Viewing this film for several evenings now! Netflix is good that way---I can hang on to Stalker for as long as I like. I watch and think this is the most beautiful photography, and than I realize how unique and original Tarkovsky's vision is. I have been reading Sculpting in Time the Soviet director's philosophical reflection on filmmaking. Having watched a number of Tarkovsky's films, I think Stalker is the most perfectly realized piece of cinematographic art I have yet encountered. Down to the synthesized soundtrack! The Writer's continual nihilistic babbling contradicts itself---it is an acid bath of pessimism and doubt. Then when the Stalker speaks---it is pure mystical poetry. The acting performance that the director gets with Chingachook is stellar.
Then there is the Zone itself, where all becomes color and birdsong, inside of the sepia-tinted, oilstreaked world where these men came from.
Tarkovsky nails it with the Stalker becaue he has harmonized the film-idea with the film production. It is seamless.
Consider the film shot in the puddle when the Stalker's wife is reading from the Book of Revelation, and we see the altarpiece of Ghent by Van Eyck floating at the bottom of the pool---conveys poetically the meaning of apocalypse.
Very easily one can attach a meaning to the Zone in order to decode its message. It is the Kingdom of Heaven, for example. It is like a drug trip, a psychedelic experience. Another way of reading this is to see that the Zone is the Stalker's own delusional obsession. The Professor aims to detonate a bomb and eliminate the Zone, while the Writer's unending negative chatter more or less accomplishes the same thing. The Stalker is looking for the pure of heart. The Beatles have Sergeant Pepper and Tarkovsky has Stalker!
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