Stalker

Last night I was watching Stalker on DVD. It's a Russian science-fiction film from 1979 directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Several decades previously, a meteorite crash creates an area called "the Zone" a bleak water-logged wasteland full of litter, decaying machinery and ruined buildings. Somewhere in the Zone is an area called "the Room" where an individual's deepest desires are revealed and made a reality. However, access to the Zone is strictly illegal, and once there a traveller has to negotiate an ever-changing maze of lethal traps, which can only be avoided in a kind of aimless zig-zag. The only people who can traverse the Zone in any kind of safety or special guides known as "Stalkers". The film's plot revolves around a Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) who lives with his wife and disabled daughter in the depressing, industrial city just outside the Zone. Against the wishes of his wife, the Stalker has agreed to guide a Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and a Professor (Nikolai Grinko) through the Zone to find the Room. The Writer is seeking artistic inspiration from the Room, while the Professor is seeking genius. The Stalker doesn't care about the Room, he only cares about the Zone itself, because that's the only thing that he believes gives his miserable life any meaning or excitement. The scenes in the city are filmed in black and white while the scenes in the Zone, which make up most of the film, are filmed in muted colour. The film mostly consists of the three guys trudging through the Zone stopping occasionally for long philosophical converstaions. As with most Tarkovsky films some people regard it as hypnotic and beautiful, while others see it as tediously slow-moving. I like it a lot though, I've seen it several times now. Apparently most of the film was shot on experimental film-stock which was ruined by the laboratories where it was being developed leading to almost all the footage being completely unusable and the wasting of a year's work, so Tarkovsky and co had to go back and make the film all over again. Most of the film was also shot near a chemical plant that was churning out poisonous liquids into the water, and many of the cast and crew ended up dying untimely deaths, including Tarkovsky.

I have to say that I do find watching Andrei Tarkovsky films incredibly relaxing, because they are so slow, but at the same time really quite mesmerising. It ends up being a bit like meditation for me. Of course they usually last between two to three hours, but they usually leave me feeling really quite refreshed.

It was the start of another week at work for me. I have got Friday and next Monday off though, so that should be really good. My friend Joe lent me a couple of DVDs of a Japanese anime (animation) series called The Guyver.