User reviews

This cult achievement of Andrei Tarkovsky is generally accepted as one of the masterpieces of Russian cinematography. When I had the opportunity to see it on the big screen, I couldn't miss it. Fortunately, the ticket was extremely cheap.

"Stalker" is based on the SF novel "Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatskiy brothers, who adapted it into the script themselves. Although its genre classification is the same as that of the novel, "Stalker" is a philosophical and psychological drama, whose SF premise is only mentioned, and I believe that it is no more than a mere illusion in the minds of the protagonists, so the SF determinant leads to completely wrong expectations.

The film opens with a very slow but mesmerizingly atmospheric and superbly shot scene, each frame of which is an art photograph. Already in those first moments, I saw myself rating it a ten, but from there on the film only goes downhill.

To be clear, the rest of the film doesn't visually lag behind that first scene, but too long shots that show totally uninteresting people who do more or less nothing, no matter how beautifully shot, are not enough to hold my attention for almost three hours. If I wanted to enjoy top photography, I would go to an exhibition and not to the cinema. Of those three hours, perhaps a third is filled with plot, which again is largely reduced to monologues, while nothing really happens. Essentially, this looks more like a monodrama than a movie.

In the center of events is an area called the Zone, in which there is a room that, for those who get it alive, fulfills the greatest wish. The basic message of the film is: "Be careful what you wish for it might come true", because the Room does not fulfill the wish that we consciously ask for, but the essential one, hidden in the depths of man.

This is an interesting premise from which you will not see anything in the film. We don't know for sure whether the Zone is special in any way at all, nor do any of the protagonists use the Room. The premise is only there to give us the background to study the personalities of the people who headed to the zone and their guide, Stalker.

The plot itself can be told in a few sentences, while the whole story is reduced to a philosophical monologue by the author through the mouths of three protagonists. There are no original philosophical ideas or interesting views on life. Just a bunch of true, but long-worn philosophical and psychological phrases, pretentiously packaged so that they seem more profound and significant than they really are.

General impression - beautifully filmed but pretentious and hard to watch, without the essential strength to justify the effort. Just because of the technical qualities and the atmosphere, I can't go below

7/10

"The photography, in this case, is like the wrapping of an empty present box." - trans_mauro.

Tarkovsky's direction for this film is nearly flawless.

The film mainly focuses on three characters and their basic goodness of each other. The photographic colors are brilliantly choreographed to the mood of character and viewer. The visionary landscapes are mesmerizing beautiful.

The survival techniques the characters in the film achieve is unlike anything I've seen in film. Much like Kubrick in terms of directive style and character study, Tarkovsky puts the viewer in a kaleidoscopic landscape of mood and emotion. No clichés here though. I have not read the story which the movie is based upon, but from what I understand the characters in the film all develop a healing understanding of each other.

That is when you know [as a viewer] that you will watch something unique and

exceptional. If you are into complex, psychological science fiction in the same vain of say {The Andromeda Strain, Solaris, 2001:a space odyssey} than you shall enjoy "Stalker".

Stalker (1979)***½ Stalker is rich, spiritual and contemplative journey through the fantastic inner world of human's hope, desire, disillusions and believes. Main characters, Writer (as incarnation of irrational, imaginative and emotional aspects of our nature or subconsciousness) and Scientist (rational, logic forces or consciousness) are guided by Stalker (symbolizing our desire, will and everlasting search of meaning) to the mysterious Zone (which may represent all our spiritual goals, meanings, struggles to achieve them and barriers in our path). Breathtaking and mesmerizing images and sounds, witty dialog and strong concept are the major virtues of this feature. Writer's monologues are among the most meaningful, thought-provoking and spiritual moments I ever experienced in any art. But the movie is overlong losing its powerful initial momentum and becoming inconsistent in it's final message (by final I don't mean last in chronology but overall). Tarkovsky's earlier SF drama "Solaris" is more structured and fully developed. Nevertheless, Stalker is an outstanding piece of art movie that puts its director among the few true cinema masters. Rating: 8.5/10

Andrei Tarkovsky is a rarity among filmmakers in that he creates films that resemble elaborate (and always smartly written, beautifully shot and superbly acted) puzzles. The pieces are always scattered, and Tarkovsky relies on his viewer to bring the final element of the puzzle along with him. SOLARIS explores the boundaries of consciousness and the sense of grief (and it uses the titular planet as a metaphor for God). ANDREI ROUBLEV is a multi-layered voyage into religious belief. STALKER, however, is far more spiritual and existential than both of them.

