tarkovsky's stalker

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

i'm only one man.

Also, Roadside Picnic is by the same guys who wrote Hard To Be A God.

I got to catch the restored version on the big screen a month ago, it was quite an experience. There was tons of detail like the specifics of the debris in the water or the rusting tanks in the field that I completely missed in many previous TV viewings. My big takeaway is that this may be the most physically textured film ever. Every single shot has a strong tactile quality.

Roadside Picnic is great, and I think I had this thread to thank for leading me to the pdf (when it was out of print).

I mentioned trying for a second time upthread (five years ago); I think tonight might have been the fourth. I think I basically get it, or part of it, in broad outline--the Zone is Oz, it's Godot, it's Miracle City in The Leftovers. (Or maybe it's the Black Lodge, or Room 101.) It's a great film to talk about--my friend and I went for coffee afterwards and compared notes for 20 or 30 minutes. The actual watching of it, sorry; I just find it tedious. I get very little out of it visually (except the last shot). Not that I loved The Mirror, but it did have that incredible pre-Ringu image. I find the brown parts in Stalker exceedingly ugly. Which they're supposed to be, I guess. The guy who made a big deal about going back to get his napsack reminded me of the babysitter in Goodfellas and her lucky hat. These are the silly things I think about when I'm bored, and I feel like I'm betraying the seriousness of the film when I do. My friend's going to lend me the Geoff Dyer book Zona--don't know anything about him or the book, but I'm hoping it sheds some light.

were you at tonight's screening in TO? more walkouts than I was expecting for a 14$ rep screening lmao

I was, yeah. Didn't notice the walkouts--we were maybe halfway down in the middle. I think I only drifted for 10 or 15 minutes tonight, better than the other times (lost some towards the end of part one).

For anyone who counts it as one of your favourite films--it won the ILX road-movie poll--I wish I could experience it as you do. I have some of the same problems with The Tree of Life. Maybe it's a temperament thing, I don't know. There are long, slow films I love. My attention doesn't flag for a second during six hours of Frederick Wiseman's Near Death.

weirdly, I drifted off a bit during the screenings of The Sacrifice and The Mirror but stayed totally awake for Stalker. I find power-napping to Tarkovsky movies to be extremely pleasant (less so in public where snoring is a real danger)

my main takeaway from this screening was that I really wish the men had brought that woman along with them to the Zone

Agree wholeheartedly; she had more personality than the three of them put together. (Which, again, I realize is beside the point--I know, I know...)

Saw it on the big screen a few months ago, loved it even more. There are whole visual layers that are hard to see on TV. I get the "boring" tag, but I just find the whole thing sort of texturally exciting from one shot to the next.

I recently watched it at home for the first time, after trying and giving up once before. I don't know whether I 'got it' or not. There was an interview with Geoff Dyer on the Criterion Collection that I watched afterwards, and he made the interesting point that the first segments of the Zone (in Part I) strongly reminded him of being a child, wandering aimlessly and making up games to play among the remnants of old disused rail depots in the English countryside.

For me, the most mind-blowing moment in the entire movie (*minor spoiler alert*) came after the Zone, when we go back to the bedroom in Stalker's house where the opening sequence took place; but now the camera has been turned 90 degrees to reveal a wall, previously concealed out of frame, whose floor-to-ceiling shelves are completely stuffed with books.

even though I stayed awake this time the movie seems designed to lull you into a nap, including placing the Part 2 marker only an hour in

x-post: Ah nice, I've missed that. Claire Denis does the same in 35 Shots of Rhum, and it's also completely mind-blowing.

For anyone who counts it as one of your favourite films--it won the ILX road-movie poll--I wish I could experience it as you do. I have some of the same problems with The Tree of Life. Maybe it's a temperament thing, I don't know. There are long, slow films I love. My attention doesn't flag for a second during six hours of Frederick Wiseman's Near Death.

― clemenza, Tuesday, November 21, 2017 4:40 AM (nine hours ago)

a) it didn't win, it was #2!
b) I fucking hate Tree of Life and find the comparison v insulting.
c) Sometimes people just don't gel with something! And that's okay (sorry for accidental clickbait phrasing).

my main takeaway from this screening was that I really wish the men had brought that woman along with them to the Zone

I know what you mean, but for me the contrast between the 'men in the Zone' bulk of the film and the sudden voice & agency of the female characters is startling in the best way. It had an enormous emotional impact on me when I first saw it.

the Dyer book is worth the read, but it's paced like the film.

I've watched it three times, agree with clemenza.

Apparently I bought the wrong Blu-Ray edition as the Curzon Home Cinema version uses an un-restored print, and it shows. You can see the film jump at every reel change, the soundtrack is often buried under crackling and so much of that incredible surface detail is lost in the murk. Seriously disappointing.

If I'd known how bad it was I wouldn't have bothered.