STALKER (FILM)

'''Stalker''' (Russian: Сталкер) is a 1979 film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It describes the journey of three men travelling through a post-apocalyptic wilderness called the Zone to find a room with the potential to fulfill one's innermost desires. The title role is played by Alexander Kaidanovsky, who guides two others through the area, the Writer, played by Anatoly Solonitsyn, and the Professor, played by Nikolai Grinko. Alisa Freindlich played the Stalker's wife.
The film is loosely based on the novel ''Roadside Picnic'' by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. An early draft of the screenplay was also published as a novel ''Stalker'' that differs much from the finished movie. In ''Roadside Picnic'', the Zone is full of strange artifacts and phenomena that defy known science. A vestige of this idea carries over to the film, in the form of Stalker's habit of throwing metal nuts down a path before walking along it. The characters in ''Roadside Picnic'' do something similar when they suspect they are near gravitational anomalies that could crush them.
"Stalker", an English word employed in the original novel, should not be understood in the contemporary, sinister sense, but rather in the older sense of a tracker of game.

Contents

Plot synopsis

Style and Themes

About the production

The crew

Cast

The making of (Gallery)

Homage

See Also

References

External links

Plot synopsis

The setting of the film is a small town on the outskirts of "The Zone", a wilderness area which has been cordoned off by the government. The film suggests that the Zone was the site of a meteor strike, or perhaps of a UFO landing. The film's main character, the Stalker, works as a guide to bring people in and out of the Zone, specifically to a room which is said to grant wishes.
The film begins with the Stalker in his home with his wife and daughter. The Stalker goes to a bar, where he meets the Writer and the Professor, who will be his clients on his next trip into the Zone. Writer and Professor are not identified by name–the Stalker prefers to refer to them in this way. They drive past the military blockade that guards the Zone, and ride into the heart of the Zone on a small trolley car.
Once in the Zone, the Stalker tells the others that they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers that are all around them. The Stalker tests various routes by throwing metal nuts tied with strips of cloth ahead of him before walking into a new area. The Zone usually appears peaceful and harmless, with no visible dangers anywhere–Writer is skeptical that there is any real danger, while Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.
Much of the film focuses on the trip through the dangerous Zone, and the philosophical discussions which the characters share about their reasons for wanting to visit the room. They first walk through meadows, and then into a building by way of a tunnel which the Stalker calls "the meat grinder". Though the Stalker describes extreme danger at all times, no harm ever comes to any of the three men. Their journey ends when they arrive at the entrance of the room.
At this point the Professor reveals in a phone call to one of his colleagues some of his true motives for having come to the room. He has brought a bomb with him, and intends to destroy the room out of fear that it could be used for personal gain by evil men. The three men fight verbally and physically, and eventually the Professor decides not to use his bomb. A classic Tarkovskian long take, with the camera in the room, leaves the men sitting outside the room, and does not clarify whether they ever enter.
The next scene shows the Stalker, Writer, and Professor back in the bar. The Writer and Professor leave, and the Stalker's wife and child arrive. As the Stalker leaves the bar with his family we see that his child, named "Monkey", is crippled, and cannot walk. Dialogue reveals that her condition is due to the influence of the Zone. The film ends with a long shot of Monkey alone in the kitchen. She recites a poem, and then lays her head on the table and pushes the dishes telekinetically onto the floor.

Style and Themes

Like Tarkovsky's other films, Stalker relies on long takes with slow, subtle movement of camera, rejecting the conventional use of rapid montage to explain the narrative and achieve artificial dramatic peaks. Instead, Tarkovsky's prolonged shots capture a poetic reality that is naturalistic and yet far removed from ordinary perception. As he did with Solaris, Tarkovsky took great liberties in adapting the screenplay to emphasize the philosophical and metaphysical angles that concerned him the most. Thus, while the film retains some of the science fiction trappings of the novel, it is most concerned with themes of personal faith that are important to Tarkovsky.

