uhhhh, i don't know about that...

i swear that car ride gets longer every time i watch it

haha, yeah that felt like an entire movie by itself.

Stalker was easier for me to get into than Solaris, and still is. Length has never really been difficult for me. It's harder to watch the 76 minutes of Pickpocket than it is to watch the 312 minutes of Fanny and Alexander. At least for me. I find Solaris's style much harder than Stalker's which I've always thought was fairly straightforward compared to his other post-Ivan films.

really? it's the opposite for me... it's easier for me to watch 76 minutes of pickpocket than 5 minutes of fanny & alexander

gonna have to agree with g money, bresson is easier to sit through than various bergmans as they tend to be a bit too talky for my likings.

Interesting. I've always found Bergman the most accessible by far of all the great "arthouse" directors. Very classical theatrical approach. For me Bresson is the height of difficulty and completely rejects almost all cinema conventions up to his work.

i thought theatrical fanny and alexander went by really quickly for a 3+ hour film. i dug it.

Anyway, as for contributions to talking about Stalker, one thing that I don't see brought up a lot is the manner of the characters. For me so much of the wonder of the film is how Tarkovsky doesn't just give these different people a lot of things to say and those things define them, but how he gives them little behaviors that really resonate with or against whatever they are saying. Take that ride into the zone as a perfect example. Many would complain that here nothing is happening. Others would say that Tarkovsky's just giving you time to reflect, or he's trying to induce a state of hyperconcentration, or that he's building atmosphere and tension, or he's just trying to be realistic and make you feel the "waiting", and maybe to some extent all of those things are happening, but for me this is nothing less than a spellbinding drop-dead ingenious piece of virtuoso cinema where something very important is going on that's just as exciting and sensually resonant to me as anything in the history of art: he's introducing you to the character of each character almost entirely through the evocativeness of their physical presence and the result is a resonance cannot be reduced to words. You learn just as much about these characters by looking at the backs of their heads as you do by anything they say. Just the way these guys look at their surroundings carries so much weight for me. How many times has that happened in the history of cinema, where a person's way of looking is as significant as if they shoved someone, or made a great speech? No, in Tarkovsky, anything these characters say or do is pathetic and limited in comparison to Tarkovsky's physical articulation of their spiritual states. I don't know of any other scene that is at once so simple and so complex. The way the writer, even just in the way he's looking around, seems like a self-obsessed, moody little narcissist. The way the scientist seems to be distancing himself from his surroundings, carefully analyzing it, but at the same time seems a little spooked and afraid. The way the stalker is just anxious and twitching to get into the zone, totally surrendering himself to the experience in all of its peace and its challenge. Very very brilliant--but of course what those looks communicate is far more than what my little sentences could ever suggest. It's far more complex than anything I can put into words, and that's why every time I watch that scene I think Tarkovsky is the greatest cinematic artist ever. I think every non-Russian speaking fan of his work should memorize the dialogue and watch his films without subtitles so that they can just let themselves go to the experience. I always admired Tarkovsky, but it wasn't until I did this that I loved him. Though I admit that the way in which I love him is very difficult for me to describe without sounding like a bumbling fool who is missing 90% of what's going on, which is why I don't talk about his films as much as I do about those of others. But with them it's just because the merits of their films more easily translate into words. The importance of what Tarkovsky's doing is total, total, total cinema, and so no description by me can ever do it justice (while on the other hand it's very possible that one might find me talking about Dumbo more interesting than Dumbo itself; this is an impossibility with a Tarkovsky film).

well said, dr drew... it's also one of my favorite scenes both in this movie and all cinema

btw i also think the writer is a bit out of it there, he's still a bit drunk, which partly explains his looks and his manners during that ride

there other scenes that defy description... like the rain scene at the end... how the light reflects off the pond/puddle only when it's raining and how those three sit back-to-back and stare at it after those intense climactic exchanges, the writer even puts his hand around stalker... it's as if the "external" climax had just taken place, but now this is the internal climax of the movie (which corresponds to tarkovsky's quote on the front page), where they just contemplate over what had happened and what they've realized through these experiences in the zone.

then there are the sequences where the stalker walks home with his wife and daughter, and the color configuration keeps switching as they walk through the desolate winter of the factory town... i may be wrong, but i don't think there's any other sequence in his movies where he switches between colors this much, and, somehow, it feels right, it creates an effect and reflects the mood of the scene... not sure how to explain it except intuitively it makes total sense to me.

and of course the sequence where the camera looks into the water, with tyutchev's poetry, it works so amazingly on both an emotional and intellectual level... it deserves a whole essay written about it.

and then stalker's monologue about music as we ascend over a mountaintop... actually pretty much every image or sequence i can think of from stalker is amazing in its own right.... even the bar scene at the beginning as the credits roll and the theme plays and professor waits for the other two - seemingly entirely static - is spellbinding in its own way.

Yeah, I think the rain pouring down is possibly the best moment in the film now that I think about it. I go into full body chills every time.

For those sick of waiting for a Criterion rerelease of Andrei Rublev, you may consider downloading this rip from the beautiful recently released Russian BluRay. You have to have VLC to switch to the English subtitles though:
http://binmovie.org/otechestvennye_film ... -720p.html

It's the censored Soviet cut, shorter than the version Scorsese smuggled that's on the Criterion, but both versions are valid and of equal interest imo, and it's really worth it to see the film look something other than distractingly bad. Do you really need to see that dude's butt? Some of the cuts are censorings imposed on Tarkovsky, but others were his idea of editorial improvements, so fans of the film definitely need to see both.

i did not know i was missing out on so much by just reading the subtitles. dialogue normally carries so much thematic weight....

Well of course you have to start by reading the subtitles. Like I said, memorize the subtitles, then watch the film without them. That sounds more daunting than it is. The only reason I can watch the movie without subtitles is because I've seen it a million times with them and have them memorized (at least generally).

I am going to watch The Sacrifice tomorrow. I'm not sure if I'll have time to gather my thoughts into a semi-coherent mess that extends beyond me just going like , but I might try.

have you seen anything else by tarkovsky before? i hope so.... the sacrifice would be a difficult way as a first, or even second, i'd imagine