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Stalker

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Product Description

Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker involves a bizarre and dangerous phenomenon called the Zone. It is beyond the comprehension of human beings, as it contains supernatural attributes where the normal laws of physics no longer apply. Apparently, deep inside the Zone there is ‘the Room’ that has the power to fulfill the deepest desires of anyone who enters it, but the problem being that these wishes might not be the consciously expressed desires, but the true unconscious ones. The Zone can only be entered with the help of a ‘Stalker’—a guide well acquainted with the treacherous ways of the Zone, as it is his job to bypass the heavy security in order to take his clients inside the heart of the Zone all the way to 'the Room.' The Stalker instructs his clients that they must do exactly as he says in order to survive the environmental dangers that lie ahead, which are invisible to the naked eye. 

Manufacturer Description

One of Andrei Tarkovsky(Solaris, The Sacrifice) most acclaimed films, Stalker is an unforgettable film experience that evokes the spiritual lucidity of Carl Dreyer and the unbridled imagination of Philip K. Dick. Since its release in 1979, Stalker has inspired filmmakers as diverse as David Lynch and Steven Spielberg and ensnared audiences in a labyrinth of striking imagery revealing the familiar in the strange, the poetic in the disturbing and the mythic in the mordant. In the near future, an unseen alien force has taken possession of an area of Russian wilderness that authorities, have dubbed The Zone. The only thing known for sure about the region is that few who enter it ever return. Led by a Stalker one of a small group of outlaws able to safely navigate the Zone, a renegade scientist and a cynical, burnt out writer penetrate the dangers outside in search of the power and transcendence rumored to exist inside. The Stalker longs to un-do a mysterious physical transformation the Zone has performed on his young daughter. The scientist will risk anything to see that reason triumphs over faith. The writer seeks a germ of inspiration that the crumbling and corrupt world beyond the Zone no longer provides. Together, these three men become desperate pilgrims walking a desolate trail leading to one of the most enigmatic and tantalizing endings in the history of cinema. A haunting and honest meditation on the intersections of science, feeling, and faith.Stalker is both profoundly unsettling and deeply moving.

Challenging, provocative, and ultimately rewarding, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker is a mind-bending experience that defies explanation. Like Tarkovsky's earlier and similarly enigmatic science fiction classic Solaris, this long, slow, meditative masterpiece demands patience and total attention; anyone accustomed to faster pacing is likely to abandon the nearly three-hour film before its first hour is over. On the other hand, those who approach Tarkovsky's work in a properly receptive (and wide awake) frame of mind are likely to appreciate the film's seductive depth of theme and hypnotic imagery. Set in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic future (although the time-frame is never specified), the eerie and unsettling story focuses on the title character, Stalker (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky), who leads characters known only as the Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and the Scientist (or Professor, played by Nikolai Grinko) into a mysterious region called The Zone. Tarkovsky films their journey as a long odyssey, or religious pilgrimage, and center of The Zone--said to be under an alien influence--is where each of these men hopes to find a kind of personal transcendence. Despite obvious parallels to The Wizard of Oz, Tarkovsky's film is devoid of special effects or any fantastical elements typically associated with science fiction or fantasy. Instead, Stalker makes astonishing use of sound and bleak-but-beautiful imagery to envelope the viewer into the eerie atmosphere of The Zone and the dank, colorless landscape that surrounds it. And while the film's glacial pacing may be off-putting to some viewers, there's no denying that Stalker has a mesmerizing power of its own, including a thought-provoking and highly debatable ending that propels the film to a higher level of meaning and significance. --Jeff Shannon

Product Information

The theme that lies at the core of Tarkovky's science-fiction masterpiece Stalker is self-reflection, as what will ultimately ensue is a tedious game of chess between four seasoned players: the Writer, the Professor, the Stalker, and the Zone itself, as they will all be forced to come to terms with their thoughts, fears, intentions, ideas, theories, beliefs, and the existential purpose of their own existence; all the while their self-confrontation will slowly manifest into a fierce philosophical battle of ideologies. Andrei Tarkovsky is considered the greatest director to have emerged from Russia since the legendary director Sergei Eisenstein, and Stalker is looked at as one of his greatest achievements. Stalker delves upon several themes dealing with Philosophy, Metaphysics, Empiricism, Existentialism and Spirituality, creating a form of meditative cinema that stems closest to the literary definition of art. Throughout the story of Stalker, the heightened tension between it's three key players increasingly builds with each new step bringing them closer towards 'the Room', causing them to slowly expose such things as ulterior and diabolical motives, and hostile and violent tendencies, all the while the destructive environment that the players inhabit clearly sets out to destroy them.

Key Product Details

  • Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
  • Number Of Discs: 2
  • Run Time: 163 (Minutes)
  • UPC: 738329048822