Stalker is my favourite movie ever... I'm the lucky owner of the double DVD release with some present interviews of the Stalker's film crew and other curiosa... According to them (Tarkovsky passed away long ago unfortunately to confirm those stories...) the original movie (filmed on decent Kodak negative...) was censored and big parts of it were deleted. Those parts were very typical sci-fi, with Alexander Kaidanovsky acting like Harrison Ford - very extrovertic without any depth in character. Tarkovsky didn't give up though and he decided to finish the movie on the ORWO (made in GDR) negative that he spared from other movie. Kaidanovsky was during that session heavily sick and depressed and quality of the negative was very bad creating that outstanding mood we can enjoy watching Stalker today...sporkles wrote:I loved Tarkovsky's Solaris as well as Stalker (which is one of my all-time favourites). Stalker is pretty different from the book, Roadside Picnic (which I never finished, as the English translation is really bad); the film is a lot less on the nose; it leaves more for your imagination.
And censorship let the movie to be finished because they considered it as worthless (and possibly the most important nail to the Tarkovsky's coffin - they didn't like that appreciation Tarkovsky got among western critics...).
I read the book of Strugaccki brothers when I was 10. The Stalker for me is completely disconnected from the book.
Great dispute about the necessity of faith...
Just listen to the molecular physicist and the Higgs boson theory...
Tarkovsky's Stalker rules (even as the effect of coincidence...)...
Skål!

