X
- 1982
- Not Rated
- Janus Films
- 2 h 42 m
- 1982
- Not Rated
- Janus Films
- 2 h 42 m
Summary A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires.
- 1982
- Not Rated
- Janus Films
- 2 h 42 m
- 1982
- Not Rated
- Janus Films
- 2 h 42 m
Stalker
8.2
Where to Watch
Summary A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires.
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 Critic Reviews
85
94% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
6% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 Critic Reviews
85
94% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
6% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest masterpiece, the Russian director’s 1979 film Stalker is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality.
Tarkovsky realizes the allegorical tale with an overwhelming density of visual detail; the riot and clash of textures—between black-and-white and color, agonized contrasts of light and murk, shimmery reflections on vast pools of water, and abrading striations of grass and stone—form a frenzied vocabulary and lend the film the torrential inner force of Dostoyevskian rhetoric.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 User Ratings
8.2
88% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
12% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 17 User Ratings
8.2
88% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
0% Mixed
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
12% Negative
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
Rumor has it Logan Paul walked out of the movie theater because "everyone's just stalking"
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work.
Subscribing to the belief that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Tarkovsky locates Stalker’s spiritual center in his protagonists’ weathered countenances.
The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own.
Stalker is an epic and frequently puzzling inquiry into freedom and faith, which unfolds in an unspecified totalitarian society.
Stalker offers the eye so little that it might well have made a better novel, or short story, than a nearly three-hour-long film.
This movie is one of the most beautiful shot and atmospheric film I have to watched it is a Odyssey into the zone and into the hearts of men.
The piercing in the movie is amazing. It is snow but feels so much faster than it is it was like I was watching it and in what I thought was an hour. I had already watched an hour and half of it it goes on with such a fast-paced in a slow way.
environment designn is beautiful and so realistic. I didn't know it. It was a set or if they really found a ruin in Soviet Union . It's just holy s***. I could not look away this looks so beautiful.
And the characters feel like they are on a journey looking for something that maybe does not exist and they feel so deep when they talk maybe it's because they're supposed to be men of learning but it just feels so interesting to listen to the conversations.
It's just a marvelous movie and the first I have watched of that directors, so now I have to buy a box set and watch the wrist.
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Faith in God and giving meaning to life
The movie "Stalker" was made based on a novel called "Roadside Picnic" in 1979, which is one of the famous movies in the history of cinema. Measured mise-en-scènes, practical and deep close-ups, and lasting portraits, and the usual characteristics of Tarkovsky's cinema, can be seen in this film. The main theme of the movie is faith, which can give meaning to the universe and human life.
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Emperor has no clothes! While the following will stand out starkly from the universal acclaim this movie usually gets I have to stand witness to the extreme contrary. After having read the absolutely fantastic 1971 sci-fi novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky “Roadside Picnic” (or “Picnic by the Roadside” in other translations) and was blown away with how modern it still reads after more than half a century, with perfectly structured plot and characters, an unforgettable ending and some truly deep insights befitting not only the best of the genre but “high” literature as well, I excitedly dived into viewing Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” as the purported adaptation of the said novel. Having previously loved Tarkovsky’s “Rublev” and another sci-fi adaptation from S. Lem “Solaris”, where his slow-moving method of filmaking worked and made sense, not to mention that Strugatskys themselves were commissioned to write the screenplay, I thought - what’s not to like? And OMG - what a mess of a movie I was greeted with! Three hour long borefest of incoherent story and wooden acting, artsy-fartsy pointless cinematography and irritatingly shallow faux philosophical musings of an “auteur” at the height of his acclaim blinded by a megalomanic ego! And not a - shred - of connection with the dynamic literary source behind it, beyond the concept of the “Zone” and the term “stalker” casually lifted from the novel and then arrogantly dropped by the wayside of director’s egomaniacal trip! I endured through the entire slog just to make sure nothing changed by the end of the ridiculously long runtime (it did not) and then read further into the details around production of this utter failure, both as a standalone work and as an adaptation. It turns out that due to his insistence on doing everything himself he made the crew work for weeks on end in some really toxic locations in Estonia and reportedly got cancer from it that was ultimately the cause of death for himself, his wife and one of the main actors in the movie! Could not believe this turn of events he caused but I like to think that if he just - adapted - the awesome book he already had as it is he would have avoided that fate both for himself and for his work! I strongly suggest you skip wasting your time on this vanity project, even if you are an art school or a film school student, and just go read the masterpiece that is Strugatsky’s book while waiting and praying some more capable hands (Denis Villeneuve’s?) will one day make an attempt at properly adapting this material to screen as it justly deserves.
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Awards
Fantasporto
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Cahiers du Cinéma
• 1 Nomination
