Stalker was my first encounter with Tarkovsky’s cinema, and I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed. I went to see it with my brother and my mum, who later noted, “I didn’t understand what’s so sci-fiey here”. I didn’t either. I loved Strugatsky brothers but Сталкер has precious little to do with the book, Пикник на обочине (Roadside Picnic) on which the film was ostensibly based. Watching it again and again in the 1980s, I grew to like (if not exactly love) this bleak movie as well as to understand my mum’s comment.
Isn’t it strange that the ominous Chernobyl-esque Zone has (at least some) colour while the “real” world outside it, apart from the final scenes with Martyshka, is monochrome? Not to me. Not now. I think that for the grownups life in 1970s Soviet Union was not particularly colourful. But I was a child. I was lucky: I was able to see stuff in full colour on our black and white telly, Рубин-110.
Speaking of colours: I’m sure that what they were showing in Teatro Guiniguada was not the 2017 restored version, which, judging from trailer, must be closer, colour-wise, to the version I saw some 40 years ago. Here the sepia sequences looked almost greyscale.
For all its focus on three men’s overlong venture to the Zone — in Timur’s opinion, the film would be perfect if it were about 40 minutes shorter — it is the final, fourth-wall-breaking monologue by the Stalker’s wife (Alisa Freindlich) that suddenly brings humanity as well as sense to the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment