A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 2 nominations
- Marta, doch Stalkera
- (as Natasha Abramova)
- Sobesednitsa Pisatelya
- (as F. Yurna)
- Patrulnyy politseyskiy
- (as R. Rendi)
- Professor
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDirector Andrei Tarkovsky spent about a year shooting all of the exterior scenes. The first part of this shoot was done over the spring and summer of 1977 with cinematographer Georgi Rerberg, using a new Kodak 5247 film stock provided by movie producer Sergio Gambarov. However, after developing these negatives, they came back with an unwatchable shade of dark green. According to the film's sound technician Vladimir Sharun, Tarkovsky always claimed that the movie was sabotaged by one of his enemies, a "well-known Soviet film director": the Kodak 5247 stock was reportedly stolen, and ended up in the hands of this director, while Tarkovsky unknowingly got a regular Kodak stock in return that was then developed incorrectly. Sharun, however, attributed the problem on "the usual Russian sloppiness", as the Kodak 5247 was newer to Soviet laboratories at the time, who didn't know how to properly process it. The disaster proved to be the final straw for Rerberg, who got the blame for the incident and walked off (or was released from) the film, so Tarkovsky had to shoot most of the film again with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinskiy. This contributed to the film's two-part narrative structure. Allegedly, the newly shot footage strayed even farther away from the source novel 'Roadside Picnic', and had a different look. Asked about this, director Tarkovsky said "no mother gives birth to the same child twice."
- GoofsAt about 23 minutes, when Stalker, writer and professor are driving in their car they have to hide for a motorcyclist. In the scene the motorcyclist comes from the right. From an opposite angle of view, he still comes from the right, where it should have been from the left.
- Quotes
Stalker: May everything come true. May they believe. And may they laugh at their passions. For what they call passion is not really the energy of the soul, but merely friction between the soul and the outside world. But, above all, may they believe in themselves and become as helpless as children. For softness is great and strength is worthless. When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies, he is strong and hard. When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. That which has become hard shall not triumph.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Distant (2002)
- SoundtracksLa Marseillaise
Written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
What does the film mean? Ask me again when I've watched it maybe ten times.
Certainly the Zone means more to Stalker than the Room. The Room is his living, but the Zone is an escape, a sanctuary from the noisy, industrial rusting slum where he lives (captured brilliantly in metallic sepia). In the Zone everything eventually returns to nature - like a pastoral coral reef growing on a battleship lichen and mosses engulf factory buildings and tanks. His first action on arriving there is to leave the other two occupied while he communes with the natural things growing in the zone, the grasses, the dew, the soil, the tiny worm that dances head-over-tail down his hand.
A beautiful, great and puzzling film. But then if it revealed all its secrets straight off then, apart from the beautiful visuals and the soundtrack it would be pointless watching it again. Great art only leaches out its secrets gradually and only to those with the desire to learn them.
- Kenny J
- Apr 30, 2003
Details
Box office
- Budget
- RUR 1,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $292,049
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $11,537
- Sep 15, 2002
- Gross worldwide
- $438,192
- Runtime2 hours 42 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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![Nikolay Grinko, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, and Anatoliy Solonitsyn in Stalker (1979)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTAzZmEzZjEtNmIzMS00MzlhLWE0Y2ItNDRlNTQwN2E0MDE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzY0MTE3NzU@._V1_QL75_UY133_CR2,0,90,133_.jpg)