A teacher and a scientist wish to go to a restricted patch of nature - the mythical conscious "Zone" - to make their wishes come true. To enter the area and survive its numerous danger, they hire a man sensible to the Zone's thoughts and actions, a Stalker. What they find there turns out to be very different from what they expected, as they come to discover who they truly are.

There's only so much you can say without getting drowned in details that would appear heavy-handed on paper but flow seamlessly on screen. Quite often, Tarkovsky reduces his characters to silence, letting their movements and eyes convey their thoughts and feelings and letting the viewer bring his own thoughts and beliefs to the film. One of STALKER's many treats is that it invites you to get carried away into your own thoughts, flowing with the images as it provides new questions to ponder... In that sense, the film is very much like a philosophical poem: a very simple surface covering innumerable layers of meaning. Yet the images Tarkovsky provides - whether filming landscapes or wide-shots or simply peering into his actors' extraordinary faces - make this almost hypnotic.

STALKER is a treasure: an invitation to go on a mental ride with a poet and philosopher. A film that makes you wonder more about yourself yet without making you anxious. The few existing films like STALKER are the reason why cinema is called "art"!

The characters at the heart of Tarkovsky's "Stalker" are people who embark on an arduous journey only to discover that they had no idea what they wanted to gain from it. The central character is a "stalker," a man who makes a living by illegally escorting people through a restricted area to The Room, a place where their greatest wish will supposedly come true. Exactly why the area is restricted is never made perfectly clear; in the novel this film is partially based on, "The Roadside Picnic," it was a site where aliens briefly landed, and The Room was an object they left behind almost as if it were refuse. But Tarkovsky would rather not settle for such a flat explanation. To him, The Room is a place that means different things to the people who journey there, and the stark, ravished landscape they must journey through consists of the phobias and anxieties that they can hardly bear to face. The expedition the men experience is a long and often maddening one, and there are many scenes where the camera lingers on a beautifully composed shot so that the viewer can take time to understand how the characters fit into the settings and how those settings form both natural and supernatural obstacles.

Andrei Tarkovsky was an artist who did not like giving solid answers to the questions his films posed. He sculpted his stories so that viewers who had the patience and self-discipline to stay attentive all the way through could draw their own conclusions. If there is any specific meaning to "Stalker," it is that we have to fully understand anything for which we are willing to alter our lives.

Some have claimed that "Stalker" is not a science fiction film. I'd say it's more of a science fiction film than most of what Hollywood passes off as part of the genre, most of which are simply action films with a sci-fi bent. Stalker is science fiction in the vein of the genres greatest writers like Phillip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem. It's pure science fiction, based on science, metaphysics and speculation, not some action fantasy or space opera that fits into the genre on the technicality that it takes place "in the future" or "a long, long time ago". The film is slow...very slow but it has to be to put you into the mindset of the film. After the opening 30 minutes the pacing actually draws you into the film in a more personal way more than any Cyborg-post-apocalyptic-hell crap Hollywood could spew out. This film is truly sci-fi, and truly great sci-fi.

i want to say somethings about the most poetic,philosophical and intuitive director, tarkovsky and his movies ,especially Stalker.

first of all, we must all know that, tarkovsky is not for all. his poetic understanding of life and human and putting this understanding to his movies is unique in the world for my opinion. one of the most poetic and philosophical movies of him, Stalker is that kind of movie. it is like a poem written with objects. we must feel before we try to understand.