About the production

This was Tarkovsky's second science fiction film (after Solaris). Like that film, Tarkovsky downplayed the science fiction aspects of the novel, making the film more about his philosophical and spiritual concerns.
The central part of the film was shot in a few days at a deserted hydro power plant on the Jägala river near Tallinn, Estonia. When the team got back to Moscow, they found that all the film had been improperly developed. The film was shot on experimental Kodak stock, and Soviet laboratories were not familiar with it. There was also speculation that the Soviet authorities deliberately mishandled the stock of the film. Tarkovsky was officially frowned upon by the Soviet authorities, not because of his political stances (Tarkovsky rarely talked about politics), but because his films dealt with issues of spirituality and the quest for God. The USSR was an officially atheistic state, and Tarkovsky's films digressed from this official line, making him suspect. However, his films were relatively popular in the USSR, and he was considered by many in Western Europe as the "Soviet Union's greatest filmmaker", so he was allowed to continue making films.
During the shooting before the film stock problem was discovered, relations with the first cinematographer, Georgy Rerberg, were in serious deterioration. After screening the material, Rerberg left the first screening session and never came back. By the time this film stock defect was found out, Tarkovsky had shot all the outdoor scenes. Some say that Tarkovsky was actually happy about this occurring, as he was unhappy about what had been shot so far. Others dispute this view. Set designer Rashit Safiullin was interviewed for the 2000 Rusico DVD, and he contends that Tarkovsky was so despondent that he wanted to abandon further production of the film.
After the loss of the film stock the Soviet film boards wanted to shut the film down, officially writing it off. But Tarkovsky came up with a solution - he asked to make a two part film, which meant additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up reshooting almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. Tarkovsky made the film more of a philosophical metaphor than a straightforward science fiction film (similar to what he did in Solaris). He was constantly rewriting the script during the actual shooting and during the dubbing and editing (the film was post-dubbed, like many Soviet films were).
Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths. Many attribute the long and arduous shooting schedule of the film, and the physical conditions of the terrain where it was made. Vladimir Sharun recalls:
It is suspected that the 1957 accident in the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, which resulted in a several thousand square kilometer deserted "zone" outside the reactor ^[1], may have influenced this film. Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident completed the circle. In fact, 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." ^[2]

The crew

★ Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

★ Second director: Tarkovsky's wife Larissa Tarkovskaya

★ Screenplay: Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky & Andrei Tarkovsky (uncredited)

★ Editor: Lyudmila Feiginova

★ Music: Eduard Artemyev

★ First camera: Georgi Rerberg (none of his footage was used, see above)

★ Second camera: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky (the footage used in the movie)

★ Sound designer: Vladimir Ivanovich Sharun

★ Set designer: Rashit Safiullin

Cast

★ Stalker - Alexander Kaidanovsky

★ Stalker's Wife - Alisa Freindlich

★ Writer - Anatoly Solonitsyn

★ Professor - Nikolai Grinko

The making of (Gallery)

Homage

Chris Marker, in his 1982 film Sans Soleil, references Tarkovsky's Stalker through the use of the term "Zone" to describe the space in which images and their attached memories are transformed.
Robert Rich and Brian Lustmord recorded an album of dark ambient music inspired by the title and the hypnotic minimalism of Tarkovsky's Stalker. It was released in 1995 on Fathom Records.

See Also

★ '', a 2007 video game based on elements of ''Stalker'' and ''Roadside Picnic''.

References

1. Trivia section of the films imdb entry
2. Johncoulhart.com article

External links

★

★ ''Stalker'' section at Nostalghia.com

★ International promotion posters

★ Stills from ''Stalker'', (Russian text)

★ ''Stalker'' at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list

★ Geopeitus.ee - Information concerning ''Stalker'' Location Filming

★ Discussion of making the film, part 1. ("Искусство кино," in Russian, Georgii Rerberg, Marianna Chugunova, Evgenii Tsymbal)

★ Discussion of making the film, part 2. ("Искусство кино," in Russian, Georgii Rerberg, Marianna Chugunova, Evgenii Tsymbal)

★ Not enough ("Только этого мало"), a poem of Arseny Tarkovsky