Christopher SoallStalker
May 29th 2009 01:29
Stalker was a Russian alien on American soil. So it would seem. A review of the 1979 film appeared October 20, 1982, in the New York Times and was insistently insulting: the film was plodding, ugly, and poorly acted. The Russians might have beaten us to space, but obviously their science fiction sucked.
I confess I can't understand what the reviewer saw (or didn't see) in the film to draw her ire so completely. Stalker is ponderous and melancholy, a slow film rather than the pew-pew, whoosh of Star Wars. Watched a certain way, it is not science fiction at all, but a philosophical brooding on the nature of belief. There is a magical Zone where you can find your greatest desire in a special room, as long as you do not anger the attendant, invisible forces that guard it . . . or there's an overgrown abandoned town, lightly, but dangerously irradiated, where madmen give tours to the gullible. Both interpretations are perfectly valid. This might be what drove the reviewer crazy. These fields may be lush and these dunes absorbing, but they're just everyday fallow fields, and this is just where some industry dumped some extra sand years ago. Or are they? I simply can't agree that the actors are 'interchangeable,' when all three have a distinct, conflicting personality, but I suppose they are all balding older men. Searching for meaning after they've tried everything else.
Almost no music, long stretches without dialogue, a style that asks the viewers to make their own conclusions. Or don't. I found this movie both beautiful and thoughtful, a slow epiphany on how much we give up when we lose our capacity for credulity (or do we?), but your mileage may vary. You can hardly have a quieter film than this.
I confess I can't understand what the reviewer saw (or didn't see) in the film to draw her ire so completely. Stalker is ponderous and melancholy, a slow film rather than the pew-pew, whoosh of Star Wars. Watched a certain way, it is not science fiction at all, but a philosophical brooding on the nature of belief. There is a magical Zone where you can find your greatest desire in a special room, as long as you do not anger the attendant, invisible forces that guard it . . . or there's an overgrown abandoned town, lightly, but dangerously irradiated, where madmen give tours to the gullible. Both interpretations are perfectly valid. This might be what drove the reviewer crazy. These fields may be lush and these dunes absorbing, but they're just everyday fallow fields, and this is just where some industry dumped some extra sand years ago. Or are they? I simply can't agree that the actors are 'interchangeable,' when all three have a distinct, conflicting personality, but I suppose they are all balding older men. Searching for meaning after they've tried everything else.
Almost no music, long stretches without dialogue, a style that asks the viewers to make their own conclusions. Or don't. I found this movie both beautiful and thoughtful, a slow epiphany on how much we give up when we lose our capacity for credulity (or do we?), but your mileage may vary. You can hardly have a quieter film than this.
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