Synopsis: In a devastated landscape the stalker guides 2 men towards a room that has the power to fulfil their deepest wishes
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Actors: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsky, Nikolai Grinko
Date: 1979
How viewed: lovefilm rental
Rating: 2/5
David Meyer says:
An unbelievably slow meditation on the necessary difficulty of any quest for spirituality, and the limited potential for man's redemption
I say:
I realise this is the point where I lose all credibility as a film buff, but I have to admit this film was far too slow and obtuse for me. The story concerns a journey to a room in a building in the middle of the Zone (a sealed off area that has been devastated by war? alien invasion? nuclear explosion?) where it is believed your deepest wish will come true. The guide (the 'stalker') takes 2 men (the 'writer' and the 'professor') to the room, using his intuition to avoid all the unseen dangers and constantly changing landscape. It takes a long time, they get there, they prevaricate, they go home. I know it's really a long philosophical discussion about art vs science, about the difficulty of achieving spirituality, about perhaps the thing that you wish for is not what it seems, but I think I've got better things to do with my time! However, then again there's that last enigmatic scene when his disabled daughter (who was born in The Zone) psychokinetically moves glasses across a table, hmmm...
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