WARNING: Defense of "Stalker" In Progress

[dennis grace]

MantaRay lashes:
>We've been bashing Tarkovsky for four or five days now and this is the best
>you have to offer? What's a "little concern?" Are you trying to tell us
>you're maybe possibly thinking about giving us bashers some good reasons not
>to bash? Are you notifying us of possible developments? WELL DO IT! I'm
>trying to remember the last time "This is an amazing _______" was good enough
>explanation for anything. STALKER sucked, STALKER sucked, STALKER sucked. 
>
>It was close to the worst movie I have ever seen (the worst was named,
>ironically "Something Special"). At my bookstore, I checked out a couple of
>books on Tarkovsky and Russian Cinema. None could give me a satisfactory
>reason for thinking that movie was anything else other than an exercise in
>pretentiousness.

Okay, MR, how about chacun a son gout?  Or, de gustibus non disputandem est?
I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, but I found _Stalker_ haunting and
often heart-wrenching.  The opening sequence drags, but it also creates a
profound sense of menace that maintains throughout much of the film.
Tarkovsky also eschews the easy answer once inside the Zone.  Sure, at first
I was annoyed by the fact that the Stalker was unclear as to the particular
danger inherent in a misstep in the Zone, but once a character strayed,
Tarkovsky managed to show the possible consequences in terms of the terror
of shifting perspectives without any facile reliance upon explosions or FX
monsters.  

If you didn't like it, you didn't like it.  That doesn't mean those of us
who enjoyed it are wrong.  Hell, I loathed Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_
(yes, I mean the book), and I still think _Desperado_ (Robert Rodriguez) was
just silly, but I won't label them mediochre for having failed to engage my
interest.  I know foax who feel the same about TRP.

A-and, if you didn't like _Stalker_ don't see the brilliant recent film
_SAFE_, another movie that creates moods through brilliant use of empty
spaces and times.

dgg
_____________________________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist
amazing at mail.utexas.edu

Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.
                                                  --Dwight D. Eisenhower

(Don't Republicans say just the cutest things?)