Thursday, July 9, 2009
Film Get Your Reps: Stalker
Posted by Benjamin Strong on Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 8:24 AM
Seven years before Chernobyl and five years before he defected, Russian past master Andrei Tarkovsky delivered this near-medieval fever vision of a countryside laid to waste by nuclear fallout. Grim premise aside, Tarkovsky’s no-effects approach to SF (in counterpoint to 1972’s high-tech Solaris) as well as his commitment to the long-take resulted in a masterpiece of style that lesser filmmakers have been biting off ever since (Children of Men is unimaginable without it). From the sepia shadows of the first half-hour to the arrival two hours later at the much-discussed Room, Stalker’s quest narrative unfolds in a metaphorical landscape that no amount of Soviet dissemblance can disguise.
Stalker plays tonight, Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening at the Walter Reade's Tarkovsky series.
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