If you want more out of a film than beautiful lighting and an obscure premise look elsewhere. I'll break down my criticism into 3 basic ideas, first that this film is pretentious beyond measure, second disrespectful of the viewer's attention, and third does not contain the deeper levels of meaning its fan claim. If you have 3 hours to kill for a movie that should have been 70 minutes at most, be my guest, but do not sit there and explain to me how important or meaningful it is that there is a dog in the final chapter of the movie drinking milk from a saucer. Neither can you argue that the inconsequential bolt throwing for the first hour and half of the movie added anything to the plot. Nor is there any build-up to most of the "high points" - if you can call them that - of the film.
For the majority of the film we have long, and I mean excruciatingly long cuts of people sitting, laying, walking, thinking, or doing absolutely nothing. The very first shot of the film takes two minutes just to pan from the Stalker's wife to the Stalker then back to wife...WHY, for the love of god just show me a ten-second clip of he sleeping and the Stalker watching her sleep, mission accomplished. I appreciate a good lingering, but for the love of Christ panning to a river, or zooming in on someone's face for three minutes when nothing is happening, please don't think I can't absorb a shot in the first minute I see it.
This points to another objective fault to the film it's level of pretentiousness. I speak Russian and watched the entire film in its original language, which leads me to think who wrote this dialogue? No one, speaks the way the people in this film speak most of the time. Their lines read like a novel or text pulled from a Nietzsche passage, how am I supposed to empathize or believe the struggles of these people when they talk like the first page of a Philosophy 101 textbook.
*Minor Spoilers* One scene in particular just really drove me bonkers as the level of emotional outpouring from the Stalker toward the end of the film. Why is this person having a mental break down if this is the Nth time he's leading a group of tourists to the Zone? Has he not dealt with these issues before? Why are they so important now, why does he try and stop the scientist from blowing up the room if he believes its pure evil and can grant the wishes of immoral people? This movie makes absolutely no sense from any logical point of view. If you want to argue it's a work of art, then I'd recommend anyone to go stare at a Pollock painting for 3 hours I guarantee you'll get more value out of it. Also, why are we told to screw ourselves as a viewer that we need to watch this movie for two and half hours and not even see what's in the room, or have any of them make a wish at the room, or have any meaningful outcome? The room isn't destroyed, a wish is not made, and the three decided not to do anything after having not really discussed the importance of this decision for the majority of the movie. Not that they discussed much in the movie anyway, I'm spitballing here, but there might be 40 minutes of dialogue in the whole film so do expect much exposition on a hugely complicated Sci Fi movie - I know, great tactic to use on obscure premise.
2 Stars because it did look beautiful as a film, but a movie is a not a painting.
For the majority of the film we have long, and I mean excruciatingly long cuts of people sitting, laying, walking, thinking, or doing absolutely nothing. The very first shot of the film takes two minutes just to pan from the Stalker's wife to the Stalker then back to wife...WHY, for the love of god just show me a ten-second clip of he sleeping and the Stalker watching her sleep, mission accomplished. I appreciate a good lingering, but for the love of Christ panning to a river, or zooming in on someone's face for three minutes when nothing is happening, please don't think I can't absorb a shot in the first minute I see it.
This points to another objective fault to the film it's level of pretentiousness. I speak Russian and watched the entire film in its original language, which leads me to think who wrote this dialogue? No one, speaks the way the people in this film speak most of the time. Their lines read like a novel or text pulled from a Nietzsche passage, how am I supposed to empathize or believe the struggles of these people when they talk like the first page of a Philosophy 101 textbook.
*Minor Spoilers* One scene in particular just really drove me bonkers as the level of emotional outpouring from the Stalker toward the end of the film. Why is this person having a mental break down if this is the Nth time he's leading a group of tourists to the Zone? Has he not dealt with these issues before? Why are they so important now, why does he try and stop the scientist from blowing up the room if he believes its pure evil and can grant the wishes of immoral people? This movie makes absolutely no sense from any logical point of view. If you want to argue it's a work of art, then I'd recommend anyone to go stare at a Pollock painting for 3 hours I guarantee you'll get more value out of it. Also, why are we told to screw ourselves as a viewer that we need to watch this movie for two and half hours and not even see what's in the room, or have any of them make a wish at the room, or have any meaningful outcome? The room isn't destroyed, a wish is not made, and the three decided not to do anything after having not really discussed the importance of this decision for the majority of the movie. Not that they discussed much in the movie anyway, I'm spitballing here, but there might be 40 minutes of dialogue in the whole film so do expect much exposition on a hugely complicated Sci Fi movie - I know, great tactic to use on obscure premise.
2 Stars because it did look beautiful as a film, but a movie is a not a painting.