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Stalker is one of those bizarre films which I found incredibly difficult to get into, and if I’m misremembering anything in my review, then that’s because trying to watch three hours of this rather pummelled my brain. After first experiencing Andrei Tarkovsky‘s work with his feature-length debut, Ivan’s Childhood, and seeing some stunning shots with that, and then seeing some promise in Solaris, albeit lost amongst many ponderous and repetitive scenes, I have to say that while I still have a couple of his films along the way to catch up with, Stalker just seems to be a case of “Let’s film any old nonsense, let’s not really care about how it looks, and people will love it.”
But then, this film has an average score of 8.1/10 on IMDB from almost 70,000 ratings. So a lot of people clearly do love it.
Anyhoo, I got the impression that being a stalker is a sort of calling, although it didn’t seem to be a stalker in the conventional sense of the word that we understand today. He’s not following anyone, not that there’s anyone to follow when it’s centred around three men going from A to B for reasons I’ll describe shortly.
The three men – known simply as the Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy), a Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn), and a Professor (Nikolay Grinko), are making their way through the Zone, which is like some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, which looks like segments out of Homefront: The Revolution, and is as fun to watch as that game was to play.
They pontificate on life, occasionally recite poems, and waffle words that make no sense and have no continuity between scenes. There’s talk of a metoerite crashing down 20 years earlier and wiping an area out including its people, plus the flowers are blooming again, but they make no smell. And I also came across a bizarre exchange which concluded, “Don’t stick your nose in someone’s underwear if you don’t understand it”.
I’m all for films where not a lot happens, but you’ve got to have some reason for them to exist, and this is almost three hours of three men walking around and getting nowhere, sometimes accidentally going back the way they’ve come and speculating that ‘the Zone’ has made them do it, rather than their own idiocy.
There’s not a moment when I was drawn into the conversation between the men, apart from the brief moments when they mention the room they’re trying to find, which they believe is some sort of utopia and an answer to all their problems, as well as the speculation about what might come when they get there. However, that could be compressed into a very short film, and not one that runs as long as one of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.
Maybe their pointless and fruitless journey is some sort of metaphor for the soul? Hence, there’s something I’m missing out on? It’s possible, given the aforementioned IMDB score.
The film is presented in the original 1.37:1 Academy ratio (approximately 4:3) and in 1080p high definition and while the extras below mention some of the problems with filming, this is evident with the look of the film. Mixing colour scenes with black and yellow, rather than black and white, I would expect that any issues with the look at down to the original print and nothing that Artificial Eye could’ve done. My score how to reflect the overall look, but this is as good as this film is going to get.
The audio is in DTS HD 1.0 mono, as you’d expect from a film of that era. There’s no issues with it, and it’s mostly just dialogue with occasional music to it.
The extras are initially a bit bizarre, but there’s some good interviews later on:
- Andrei Tarkovsky’s Metaphysical Dream Zone: An introduction by Mary Wild (2:35): Another one of film psychoanalyst Mary Wild’s brief pieces, using a lot of long words where simple descriptions would suffice.
- Andrei Tarkovsky’s Metaphysical Dream Zone Part 5: Stalker (14:17): Once again, Mary Wild talks about further aspects of the film, overanalysing it, and she confused the hell out of me. I couldn’t listen to the whole piece.
- Interview with cinematographer Aleksandr Knyazhinsky (5:43): At the time of recording this interview (which isn’t stated), Knyazhinsky was one of the last men alive to work on the film. He talks about making Stalker, whilst clearly not very well as he’s sat next to his hospital bed, so that’s most likely why it’s a short interview. He talks about how the power station they shot in really was as dilapidated as it looked, and the dog they came across while filming there, which only understood commands in Estonian.
Knyazhinsky passed away on June 14th, 1996.
- Interview with set designer Rashit Safiullin (14:22): In this one, Safiullin gives his thoughts on making the film, including a year’s worth of filming which went down the plughole because it was shot on ‘experimental Kodak’ film stock which couldn’t be developed. Oopsy…
Both interviews are shown in 4:3.
The menu features clips from the film set to a piece of the score, there are a bog standard 12 chapters and subtitles are in English.
Stalker is released next Monday on Blu-ray and DVD, and click on the packshot for the full-size version.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
1 5 7 4 |
| OVERALL | 4 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 164 minutes
Year: 1946
Cat.no: ART183BD
Released: August 22nd 2016
Chapters: 12
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: 1.0 DTS HD Master Audio (Mono), DTS 1.0, Dolby Digital 1.0
Languages: Russian
Subtitles: English
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky, Arkadiy Strugatskiy and Boris Strugatskiy (based on the novel by Arkadiy Strugatskiy and Boris Strugatskiy)
Music: Eduard Artemev
Cast:
Stalker: Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy
Writer: Anatoliy Solonitsyn
Professor: Nikolay Grinko
Marta: Natasha Abramova
Zhena Stalkera: Alisa Freyndlikh
Sobesednitsa Pisatelya: Faime Jurno
Lyuger, khozyain kafe: E. Kostin
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.