Stalker (DVD)

I debated waiting for the DVD category to appear for this but, as I've said quite a bit about the film, I thought it was just as appropriate to pop it here. The DVD review is at the bottom. Director Andrei Tarkovsky Writer Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky Stars Aleksandr Kajdanovsky, Alisa Fredndlikh, Anatoly Solonitsin, Nikolai Grinko, Natasha Abramova Certificate PG Running time 155 minutes Made Russia 1979 In the movie world, where sci-fi equates to hi-tech space operas, like Star Wars, or gothic excess, such as The Matrix, it is good to be reminded that there is more to the genre than flashing light sabres and ...  Read the complete review

'Stalker' is, along with Tarkovsky's other most famous film 'Solaris', one of my favourite films. The excellent re-release of most of Tarkovsky's more important features by Artifical Eye on DVD has offered them to a new generation of audiences. 'Stalker' is, briefly, the story of three men who break into a heavily fotified region of an unnamed country that has been forcibly evacuated due to a similarly unnamed contamination. Alexander Kaidanovsky plays the title role, a mysterious and emotional ex-military man who supports his family with the money from dangerous sorties leading clients into the zone. In this instance he is take two men known only ...  Read the complete review

I waited a long time to see this film. I know it was shown on channel 4 in the mid 1980s but I didn't catch it. I waited and waited in vain for it be shown again. The film came up in a conversation I had with a friend in Poland. We were talking about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986), the radioactive fall out had affected the country a few years previously. This film was mentioned in relation to the subject since the Chernobyl disaster closely followed the release of the film which his hailed by many as a prophetic vision of ecological catastrophe. I had seen a few of Tarkovsky's films but not this one and my friend recommended it as a 'must see'. Finally last year I ...  Read the complete review

Whilst perusing the DVD section of HMV on Oxford Circus, I came across the World Cinema section. Noticing it was also a sale section with really cheap foreign titles, I scoured through the lot, mainly on the hunt for Japanese films. Instead, I came across "Stalker", I had a look at it, the cover of the case, depicting a man laying in shallow waters intrigued me. "Hello, what's all this about?" Turned it over and had a read, sounded even more interesting. But, alas, I only had enough money to get home. So I put it back. But the seeds had been planted, I became incredibly desperate to see it, couldn't find it in my ...  Read the complete review

Tarkovsky's films have a reputation for being slow and impenetrable, but his two 'science fiction' films - the other is 'Solaris', from the Stanislav Lem novel - are relatively accessible, partly through being located in a specific genre. While 'Solaris' uses the traditional visual trappings of SF - the characters are in a spaceship, orbiting a mysterious planet - the only genre pointers in 'Stalker' are given in the dialogue. This trick, familiar to anyone who has sat through terminally low-budget SF films (a dead breed, perhaps thankfully, by all accounts) actually works here, against all the odds. It makes for a fascinating ...  Read the complete review