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Stalker (film)
Encyclopedia
Stalker is a 1979 science fiction film
directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their novel
Roadside Picnic
. It depicts an expedition led by the Stalker to bring his two clients to a site known as the Zone, which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires.
The title of the film, which is the same in Russian and English, is derived from the English word to stalk in the long-standing meaning of approaching furtively, much like a hunter. In the film a stalker is a professional guide to the zone, someone who crosses the border into the forbidden zone with a specific goal.
) urges him not to go into the Zone because of the legal consequences, but he ignores her pleas.
The Stalker goes to a bar, where he meets the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn
) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko
), who will be his clients on his next trip into the Zone. The three of them evade a military blockade that guards the Zone using a Land-Rover
— attracting gunfire from the guards as they go — and then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car
. In a single shot, almost 7 minutes long, the 3 sit motionless, looking in 3 opposite directions on the railway work car, with the only sound accompaniment being the squeaking of its winch. As they pass from urban setting to rural, their surroundings grow strikingly colorful in contrast to the urban setting.
The Stalker tells his clients that they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers that, while invisible, are all around them. The Stalker tests various routes by throwing metal nuts tied with strips of cloth ahead of him before walking into a new area. The Zone appears peaceful and harmless. The Writer is skeptical that there is any real danger, while the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.
The three men advance through the Zone while sharing philosophical discussion about their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses concern that he is losing his inspiration, while the Professor hopes to win a Nobel prize. Meanwhile, the Stalker — who explains that he has never gone into the Room himself — quotes from the New Testament
and bemoans the loss of faith in society. The Stalker at times refers to a previous Stalker, named "Porcupine," who led his poet brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room and gained a lot of money, and then hanged himself. It appears that the Room fulfills all of the wishes of the visitor - the problem being that these might not be the consciously expressed wishes, but the true unconscious
ones. When the Writer confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, he says that it all comes from Porcupine.
The men walk through meadows and then enter a tunnel that the Stalker calls "the meat grinder." In one of the decayed buildings, a phone inexplicably begins to ring. The Writer answers and says into the phone that "this is not the clinic," and hangs up. The Professor then uses the phone to call a colleague. In the resultant conversation, he reveals his true motive for having come to the Room. He has brought a bomb with him and intends to destroy the Room out of fear that it could be used for personal gain by evil men. The three men fight verbally and physically; the Professor backs down from his plan to destroy the Room. Their journey ends when they finally arrive at the entrance to the Room. The men sit outside the Room in a long uninterrupted shot and never enter it. A rainstorm begins to fall from a dark sky where a ceiling once was, into the ruined building, and then gradually fades away.
The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are shown to be back in the bar in a single cut - as if the journey back is insignificant - and meet with the Stalker's wife and daughter. A mysterious black dog that followed the three men through the Zone is now in the bar with them. When his wife asks where he got it, the Stalker says that it got attached to him and he could not leave it in the Zone. As the Stalker leaves the bar with his family and the dog, we see that his child, nicknamed "Monkey" is crippled, and cannot walk unaided.
Later, when the Stalker's wife says she would like to visit the Room, he seems to have doubts about the Zone; he tells her he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. The Stalker's wife then contemplates her relationship with the Stalker, only to conclude that she is better off with him. Monkey sits alone in the kitchen. She recites a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev
and then lays her head on the table and appears to psychokinetically
push three drinking glasses across the table, one after the other, with the last one falling to the floor. After the third glass falls to the floor, a train passes by, causing the entire apartment to shake.
Supporting actors:
by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. After reading the novel, initially Tarkovsky recommended it to his friend, the film director Mikhail Kalatozov
, thinking that he might be interested in adapting it into a film. Kalatozov, however, could not obtain the rights to the film from the Strugatsky brothers and abandoned the project. Tarkovsky then began to be more and more interested in adapting the novel. He hoped that it would allow him to make a film that conforms to the classical Aristotelian unity
, that is the unity of action, the unity of location and the unity of time.
