Remembering the filming of Stalker

May 12, 2017 2:08 PM

"we’re excited to present you with a rare testimony from one of the people fortunate enough to witness–and actively participate in–the creation of Stalker. Sergei Bessmertniy, which is more than likely his pseudonym, was hired as a mechanic to work on the set, and in this article he shares a lot of fascinating details about Stalker from a fresh, unique perspective. His account of the process of filming holds value mostly because of the little things, as the mechanic reveals how certain scenes were filmed, describes the footage that was lost or discarded, at the same time giving us hints and information that paint the picture of Andrei Tarkovsky." A Unique Perspective on the Making of ‘Stalker’: The Testimony of a Mechanic Toiling Away under Tarkovsky’s Guidance.

Also available on LiveJournal, published by the author as he was among the people not happy with the initial translation. (And here's the Russian version.)

posted by sapagan (35 comments total)

Dammit, internet -- you're going to force me to watch this movie, aren't you?
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:10 PM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Holy shit thank you
posted by griphus at 2:14 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl' was very evocative for a sandbox game, and the framework of the story transplants very neatly into the Chernobyl exclusion zone almost as if the original novel was written for those events.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:32 PM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dammit, internet -- you're going to force me to watch this movie, aren't you?

I rented "Solaris" from my local video store back in the 90's and was absolutely blown away. When I returned it, I saw "Stalker" available right next to it and snatched it up, but I just couldn't get into it and I quit about thirty minutes in. With each passing year, the Internet keeps insisting that was a terrible mistake, so I'm guessing I need to break down and give it another go.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:36 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Curses, sapagan!
Not only do I need to make time to rewatch Stalker now and read this article, but also have I never heard of Cinephilia & Beyond up to this point and it seems super down my alley... D:
posted by bigendian at 2:58 PM on May 12, 2017

Thank you for this, sapagan!

Here's a piece with Geoff Dyer about "Stalker" that I produced a few years ago, which is heavily scored with sound from the film: http://www.ttbook.org/book/geoff-dyer-zona
posted by DougieGee at 3:01 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the post; Tarkovsky is one of my very favorites. Any MeFites in NYC should go to Lincoln Center for this show; it's one of those events that make me sorry I left town.
posted by languagehat at 3:15 PM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Seeing Stalker on 35mm in a festival showing remains one of my very fondest cinema memories. Later, I showed the movie to my parents, who sat silently through the whole thing before stomping off in bewildered indignation.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
posted by fifthrider at 3:29 PM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Such an amazing film. I think if I had not been in the right frame of mind to receive it I might have bounced right off of it, though. It's just so different from what we expect in a film.

Thanks, sapagan!
posted by rodlymight at 3:48 PM on May 12, 2017

Stalker is a film that sometimes seems almost deliberate in its attempt to drive you away. But it becomes a different movie after the 30 minute mark or so. Not necessarily more agreeable, or faster paced, but different.
posted by wotsac at 4:08 PM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I first saw Stalker as a sophomore in college, and it completely changed my sense of what film could be. In fact, I hadn't seen all that many movies in my life aside from what came on TV or played in suburban movie theaters. As a result, I was somewhat skeptical of cinema as such, thinking that it just wasn't very interesting (certainly not as interesting as literature, and Russian literature in particular, which was crucial to my intellectual formation back then). Stalker, with its strange settings, abrupt changes of color, interminably long takes, and minimal attempts to explain its mysterious world, left me feeling unsettled, or haunted, in a way that only a handful of works of art have affected me.

As languagehat noted, there's a new restored version of the film coming out later this month. Here's the trailer.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 4:32 PM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

There were a lot of nuts thrown from a bandage, but the meaning of the action wasn’t explained. One of these nuts is hanging on the wall in my room for many years.

This film has slow pacing, but it really gets more fascinating with repeated viewing. Last time we watched it, time seemed irrelevant.
posted by ovvl at 4:41 PM on May 12, 2017

It might be worth pointing out Adam Curtis' contention that Roadside Picnic, upon which Stalker was based (and by extension the film) is one of the sources of Russian post-truth manipulations. See Hypernormalisation for details.
posted by Grangousier at 5:55 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

On the suggestion from some that Tarkovsky should make Stalker faster-paced or more dynamic, he replied "The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts".

That tells you a lot about Stalker and about Tarkovsky as a filmmaker.

I went to see it last weekend at Lincoln Center. The stranger sitting beside me declared when it was over that it was "a good sleeping movie". Need it be said, I disagreed.

To quote Tarkovsky again: “If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.”

This was the second time I had seen the movie, and it struck me how much there was in each of those shots, how necessary the length of them was, how time slowly unfolds.
posted by matcha action at 5:56 PM on May 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

For me, Stalker is very much like David Lynch's Dune. It is an amazing film on its own merits, but I think it fails as an adaptation of Roadside Picnic.


And like Dune, I'm not sure if a successful filmic adaptation of Roadside Picnic could be made.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:59 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl' was very evocative for a sandbox game, and the framework of the story transplants very neatly into the Chernobyl exclusion zone almost as if the original novel was written for those events.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:32 PM on May 12 [2 favorites +] [!]

It's more closely related than you might think. The Zone of Roadside Picnic was inspired in part by the 1957 Kyshtym radiation disaster.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 6:02 PM on May 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

> To quote Tarkovsky again: “If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.”

