tarkovsky's stalker

remember this thread once this place get engulfed by #futureOfInternets

Lol

i mean

like

http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/stalker38.jpg

"Yes?"

this is surely amongst the great works

it is one of the greatest

The toxic looking set of Stalker is no special effect:
"We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris"

That's a horrific story

yeah but look what they made

Not worth it, even for such a huge masterpiece, ymmv

When you work in the trades you develop a gallows humour about faked asbestos reports and risk assessments and exposure to carcinogens. I'd imagine if you were working for the Soviet film industry in the 70's it would be even more lackadaisical.

i thought this was so boring, should i rewatch it?

depends on if you thought it was boring in the past five years or not and if you can see it in a theater imo

That's a horrific story

― too young for seapunk (Moodles), Friday, 30 October 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but look what they made

― twunty fifteen (imago), Friday, 30 October 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You are Geoff Dyer and I claim my 50p.

It could be worse, they could've died from making The Conqueror:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-conqueror/making-of-movie-that-killed-john-wayne/

My conclusion from reading that = Money is great.

I was about to bring up The Conqueror.

so many phrases seem to have gone untranslated

Pretty common in foreign films that didn't have an upper-tier UK-US distributor in that era.

wowwwww

innit just

watched this again on blu-ray a couple of weeks ago - never fails to be absolutely captivating

the stalker's dream is one of the most spellbinding sequences in cinema imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0VJa3HmsJQ

oh i started watching this the other day but my O/h was really tired and not in the mood for b/w with subtitles and gloominess. I really want to watch it though.

love this so much.

dl, it's only in black and white for a while before it transitions to colour (in another indelible sequence)

the b&w photography is so, so beautiful though. it's got so much texture to it

Yeah, it reminded me of Werckmeister Harmonies quite a lot (I can imagine Bela Tar was highly influenced by this film). As I say, we barely got 20 mins through before we realised this was a film for another time.

A few visual similarities aside, I don't think Tarkovsky and Tarr have v much in common. In fact, Tarr articulated the difference quite well: “Tarkovsky is religious and we are not… he always had hope; he believed in God. He’s much more innocent than us – than me. No, we have seen too many things to make his kind of film… he is much softer, much nicer. Rain in his films purifies people. In mine it just makes mud.”

It is a great quote but Tarkovsky must have seen some brutality himself growing up during the great terror and then the war.

I think that even the religious hope in Tarkovsky's films is tempered by some extreme self-doubt. God is hardly pedestaled as some end to suffering.

I like his famous quote about how Stalker should 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.”

I agree. That sequence from Stalker posted above is a good demonstration. Mankind is destined to die and be forgotten, and all of its works, including religion. It's like his faith was in the face of knowing there was no destiny or future for mankind beyond this sort-of ultimate apocalypse, and why his works are so emotionally extreme in their beauty. I'm not a Tarkovsky or film scholar by any means, but that's what I get from it at least.

It is a great quote but Tarkovsky must have seen some brutality himself growing up during the great terror and then the war.

Yeah, nihilists/cynics etc. always think they've seen more that others - the scales have fallen from their eyes, rather than their eyes having scabbed up.

That Tarr quote makes me think significantly less of him.

Reading his dad's poetry and its fantastic, some of the most affecting Russian poetry this side of Tsvetaeva!

Completely agree. Hearing it in Mirror for the first time blew me away.

dowd otm and with best poetic imagery.

he stalker's strong resemblance to Woody Harrelson was distracting.

Haha -- true!

One of our art houses will show Stalker next Tuesday -- I'm looking forward to seeing it again. I wonder if they got their hands on the Criterion early?

The 4K resto is via Janus Films, ie the version that Criterion puts out. It's the way the Film Forum in NYC operates now. So really, fuck DCP.

I'll be seeing the restoration next Wednesday. They showed the Solaris restoration this week, which was really great.

Restoration is striking. Saw it in NYC a few weeks back.

Totally. After only seeing it on that crummy DVD, this looked stunning. Great work.

DCP is great though

If there's a disc, I don't need to pay $15 to see the same thing larger though.

What's DCP?

Digital Cinema Package- it's the hard drive that digitally projected films are bundled onto.

I'd reckon that a DCP projections has way more in common with a film projection than with a small television

Digital Cinema Package- it's the hard drive that digitally projected films are bundled onto.

― You guys are caterpillar (Telephone thing),

Thanks. Oh, that thing! I haven't seen any notable differences. Stevie otm.

It depends on the smallness of the television, of course, but dcp and celluloid are two fundamentally different things, and they look very different. DCP is fine though, when I helped arrange a showing of Solaris recently we chose the DCP as well.

The 4K resto is via Janus Films, ie the version that Criterion puts out. It's the way the Film Forum in NYC operates now. So really, fuck DCP

Cannot compute this post.

Saw the restoration (on DCP) in Philly a few weeks back and was blown away for what it's worth.

Anyone know the Sokurov scifi film Days of Eclipse (1988)? It shares a pair of novelist/screenwriters with Stalker. Showing tonight at NYC MoMA.

https://criticsroundup.com/film/days-of-eclipse/

btw i never knew the source novel that was loosely adapted for Stalker has the title Roadside Picnic (tho it's referenced at the start of the thread).

Then no wonder you didn't get the point of my screenname I used for this post