opening sequence of film contains some kind of expressionist objects with related the moral and inner conditions of the people living in the town . the "dirty" black and white take gives the viewers ,the mood of people having nothing to live, nothing to believe and nothing to give others.and the aggressive green take in the "zone" gives another vision of the life. the camera moves very slow to make us to go into to film and feel the film. tarkovsky's usage of objects and colours is very different and that is why i think he was a cinema poet. on the other hand, in addition to this "poem written with objects", the film also has very deep philosophical content. what is life,what is human, what is goodness, what is selfishness, what is devotion, what are the bases of our civilizations etc. and people are made to think all these things, not mostly with dialogs but with objects and colours and complete vision.

for example, the three objects shown while the camera goes into the water ,but actually to the heart of human being and we see one cringe, one gun and one religious icon. and these are the metaphors of the human civilizations for my opinion. and all the journey into to the "zone" and finally "room" , actually done into the human being. into our selfishness,into our subconsciousness, our badness,our goodness, our weak and strong parts. actually i can feel that , the things searched in this movie are our lost innocence . the stalker is the only people who believes something and needs to believe .and actually the journey itself is a fake. to go to the truth,faith,justice, goodness are being related with innocence in that movie. the microcosms shown poetically in the water is another metaphor shows human being's selfish behaviour. because human, destroys the things,destroys the innocence, destroys the world living around them.our today's civilization broke our strong cooperation with nature and changed this relationship to a nature disaster. the movie gives the message of the need of mercy to all the living and even non-living things in our nature. because human being's salvation is only related with that.

and the need of hope, need of believe is human being's basic needs. and our modern world destroyed all the hopes and believes. the movie contains metaphors making us to feel and think about those needs.and the most critical thing is felt in the film that self-denial is the basic need in our world.and unfortunately this value is lost and needed to be re-gain.

i can tell about all the metaphors in the movie but no need. because every person understand those things different like kafka's novels. and we just need to watch the movie with no prejudice but with open heart.

i recommend this film to all the cinema-lovers. i recommend also not to try to understand this film. only leave yourself to this great poem and it will give you all you need.

The Region 2 Artificial Eye DVD includes interesting interviews with the cameraman and production designer. The production designer reveals that the film was completed only to be destroyed because it had been shot on experimental Kodak and couldn't be developed - a whole year's work was ruined. He proposes the possibility that the authorities of the time didn't want it to be developed. The incident nearly destroyed Tarkovsky. He was finally persuaded to go back and film a new Stalker, this time on a shoestring budget.

What does the film mean? Ask me again when I've watched it maybe ten times.

Certainly the Zone means more to Stalker than the Room. The Room is his living, but the Zone is an escape, a sanctuary from the noisy, industrial rusting slum where he lives (captured brilliantly in metallic sepia). In the Zone everything eventually returns to nature - like a pastoral coral reef growing on a battleship lichen and mosses engulf factory buildings and tanks. His first action on arriving there is to leave the other two occupied while he communes with the natural things growing in the zone, the grasses, the dew, the soil, the tiny worm that dances head-over-tail down his hand.

A beautiful, great and puzzling film. But then if it revealed all its secrets straight off then, apart from the beautiful visuals and the soundtrack it would be pointless watching it again. Great art only leaches out its secrets gradually and only to those with the desire to learn them.

It seems to me that I see Tarkovsky' movies differently from many other people. For me this film is not "too long" or boring. For me this is one of the best movies ever made.

Western culture has a very long tradition of film-making. Usually typical western movie is focused on "story". (Of course - not always) The sharpness and tension of the movie are achieved by the big number of cuts or by the fast varying of shots or by the sudden varying of plans or by some surprising angle of camera etc. Tarkovsky don't like cuts. The number of cuts is minimal. His camera is moving like in dream (Bergman envied Tarkovsky for that), it has no angles at all. Colours are pale, "dirty", very tender, soft, almost black-and-white.

In a typical western movie dialog is followed by the camera. Picture is illustrating text and is subordinated to it. In Stalker text and visual image are coexisting, cooperating with each-other. Both are moving on their own ways but at the same time, somehow - harmonically. Text and picture are not subordinated, they are both independent.

Why is Tarkovsky using such a weird language? Surely not only because he wants to opposite the dogmas of western cinema. He has a positive message too. Audience of his films has to understand his films not only at the level of thinking or emotions, but at the level of much deeper consciousness. Therefore watching his movies means rather meditation than watching-TV-and-eating-popcorn. The purpose of Tarkovsky's films is to loose the mind of audiences, to wake it up to much deeper attention. So that audiences can simply watch and see.

