In fact there are less edits in the film than minutes it takes to tell the story. Stalker was composed of a very small number of shots. Tarkovsky was very adept at minimising dialogue and maximising the potential of the image to tell a story or explore ideas. And the visuals add a lot to the narrative of the film here. To fully comprehend a film like Stalker it is important to realize that the script was conceived with a very specific visual style in mind. And if that is the case, what is happiness exactly? That there are no easy definitions is part of Tarkovsky’s brilliance. I personally see it as an exploration of whether happiness is the core factor of humanity’s quest to discover the meaning of life.
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Some believe Tarkovsky wanted to discuss religion, others believe the film was a metaphor for the Soviet gulag camps. Much continues to be written of its continued thematic timelessness. Meanwhile, Act 2, The Zone – spills over either end of Act 2 into Acts 1 and 3 before being straddled by the real world, opening and closing in Stalker’s house, in which the Zone is merely discussed. This is the structural premise of most of Act 2 it allows a space to move the story forwards slowly, but still big enough to fill with the lofty ideas Tarkovsky had in mind. To reach it one must take the longest route and often, people will only be able to cross that threshold once they have become “wretched”. The Room is defined as a place impossible to just walk into. While the structure is basic enough – progressing as the characters move deeper into this sylvan abyss known as the Zone – the film is designed to encourage viewers to fill in the gaps with their own presentiments. The Stalker is to be their guide into and through The Zone: a forbidden area in which lies an elusive Room where one’s innermost desires will come true. In fact the structure is rather simple at its core.Ī man named Stalker meets with two men, Writer and Professor. While a non-conformist film in many ways, Tarkovsky shows what can be done creatively with conventional linear narrative and a three act structure. Do not expect the story beats to slot perfectly into Blake Snyder’s beat sheet from ‘Save The Cat’ or any other self-proclaimed screenplay writing guru. Like most of Tarkovsky’s work, one can expect a somewhat unorthodox style. Some years later, Tarkovsky, Larisa Tarkovskaya who was his assistant director and wife at the time, and Anatoliy Solonitsyn who played the Writer all died from similar cancerous diseases, which many believe were related to the prolonged shoot in a contaminated heavy industrial wasteland, downstream from a chemical plant. Filming took place around a disused heavy industrial zone. The next year, Tarkovsky returned to the outskirts of Tallinn in Estonia. The setback led in part to Tarkovsky having a minor heart attack in 1978 this was only the first of many health issues that would become associated with the film.
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Taken very loosely from a 1971 novel called Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers Arkady and Boris, the version of Stalker available to us is essentially the second version that was made.Īfter filming in Estonia for roughly half a year to make the first version of the film, the crew and cast returned to Moscow to find that all of their film stock was heavily tinted dark green. This is seen very directly in some of the more cerebral filmmakers like Terrence Malick, and indirectly in the work of other great writer-directors like Michael Haneke, Paul Thomas Anderson and Lars Von Trier (especially his earlier work) to name just a few.Īlthough the pace of Stalker is of gradual brooding intensity, the actual production itself played out more like a noir film. During his career Tarkovsky managed to circumvent strict Soviet censorship to make films that pierce the human psyche so thoroughly that he still influences a great many people today. Stalker and Andrei Tarkovsky are both very relevant still to modern filmmaking. Lines from opening credits of Stalker, attributed to a seemingly fictitious Professor Wallace – although he may be the Professor character in the film.“One way or another, our small country has seen the birth of a miracle – the Zone.