tarkovsky's stalker

this is one of the best films ever!

and it's not boring!

I should've gone.

it better be not boring! I am going to see it, and if I fall asleep like i did in solaris...

Probably the most beautiful movie I've ever seen that looks like it was filmed in a vat of toxic sewage (in other words, this film has got to be the Russian equivalent of "The Conqueror", no?)

i saw this with a group of friends the other night and loved it. it's really beautiful, although it kind of killed everyone's desire to go out drinking afterward.

it brought to mind lots of things that were made later...cube, house of leaves, lots of video games (half-life 2, fallout 3, uh, super mario bros).

yeah i don't get why people hate this one so much, i think it's great

Actual Stalker videogame would be 1000x awes.

uh, see the previous revive!

!!!

this is like "mindwalk" with a pedigree.
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Monday, May 29, 2006 7:42 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

i just watched this and i liked it a lot, but it did make me think of "mindwalk" once or twice. but even when the script droned on a little, there was still the gorgeous, ominous look and feel of the film. i think its ideas resonate much more in its non-verbal realms than in its dialogue.

restraining orders were really hard to get in russia back then

minor point of curiosity: why is it split into part 1 and part 2, with a separate credit and everything? was it originally made for tv or something?

it was something to do with soviet bureaucracy. Tarkovsky had already used his whole budget shooting the bulk of the film but the film stock was ruined and the footage was unusable. in order to get funding to reshoot it T had to imply to the authorities that the film was always conceived as two parts and he needed additional funding to shoot part two. i think he actually used the funding for part two to reshoot the whole thing.

ah. i knew about the reshooting. i guess that makes a sort of bureaucratic sense.

man, it was really something to watch, it's still replaying in my head. i'll probably need to watch it again but i want to give it more time to unspool and settle in.

it's really beautiful, although it kind of killed everyone's desire to go out drinking afterward.

new definition of "art film"?

Tried for a second time tonight. I'll need to be 100% alert and working on a minimum of 10-hours sleep if I'm ever going to last the whole way--drifted through most of the middle hour tonight. I'll forgo the kind of jokes I used to make when I saw it 15 years ago. The stalker's strong resemblance to Woody Harrelson was distracting.

If you can handle the candle scene from Ностальгия/Nostaghia you can handle Сталкер/Stalker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_li-WHcII

i'm kind of surprised the some people (vahid!) think the pre-zone section is good and then it goes downhill. i think the getting to the zone section is often messy and boring but once they get there and less starts to happen, plot-wise, the film is electrifying.

otm

Uncanny, I tell you.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_khYoWIBgmBI/S13LXPOfn5I/AAAAAAAABrI/ryGqrXSAiak/s320/13stalker.jpg

http://www.hggirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/woody-harrelson.jpg

I ate a bunch of weed on a train and watched this on my laptop. It blew my goddamn mind. One of my favorite movies, and xp- the film really starts getting good once they reach the zone. Absolutely. Their every step becomes measured, they ruminate, they argue, crazy shit starts happening around them...

I'm gonna watch this tonight again.

One of my favorite movies, and xp- the film really starts getting good once they reach the zone.

first part of that sentence OTM, one of my very favorite movies. but it's brilliant from the beginning. hell, the first shot is one of the best in the film. and so's the second...

thought thread might've been revived cos of this new book:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/05/zona-geoff-dyer-tarkovsky-stalker

amazing film.

Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident led to the depopulation of an area rather like that in the film. Some of those employed to take care of the abandoned nuclear power plant refer to themselves as "stalkers" and to the area around the damaged reactor as "The Zone.

love this fact, through the whole film i kept thinking of chernobyl.

I love this movie so much I can't help feeling personally offended whenever anyone shits on it.

If someone doesn't like this movie, I automatically don't like them. I think there's something wrong with the way they open their senses.

And we were headed for such a beautiful friendship, elan.

I know I should be beyond the point where I feel so personally about things outside of myself (I got shit for saying more or less the same thing about The Tree of Life on the sandbox movie thread) but I wonder if this movie doesn't work as a sort of litmus test about whether or not one feels sure they know what reality really is, or whether they (like I do) are in constant doubt as to what is real and what isn't. Mind, this is drawn from very little experience but I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.

also n.b. I don't think everyone who dislikes this movie is a terrible person, but maybe people who are sure of themselves also tend to dislike this movie.

i dunno, i'm quite unsure of myself in certain respects (and full of headstrong confidence in others), but i like stalker and the tree of life primarily because i find them beautiful. i can certainly see why others might dislike either or both. they're long, slow, abstract and arguably pretentious films.

Ordered that Geoff Dyer book yesterday, really looking forward to it. One of my favourite writers on one of my favourite films.

It's not like I think Stalker dislikers are bad or terrible! I just always feel like there's going to be a large gap between the way we experience things.

so with Zona out now, there'll be a Stalker screening in NYC Saturday eve with a panel (incl Walter Murch, Francine Prose, Phillip Lopate and Dyer) talking between the reels!

http://nyihumanities.org/event/tarkovsky-interruptus

G Kenny discusses the book (and Hoberman review of same) here:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/03/geoff-dyers-zona.html

um, I love Tarkovsky and shamefully have never watched all of the film. I think I'm going to attempt some multiple viewing, book reading, extravaganza

Walter Murch on a panel? I hope there's coverage or a recording of the talking.

just read abt that in the wsj & it was vague enough that i thought there was also a screening/talk on fri ;_; sounds rad tho

Anyone read Dyer's bk?

no

he looks like a nudnik

Ws reading his wiki -- he's written on a wide range of subjects, you know.

yes but i saw him talking abt stalker w/ m kermode on bbc hds benighted 'the culture show'

& i distrust ppl called geoff

the bldgblog guy is named geoff and he seems ok

in your opinion

ws saying it as something to distrust really - travel one min, jazz the next, now not only film but STALKER! Sounds like a mid-life crisis bk instead of a fully researced account of Tarkovsky and his (and Soviet cinema's) struggle w/the authorities.

Ah well..xxp

there was one broadsheet review which was all 'less abt tarkovsky than abt geoff dyer' as if that might be more enticing

I've read books that ended up being semi-autobiographical about pretty boring people, this couldn't be worse

Not the recommenation I was looking for!

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/03/tarkovsky-interruptus.html

"...this emboldened Slate's Dana Stevens, whose contributions up to this point had been inoffensive enough to be ignorable/forgettable, to chime in about the "weak writing" in the film."

Why is Dana Stevens invited to these things? n.b. I can't recall ever reading a Dana Stevens review but her talks on the Culture Gabfest are...lacking.

"cultural vegetable."

Never heard this term before, only 10 year olds dislike all vegetables.

that phrase was at the center of an NYT Magazine-launched brouhaha over "difficult/boring" films last year.