Dream-like story of a mystical room within a cordoned-off wasteland at the heart of run-down society. The room is supposed to fulfill the wishes of anyone who goes there, but is very difficult to approach and requires a guide (or "stalker") to help reach it. The film follows the progress of one stalker and his two latest customers (a scientist and a writer) during a day's journey through "the zone". Deeply philosophical themes of human desire and meaning are addressed, leaving the viewer with a LOT to think about, both during and after the movie.
Tarkowsky was apparently obsessional about every single tiny detail of what appeared in every shot, and this resulted in the most visually perfect film I've ever seen: the stark black/white "real" world contrasting with the lush colours of the wild vegetation and crumbling buildings in the zone. The mood is set by the opening scene where the camera, VERY slowly, tracks into a bedroom, towards a chair being used as a bedside table, and then across the faces of a sleeping woman and child and then a man who is awake and looking back across the bed... so the camera tracks back the other way so you can re-view the scene in the knowledge that it is also being observed by the man. This is the only example I can think of in cinema of an attempt to address Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle! And this is only the first scene! There are so many other stunning scenes, but one that stands out in my mind is the slow close-up tracking shot of discarded objects and debris in the bottom of a very shallow, slow-flowing stream of water - a microcosm of the whole film, and of human life in general - this is a scene that only Tarkowsky would ever have thought of doing.
This is a "proper" film, a work of art, that will still be watched and appreciated in a thousand years' time.
Tarkowsky was apparently obsessional about every single tiny detail of what appeared in every shot, and this resulted in the most visually perfect film I've ever seen: the stark black/white "real" world contrasting with the lush colours of the wild vegetation and crumbling buildings in the zone. The mood is set by the opening scene where the camera, VERY slowly, tracks into a bedroom, towards a chair being used as a bedside table, and then across the faces of a sleeping woman and child and then a man who is awake and looking back across the bed... so the camera tracks back the other way so you can re-view the scene in the knowledge that it is also being observed by the man. This is the only example I can think of in cinema of an attempt to address Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle! And this is only the first scene! There are so many other stunning scenes, but one that stands out in my mind is the slow close-up tracking shot of discarded objects and debris in the bottom of a very shallow, slow-flowing stream of water - a microcosm of the whole film, and of human life in general - this is a scene that only Tarkowsky would ever have thought of doing.
This is a "proper" film, a work of art, that will still be watched and appreciated in a thousand years' time.