Stalker is not an entertainment and is not supposed to be. It means there is no sense at all to watch Stalker, when you need some amusing entertainment. Stalker is a serious movie. It is very narrow-minded to evaluate movies on the assumption of entertainment only. Of course, we live in the world of movie-consumers, produced by powerful film-companies, demanding more and more and more exciting entertainment. Consumer doesn't understand this movie. For him it is big bore.

While Tartovsky is well known for his slow pacing and poetic cinematographic lingering, this film takes his style to an unnecessary extreme. I appreciated Solaris but it wasn't done very well here. For sure, there are moments of reflection and deep visual symbolism but most of the time I was just watching pensive faces reacting to nothing at all, or repeated pleas from the stalker to listen to his instructions. There was a decent attempt at expressing some deep messages but these could have been done in a much more succinct runtime without any loss of meaning or effect: We all need some magic in the world, we don't always know what we truly want or need, we will never truly be satisfied with our searching, and so on. The uniquely spooky cinematographic and aural atmosphere deserve commendation but this didn't make up for the truly dreadful pace.

This movie is so strange. When i saw it, i realized that it was beautiful, that it was really good. but what really fascinates me is that some of the pictures and emotions i experienced in the movie keep reappearing afterwards. They haunt me so to say and i've got an incredible urge to watch the movie again. I've never experienced this so vividly and uncontrollable. Normally it's you who "summon" the pictures and feelings from the movie when you find cues (feelings/pictures) to it in your environment.

But this movie just keeps appearing without no obvious reason at all, filling you with feelings and beautiful images out of the blue.

See it and make up your own mind, could be i'm just on the verge of going mad after all ;)

Well, the story of a "Zone" that makes your deepest, most unconscious wishes come true is one that holds magical possibilities, but you won't find most of them here. Someone else has already called this film tedious and pretentious, and I agree. Actually, not to call "Stalker" pretentious would almost be an insult to Tarkovsky himself! (He even brought up the subject of why music touches our souls at one point). And not to call it tedious would be the same as kidding yourself; the film is downright unbearable at times, and probably always deliberately so. Moments of beauty and revelation do exist (like the realization of the true nature of "The Room"), but they are few and far between. Mostly the film will try your patience by having its three characters accomplish in more than two hours what they could've accomplished in less than 40 minutes. The ending is mega-disappointing. (**1/2)

A dystopian state. A group of misfits. A journey to a mythical "Zone" that might provide happiness. The theme has promise.

But my-oh-my, "Stalker" is so, so slow. And the conversations/meditations of the various characters are impossible to make any real sense of.

It's really hard to think of any scenes that work beyond the framing and the sets/locations. If you were to take a series of stills from the film you would think they were beautiful. But when you string them together, it simply fails as a film.

It lacks the spark of life and curiosity and surprise that is needed to engage a viewer. It's just a pretentious bore.

It's been 5 years (already!) since I saw my last Tarkovsky. I had come to rest with Zerkalo, because here was a man, one of few, very few in the cinema, who can permeate so deeply into the essential mystery of how things move, and he only made a handful of movies really so I must make them last, and take them in when the time feels right. My next one might be in another 5 years time, but yesterday night the time felt right for this, one I've been heartily anticipating for years.

This is Tarkovsky entering the mind once more. He never does it in any obvious, Inception way, it's never actually the mind; but we arrive at a place, a source of the imagining, where wind blows from and rings each thing into being. In Rublev he was the artist looking to paint the face of god in a godless world that concealed it. In Solyaris he was the cosmonaut. In Zerkalo, a filmmaker who recalled a whole life, receiving visions at the doorstep. Here he's the Stalker who takes us into the Zone, obvious enough.

Each one is self-referential of course about the very process of stepping into the movie. The Zone as a Tarkovsky movie - full of desolate nature and a mysterious presence that bends logic. We first have to cross the iron border where censors (his illiterate Soviet patrons) prevent entry.

