Unpopular Opinion: Tarkovsky's STALKER sucks.

The Zone is supposed to be a dangerous, mysterious, and magical place. Tarkovsky managed to suck all of the life, magic, and mystery out of it and substitute it with mental masturbation and close ups from a nature walk in the USSR. Compared to the book upon which it is based, and the game based upon it, it is categorically a snoozefest. I couldn't wait for it to be over. Even when they finally reach the room at the end, for all intents and purposes, nothing really happens. The only remotely interesting part of the movie is their breaking into The Zone. I don't think this movie deserves the praise that is heaped upon it, and ultimately I think it's purported high-brow intellectuality is just a facade behind which people hide a movie that isn't just boring, but a waste of the viewer's time.

Edit: I'm not sure that we actually see any living creatures aside from the three main characters after their break-in to The Zone. Just wanted to add that. He literally took life out of the movie. Of course, I may be misremembering.

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I have to watch it again. My recollection was that it wasn't that coherent as a narrative, but visually fascinating. The DVD is lurking in my disk shelf somewhere.

The film takes its time to build atmosphere and explore themes, which can feel tedious if you're not invested in its mood or ideas.

I understand Stalker not being everyone's cup of tea.But saying it sucks because not enough happens... doesn't sit well with me. It's a movie about oppressive dread, and the fear of learning we are not the people we think we are.


I haven't read the book or played the game, so I can't say how they compare, but the movie works fine for me.


If you want something similar, but with more action, I recommend Annihilation.

Well, if you get piled on here, your thread title is right. If you don't, your thread title is wrong. It appears you're in a bit of a pickle here. Do you want to be wrong and agreed with or right and attacked?

Tarkovsky films are always a slow burn, but I think Stalker encapsulates the hesitation people have when they are just on the edge of reaching a goal, dream, or what have you... especially when a person has had to conquer some fear to get to it and then once that goal can either be a complete let down or can be something positive but entirely different than what they expected.

I can't speak to the source material because I haven't read it and am not familiar with it, and as such I can only speak to the film in its own merits or in comparison to other films, but there's definitely a Wizard of Oz like structure and theme going on here and I think it's a brilliant film... one of my favorites actually and my favorite Tarkovsky film. The images are beautiful and the contrast between the three locales is spectacular... the sepia tones of the first part of the film taking place in what looks to be a burned out almost post-apocalyptic urban warzone nightmare and then the colors albiet washed out greens and blues of the Zone and then finally the surreal and disoriented dunes, chambers, and corridors of the zone itself.

The film keeps moving along as its sloth-like pace, but still progressing as each of the three men have different dreams or objectives. Who knows what to make of it really, but it's brilliant. Tarkovksy is an amazing filmmaker that can push a viewer to the absolute limits of tolerance for a slow pace, ambience, and allegorical or thematic and symbolic meaning without ever becoming a true exercise in pretention the way a film like Jeannie Delmein Rue 29-58-29... whatever the Hell that exercise in garbage is or more recently Russian Ark. Films that are true nonsense masquerading as high art via gaslighting.

Stalker is really great though, but you have to be in the right mood or frame of mind for it. Also noteworthy to if any of you are gamers how the tone, feel, and atmosphere of Stalker was brilliantly recreated in the Russian Metro video games series.

All this of course makes sense as the world was still in the Cold War, albeit Russia was in serious economic crisis by the late 1970s, even with oil prices sky high, but realizing their military spending and spending in their nuclear programs on the heels of their insane spending of the previous' decades space program and just on the eve of their disasterous debacle in trying to expand into the Graveyard of Empire (Afghanistan)... yeah it's no wonder that the Russian citizens, filmmakers, or whomever could see parallels between the reality of Russia in the late 1970s and early 1980s just prior to the fall and a piece of fiction like Stalker which has a very depression and defeated tone to it. The funny thing is it took Russia to kick their own asses and all the US had to do was press them economically in a globalist and geopolitical form of "Keeping up with the Jones."

Like I said, please don't confuse brilliant slow burn tone-poems and cerebral thought pieces like Stalker with toilet paper like Jeanne Diehlman Foux alala...blah blah blah. I know you didn't mention that film by name, but the criticism you laid upon Stalker would much better fit that thing.

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"The Zone is supposed to be a dangerous (...)"

The only way to show danger is with antagonists doing bad things, right?

"mysterious"
What makes something mysterious to you? Isn't the vastness of the empty environment and what supposedly happens there mysterious enough? The area itself is so mysterious that the viewer can't see any further than the characters' vision.

"and magical place"
If the room isn't magical enough, then nothing is magical.

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"This Would Sharpen You Up And Make You Ready For A Bit Of The Old Ultra-Violence."

Yes.

The thing with burn is that it implies fire, and I feel that this is a movie that, figuratively speaking, has no flame.

I would say there is fire to the seemingly mundane nature walks. An excerpt from a review I wrote awhile ago:

"In many ways, this is more of a feel than a film. Initially, the transition from sepia to color when they enter the Zone makes the area seem like a haven as opposed to the drab outside world they're stuck in. However, the more we learn about the Zone and the various people who had ventured there prior to the film (like a previous guide named Porcupine who killed himself after becoming rich in the Zone), the more dangers the area is revealed to have, and the more omens they witness as they make their way through it (a group of abandoned army tanks, a black dog which recurs throughout their time in the Zone, or a human skeleton they pass by), the more apparent it is that the room isn't as fulfilling as it appears, thus making the initial jump from sepia to color a façade which conceals many darker undertones."

I also think there's plenty to be said about the inexplicable intensity of certain sequences (the rail car ride, the tunnel scene, the final shot) and some interesting subtext on nuclear disasters bubbling underneath the surface.

Anyways, I don't know if this will change your opinion, but I figured I'd share regardless.

This was my major complaint for the film as well, but I still enjoyed the direction and the psychoanalysis.

I just feel like, considering the source material, and what others have done with it, the movie is very bland. And ultimately, "it's thought provoking" isn't an adequate excuse for me. You can make something thought provoking without it being bland. Hell, think of something like the Terminator franchise. Kind of a popcorn flick, and yet it's still arguably the main point of reference when we think of the potential consequences of unchecked AI development, and potentially sentient AI. It's entertaining, and if you choose to think on it, then it's thoughtful too.

Tarkovsky is freaking frustrating for me. I hate him in a way. But I definitely would never consider him or his films to suck. But he is a challenging filmmaker for sure.

Are you familiar with the director outside of Stalker?

There's no doubt that Stalker sucks...for the OP that is.

My review of Stalker which says why I feel the way I do about it:

The slow pace also gives you time to reflect on what was said and come to some of your own conclusions. The vast majority of films don't give you that. And since I love psychoanalysis in film, I greatly appreciated having that time to reflect while travelling through the Zone with the main characters.

Honestly, I'd say his slow cinema films are his worst. They aren't bad, but all three are overrated to me, especially Nostalgia. His experimental films like Mirror and Solaris are just... wonderful. I adore Mirror for its incredible technical feat: cinematically capturing the thought-process of the human mind, and Solaris was a perfectly done adaptation of a perfectly done novel with its own stuff to say.

I think I’ve enjoyed Stalker and Nostalgia the most actually haha. But I understand either camp. And also the neither camp hah

I've never been a fan of Tarkovsky, but I've seen almost all his movies because I have nothing left to watch, but I didn't see this, thinking it would be a Russian 2001

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Personally, I'm looking forward to the upcoming American remake starring The Rock. He will surely blow up some s-hit in The Zone to get in... the Zone.

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