Stalker

A welcome re-issue for Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s contemplative masterpiece Stalker which will attract an arthouse audience hopefully of newcomers as well as Tarkovsky fans eager to see the film again on a big screen.

The story is abstract and you make of it what you will – in the pot for sure are themes of hope, love, guilt and redemption. Luckily the storyline (unlike some of Tarkovsky’s films) is fairly linear. A Stalker is asked to lead two other men – a writer and a professor across a police state-owned territory known as the Zone and they are hoping to get to a place known as the Room which will give them answers. It is a wet dank world and for these shaven-headed men crossing a harsh industrialised landscape, this is going to be no easy task. If they get there though, a solution of sorts might materialise.

Many of Tarkovsky’s pet loves are hidden obliquely here – his love of fire and water for instance, his abilities to turn simple lines into something more allegorical and his way of giving you subject matter that seems to strike at the heart of the matter. To me, Stalker was Tarvoksky’s most complete and easily comprehensible film but still only go if you’re able to give it the time and latitude it deserves, you need to be prepared to open your mind to the numerous ideas it will throw at you. If you prefer a film that sticks closer to a familiar plot line and a film that will give you a story that is easily identifiable – this isn’t the film for you.

For those brave enough however, this could be a particularly refreshing experience, merely to see a film (as I first did when I was 15) that cinematically crosses boundaries into a world of theories and no easy answers. You don’t have to understand it fully – my ideas of what it means are probably quite different to others’ but visually it is stunning, and it offers a world and landscape alien to the world we know today.

Matt Arnoldi