Stalker (film)

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Movie
German title stalker
Original title Сталкер
Country of production Soviet Union
original language Russian
Publishing year 1979
length approx. 163 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Andrei Tarkovsky
script Arkadi and Boris Strugazki
production Alexandra Demidova
music Eduard Nikolajewitsch Artemjew and Maurice Ravel , Richard Wagner , Ludwig van Beethoven
camera Alexander Knjaschinsky
cut Lyudmila Feiginova
occupation

Stalker was made in 1978/79 as the fifth feature film by the Soviet director Andrei Tarkowski . The work produced by Mosfilm is considered a classic of Soviet cinema and the science fiction genre .

action

The starting point of the action is a city not described in more detail in terms of time and place, which lies on the edge of an area designated as a "zone". Strange things happen in this zone, there are puzzling phenomena, the cause of which was years ago at the time of the action and can only be guessed at. Was it a visit to an alien civilization or a strange meteor strike - you don't know. The area has been evacuated , cordoned off and is under heavy military guard. The text in the opening credits reads:

"… what it was? The fall of a meteorite? Visiting inhabitants of the human cosmos? However, in our small country the miracle of all miracles originated - the ZONE. We immediately sent troops there. They didn't come back. So we surrounded the ZONE with police cordons ... and were probably right about it ... by the way - I don't know, I don't know ... From an interview by Nobel Laureate Professor Wallace with a correspondent for the RAI. "

The “stalker” (here in the sense of a boy scout , local expert or scout) earns his living by illegally bringing people through the restricted belt and leading them within the zone. His daughter is sick, her father's job and life near the Zone have left their mark on the girl. The stalker has developed a flair, even awe, for this constantly changing place, feels the dangers in advance and has his methods of avoiding the deadly traps that the zone sets.

Two of his customers, the “professor” and the “writer”, want to be brought to a place that is in the zone and that is known as the “room of wishes” for different reasons. Legend has it that this is where the most secret, deepest wishes come true. While the writer wishes for the inspiration he has been missing for some time back, the professor has completely different intentions: He wants to destroy this room because he fears that it will be misused. But even the stalker himself has his reasons for going to this place. He wants to give people hope for a happy life.

The dangerous expedition is not without effect on the travelers. On the way, views of life and worldviews are questioned, hopes and doubts come to light - the protagonists have at the same time embarked on an inner journey. At their destination, all three must finally realize that this place cannot help them to solve their problems or - depending on the point of view - they are not ready to use the space of wishes, as the fulfillment of unconscious wishes involves a great risk. Stalker reports about his teacher "Stachelhaut", who once introduced him to the secrets of the zone, and his suicide after he lost his brother out of greed in the zone and wished him back in the room of wishes, but instead got only wealth.

Ultimately, the stalker manages to return, albeit scarred by the experiences. The film ends with a monologue of his loving wife spoken into the camera and pictures of his daughter, who is apparently now able to move objects through the power of telekinesis .

Emergence

Script, texts

The basis for the script was initially the third chapter of the novel Picnic by the wayside by Arkadi and Boris Strugazki . The narration contrasts two apparent opposites. Aliens have left their mark on six different areas of the world for reasons unknown. These traces are above all objects of partly unknown function, always unexplained principle, often terrible or even fatal effects, sometimes extremely useful. They are rescued from the zone by illegal treasure hunters (the "stalkers") and other legally operating people. The economic as well as military potential of these things from the zone is widely recognized. Its proximity to the zone has triggered an economic boom in places on its fringes, which is attracting more and more people in search of wealth and happiness. This contrasts with misery, violence, mistrust and - as a red thread running through the story - constant alcohol abuse , an alcoholism that is supposed to make the bad sides of the zone (mutations, etc.) forget. At the same time, the Strugazkis tried to present all inexplicable phenomena of the zone, such as the misery of many people living in its periphery, as soberly, objectively and unmystifyingly as possible.

In the course of the three years of collaboration between the director and the authors, however, the ideas about the film changed so much that an independent film narration ( Russian Машина желаний , German: Die Wunschmaschine, published in Soviet literature , No. 2, 1984, vol. 36) emerged, which corresponds to the plot according to only in a few corner points with the original novel. In total, seven to nine script versions were written by the Strugazki brothers, and Tarkovsky was only satisfied with the last one.

The poems presented are by Arseni Tarkowski, the director's father, and Fyodor Tjuttschew .

