Cheap Stalker (DVD) (Andrei Tarkovsky) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Stalker

Much more than just science fiction...
Tarkovsky is by far my favorite director. Stalker was the first film I saw, and the experience was so memorable that I went on and saw all his other films. Many people have compared it to Stanley Kubrick's "2001, a space odyssey". I beg to differ. While Kubrick's film was also a masterpiece in its own respect, it was not delivering a spiritual and metaphysical message like Stalker. Many viewers tend to criticize Stalker for lack of so-called "action". In his book, "Sculpting through time", Tarkovsky explicitly states that this was indeed what he intended to do. This is about a journey to our inner soul, this side of us that is our most intimate and yet at the same time our most frightening. The Writer is of course our artistic side while the Professor would represent our logical and scientific leanings. Both of these men seem despaired because of lack of faith, only to be redeemed at the end. However, while many would believe that this film seems to give a pessimistic message about the human condition, it actually gives hope. Indeed, we can be redeemed, and that is through love and sacrifice personified by the Stalker's wife.
Now, for the visual aspects of this film. Every shot is a masterpiece, a work of art. The language and the dialogue are all beautiful and poetic.
All in all, Stalker is a philosophical masterpiece, a gem in the world of cinema.

---

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.