The plot and flow of the film departs considerably from the novel. According to Tarkovsky the film has nothing in common with the novel except for the two words Stalker and Zone.
However, watching the film and reading the novel demonstrates that there are, in fact, several similarities between the novel and the film. In both works, the Zone is guarded by a police or military guard, apparently authorized with deadly force
. The Stalker in both works tests the safety of his path by tossing nuts and bolts (tied with scraps of cloth), ensuring that gravity is normal (i.e. the object flies in an expected path.) Also, a character named Porcupine is a mentor Stalker to the protagonist. Finally, the target of the expedition (the final expedition in the case of the novel) in both works is a wish-granting device.
An early draft of the screenplay was published as a novel Stalker
that differs much from the finished film. In Roadside Picnic the site was specifically described as the site of alien visitation; the name of the novel derives from a metaphor proposed by a character who compares the visit to a roadside picnic.
In an interview on the MK2
DVD, production designer Rashit Safiullin describes the Zone as a space in which humans can live without the trappings of society and can speak about the most important things freely.
Some elements of the original novel remain. In Roadside Picnic, the Zone is full of strange artifacts and phenomena that defy known science. A vestige of this idea carries over to the film, in the form of Stalker's habit of throwing metal nut
s down a path before walking along it; the characters in Roadside Picnic do something similar when they suspect they are near gravitational anomalies that could crush them.
In another sharp contrast, the penultimate scene of the movie is a first person monologue by the Stalker's wife, where she looks directly into the camera and explains, with increasing authority, how she met the Stalker and decided to stick with him. It is the only such scene in the entire 160 minutes of the film; the content though is a kind of answer to what the same woman had said in the opening scene, when she blamed her husband for their miseries. It carries clear allusions to Christ (who also called strangers to "follow me") and as some reviewers pointed out, echoes the style of 19th-century Russian novels with their bold and passionate heroines.
, they found that all of the film had been improperly developed and their footage was unusable. The film had been shot on experimental Kodak stock with which Soviet laboratories were unfamiliar.
Even before the film stock problem was discovered, relations between Tarkovsky and the first cinematographer
, Georgy Rerberg
, had been in serious deterioration. After seeing the poorly developed material, Rerberg left the first screening session and never came back. By the time the film stock defect was discovered, Tarkovsky had shot all the outdoor scenes and had to burn them. Safiullin contends that Tarkovsky was so despondent that he wanted to abandon further production of the film.
After the loss of the film stock, the Soviet film boards wanted to shut the film down, officially writing it off. But Tarkovsky came up with a solution: he asked to make a two-part film, which meant additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up reshooting almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. According to Safiullin, the finished version of Stalker is completely different from the one Tarkovsky originally shot.
The film mixes sepia and color footage; within the Zone, in the countryside, all is colorful, while the outside, urban world is tinted sepia.
The central part of the film, in which the characters move around the Zone, was shot in a few days at two deserted hydro power plant
s on the Jägala
river near Tallinn
, Estonia
. The shot before they enter the Zone is an old Flora chemical factory in the center of Tallinn
, next to the old Rotermann salt storage and the electric plant—now a culture factory where a memorial plate of the film has been set up in 2008. Some shots from the Zone were filmed in Maardu
, next to the Iru powerplant, while the shot with the gates to the Zone was filmed in Lasnamäe
, next to Punane Street behind the Idakeskus. Some shots were filmed near the Tallinn-Narva highway bridge on the Pirita River
.
