Movies - Stalker

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	Movies - Stalker

Stalker (Russian: Сталкер) is a 1979 film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It describes the journey of three men travelling through a post-apocalyptic wilderness called the Zone to find a room that can grant wishes. The English title is a misleading translation of a Russian word lacking the sinister connotations of the English word "stalker". The title role is played by Alexander Kaidanovsky, who guides two others through the area, the Writer, played by Anatoly Solonitsyn, and the Professor, played by Nikolai Grinko. Alisa Freindlich played the Stalker's wife.

The film is loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky an early draft of the screenplay was also published as novel Stalker that differs much from the finished movie. In Roadside Picnic, the Zone is full of strange artifacts and phenomena that defy known science. A vestige of this idea carries over to the film, in the form of Stalker's habit of throwing metal nuts down a path before walking along it. The characters in Roadside Picnic do something similar when they suspect they are near gravitational anomalies that could crush them.

About the production

This was Tarkovsky's second science fiction film (after Solaris). Like that film, Tarkovsky downplayed the science fiction aspects of the novel, making the film more about his philosophical and spiritual concerns.

The central part of the film was shot in a few days at a deserted hydro power plant on the Pirita river in Tallinn. When the team got back to Moscow, they found that all the film had been improperly developed. The film was shot on imported Kodak stock, and Soviet laboratories were not familiar with it. There was also speculation that the Soviet authorities deliberately mishandled the stock of the film. Tarkovsky was officially frowned upon by the Soviet authorities, not because of his political stances (Tarkovsky rarely talked about politics), but that his films dealt with issues of spirituality and the quest for God. The USSR was an officially atheistic state, and Tarkovsky's films digressed from this official line, making him suspect. However, his films were relatively popular in the USSR, and he was considered by many in Western Europe as the "Soviet Union's greatest filmmaker", so he was allowed to continue making films.

During the shooting before the film stock problem was discovered, relations with the first cinematographer, Georgi Redberg, were in serious deterioration. After screening the material, Redberg left the first screening session and never came back. By the time this film stock defect was found out, Tarkovsky had shot all the outdoor scenes. Some say that Tarkovsky was actually happy about this occurring, as he was unhappy about what had been shot so far. Initially, the Soviet film boards wanted to shut the film down, officially writing it off. But Tarkovsky came up with a solution-he asked to make a two part film, which meant additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up reshooting almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. Tarkovsky made the film more of a religious parable than a straightforward science fiction film (similar to what he did in Solaris). He was constantly rewriting the script during the actual shooting and during the dubbing and editing (the film was post-dubbed, like many Soviet films were).

Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths. Many attribute the long and arduous shooting schedule of the film, and the physical conditions of the terrain where it was made. Vladimir Sharun recalls:

Many cineasts say the film is prophetic, foretelling Chernobyl. It is suspected that the 1957 accident in the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, which resulted in a several thousand square kilometer deserted "zone" outside the reactor , may have influenced this film. Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident completed the circle: life imitating film imitating novel imitating life. In fact, those employed to take care of the abandoned power nuclear power plant refer to themselves as "stalkers", and to the area around the damaged reactor as the "Zone."

The crew

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Second director: Tarkovsky's wife Larissa Tarkovskaya
Screenplay: Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky & Andrei Tarkovsky
(uncredited)
Editor: Lyudmila Feiginova
First camera: Georgi Rerberg (none of his footage was used, see above)
Second camera: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky (the footage used in the movie)
Sound designer: Vladimir Ivanovich Sharun

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Movies - Stalker

About the production

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