Stalker (1979) d. Andrei Tarkovsky

Criterion Collection Cover of Stalker d. Andrei Tarkovsky

Movie Review

Stalker (1979)

d. Andrei Tarkovsky

Criterion Collection #888

   Stalker is a huge movie for people who call movies "films."   In my mind it is one of the central movies of the entire Criterion Collection and it represents "World Cinema" in its purest form.  Stalker is unwieldy, difficult to understand, comes with an "only in Russia" production story and bears little to no resemblance to its source material, a science fiction novel, but it has still managed to influence a generation of writers and filmmakers- most notably in the movie version of the Jeff Vandermeer novel Annihilation, which is basically a remake/homage/rip off of Stalker. 

   Clocking in at a full 161 minutes (it feels even longer!) Stalker is "about" the central character- more of a guide than an actual Stalker, who is hired to tour the "writer" and the "professor" around a mysterious era known as "the zone."  The zone is a constantly changing, rearranging area that is never the same place twice, walled off from a sepia-tinged Russia that looks like it has just emerged from a World War.   If, like me, you are expecting some kind of action or excitement from such a set up, you are due to be disappointed since the bulk of Stalker is shots held for minutes at a time and the characters engaging in dialogue whose closest Western equivalent would be a Samuel Beckett play.

  It strikes me that Stalker is one of those movies where, once you make it through, you feel compelled to call it magnificent, but mostly I found it hard to pay attention.  Sad!