The documentary film Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of "Stalker" by Igor Mayboroda sheds new light on the production of "Stalker". The relation between Rerberg and Tarkovsky suffered tremendously during the production of "Stalker". Rerberg felt that Tarkovsky was not ready for this script. He told Tarkovsky to rewrite the script in order to achieve a good result. Tarkovsky ignored him and continued shooting. After several arguments, Tarkovsky sent Rerberg home. Ultimately, Tarkovsky shot this movie three times, consuming over 5,000 meters of film. People who have seen both the first version shot by Rerberg (as Director of Photography) and the final theatrical release say that they are almost identical. Tarkovsky sent home other crew members in addition to Rerberg and excluded them from the ending credits as well. Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths, which were attributed to the long, arduous shooting schedule of the film as well as to toxins present at the shooting locations. Vladimir Sharun recalls:
s with slow, subtle camera movement, rejecting the conventional use of rapid montage. Almost all of the shots not set in the Zone are in a high-contrast brown monochrome.
The film contains not more than 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of almost one minute. Many shots lasting for more than four minutes.
, who had also composed the film scores for Tarkovsky's previous films Solaris
and The Mirror
. For Stalker Artemyev composed and recorded two different versions of the score. The first score was done with an orchestra alone but was rejected by Tarkovsky. The second score that was used in the final film was created on a synthesizer along with traditional instruments that were manipulated using sound effects. In the final film score the boundaries between music and sound were blurred, as natural sounds and music interact to the point were they are indistinguishable. In fact, many of the natural sounds were not production sounds but were created by Artemyev on his synthesizer. For Tarkovsky music was more than just a parallel illustration of the visual image. He believed that music distorts and changes the emotional tone of a visual image while not changing the meaning. He also believed that in a film with complete theoretical consistency music will have no place and that instead music is replaced by sounds. According to Tarkovsky, he aimed at this consistency and moved into this direction in Stalker and Nostalghia
.
In addition to the original monophonic soundtrack a newer, alternative soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound
exists. This alternative soundtrack was created for the 2001 DVD release by the Russian Cinema Council (Ruscico). Apart from remixing the mono soundtrack into stereo surround sound, music and sound effects were removed and added in several scenes. Music was added to the scene where the three are traveling to the zone on a motorized draisine
. In the opening and the final scene Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony
was removed and in the opening scene in Stalker's house ambient sounds were added, changing the original soundtrack, in which this scene was completely silent except for the sound of a train.
Pulcherrima Rosa by an anonymous 14th century Italian composer dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In its original form Tarkovsky did not perceive the motet as suitable for the film and asked Artemyev to give it an Oriental sound. Later, Tarkovsky proposed to invite musicians from Armenia and Azerbaijan and to let them improvise on the melody of the motet. A musician was invited from Armenia who played the main melody on a tar
, accompanied by orchestral background music written by Artemyev. Tarkovsky, who, unusually for him, attended the full recording session, rejected the final result as not what he was looking for.
Rethinking their approach they finally found the solution in a theme that would create a state of inner calmness and inner satisfaction, or as Tarkovsky said "space frozen in a dynamic equilibrium." Artemyev knew about a musical piece from Indian classical music
where a prolonged and unchanged background tone is performed on a tambura
. As this gave Artemyev the impression of frozen space, he used this inspiration and created a background tone on his synthesizer similar to the background tone performed on the tambura. The tar then improvised on the background sound, together with a flute
as a European, Western instrument. To mask the obvious combination of European and Oriental instruments he passed the foreground music through the effect channels of his SYNTHI 100
synthesizer. These effects included modulating the sound of the flute and lowering the speed of the tar, so that what Artemyev called "the life of one string" could be heard. Tarkovsky was amazed by the result, especially liking the sound of the tar, and used the theme without any alterations in the film.
or the Marseillaise
. In an interview with Tonino Guerra
Tarkovsky said that he wanted "music that is more or less popular, that expresses the movement of the masses, the theme of humanity's social destiny. But this music must be barely heard beneath the noise, in a way that the spectator is not aware of it.". As the sound of the train becomes more and more distant, the sounds of the house, such as the creaking floor, water running through pipes, and the humming of a heater become more prominent. While the Stalker leaves his house and wanders around an industrial landscape, the audience hears industrial sounds such as train whistles, ship foghorns, and train wheels. When the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor set off from the bar in an off-road vehicle, the engine noise merges into an electronic tone. The natural sound of the engine falls off as the vehicle reaches the horizon. Initially almost inaudible, the electronic tone emerges and replaces the engine sound as if time has frozen.