This is the border guarded by the irongated mechanisms of reason that has to be crossed before we can begin our guided meditation beyond logic. One way he does this is by splitting himself into characters. One is a scientist, which is Tarkovsky's critique of a mechanistic worldview that reduces a tree to what biological facts it can explain. Another is a writer, a surrogate for Tarkovsky's intellectual self who despairs about the possibility of words to communicate sense. The Stalker himself as who Tarkovsky feels himself to be most purely, the guide who knows the whims of this landscape and wants nothing other than to bring us to the doorstep of miracle.

It's his uncanny ability, as always, to pave the way for that miracle. We never enter "the room", as it were. But we are brought to the doorstep. He cultivates the space that leads up to that apperception, this is what people call elusive and dreamlike. Tarkovsky's real work is that he teaches, rewires, us how to see, effects this change in the whole of logic of space, so that we leave with Tarkovsky eyes to go back out. This is far more valuable, and insightful, than any of the imagery that blends industrial grime, fish and religious iconography (in one memorable instance, with voice-over from John's Apocalypse). It's that elements can swirl and reflect in this way.

He does several wonderful things, some of them completely breathtaking like the meditation on music that rings a chord in the listener who responds to it with what we have no other name to call but soul. He stretches space, seemingly with no effort, both in the industrial segment early and then across the Zone. He makes the geography elastic, shuffles boundaries of forward and back. It's not that this means something again, it's that the place in which you can receive _anything_ (which is perception itself) can bent thus. The result is a marvelous sense of heaving. Thunderous views of a train, or waterfalls, crash across the frame. Same thing. It's his most sculptural work so far.

The dilapidated Soviet locales provide ample opportunity for gnarly imagery, I simply shudder to think that it was actually filmed in places like we see. It's possible that we're seeing the place that killed him and several more from cast and crew.

But there's also another side that I want to draw my distance from. In Zerkalo he had reached a point of equanimity that lets go of questions and accepts what is, that for better or worse a life was lived. This is gone here and replaced with a sense of tiredness and cynicism that narrows down to the personal. Now it's not about what is let go of, it's about what is clung onto. None of it is sci-fi of course. But too much is an artist's stream-of-consciousness on what place his own art has. Too much is angsty here. What am I to make for example of Stalker being escorted to bed by his wife, now a pathetic figure who complains that no one wants what he has to show? This is a dangerous path to take because it substitutes the struggle to make sense of life, with the struggle to deliver art about doing it and complain that no one appreciates it. The latter Tarkovsky is far less interesting to me than the former. I fear he would get worse in this regard, compounded by his exile from home.

I've read about how Tarkovsy was possibly interested in Zen Buddhism and Tao while preparing for this and may have incorporated influence. There is the notion of spontaneous arising in the Zone as the Zen mind and the bit about how the soft endures while the hard breaks that comes from the Daodejing. It doesn't really venture into either, its preconceptions simply lie elsewhere. But Tarkovsky fails to make use of the Buddhist wisdom in his own predicaments. Instead of letting go, he clings to the burden of fixed views. He suffers their weight, for no reason I might add. The title of this post is a Taoist excerpt.

So there are two sides here. The journey to where perception is made fluid and mingles with its reflection and the intellectual burden of its creator. One soft, the other hard. Maybe in another 5 years I will get to see what gives way in Nostalghia.

This film is based on a SF novel by the Strugatki brothers, called "Picknick at the side of the road" (the translation might not be very accurate). In spite of the very simplistic narrative and dramatic structure (the whole action takes place only in one day and only in three locations: the stalker's home, the bar where they meet and the Zone), this is the masterpiece of Tarkovski and probably of the whole cinema ART.