Locations

Some filming locations are still accessible after decades and some have hardly changed. The factory in which the protagonists initially hide from the police and then find the motorized trolley is still partially standing (as of 2014). The remaining, now mostly renovated, buildings are in the port district of Tallinn and are now used for events, including a stalker festival .

The building in front of which the writer is brought to a stop by a voice used to be a cardboard box factory near Tallinn .

Since there was a chemical plant just above a waterfall and the pollution of the river was still visible in the film, after a number of cancer cases among those involved ( Anatoly Solonitsyn and Tarkowski's wife Larissa) speculations that Tarkowski's cancer was also triggered:

'We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Pirita with a half-functioning hydroelectric station,' says Vladimir Sharun. 'Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larissa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris ... '

“'We were shooting near Tallinn on the Pirita, a small river with a semi-functioning hydropower plant,' says Vladimir Sharun. 'Farther upstream was a chemical plant that dumped toxic liquids into the river. There's this take in Stalker too: snow falls in summer and white foam drifts down the river. It was, in fact, some terrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkowski died of cancer in the right lung. And so did Tolya Solonitsyn. I realized that it was all related to the external shoot for Stalker when Larissa Tarkovskaya died of the same illness in Paris ... '"

Effects, camera

Despite the actually adventurous plot, the film manages almost completely without special effects : only in one of the last scenes does a drinking glass seem to move across a table top by itself - an allusion to the telekinetic abilities of Stalker's daughter, who is watching the process up close. With his idiosyncratic imagery, encrypted symbolism and dialogues, Tarkowski has succeeded in creating a masterpiece of film art that defies superficial observation and can be interpreted very broadly. Minute-long camera pans and plan sequences , the post - apocalyptic -looking backdrops of decaying industrial landscapes, in which nature is already gaining the upper hand, and the targeted use of black and white sequences create a dense atmosphere between dream, melancholy and pathos.

The film interweaves a dreary world of naked misery and disgusting repulsion, which gains its perfect aesthetic through the masterful camera work, staging and immersion of the black and white in the color of the bromine - dissolving a seemingly unbridgeable contrast. As in all of Tarkowski's later films, the camera work in connection with moving people, the balancing of the weight of the composition and the general filling of the image content is of the highest perfection. Tarkowski himself is responsible for the production design. On the other hand, there are irritations that are relatively common in Tarkowski's work, such as cut feet or other errors considered serious and amateurish in classical photography - a divergence between the demands of the scene on the one hand, and the playable and the difficulties of camera recording on the other.

Conflict with Georgi Rerberg

The first part of the shooting was shaped by the conflicted relationship between Tarkowski and the cameraman Georgi Rerberg . Rerberg was one of the most respected Soviet cameramen at the time and had already worked with Tarkovsky on the film Der Spiegel . He also filmed the first version of Stalker , but it broke up and broke with Tarkovsky. Rerberg has been replaced by Alexander Knjaschinski, and his name does not appear on the film's official staff list, although Tarkowski seems to have taken some of Rerberg's ideas into account in the final version.

The film was shot on Kodak film, which was only available to selected directors in the Soviet Union. On August 9, 1977, 6,000 film meters - out of a total of 10,000 - were irreparably damaged during the development of the film in Mosfilm's laboratories. Various theories have been voiced about this process. This also includes the fact that Tarkowski took care of the destruction in order to be able to rework the film that was unsatisfactory for him. According to the author Ant Skalandis, the incident was due to inattentiveness of the staff.

The documentary Rerberg i Tarkovsky. Obratnaya Storona “Stalkera” (2009, German Rerberg and Tarkowski. The downside of “Stalker” ) by Igor Maiboroda deals with the conflict between Rerberg and Tarkowski.

Synchronization, editions

The premiere in West Germany took place on February 16, 1981 at the Berlin International Film Festival . Stalker was shown completely synchronized in the GDR in 1982 in cinemas. After the film was only shown on television as the original with subtitles in West Germany for a long time, Icestorm Entertainment released a DVD with DEFA synchronization. However, this DVD has a less than mediocre picture quality and contains neither an original soundtrack nor subtitles.

In 1984 Stalker was also dubbed by WDR. This version was last broadcast by ARD in 1995 and is no longer available today.