The journey to the Zone on a motorized draisine features a disconnection between the visual image and the sound. The presence of the draisine is registered only through the clanking sound of the wheels on the tracks. Neither the draisine nor the scenery passing by is shown, since the camera is focused on the faces of the characters. This disconnection draws the audience into the inner world of the characters and transforms the physical journey into an inner journey. This effect on the audience is reinforced by Artemyev's synthesizer effects, which make the clanking wheels sound less and less natural as the journey progresses. When the three arrive in the Zone initially, it appears to be silent. Only after some time, and only slightly audibly can one hear the sound of a distant river, the sound of the blowing wind, or the occasional cry of an animal. These sounds grow richer and more audible while the Stalker makes his first venture into the Zone, initially leaving the professor and the writer behind, and as if the sound draws him towards the zone. The sparseness of sounds in the zone draws attention to specific sounds, which, as in other scenes, are largely disconnected from the visual image. Animals can be heard in the distance but are never shown. A breeze can be heard, but no visual reference is shown. This effect is reinforced by occasional synthesizer effects which meld with the natural sounds and blur the boundaries between artificial and alien sounds and the sounds of nature.
After the three travelers appear from the tunnel, the sound of dripping water can be heard. While the camera slowly pans to the right, a waterfall appears. While the visual transition of the panning shot is slow, the aural transition is sudden. As soon as the waterfall appears, the sound of the dripping water falls off while the thundering sound of the waterfall emerges, almost as if time has jumped. In the next scene Tarkovsky again uses the technique of disconnecting sound and visual image. While the camera pans over the burning ashes of a fire and over some water, the audience hears the conversation of the Stalker and the Writer who are back in the tunnel looking for the professor. Finding the Professor outside, the three are surprised to realize that the have ended up at an earlier point in time. This and the previous disconnection of sound and the visual image illustrate the Zone’s power to alter time and space. This technique is even more evident in the next scene where the three travelers are resting. The sounds of a river, the wind, dripping water, and fire can be heard in a discontinuous way that is now partially disconnected from the visual image. When the Professor, for example, extinguishes the fire by throwing his coffee on it, all sounds but that of the dripping water fall off. Similarly, we can hear and see the Stalker and the river. Then the camera cuts back to the Professor while the audience can still hear the river for a few more seconds. This impressionist use of sound prepares the audience for the dream sequences accompanied by a variation of the Stalker theme that has been already heard during the title sequence.
During the journey in the Zone, the sound of water becomes more and more prominent, which, combined with the visual image, presents the zone as a drenched world. In an interview Tarkovsky dismissed the idea that water has a symbolic meaning in his films, saying that there was so much rain in his films because it is always raining in Russia. In another interview, on the film Nostalghia, however, he said "Water is a mysterious element, a single molecule of which is very photogenic. It can convey movement and a sense of change and flux." Emerging from the tunnel called the meat grinder by the Stalker they arrive at the entrance of their destination, the room. Here, as in the rest of the film, sound is constantly changing and not necessarily connected to the visual image. The journey in the Zone ends with the three sitting in the room, silent, with no audible sound. When the sound resumes, it is again the sound of water but with a different timbre, softer and gentler, as if to give a sense of catharsis and hope. The transition back to the world outside the zone is supported by sound. While the camera still shows a pool of water inside the Zone, the audience begins to hear the sound of a train and Ravel's
Boléro
, reminiscent of the opening scene. The soundscape of the world outside the zone is the same as before, characterized by train wheels, foghorns of a ship and train whistles. The film ends as it began, with the sound of a train passing by, accompanied by the muffled sound of Beethoven's Ninth symphony, this time the Ode to Joy
from the final moments of the symphony. As in the rest of the film the disconnect between the visual image and the sound leaves the audience in the unclear whether the sound is real or an illusion.
were critical of the film, on being told that the film should be faster and more dynamic, Tarkovsky replied:
The Goskino representative then explained that he was trying to give the point of view of the audience. Tarkovsky supposedly retorted:
The Western Reception has been a little timid, the movie was slowly made available and since it was after the release the reviews were not concurrent, nevertheless, it currently holds 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
.
