Stalker (1979)

Directed by: Andrei Tarkovsky | 163 minutes | drama, science fiction | Actors: Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Alisa Freyndlikh, Anatoly Solonitsin, Nikolay Grinko

The tricky part about discussing elusive classics is that you always run the risk of coming off like mustard after meals. Because let’s just say something sensible about a film that countless bright minds have been thinking about for decades. As a reviewer you must be so arrogant to think that people are still waiting for your opinion. But what if a film simply cannot be captured in words, but revolves around a feeling of intoxication for which words fail? Like a hallucination that you have to process very slowly? Then you get a review of Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’.

We start in a dirty and dilapidated setting, presumably Russia in the near future. A mysterious guide named Stalker meets a curious scientist and a wistful writer to guide them to the ‘Zone’, a hermetically sealed area where things like reason and reason no longer apply. After several researchers and soldiers did not return when they investigated this place, the state has decided to completely close this area off from the outside world. After all, the inexplicable cannot be examined.

In this Zone there would be a room in which man is confronted with his deepest fears, but where at the same time your greatest desires can come to fruition. Set against the sordid industrial backdrop at the beginning of the film, the Zone reveals itself as a place of stunning nature; reason for Tarkovsky to allow more color. The three characters then make their way through the wondrous nature, constantly wary of the utterly elusive rules that govern the Zone.

‘Stalker’ is probably best described as a classic that many have heard of, but few have actually seen. Like a book that everyone has on their shelves, but has never read: that’s how you could see ‘Stalker’. Not so strange: accessibility is not the magic word here. Tarkovsky gives the viewer plenty of room to draw their own conclusions and to form interpretations of the whole. After all, the enigma of the human soul cannot be captured in answers. ‘Stalker’ is therefore primarily a spiritual quest for the ultimate existential question: what does it mean to be human? In the Zone you get to know your deepest desires and greatest fears and it is impossible to escape your inner struggles.

Almost forty years later, ‘Stalker’ is unparalleled. Since then, a film-maker of a comparable order to Tarkovsky has rarely appeared. Few directors have managed to achieve such a mystical atmosphere that Tarkovsky has created for himself and his film. In that respect, the production process surrounding ‘Stalker’ is perhaps even more shrouded in mystery than the film itself. Many of those involved in ‘Stalker’ died quite soon after the film was made, presumably because the living conditions on the sets were very unhealthy. Think of a shooting location in Estonia near a chemical factory that leaked toxic fluids. Tarkovsky died seven years after making the film from lung cancer, which presumably lodged in him during the shooting. In that light, that ‘Zone’ becomes even more terrifying.

Certainly a younger generation will probably see many similarities in ‘Stalker’ with Alex Garland’s recent ‘Annihilation’, a film that is indebted to Tarkovsky in almost every fiber. Still, ‘Stalker’ remains a relatively unparalleled phenomenon: a film without action, aliens or effect. Everything in ‘Stalker’ revolves around the inner and the philosophical.

Ingmar Bergman once said of ‘Stalker’ that the film is like a ‘room he always wanted to enter’. ‘Stalker’ is hallucinatory, elusive and poetic. Experience cinema pur sang, which no 4DX can compete with. After all, Tarkovsky himself once stated that the Zone would be a metaphor for the cinema: a world full of special rules in which your deepest dreams and desires can become reality.

Beautifully filmed, terrifyingly oppressive and an unparalleled view of what it means to be human. Long? Of course. Slow? Absolute. A must-see? What do you think? ‘Stalker’ is a classic that every self-respecting film buff, despite the fact that the film is completely inaccessible and completely elusive, should definitely see.