Actress role DEFA synchro 1982 WDR synchro 1984
Alexander Kaidanowski stalker Joachim Siebenschuh Lutz Mackensy
Alissa Freindlich Wife of the stalker Annemone Haase Eva Maria Hagen
Nikolai Grinko professor Werner Dissel Herbert Stass
Anatoly Solonitsyn writer Otto Mellies Hans-Michael Rehberg

The version of RUSCICO created for the international market contains the film on 2 DVDs with complete picture and sound restoration. The original sound in Russian is contained in a " Dolby Digital 5.1" remix and (in the second edition) in the additional original mono sound. The DVD also contains German subtitles.

In 2017, Stalker was completely restored and re-digitized, but so far only shown in selected cinemas.

In 2017 Mosfilm published a version with subtitles on Youtube, see under Weblinks.

Interpretation and reception

Filmographic classification

Like all films, Stalker is subject to Tarkowski's personal worldview, biography, work and action, which are revealed through the film itself and less in concrete interviews or autographs. The film overcomes the Aristotelian unity of place, time and action in favor of a different structure: a photoesthetic layer mediates between (at least) two very equally emphasized levels of action: a concrete (Tarkovskian) interpretation of the science fiction novel Picnic on the wayside and an abstract and The cinematic implementation of Tarkowski's intentions in need of interpretation.

Since the two levels of action work independently, pursue their own goals and are mainly carried by the images in the film, which is poor in words and sounds, both levels have to accept compromises in favor of the other, which are primarily evident in the deviations between the film version and the novel. This increases the mystical effect of the “zone” far beyond its effect in “picnic by the wayside”.

Reviews

“The expedition becomes a journey into the inner world of the protagonists and a panorama of a godforsaken European civilization. Similar to ' Solaris ', Tarkovsky uses a science fiction template as a background for mystical - philosophical reflections and overwhelming visual visions, with which he poetically crosses the boundaries of conventional narrative cinema . The idiosyncratic aesthetics of his film language, which refused any superficial realism , compelled Tarkovsky to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1982. "

- Lexicon of international film

In Tarkowski's words, the film contrasts the inexplicable and amazing love of Stalker's wife with the emptiness , the cynicism and the hopelessness that have dominated the main characters in their previous lives. However, as always , the artist rejects simple interpretations such as that stalkers are about life in the Soviet Union or about the concentration camp or that they are an allegory of the police state : “There is no allegory here. I'm more interested in uncovering life itself than playing with simple symbolisms. ”The weak and defenselessly designed stalker turns out to be the strongest of all human beings when the film is broken up, as invincible in the spiritual sense.

"Every landscape picture is [...] a testimony to a process in which nature , society and history interpenetrate. […] For Tarkovsky, all history is natural history, understood as the progressive destruction of nature that encroaches on people. Their 'setting' is the landscape that has become a ruin. [...] History can be deciphered as a nightmare, especially in and around the landscape. "

- Bernd Kiefer

“As in Andrei Tarkovsky's Stanislaw Lem film 'Solaris', this journey also ultimately leads into the inner world of the protagonists. Dissatisfied with his first version, Tarkovsky had the entire film destroyed and shot everything again - a radicalism that few filmmakers in the Soviet Union could afford. With his metaphorically dense works, which elude a conclusive interpretation, Tarkovsky was one of the most important directors of cinema in the outgoing Soviet Union. Conclusion: gloomy representation of human boundaries "

- Cinema

But Klaus Kreimeier also recognizes: "The signs inscribed in the film of a possible reconciliation between man and nature cannot be overlooked." Tarkowski himself explains: "[The] final parable should mean nothing other than that there is a certain hope : the future is in the children."

Hartmut Böhme identified the three characters in the film as the three stages of Hegel's philosophy of history: science (professor), art (writer) and religion (stalker).

Aftermath

In 1995 the Dark Ambient album Stalker by Robert Rich and Brian Williams (aka Lustmord) was released , which has been referred to as the "Imaginary Soundtrack" with reference to the film. The artists tried to convey the atmosphere of the film emotionally to the listener using purely acoustic means. As usual in this style of music, neither rhythmic nor vocal elements are used. Alienated speech and sound samples from the film are sometimes used in the background.

Two East German underground bands , Freygang and Sandow , also took up the work musically: Freygang in their song Stalker (album Landunter from 1998), Sandow put the theme on their album Stachelhaut (1999), among others . Also inspired by the film are the Dresden neofolkers Darkwood with their song Room of the Innermost Wishes (on the compilation Secret Lords , 2004) and the Norwegians The 3rd and the Mortal with the piece Stalker (on the album Project Bluebook , 2003). The song The Dull Flame of Desire on Björk's 2007 album Volta contains an English translation of the poem last recited in the film.