Film critic Derek Adams compared Stalker to Francis Ford Coppola
's Apocalypse Now
also released in 1979, "as a journey to the heart of darkness
, [Stalker] is a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's."
The film is rated at #12 on the website Rate Your Music
's top 100 films chart.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Roadside Picnic
Roadside Picnic
Roadside Picnic is a short science fiction novel written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky between January 18 and November 3 of 1971. As of 1998, 38 editions of the novel were published in 20 countries. The novel was first translated to English by Antonina W. Bouis...
. It depicts an expedition led by the Stalker to bring his two clients to a site known as the Zone, which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires.
The title of the film, which is the same in Russian and English, is derived from the English word to stalk in the long-standing meaning of approaching furtively, much like a hunter. In the film a stalker is a professional guide to the zone, someone who crosses the border into the forbidden zone with a specific goal.
Plot summary
The Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) works as a guide who leads people through "the Zone" — an otherwise mundane rural area scattered with ruined buildings, where normal laws of physics no longer apply — to encounter "the Room", said to grant the deepest, innermost wishes of anyone who steps inside. In his home with his wife and daughter, the Stalker's wife (Alisa FreindlichAlisa Freindlich
Alisa Brunovna Freindlich is a Soviet and Russian actress, People's Artist of the USSR.-Biography:Alisa Freindlich was born into the family of Bruno Freindlich, a prominent actor and People's Artist of the USSR. She is of German and Russian ancestry. Her father and paternal relatives were ethnic...
) urges him not to go into the Zone because of the legal consequences, but he ignores her pleas.
The Stalker goes to a bar, where he meets the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn
Anatoly Solonitsyn
Anatoly Alekseyevich Solonitsyn was a Soviet actor.-Work:Solonitsyn is best known in the west for his roles in several of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, including Dr...
) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko
Nikolai Grinko
Nikolai Grigoryevich Grinko or Mykola Hryhorovych Hrynko , was a Soviet/Ukrainian actor.He is well known for his roles in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, including: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rubliov, Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker. He starred in the 1981 film Teheran 43.-External links:...
), who will be his clients on his next trip into the Zone. The three of them evade a military blockade that guards the Zone using a Land-Rover
Land Rover Series
The Land Rover Series I, II, and III are off-road vehicles produced by the British manufacturer Land Rover that were inspired by the US-built Willys Jeep...
— attracting gunfire from the guards as they go — and then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car
Speeder
A speeder is a maintenance of way motorized vehicle formerly used on railroads around the world by track inspectors and work crews to move quickly to and...
. In a single shot, almost 7 minutes long, the 3 sit motionless, looking in 3 opposite directions on the railway work car, with the only sound accompaniment being the squeaking of its winch. As they pass from urban setting to rural, their surroundings grow strikingly colorful in contrast to the urban setting.
The Stalker tells his clients that they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers that, while invisible, are all around them. The Stalker tests various routes by throwing metal nuts tied with strips of cloth ahead of him before walking into a new area. The Zone appears peaceful and harmless. The Writer is skeptical that there is any real danger, while the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.
The three men advance through the Zone while sharing philosophical discussion about their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses concern that he is losing his inspiration, while the Professor hopes to win a Nobel prize. Meanwhile, the Stalker — who explains that he has never gone into the Room himself — quotes from the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
and bemoans the loss of faith in society. The Stalker at times refers to a previous Stalker, named "Porcupine," who led his poet brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room and gained a lot of money, and then hanged himself. It appears that the Room fulfills all of the wishes of the visitor - the problem being that these might not be the consciously expressed wishes, but the true unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...
ones. When the Writer confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, he says that it all comes from Porcupine.
