Unpopular Opinion: Tarkovsky's STALKER sucks.

I guess I'm like an unofficial non-automated bot. Posting random lists and comments, but not computer generated. I can understand why I could be confused with one of the guys who joins and immediately posts 10 threads about some Chinese gadget or whatever. But actually, no I'm real.

Yes, reading some of the comments now I can see that the Stalker chat still seems very strong in fairness.
I just posted blind as somewhere to put my controversial opinion about Blanchett.

Personally the only Tarkovsky I really rate is Mirror, and I think Solaris is pretty good but not amazing like many people think. But I'm aware that his body of work is very widely admired amongst film fans/experts.

I like your posts just fine, and I wasn't inferring you were a bot. It just so happened I did a few bot swipes before reading your post, which you have to admit is a bit of a non-sequitur.

I still need to see Mirror, but I have had trouble getting my hands on a copy. Solaris is tops for me, but I tend to like both versions of the film, so I think I just tend to favor the material there.

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Connect your laptop to a bigger screen and you should be good enjoying this masterpiece!

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HEI guys.

Thank you!

As a pretty huge fan of Tarkovsky, with Rublev being one of the greatest films ever made, and Solaris being one of the greatest sci Fi films ever made, and Mirror being one of the greatest movies ever made that I don't remotely understand, and Sacrifice being one of the greatest overlooked masterpieces ever made....I just found Stalker incredibly dull.


But this doesn't mean Im going to dismiss the movie, or assume I'm right and everyone else is wrong, or that there is a conspiracy of phony cinephiles out there propping up it's letterboxes rating. What I do is listen to what people who do like it have to say about it, not simply to agree with them like a spineless syncophant, but to understand where people who aren't me might be coming from, and what they got out of it, or what they saw that maybe I missed.


After all, being correct isn't the point of art. Listening and being receptive to different points of view is what matters. The rest is just a distraction.

Half of you are right! and the other half wrong! Sorry that's all I got as I haven't read this thread for three days.

This is exactly how I felt concerning Jeanne Deilman. Wrote a freakishly long review about it and gave that bitch (the movie, not Jeanne) a 7.

SpelingError would probably help you out Squire:
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...ad.php?t=64603

I found Mirror welcomingly easy to follow (how's that for an unpopular opinion?).

I mean... is there much else to it - or the idea of it - other than admiring (the ambitious) task of capturing a nation's soul and (recent) history by following the life events and dreams of a man at his deathbed? I surely don't suggest that I got all of it (It's symbolism, for example, is very Russian I hear)...but I loved how otherwise universal it felt.

I struggled more with The Sacrifice (the bit where they're "ascending" is unintentionally funny to me, whereas the same shot in Mirror isn't - maybe that's because it could easily be labled as a dream scene)...but that's where I stand atm.

Is it ever the wrong time to objectify someone and say they are bad at their job?

I was not super taken with Stalker, but I certainly liked it more on the second viewing knowing what to expect. I just don't really click with it emotionally.

I think it also should be said that when it comes to adaptations of a book, there are movies that try to adapt in a more faithful way, and movies where the filmmaker is using the book to maybe explore some of their own ideas. Stalker might fall more into the second category, and the way that Tarkovsky chose to portray (and not portray) the Zone may have more to do with the message he wanted to send and less with being faithful to the original text.