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Stalker

1979

Andrei Tarkovsky

Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Natalya Abramova ...

7.9

14,845

Sci-Fi. Drama. Mystery The setting is an unnamed country in an unforeseen postapocalyptic future. A meteorite has landed, and its impact has created a mysterious phenomenon known as the Zone, within which resides a sinister room said to grant humanity’s deepest desires. Only Stalkers are able to enter the Zone, bringing intrepid citizens to test their strength and desires against the Zone’s enigmatic treacheries. The film follows one such Stalker (Alexander ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"[A] masterpiece (...) His mise en scene is mesmerizing, and the final scene is breathtaking. Not an easy film, but almost certainly a great one."	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"A somber futuristic fantasy from the Soviet Union, attempts to build an apocalyptic vision out of the most impoverished materials imaginable. (...) 'Stalker' offers the eye so little that it might well have made a better novel, or short story, than a nearly three-hour-long film."	NEG
United Kingdom	Philip French The Guardian	"Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work."	POS
United States	Nick Schager Slant	"In aggregate, however, what these various artifacts, objects, and narrative events do ultimately capture is something akin to the essence of what man is made of (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Mark Olsen Los Angeles Times	"The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own."	POS
United Kingdom	Chris Peachment Time Out	"Hang on in to the ending, where a plain declaration of love and a vision of pure magic at least point the way to redemption. As always, Tarkovsky conjures images like you've never seen before"	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Empire	"Seminal feature from Tarkovsky, the master of atmosphere and multi-functional allegory is truly affecting (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	The New Yorker	"Tarkovsky realizes the allegorical tale with an overwhelming density of visual detail; the riot and clash of textures (...) form a frenzied vocabulary and lend the film the torrential inner force of Dostoyevskian rhetoric."	POS
United States	John Semley Salon	"It’s a film that challenges us to be bored, while refusing to be boring. And it’s a film that reveals more and more of itself on subsequent viewings, inviting obsession, and rewarding and punishing it in equal measure."	NEU
United States	The Wall Street Journal	"A pertinent exploration of emotion’s power in the face of desolation (...) It offers visual splendor, as well as mysteries, portents and miracles."	POS

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