1979 - STALKER, on the big screen

Showing at a revival theater near near me was Tarkovsky's science fiction epic Stalker.  The film is long and very intense visually and story wise.  To recap, Stalker involves the travels of three individuals into an area called The Zone.  The Zone apparently contains a room that will grant the wishes of people that can find it and enter it.  The three men traveling to this mysterious room are the stalker who is the guide through the zone, a writer apparently suffering from writer's block and a professor on a mysterious mission.

The movie is long and probably what would today be called slow moving.  Andrei Tarkovsky the director was a very serious fellow when it came to his art and he approached each of his films with a deliberate approach when it came to making films.  The visual elements in a Tarkovsky film were always carefully planned out.

 

This was a difficult film for Tarkovsky to complete, he apparently had lots of technical issues with film stock and after a year of work the first version of the film was scrapped and was restarted with a revised screenplay.

What's the film about? Well part of it is definitely about having faith in your life although this is a very simple explanation.  The best thing that can be said about Stalker is that it is considered one of the greatest films ever made.  It's certainly a very fascinating and interesting film and was made by a master filmmaker.

The film was written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.  The running time is a daunting 161 minutes. 

1972 - SOLARIS, epic Russian science fiction film is dense and very long.

A blog that only does short reviews of films, is probably no place to review this long, difficult and very interesting science fiction film from Andrei Tarkovsky a man who saw films as art with a capital "A."

This film was supposedly Tarkovsky's answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey, although I am not sure what he disliked about that film.  Tarkovsky practically throws out everything that is in a science fiction film.  There are no shots of spaceships flying through space and he seems completely uninterested in the trappings of technology things that are usually a staple of this genre.

Instead what a viewer gets is a long meditation about the nature of memory and love.  All presented very deliberately with the camera moving slowly around the space station and the protagonists as Tarkovsky works to set a very careful and delicate mood.  It is all extremely well done.

 

To be very honest, this is a film that has taken me several viewings to finally get through.  This is not a throw it on the DVD player and casually watch it kind of film.  Even writing a capsule review of Solaris kind of cheapens it.

A very interesting film but difficult to view without putting some effort into it.
The screenplay was by Friedrich Gorenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky.  The running time is165 minutes.

1961 - THE STEAMROLLER AND THE VIOLIN, a Tarkovsky film I could stay awake through

Andrei Tarkovsky, was one of the Soviet Union's greatest filmmakers.  He made important films in his short lifetime.  Stalker and Solaris are science fiction films that examine man's place in the universe and attempt to look deeply into the soul. Andrei Rublev looks at the artist's place in society, in order to understand if an artist should be an active part of society or just a chronicler of it.

These films are very long, complex and thoughtful meditations, with superb photography and are made with great care.  These films can also be very boring. I've viewed them frequently when I am having trouble sleeping, they are a guaranteed cure for insomnia at times.

The Steamroller And The Violin was apparently Tarkovsky's graduate thesis film from film school.  The film appeared to have been made at Mosfilm studios, so it has a very professional look to it for a student film.  The Steamroller and The Violin shows the beginnings of Tarkovsky's complex visual style and is the story of a young violin player who is persecuted by his peers, but protected by a sensitive Russian worker.

 

Since The Steamroller and the Violin is a Tarkovsky film it is also kind of on the boring side, but it is only 45 minutes long and it is interesting although I still needed two breaks to get through it.

 The film was written by Andrei Konchalovsky and Tarkovsky.  The running time is 46  minutes.