Stalker [THE CRITERION COLLECTION] [Blu-ray] [2017]

The Stalker is quite simply the best movie ever made. In this as in other Tarkovsky movies, the imagery will linger and stay with you for the rest of your lives.This movie is about what really matters, the most important questions that humankind has struggled to answer....the question of faith.This movie is about hope, about faith, the innate philosophical and metaphysical questions that stalk us. It is about God, the mystery, the awe inspiring mystery of God.It is also perhaps about the loss of these very things.I feel there is nothing vague or deliberately mysterious about the movie.The narrative has an urgency unlike Andrei Rublev for instance.The movie is cloaked in religious symbols and the imagery, so surreal but real, is set against a background of waste, dirt, disuse and decay. Perhaps in this too, the allegory is not difficult to follow.The tunnel or pipe scene is a heart stopper and are not all Tarkovsky scenes like paintings?There is something inhuman, frightening, mysterious and detached and distanced about this imagery and that perhaps is the meaning of the the journey in this movie.Some images make you stop and not want to go on seeing the movie further, lest you lose the delirious heartache of that moment.But each image is followed by another devastating image and one soon finds it wiser to assume silence.Tarkovsky's stalker character, I felt, is a medieval mystic guide, given to philosophical sololiquies and reveries.He recites poetry and lies down, like an epileptic. The other two characters, the writer and the professor represent philosophical cynicism and scientific empiricism.The imagery is kafkaesque and viewers might be reminded of The Castle and Before the Law.However, Tarkovsky is not vague and defines the stalker with the strength of religious fervour but not zealous prejudice.As to the Dog.....Vladimir Nabokov cautioned against over analysis, and that surely should be left for each one to decide.

Stalker is my favourite film of my favourite director, thus, my favourite of all films!I first saw it in the old Scala cinema at King's Cross, with the Thameslink trains rumbling away underneath, which seemed entirely appropriate to the opening and closing scenes. Seeing it several times since, and now on DVD, has confirmed its status for me; it's one of those films where you notice a little bit more every time.It's hypnotic visual quality has been much commented upon, and requires no more comment by me. But visual quality is not enough by itself, otherwise I would rate Blade Runner as the greatest. Stalker is an utterly challenging film which gets right to the root of the human condition, asking what is our greatest desire. The Writer and Scientist in the film cannot confront this challenge, because they dare not enter the Room. We should ask ourselves what our greatest desire is, and see if we dare answer it. That is the challenge Tarkovsky presents us with.The most hypnotic scene, for me, is when the 3 men are sitting in an outward-facing circle, outside the Room, and the rain-shower starts. Magical!The DVD (2 discs, so unfortunately the film is split halfway) includes interesting interviews with the director of photography and the production designer, as well as an extract from Tarkovsky's diploma film The Steamroller and the Violin. All very enlightening.Stalker, which had to be shot twice because of faulty film stock, was filmed in Estonia and many of those involved fell ill and died during the ensuing years, including Tarkovsky and Solinitsin (playing the Writer), because of the unhealthy environment. The film was also a chilling precursor of Chernobyl, which resulted in landscape which could have come straight from Stalker.I attended a Tarkovsky symposium at Tate Modern in 2008, and it was no surprise that Stalker was a major focus of the papers presented. One of the contributors, the novelist Toby Litt, wrote a most excellent article in the New Statesman about it at that time.So, if you can see only one film in your life, please make it Stalker!

I watched Stalker as part of the plan to watch all of the IMDB Top 250 movies (a testament in itself that there are enough people out there who have watched this movie to rate it highly enough). When I sat down I did not fully know what to expect. What I watched turned out to be a slow paced and a quite a head scratching experience, but one which transfixes and beguiles. It has a dreamlike quality to it so that when it is all over you stop and think about what did it all mean, and it continues to make you do that. I still find 6 months on that there was a beauty and quality to the film that has stayed with me that makes me eager to see it again (if only copies of the film were easy to come by!)To me it is like a painting. Some of the best artwork is that which makes you linger and stare at it, looking at the colours and images (much of the film is in a sepia/tinted monochrome before bursting into colour once we 'enter the zone'). You also spot little aspects of the image and you also try and imagine what is it that is happening outside of the picture that is driving the people we can see in the image. i just found myself staring at the images and coupled with the industrial soundtrack it creates a strangely beautiful experience.It is not for everyone and many will hate it, but sit down, watch it and find out for yourself.