Stalker (1979)

Movie Info

Who wouldn’t want to leave this world?

The Zone is forbidden.  In the Zone the Room exists and in the Room, people deepest dreams come true.  The stalkers leads clients into the Zone to find the Room, but the path through the Zone is dangerous and never the same.  Things have a way of getting lost in the Zone.  A stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) takes “the Writer” (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and “the Professor” (Nikolai Grinko) into the Zone…what are their dreams?  What do they hope to find in the Room?  Is the Room’s gift a curse or a gift?

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker (Сталкер) is a Russian science-fiction movie.  Following Tarkovsky’s Mirror in 1975, the story is developed from the 1972 Boris and Arkady Strugatsky book Roadside Picnic and was released at Cannes in 1980 after premiering in the Soviet Union in 1979.  The movie has gained cult status over the years, and the Criterion Collection released a remastered version of the film (Criterion #888).

Remember we paid for this

Tarkovsky is a tricky director.  His direction is amazing and the results are flawless…but it takes a lot of tolerance and a lot of concentration to get through his movies (which generally aren’t that short either).  With Solaris, you had a story of a planet that tries to appease astronauts by “giving” them their lost loves…here, dreams are tapped into once again for a somewhat companion piece in Stalker.

While for the most part, Solaris can be broken down into “a story” with a plot and pieces that eventually come together, Stalker feels a bit more obtuse and difficult to get a handle on.  The story features characters pontificating in an abandoned world and contemplating the meaning and value of dreams and desires.  The Room gives you what you want, but that gift is a double-edged sword.  Deep down, what you want might not always be what is right (showing in the story of Porcupine), and without sadness and lost, achieving a dream loses meaning.  This seems to be the boiled down themes of the movie, but it is a long right to get there.

Entering the tunnel of terror

The cast is good.  Alexander Kaidanovsky plays the anguished stalker who feels like a war vet who has spent too much time on the battlefield.  He doesn’t feel right at home, and he doesn’t feel right in the Zone…he belongs nowhere.  Anatoly Solonitsyn as the Writer is bitter and teeters between hoping the Room will help keep his inspiration and fearing that once inspired that the writing will be meaningless.  He is the one who butts heads most with the stalker and questions the rules.  The Professor played by Nikolai Grinko (and voiced by Sergei Yakovlev) thinks the Room is too dangerous and that dreams achieved can only mean a failure and breakdown of society…but his decision about what to about it and if he should decide causes his conflict.  The film also features a strange and rather small role by the stalker’s wife played by Alisa Freindlich who directly addresses the camera and almost serves as a voice of reason to the heavy philosophical questions of the film.

I bet there are Grabbers from Tremors under the sand

The movie looks fantastic.  The beginning and ending of the film (outside of the Zone) feature a sienna stylized look that is reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz.  One the group enters the Zone it (like The Wizard of Oz) gains color which is sharp contrast to the dreary world the characters live in.  Despite the hope provided by the Zone, the Zone is littered with things like discarded needles and filth.  It gets progressively worse the deeper that the characters go into the Zone and this also reflects their mental states…but even in the worst locations Tarkovsky’s vision prevails.

Stalker almost feels like a complete mind-f*!% type of movie.  While you watch it, you keep reading into what you are seeing and what the Zone means, but I don’t know that there is really an answer.  It is like an odd Waiting for Godot type moment where you keep expecting the unexpected to happen…but Godot never comes.  I think the enigma of the Zone and the Room are meant to be that since they mean something different to everyone.  I don’t know while watching Stalker if the answers are there at all…which could be extremely frustrating.  It is also something I’ve come to expect from Tarkovsky and his view of cinema and the world.  Tarkovsky followed Stalker with Nostalghia in 1983.