Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER takes place in the fantastical land known as the Zone
STALKER (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Mid-Manhattan Library
455 Fifth Ave. at 40th St.
Wednesday, March 20, free, 7:00
www.nypl.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. Stalker is screening for free March 20 at the Mid-Manhattan Library as part of the series “Three Auteurs of World Cinema,” which began with six films by Wong Kar-wai and continues with Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice on March 27 before presenting eight works by Federico Fellini beginning April 10 with I Vitteloni.
When she was a girl in Asunción, Paraguay, Renate Costa Perdomo had an uncle, Rodolfo Costa, who died under mysterious circumstances. For several days, he lay naked and dead on the floor of his apartment, his closet empty of all clothing. When Perdomo asked her family what her uncle died of, she was told “sadness.” After attending film school, Perdomo decided to get to the bottom of the story, making her feature-length documentary debut with the intimate, moving 108 (Cuchillo de Palo). Shot with a beautiful poetic beauty by Carlos Vásquez, the film follows Perdomo as she speaks with relatives, neighbors, and friends of her uncle’s who slowly reveal that he lived a second life, one in which he was known as Héctor Torres, a gay dancer who was persecuted for the way he was, arrested under Alfredo Stroessner’s repressive regime and included on a famous public list of 108 homosexuals. Perdomo explains that the number, 108, is still filled with meaning in Paraguay, where some people refuse to use it as an address or in a telephone number. Perdomo speaks at length with her father, a silversmith who has no problem discussing his old-fashioned feelings about homosexuality. Perdomo also meets some of the people who knew Hector, including men who identify as women, some of whom will only speak in secrecy. 108 is more than just a personal journey; it is a compelling exploration of lingering bigotry and biases, made by a woman who is unafraid to share the truth, about both her family and her native country, with a world that needs to know about these kinds of stories. 108, which has been winning awards at international festivals since 2010, is finally getting its U.S. theatrical release, running March 18-24 at the Maysles Cinema as part of Livia Bloom’s “Documentary in Bloom” series.
Ray Milland won an Oscar as Best Actor for his unforgettable portrayal of Don Birnam in Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, starring as a would-be writer who can see life only through the bottom of a bottle. Having just gotten sober, he is off to spend the weekend with his brother (Phillip Terry), but Don is able to slip away from his girlfriend, Helen (Jane Wyman), and his sibling and hang out mostly with Nat the bartender (Howard Da Silva) and plenty of inner demons. One of the misunderstood claims to fame of Wilder’s classic drama is that it was shot in P. J. Clarke’s on Third Ave.; although the bar in the film was based on Clarke’s, the set was re-created in Hollywood, which doesn’t take anything away from this heartbreaking tale that will not have you running to the nearest watering hole after you see it. The Lost Weekend, which won three other Academy Awards — Best Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett), Best Director (Wilder), and Best Picture — is screening March 18 at 7:25 at Film Forum and will be introduced by Blake Bailey, author of the new biography Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson (Knopf, March 13, 2013, $30), about the author of such books as The Lost Weekend and The Fall of Valor, and will be followed by a book signing. Bailey, who has also written biographies of John Cheever and Richard Yates, is currently working on a major bio of Philip Roth; the new documentary 
Loosely adapted from the book by John Godey, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three wonderfully captures the cynicism of 1970s New York City. Four heavily armed and mustached men — Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Gray (Hector Elizondo), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman), colorful pseudonyms that influenced Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs — hijack an uptown 4 train, demanding one million dollars in one hour from a nearly bankrupt city or else they will kill all eighteen passengers, one at a time, minute by minute. The hapless mayor (Lee Wallace) is in bed with the flu, so Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle (Tony Roberts) takes charge on the political end while transit detective Lt. Zachary Garber (a great Walter Matthau) and Inspector Daniels (Julius Harris) of the NYPD team up to try to figure out just how in the world the criminals expect to get away with the seemingly impossible heist. Directed by Joseph Sargent (Sybil), the film offers a nostalgic look back at a bygone era, before technology radically changed the way trains are run and police work is handled. The film also features a very funny, laconic Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone and the beloved Kenneth McMillan as the borough commander. The film was remade as a television movie in 1998, starring Edward James Olmos, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lorraine Bracco, and as an embarrassingly bad big-budget bomb in 2009 by Tony Scott. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is screening March 16 at 92Y Tribeca and will be followed by a discussion with Pelham sound mixer Chris Newman and special subway-related giveaways, kicking off the eight-week Cinebeasts program “The Subway Series,” consisting of subway busking and films set in the New York City underground.
