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StalkerRating:
Release Date: 15 October, 2002 Retail Price: $49.99 OUR Price: $39.99 You SAVE: $10.00! Cast: |
Stalker Reviews
I wish Stalker were as good as the reviewers would have it!
The very fact that this film has inspired so many thoughtful and well-written reviews shows that it definitely has a lot to offer. I'm a little disturbed by the frequently repeated claim that those who find Stalker too slow must be unable to tolerate anything but the likes of Top Gun, etc. While I agree that Stalker has moments of stunning "visual poetry" (e.g., the scene where the three men lie upon the ground, resting and meditating, is among the most arresting and haunting moments I've encountered, in film), I find the overall pace almost unbearably slow. After all, isn't the ability to edit visual pacing one of the most powerful assets of cinema? It might be worth considering that, just as no composer would dare to challenge the audience with three hours of unrelieved largo (even in Indian classical music, where audiences are accustomed to much longer performances than in the west, a slow alap rarely lasts more than an hour), varied pacing is, or can be, a director's best asset. Tarkovsky merely plods, through this film, though I do understand why some viewers choose to justify this as a meditation.
Ok then, it's a meditation. . . . I only wish, then, that the exposition weren't so flawed. Case in point: the stalker's wife throws herself upon the floor in agony at his departure near the beginning of the film, only to speak directly and smilingly to the camera, in the end, saying that she loves and accepts him as he is, and wouldn't have him any other way. Likewise, I find the Writer and Scientist hopelessly inconsistent and muddled, as characters, even as I imagine that some viewers will want to say that this is appropriate to their not being able to identify their own innermost wish, in the end. I accept that this sort of thing clearly works for some, but it just doesn't do it for me. Overall, I quite like Zizek's brief assessment in The Fright of Real Tears, where he talks about Tarkovsky's ideological murkiness being redeemed by his ability to interconnect the fate of the human spirit with that of the earth, by capturing the latter's "dank materiality."
Overall, the film is well worth watching, if only because it's so provocative, but due to its plodding pace and muddled exposition, it will remain but the intimation of a masterwork for me. (I was tempted to give the film four stars, since Tarkovsky at least dares so much . . . my actual rating would be something like 3.5, on the Amazon scale.)
Faithless world
First of all, do not watch this film if you have ADD. There are long, drawn out shots of fields, three men walking, and quirky discussions which many will find boring. I didn't. While this film is about many things at once, I found on reflection that (at least to me) "Stalker" is essentially about the ethical/non-ethical nature of notions like hope, redemption. The 'Zone' as it is termed is really a metaphor for what a human has to reach in his/her life to find metaphysical hope. In the end, that hope is judged (by the most likeable character out of the three) to be invalid, even morally wrong.
The meditative shots of fields alternate with shots of decay, destruction, and a "1984ish" state. These men remind one of some of Beckett's characters, behaving in absurd ways. But, perhaps the point is, this is an absurd world. A masterpiece that demands full attentiveness.
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