Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER takes place in the fantastical land known as the Zone
STALKER (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Wednesday, December 18, 4:30 & 8:00, and Thursday, December 19, 4:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Set in a seemingly postapocalyptic world that is never explained, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker is an existential work of immense beauty, a deeply philosophical, continually frustrating, and endlessly rewarding journey into nothing less than the heart and soul of the world. Alexander Kaidanovsky stars as Stalker, a careful, precise man who has been hired to lead Writer and Professor (Tarkovsky regulars Anatoli Solonitsyn and Nikolai Grinko, respectively) into the forbidden Zone, a place of mystery that houses a room where it is said that people can achieve their most inner desires. While Stalker’s home and the bar where the men meet are dark, gray, and foreboding, the Zone is filled with lush green fields, trees, and aromatic flowers — as well as abandoned vehicles, strange passageways, and inexplicable sounds. The Zone — which heavily influenced J. J. Abrams’s creation of the island on Lost — has a life all its own as past, present, and future merge in an expansive land where every forward movement is fraught with danger but there is no turning back. An obsessive tyrant of a filmmaker, Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev, Solaris) imbues every shot with a supreme majesty, taking viewers on an unusual and unforgettable cinematic adventure. (For our 2012 twi-ny talk with Geoff Dyer, the author of Zona: A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room, which offers quite a unique take on Stalker, go here.)