In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film on their list.

In 2007 the computer game Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl was released , which takes up some essential elements of the novel and the film and stages them as an atmospherically dense first-person shooter , which was praised by critics primarily for its aesthetic and narrative qualities.

The Russian film Я тоже хочу (“I want too”) by director Alexei Balabanow from 2012 is a reinterpretation of Stalker : Three unequal seekers enter a contaminated zone where wishes are fulfilled.

literature

  • Geoff Dyer : Zona: A Book about a Journey to a Room . Canongate, Edinburgh 2012, ISBN 978-0-85786-166-5 .
    • dt .: Die Zone: A book about a film about a trip to a room . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-8296-0596-0 .
  • Arkadi and Boris Strugazki : The dream machine . In: Lichtjahr 4. A fantastic almanac . Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1985, p. 6-38 .
  • Arkadi and Boris Strugazki: Picnic by the wayside . Suhrkamp / KNO (st / Fantastic Library), Frankfurt / Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-37170-3 .
  • Andrei Tarkovsky : The sealed time. Thoughts on art, on the aesthetics and poetics of film . Ullstein-Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3-548-35931-0 .
  • Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexicon of science fiction films . 7th edition. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-11860-X .

Web links

Wikiquote: Stalker  Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boris Strugazki: Comments on the Past (Russian)
  2. ↑ Information from the opening credits of the film
  3. ↑ Stalker - Tallinn Creative Hub ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. / @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kultuurikatel.ee
  4. ↑ Stalker Festival 2014
  5. ↑ acs.ucalgary.ca ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2009) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acs.ucalgary.ca
  6. ↑ http://www.proficinema.ru/questions-problems/interviews/detail.php?ID=66304 Interview with Igor Maiboroda (Russian)
  7. ↑ Ant Skalandis: Bratija Strugazkie (Ант Скаландис: Братья Стругацкие). Moscow 2008, ISBN 978-5-17-052684-0 , p. 504.
  8. ^ Stalker (GDR Synchro) in the German synchronous file
  9. ↑ Stalker (BRD-Synchro) in the German dubbing index
  10. ↑ Details on the R · U · S · C · I · C · O-DVD by Stalker ( Memento of the original dated December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ruscico.com
  11. ↑ Eventhint.com: Stalker [Restored Edition - A Film by Andrei Tarkovsky] | Eventhint.com. Retrieved June 11, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Stalker. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 3, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  13. ↑ Andrei Tarkowski in an interview in 1977: “This is what the situation seems until the last scene in which they are resting in the café after their expedition and Stalker's wife appears, a weary woman who has seen a lot in her life. Her arrival forces the heroes to face something new, unexplained and astonishing. It is difficult for them to understand the reasons for which this woman, who suffered so much because of her husband, she gave birth to a sick child through his fault, still loves him with the same limitless generosity she felt for him in the days of her youth. Her love, her devotion - this is exactly the miracle with which one can counter the lack of faith, spiritual emptiness, cynicism - that is, all which the heroes of the film have lived until now. [...] In Stalker everything must be spelled out to the end - human love is this miracle which can defy all the dry theorising about hopelessness of the world. This emotion is an undeniable positive value in every one of us. It is what man leans on, what remains his forever. " (English) ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acs.ucalgary.ca
  14. ↑ Andrei Tarkowski 1981, translation by Wikipedia (English) ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acs.ucalgary.ca
  15. ↑ a b Klaus Kreimeier : Andrej Tarkowskij. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1984, quoted from: Filmzentrale .
  16. ↑ Bernd Kiefer: The Unimagined Interface - Allegorical Landscapes in Antonioni , Angelopoulos and Tarkowskij. In: film service. 17/2004, p. 59 ff. Similar to Klaus Kreimeier : Andrej Tarkowskij. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1984, quoted from: Filmzentrale , for his part partly with reference to the cultural scientist Hartmut Böhme .
  17. ↑ Cinema.de: film review
  18. ^ Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 7th edition. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-11860-X , p. 837.
  19. ↑ Stalker. Retrieved May 15, 2017 .
  20. ↑ See http://robertrich.com/site/disco.php?album_id=21 .