Stalker (1979)

Infra September 17, 2017

This movie is like an onion, has multiple layers. To understand it, you have to be very careful and pacient. You have to focus on movie and not doing anything else while you watch it, because if you don't, you won't understand it. http://cinematol.ro/pareri-filme-stalker-calauza-1979/

CinemaSerf June 14, 2022

★ 7/10

This really is the cinematic equivalent of "be careful for you wish for". Two characters - a teacher and a professor, seek out a "stalker" who can lead them through the maze of challenges that culminates in an heavily restricted area know as the zone. Why? Rumour has it, that when in that zone you may make wishes that will immediately come true. What is this place? Is it real, imaginary, alien, all of these - or it is all just a cerebral hallucination of a place that, like El Dorado, we imagine to be where all of our problems can go away, be solved, eradicated. It is loosely based on the Strugatsky brothers early seventies sci-fi novel "Roadside Picnic" but it's fair to say that Andrei Tarkovsky opens up the more linear aspects of their story leaving us with a much less defined and more intangible series of threads as these men undergo significant travails to get to a place - that freque…

Filipe Manuel Neto May 31, 2023

★ 2/10

**More style than content.** This was my first contact with the cinematographic work of Andrei Tarkovsky, a Soviet filmmaker who would end his career outside his native country when he fell into disgrace for allegedly spending too much money on films that were not worthy of the expense. A regrettable attitude, but typical of countries that prefer to spend money on missiles than on support for culture and education, especially after considering how dangerous and insubmissive can be a cultured population capable of thinking without anyone from a party saying what It's the right thing. This is not, however, an ordinary Soviet film, loaded with subliminal messages, more or less direct, demonizing the rich and praising the effort and dignity of workers. On the contrary. Tarkovsky takes us to a desolate world, apparently hostage to repressive authority. There is nothing beautiful there. …

CarsonTrent December 23, 2025

★ 10/10

**Metaphysical themes explored in Stalker** The three main characters are Archetypes: Writer, Professor (scientist) and Stalker (seeker). One is the Stalker which is the seeker, a man searching for redemption which has faith ( Faith is an unreserved opening of one's mind to whatever the truth turns out to be / opposed to belief which is opening up to the truth as long as it fits with preconceived ideas and wishes). Stalker lives in a polluted industrial town which represents technological development of Man, with its positive and negative aspects, such as his paraplegic daughter which may have been born this way due to pollution, but may also have gained some other powers (issues nevertheless irrelevant to the fundamental nature of being). He feels in prison everywhere, because he is seeking for meaning. He cannot settle for the mundane. That's why he fights with his wife, but also…