Tarkovsky's The Stalker

[Derek C. Maus]

On Mon, 4 Jan 1999, Richard Romeo wrote:

> I expected heavy visuals but this movie is very subtle in its splendor.  
> Picture Dostoevsky on either some low-level mescaline or some really 
> great hash.  Lots and I mean lots, of dialogue.

See entry under Tarkovskii (tm).

> I'll leave it up to those who've seen it to make the connections with
> that other "Zone."  I'm sure there are plenty.  I think the movie came
> out in 1979. 

I remember a bit of a fur-flying episode about "Stalker" last summer
(haven't checked the archives) and I posted this back in September in
response to Michael Workman's mention of it: 

> "Stalker" is an Andrei Tarkovskii adaptation of a really awesome novella
> by Russian sci-fi satirists Boris and Arkady Strugatskii called
> "Roadside Picnic". The story is about an area called "The Zone" (!!!!)
> in which unnamed and undepicted alien visitors have left behind a lot of
> technology--like the rubbish left behind after a roadside picnic--that
> no one on earth really understands how to use, but everybody wants
> because they have found ways to adapt it to different (and money-making)
> purposes. The Zone has been declared off-limits, supposedly because of
> the hidden dangers that exist therein as a result of the alien contact.
> A few "privately-contracted" individuals known as Stalkers go into the
> Zone illegally and bring out artifacts that they then sell to various
> and nefarious speculators.
>
> Like most Tarkovskii films, this adaptation is extremely long (about 3
> hours) and extremely uncluttered by dialogue, making it very difficult
> at times to understand just what is going on. Also, he has adapted the
> original story very freely, putting it much more into a framework of
> science-for-profit vs. science-for-edification. Still, if you liked "The
> Sacrifice" or "Solaris" this is a really interesting (and visually
> bleak, something akin to Jan Saudek photography) film. Read the story
> first--it's available in a good translation. The Strugatsky brothers are
> excellent Russian parallels to Harlan Ellison, Philip Dick, etc. 

I'd be pretty cautious about making too many connections between _GR_ and
this film/story, just because I'm pretty sure the book wasn't translated
into Russian (at least not officially--I can't speak for private
translations, but that's a task I can't imagine too many people
undertaking for simple shits-and-grins...) until much later. Still, the
parallels, even if unintentional, are interesting, perhaps speaking to a
similarity of mindset among widely disparate individuals.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Derek C. Maus               |   "Don't go around saying the world
dmaus at email.unc.edu         |      the world owes you a living.
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    |       The world owes you nothing.
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/  |          It was here first."
                            |                  --Mark Twain
-----------------------------------------------------------------------