I've been (re-)listening to some recorded conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman, and one of Cage's favorite aphorisms seems to be, "If something is boring for two minutes, try it for four minutes. If it's boring for four minutes, try it for eight. If it's boring for eight minutes, try it for sixteen. Eventually you will discover that it is not boring."

Cage and Tarkovsky seem antithetical to me in some ways so it's interesting that they seem to be drawing water from the same well at times.
posted by ardgedee at 6:44 PM on May 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

For me, Stalker is very much like David Lynch's Dune. It is an amazing film on its own merits, but I think it fails as an adaptation of Roadside Picnic.

Unfaithful adaptations often make excellent art unto themselves.

[see also: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? and/or Solaris]

Amusingly, the majestic, tectonic pace is a big part of why Stalker still sets my hair on fire with glee, but when I try to explain it as "nearly as gorgeously, hypnotically, luxuriantly, mind-bendingly dull in the best possible way as Solaris," few people take up my offer to have a Tarkovsky double feature movie night.
posted by sonascope at 6:53 PM on May 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

It's worth noting that the Strugatsky brothers have inspired a number of more or less unfaithful adaptations by major Russian filmmakers, including Aleksander Sokurov's Days of the Eclipse, which is quite Tarkovskian in its preoccupation with the cinematic experience of duration, and, more recently, Aleksei German's Hard to Be a God. I haven't seen the latter yet because I expect that it is rather painful to watch, given his earlier work, but this is the final film of one of the most important Russian filmmakers of the last thirty years (and one quite little known in the US, I find).
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 7:19 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love Tarkovsky and I've never remained awake for an entire one of his films.
posted by HeroZero at 7:29 PM on May 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

Stalker is one of my very favorite films and I can't wait to dig into this. Thanks, sapagan!

For what it's worth, I really adore deliberate pacing like Tarkovsky's, but as an adult I finally get why people might have issues with it. It can be difficult to schedule filmviewing, which is almost necessary for something like Stalker and Solaris. Still; that transition into sudden color is one of my favorite moments in film. Likewise the infamous Tokyo freeways.
posted by byanyothername at 7:53 PM on May 12, 2017

Also the fact that each iteration of Roadside Picnic/Stalker/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a completely unique thing that ignores everything about its alleged source material except for the atmosphere and loose premise is something I really like about them. The film is my favorite, but an animated completely deranged Roadside Picnic would be a lovely thing.
posted by byanyothername at 7:59 PM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just FYI: Archive of Tarkovsky films available online, with subtitles, courtesy of Mosfilm.
posted by runcifex at 8:45 PM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

Great stuff! Time for a Tarkovsky evening soon. Thanks
posted by mumimor at 3:45 AM on May 13, 2017

Second only to Rublev.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:12 AM on May 13, 2017

The weird thing is that I'd impulsively started to rewatch Stalker the day before yesterday before I remembered I had to do some stuff and wouldn't have time to finish, so I put it off until yesterday, right about when this was posted.

I'm always curious about how some filmmakers manage to blend meticulously staged scenes with organic elements the way Tarkovsky does, so I especially appreciated those explanations.

Thank you for making a post just for me!
posted by ernielundquist at 11:13 AM on May 13, 2017

Thanks for this post.

As a side note, if you're interested in the Kyshtym disaster McCoy Pauley mentioned above, check out the documentary City 40 (trailer here), which is where the disaster actually too place, but since City 40/Ozorsk didn't officially exist on maps...
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:28 AM on May 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Dammit, internet -- you're going to force me to watch this movie, aren't you?

I rented "Solaris" from my local video store back in the 90's and was absolutely blown away. When I returned it, I saw "Stalker" available right next to it and snatched it up, but I just couldn't get into it and I quit about thirty minutes in. With each passing year, the Internet keeps insisting that was a terrible mistake, so I'm guessing I need to break down and give it another go.

And then I almost always end up not liking the thing. Damn you internet. Internet opinion is like the ultimate Lucy with the football.
posted by bongo_x at 1:02 PM on May 13, 2017

Maybe it's you
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:12 PM on May 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Dammit, internet -- you're going to force me to watch this movie, aren't you?

Mosfilm has a high-quality transfer on YouTube. Russian vocals, subtitles in English and a couple of other languages.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:20 PM on May 13, 2017

Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalker, Solaris, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:34 PM on May 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I saw Stalker at the Red Vic in the Haight here in San Francisco back in the 90's. Being long it got out late and there wasn't a lot of people on the street except for loads of groups of two or three all arguing about the film they just saw. I've never witnessed that sort of an effect from a film. The arguments were about the what the film was trying to say not about its quality. Everyone was busy interpreting the film for each other. Tarkovsky gave us a metaphysical mystery to solve and in this case it was clear that he convinced this set of viewers that it was an effort worth making.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:45 PM on May 13, 2017 [5 favorites]

I love Tarkovsky and I've never remained awake for an entire one of his films.

My trick with Solaris and Stalker is to treat them less as films in the sense that you park yourself in front of them and watch and more as ambient installation pieces I like to just let either run on a screen in the house in a loop for days on end, drifting in and out of conscious focus like catching sight of a particularly amazing sunset or a bird that's come inexplicably close. It's like film as painting, mutating as slowly as the weather.
posted by sonascope at 8:20 AM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Any MeFites in NYC should go to Lincoln Center for this show;

I'm so mad I can only make it to one of these but Stalker it is.
posted by griphus at 8:41 AM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Holy shit the remastered version is amazing. It's still playing for like two weeks I think and it's like watching a brand new movie.
posted by griphus at 5:18 PM on May 19, 2017 [5 favorites]