deep film. It just contains elements that are more “typical” to the sci-fi genre. I don’t mean this in a bad way. Almost every film ever made is more “typical” than Stalker.
ACCORDING TO IMDB:
- The film was initially shot on Kodak 5247 stock. This film stock was newer to Soviet laboratories of the time and some of the original negatives were destroyed by a processing error at the laboratory. Part of the film was shot again with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinskiy.
- The Zone of the film was inspired by a nuclear accident that took place near Chelyabinsk in 1957. Several hundred square kilometers were polluted by fallout and abandoned. There was no official mention of this “forbidden zone” at the time.
- According to the film’s sound designer Vladimir Sharun, at least 3 members of the crew (including director Andrei Tarkovsky) died as a result of chemical contamination encountered on location in Estonia.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND IT?: I imagine most library systems own a copy. It is available on Netflix DVD. One can rent the move from Amazon for $3.99 or buy it for $17.99.
RUNTIME: 162 Minutes
DIRECTED BY: Andrei Tarkovsky
WRITTEN BY:Arkadiy Strugatskiy
STARING: Aleksandr Kaydanovskly
