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.