Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2676 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-04-22
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Black & White, Colour, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: Russian
• Subtitled in: Cantonese Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Russian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 155 minutes

DVD Description
DVD Special features:
Stills gallery
Cast and crew biographies and filmographies
Interviews with director of photography A. Knyazhinsky / production designer R. Safiullin
Extract from Tarkovsky’s diploma film "The Steamroller and the Violin"

Russian language with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Russian

Synopsis
With STALKER, Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky returns to the mind-bending, philosophy-tinged science fiction of SOLARIS. 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 Kaidanovsky) as he attempts to bring two characters known as Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and Scientist (Nikolai Grinko) into the Zone. The hapless trio makes a difficult and mud-drenched journey, dodging military guards and invisible traps and enduring extreme psychological strain. While Tarkovsky avoids any direct political reading of STALKER, the film's allegorical structure presents a powerful and disturbing metaphor for humanity's loss of and subsequent quest for faith. The Stalker's struggle to rescue himself and his family while guiding those more wretched than himself creates a physical and metaphysical drama that leaves the viewer breathless. Blending visual, narrative, and cinematic conventions to portray the fractured logic of the Zone, Tarkovsky conjures a universe of despair and desire in which science, rationalism, and technology must face off against love, humanism, and faith.

From the Back Cover
Deep within the Zone, a bleak and devastated forbidden landscape, lies a mysterious room with the power to grant the deepest wishes of those strong enough to make the hazardous journey there. Desperate to reach it, a scientist and a writer approach the Stalker, one of the few able to navigate the Zone’s menacing terrain, and begin a dangerous trek into the unknown. Tarkovsky’s second foray into science fiction after ‘Solaris’ is a surreal and disturbing vision of the future. Hauntingly exploring man’s dreams and desires, and the consequences of realising them, ‘Stalker’, adapted from Arkady & Boris Sturgatsky’s novel ‘Roadside Picnic’, has been described as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.

Customer Reviews

Peeling back the raw centre
This is an amazing film which defies labelling. It is certainly not sci-fi, but is set in an imaginary landscape of industrial ruins, empty of people and permeated by a mysterious force of nature which is threatening even as it preserves.

There is a storyline - see other reviews - but the film is essentially about human integrity and the failed quest by some conventional 'heroic' figures from the Soviet Union - the writer, the scientist, the engineer etc - to find meaning in a specific, material spot.

The pot-holed, jagged and overgrown territory of 'the zone' is the true hero of the film - along with the nervous, faithful, uninspiring but true person of the 'stalker', the man who knows how to get into the zone and how to find the dripping cellar where reality exists.This is a poetic film to be savoured with a soul-mate or two and demands rapt attention.

Stalker
This DVD from AE has a good transfer, and also two soundtracks (original mono and new 5.1). Tarkovskij fans usually seems to prefer the original soundtrack (and dislike the new) so this is probably important. The film itself should be seen, not discussed in advance, as it opens up for different interpretations.
The only little minus about this DVD is the film being split up on two different discs. It is not that long (2.5 hrs). Ok, the movie is in two "parts" originally, but why split it so you have to insert the new disc, and re-watch the logotypes and menus? This detracts a little because Stalker demands concentration and immersion and builds up a lot of atmosphere. The extras are a little short (considering the two discs) but worth watching. For about 10GBP this is good value for money. (Watch out for the other Tarkovskij DVDs from AE though, as some of them have flawed transfers.) Highly recommended!

Excellent
This is a great film.

As the other reviewers have stated, it is very slow but also immersive. The locations found in the film are very interesting and do leave an impression on your mind long after the film has finished.

This film can be interpreted in many ways, definitely worth repeat viewing.