You have to understand that this film is not sensational through its action, but through its metaphors and motifs. For example, the house motif, that appears in all his movies (The Sacrifice, Andrey Rubliov, Ivan's Childhood, Nostalghia etc.) also appears in Stalker, as everything that is outside the house. That means all the world that was destroyed and made hard to live in by man. Like the whole world, the stalkers home is ugly and sordid and like Rubliov he doesn't have a place to call home: "For me everywhere is a prison". Thats why he retires and finds his peace in the dangerous but alive and full of miracles space of the Zone. The Zone, sign of extraterrestrial or divine (apparently hostile) passage on earth, remains the only breathable place for man, because man hasn't reached to spoil it yet. The presence of the "wishing well" there says it all. The time in this film is as important, as in all tarkovskian art. The rhythm of the movie is given by the time that flows in it. The long frames express a relation between action and contemplation, between the meaning of that moment compared to the meaning of history. Although there are no retrospectives, the linear flow of the frames doesn't imply neither the subjective nor the objective characteristic of time. If you noticed, in the Zone they only travel in curves: "Here the shortest way is not the straight one" says the stalker to his companions. Anyway, these are few of the reasons why I think this is a masterpiece of the cinema art. For the ones that have rated this film less then "excellent" I would recommend that they see it again... and again... and again. "BUT, EVEN THEN THEY WILL NOT BELIEVE" - says the stalker at the end of his one day adventure. :) I would like to excuse myself for the spelling mistakes! (I'm from Romania :))

Other reviewers have covered important points, but the essential quality of this film has only been danced around by a few.

'Stalker' is not to be watched, it is to be experienced. Those who find it too long or boring are standing outside the experience, looking on. Stalker is like an ancient spiritual or healing ritual. It offers you the opportunity to enter into the process and by joining in at each step, allowing the carefully crafted pacing to work on you, come to a point of transformation.

Each person has a different understanding of this film because what's in the Room is different for each of us. Every one of us has a deepest wish, usually unconscious, around which our entire life revolves. It drives all our decisions and relationships with people, things, society. And as the film makes clear, our goading wish is quite often not what we think it is - and not what we want it to be.

Entered into in the right way, this film can bring you to a new understanding of yourself. You may learn something you wish you hadn't. That's what happened for me... but I'd rather know. Others may choose differently. Others may choose not to even enter the journey into their personal Zone, in which case this film will seem long and boring, like someone else's dream.

Experiencing this film was a pivotal point in my life. It profoundly changed me. Like ancient rituals, this is what art - real art - is supposed to do, and Tarkovsky is the greatest master.

If anyone would like to discuss this film with me, please email.

Stalker may not be my favourite of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, that belongs to Andrei Rublev, which is from personal opinion the greatest Soviet film ever made. It's also not his most accessible(Ivan's Childhood), if anything only Solaris is more divisive. However Stalker is still an outstanding film, it loses momentum ever so slightly at the end but not enough for it to hurt the film.

As with all Tarkovsky films, Stalker is brilliantly made. It is grittier and more muted in colour than with his other films, but still maintains that hypnotic dream-like quality that the cinematography in his films have. The scenery is evocatively atmospheric, mundane but in a good way. Tarkovsky's direction again is nigh-on impeccable, showing a mastery of visuals and mood. Stalker is hauntingly scored but never in a too obvious way, while of all his films to me it was Stalker that had the most thought-provoking writing. Not all of it is easy to understand at first but a lot of the lines really makes one think a long while after. The story is not for everyone, with some finding the deliberate pacing too much for them but the storytelling is actually very suspenseful and there is a chilling atmosphere throughout, the film is slow but the suspense, atmosphere and cinematography kept this viewer glued to the seat. The acting's of the kind with the actors having times where they don't say a lot or anything but their body language, eyes and expressions communicate an awful lot, which is every bit as powerful as when speaking.

Overall, an outstanding film if not Tarkovsky's best or most accessible. If you are a fan of Tarkovsky, or at least familiar with him ,you shouldn't have too much trouble getting into Stalker. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

In a small, unnamed country there is an area called the Zone. It is apparently inhabited by aliens and contains the Room, wherein it is believed wishes are granted. The government has declared The Zone a no-go area and have sealed off the area with barbed wire and border guards. However, this has not stopped people from attempting to enter the Zone. We follow one such party, made up of a writer, who wants to use the experience as inspiration for his writing, and a professor, who wants to research the Zone for scientific purposes. Their guide is a man to whom the Zone is everything, the Stalker.

Superb, profound, thought-provoking movie by famed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. If ever you needed an example of how cinema is more than simply entertainment but is art, holding the mirror up to nature, this is it.

