tarkovsky's stalker

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.

(xpost) Obviously, no insult intended--I guess I think of them both as somewhat mystical (which probably just tells you that I'm not getting one or both of them).

Forgot--Badlands won the road-movie poll.

Another guy at his wit's end.

http://yarn.co/yarn-clip/b4d2f220-0c8f-48ce-97d7-8f2f37246f72#BJTxAHj8QWG.copy

stalker is a headphones movie

That's what I used to say about the Alan Parsons Project's Tales of Mystery and Imagination back in high school. Except for the movie part.

what other movies do people like to sleep through

Leviathan (2012)

yes! i love falling asleep to Leviathan. also Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Third Man

... I have, on more than one occasion, put on a DVD of Tarkovsky's Solaris as a soporific

visiting locations in Estonia

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/andrei-tarkovsky-stalker-locations

😍

😍

☣️

uh sorry, i mean ☢️

I wonder if it was procion dye waste that was being dumped into the Jagala river. I used to knock about places that remind me of some of the Stalker locations and a dye company was dumping waste into the waterways at the time. The water + even some of the greenery in the surrounding area used to have a yellow tint and was horrible smelling at times. Also had an uncle who worked at the L B Dyes factory for 20 odd years and he was known as "Yellow Eddie" and loads of his co-workers died of lung cancer, but the yellow man defied the odds and died of a stroke.

Lots of skepticism from me on this thread, and if I were to watch it tomorrow, I know I'd drift off for stretches. But thinking about my twilight walks around town right now, I never would have guessed that life would more or less turn into this movie (or at least this movie plus the occasional car).

Finally watched this some months ago. Very moving, honestly.

Working my way through the ilx list and we watched this last night. It's a great film and liked it very much. It's possible it could have been edited tighter and it wouldn't have lost much and might have gained power. Otoh, I understand and accept the argument that the length is part of the journey and helps put you in the place of the characters.

Visually stunning and the final shot of the reactor is incredible.

I kept thinking about how this SF movie is largely without effects other than some lighting. Does anyone know how much of certain shots were staged versus just shooting what was there? Thinking of the dream sequence with the shots of objects in the water.

Watched this today, cocooned in a blanket, wind raging outside. I'm still processing it - the material reality of the film, and the experiential aspect of watching the thing. It felt quite close to meditation in places - watching the screen became watching the mind and what drifted across the internal screen. Did any of this chime with the stuff on the screen etc.

The two shots that are currently bouncing around in my head are the lingering (when doesn't the camera linger?) shot of the heroin paraphernalia in the apartment and the vast wall of books - and what both mean for the stalker's state of mind and his purpose for entering and re-entering the zone. Are we to believe that he's been multiple times but hasn't been 'able' to enter the room?

I've read the Strugatsky book but don't remember it sufficiently to know how whether a re-read will throw new light on the the film. Man, what a trip.

I’ve seen this movie three times and I’ve never noticed the heroin paraphernalia. Like needle, what else?

I have maybe concocted it but definitely recall a tray with a syringe and cotton wool balls. Multiple syringes underwater throughout as well. And I read his wife's first tirade as a reaction to his falling back into addiction (as well, clearly, as continually falling for the allure of the Zone).

I would assume that was an allusion to the unspecified health problems of the daughter?

That’s what I might have thought

We’re ringing down the curtain on 2022 with this tonight, gonna be a good time

I specifically left tonight empty with no obligation to do anything. My 16yr old son has just asked if a 'few friends' can come over as they have nowhere else to go. Give me Stalker any day.

xps - ah ok, that makes perfect sense.

Maybe this could be an NYE tradition: watch Stalker and then watch Dinner for One.

I’m due for another viewing but to me seems like a more perfect reflective New Year’s Day viewing.

But my wife didn’t like Andrei Rublev and I’m afraid what she’s think about Stalker. 🙁

definitely saw the drug paraphernalia as medicating the kid who is getting telekinesis

(this thread being bumped prompted me to t0r3nt every tarkovsky for my collection)

I did that years ago and it was a very good move

(Genuine question from someone who has forgotten how: um, where does one t0r3nt from these days? All my old places are long dead.)

With regard to the stalker and his obsessive returning to the room, I can't stop thinking of the phrase 'you had everything you needed right there'.

https://i.imgur.com/zT6HsAK.png

chinaski, drop me a line via ilx mail about plex

stalker was available for a long time on youtube, some semi-official moscow film upload

oh, still is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc

Nice, thanks! In 4K, no less! It looks like Mosfilm also uploaded *Andrei Rublev* (first cut (205 min) and final cut (182 min)), *The Mirror* and *Ivan's Childhood*.

"(Genuine question from someone who has forgotten how: um, where does one t0r3nt from these days? All my old places are long dead.)"

I went through the same despair, now I pay a few quid per 6 months for a usenet provider and something similar for a nzb site and now I don't bother with the ghost-towns of formerly good torrent sites any more!

they’re all on criterion, just subscribe to criterion

there is always one bloody venture scout on every thread! (joking obv)

Point taken obviously, but it's not available in the UK, and never has been. (I could get a VPN, of course.)

Right. We had this discussion earlier about Criterion being US-only.

I was in a 7/8 class this morning, so for Tarkovsky's birthday (and forgetting it was MLK Day--got to him later) I talked about the S&S poll, then played the final three minutes of Stalker. Couldn't get any sound, which definitely mattered.

They were a good class, so they listened and watched without interruption. But I sensed the general feeling in the room was "What the fuck is this guy going on about?"

I know you will have told them!

In my own fumbling manner--"So to sit there completely mystified for two-and-a-half-hours, and then to end with this...amazing!--yes. (Told them I loved the ending, that I've struggled with the film three or four times, and that I have drifted off every time.)

You should show them the rail journey. That's my fave part.

If I had to introduce somebody to Tarkovsky using a clip of only a few minutes...maybe the balloon ride from Rublev? Or the missile attack in The Sacrifice where the milk jug crashes to the floor?

The clip I feel like I see used most as a Tarkovsky emblem is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Q7cvTh_jU

Watching Stalker for the first time was actually life-changing, inasmuch as it totally rewired my brain's way of thinking about landscape, art and even time.

Currently reading the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer which feels like it is consciously riffing off the Zona/Roadside Picnic/Stalker (as did M. John Harrison in his Kefahuchi Tract books). Really good.

The film of Annihilation definitely plays off of Stalker too.