The movie starts as a science-fiction adventure, and a very intriguing and engaging one. While Tarkovsky develops the plot slowly, it is never dull. In fact, the slowness ramps up the suspense. It also gives you time to admire Tarkovsky's excellent camera work. Every shot is perfectly chosen and captured, resulting in the movie seeming more like a series of paintings than a film. This, despite the simple, basic production quality and the dearth of remastered copies (the version I watched was in 240p!).

As the movie progresses it moves from being plot-driven to something much more metaphoric and ends up covering a multitude of macro-level societal issues.

Most prominent, and important, is a debate around science vs art vs religion, each represented by the three protagonists. Tarkovsky doesn't take sides, but gives every faction a chance to state their case. What you end up with is a reasonable explanation for each side's value in society, and why there is friction between the three.

This all said, the initial instinct with this movie may be one of disappointment. There is no great resolution in the end, either to the mysteries of the Zone or the debates between the three lead characters. For those expecting closure and a neat tying up of the plot, this is likely to be a let-down.

However, if you think about it, this is perfect. Tarkovsky retains his neutral stance and leaves it to the viewer to think things through. More than anything, he is not providing solutions, or a "winner", but making you think about the issues, and life in general.

It is a brilliant movie in many ways. The visuals are stunning and haunting. Several of the scenes will remain imprinted on your memory forever. The script is literate and thought-provoking. Like any great work of art, it is not pedantic, but open to interaction with the viewer.

If it were 90 minutes long, it might be the greatest movie ever made. Unfortunately, it is 160 minutes long, and the extra footage can be tedious beyond belief and seems to do nothing to further the story or enhance the mood.

Tarkovsky makes every point with a sledgehammer, never with a scalpel. This can be supernaturally effective. It can also impel you to yell "get on with it" or "you already said that" at the screen.

I view this film as a great achievement, and yet a failure in that Tarkovsky's acquaintance with Western literature apparently did not include an encounter with the phrase "brevity is the soul of wit". As great as it is, how great might it have been!

Stalker is one of those 'important' films that people who call movies films are very serious about. I mean, they LOVE Stalker and if you don't LOVE Stalker the way they LOVE Stalker it's because you don't UNDERSTAND Stalker. As in, you like spolsions and car chases and all those western cinema (oh, they call movies cinema a lot as well) clichés while they appreciate mood and lighting and probably opera.

So, to be clear, I understand Stalker. I understand the journey the characters undertake and why. I just wish they arrived at someplace a little bit more - ambitious.

The fun takes place in a future time in an unnamed country (Estonia). One day, a meteor strike destroys most of a small community and leaves behind a danger zone called 'The Zone'. The cool thing about the Zone is the rules of reality don't apply there and it even features a special room called 'The Room' which grants wishes! Highbrow!

That's all preamble, the story proper begins with the title character Stalker saying good-bye to his very unhappy wife and setting off on his latest guided tour of the Zone. The two members of his party referred to simply as 'The Writer' and 'The Professor', cause, you know, names are dumb, both hope the Room will grant them what their hearts desire, in their cases to be relevant and famous.

The journey that follows is populated with series of long conversations about the meaning of life. Interesting I guess, except the topics soon become repetitive and the mood sullen. These are not nice people. The Writer stating all human actions are selfish except for the creation of art is as debatable and it is smug. The Stalker claims his motives for guiding people through the Zone are purely altruistic yet he routinely sends his clients in first when exploring a dangerous path while he brings up the rear. And the Professor has a hidden agenda which I won't spoil for you because if you make it to the third act you deserve some sort of reward.

At about the 60 minute mark it became clear to me Stalker was going to be about the ride and not the destination. That's fine and as other reviewers have said it is a very, very pretty film to look at I just wish the characters had moved beyond the trite 'What's it all about anyway?' Sunday afternoon coffee shop chit chat and actually tried to come up with some answers for themselves.

Near the end of the film Starkers party is able to deduce (based on nothing) what the Room really offers people. This reveal serves the plot but it's no great insight into the human condition. It certainly isn't worth the 2 hour wait it took to get there.