The men walk through meadows and then enter a tunnel that the Stalker calls "the meat grinder." In one of the decayed buildings, a phone inexplicably begins to ring. The Writer answers and says into the phone that "this is not the clinic," and hangs up. The Professor then uses the phone to call a colleague. In the resultant conversation, he reveals his true motive for having come to the Room. He has brought a bomb with him and intends to destroy the Room out of fear that it could be used for personal gain by evil men. The three men fight verbally and physically; the Professor backs down from his plan to destroy the Room. Their journey ends when they finally arrive at the entrance to the Room. The men sit outside the Room in a long uninterrupted shot and never enter it. A rainstorm begins to fall from a dark sky where a ceiling once was, into the ruined building, and then gradually fades away.
The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are shown to be back in the bar in a single cut - as if the journey back is insignificant - and meet with the Stalker's wife and daughter. A mysterious black dog that followed the three men through the Zone is now in the bar with them. When his wife asks where he got it, the Stalker says that it got attached to him and he could not leave it in the Zone. As the Stalker leaves the bar with his family and the dog, we see that his child, nicknamed "Monkey" is crippled, and cannot walk unaided.
Later, when the Stalker's wife says she would like to visit the Room, he seems to have doubts about the Zone; he tells her he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. The Stalker's wife then contemplates her relationship with the Stalker, only to conclude that she is better off with him. Monkey sits alone in the kitchen. She recites a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is generally considered the last of three great Romantic poets of Russia, following Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.- Life :...
and then lays her head on the table and appears to psychokinetically
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
push three drinking glasses across the table, one after the other, with the last one falling to the floor. After the third glass falls to the floor, a train passes by, causing the entire apartment to shake.
Cast
- Alisa FreindlichAlisa FreindlichAlisa Brunovna Freindlich is a Soviet and Russian actress, People's Artist of the USSR.-Biography:Alisa Freindlich was born into the family of Bruno Freindlich, a prominent actor and People's Artist of the USSR. She is of German and Russian ancestry. Her father and paternal relatives were ethnic...
as the Stalker's Wife - Alexander Kaidanovsky as the Stalker
- Anatoli Solonitsyn as the Writer
- Nikolai GrinkoNikolai GrinkoNikolai Grigoryevich Grinko or Mykola Hryhorovych Hrynko , was a Soviet/Ukrainian actor.He is well known for his roles in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, including: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rubliov, Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker. He starred in the 1981 film Teheran 43.-External links:...
as the Professor
Supporting actors:
- Natasha Abramova as Monkey, the Stalker's daughter
- F. Yurna, Y. Kostin and R. Rendi
Writing
The film is loosely based on the novel Roadside PicnicRoadside Picnic
Roadside Picnic is a short science fiction novel written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky between January 18 and November 3 of 1971. As of 1998, 38 editions of the novel were published in 20 countries. The novel was first translated to English by Antonina W. Bouis...
by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. After reading the novel, initially Tarkovsky recommended it to his friend, the film director Mikhail Kalatozov
Mikhail Kalatozov
Mikhail Kalatozov born Mikheil Kalatozishvili was a Georgian/Russian film director. Born in Tiflis , he studied economics before starting his film career as an actor and later cinematographer....
, thinking that he might be interested in adapting it into a film. Kalatozov, however, could not obtain the rights to the film from the Strugatsky brothers and abandoned the project. Tarkovsky then began to be more and more interested in adapting the novel. He hoped that it would allow him to make a film that conforms to the classical Aristotelian unity
Classical unities
The classical unities, Aristotelian unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:...
, that is the unity of action, the unity of location and the unity of time.
The plot and flow of the film departs considerably from the novel. According to Tarkovsky the film has nothing in common with the novel except for the two words Stalker and Zone.
However, watching the film and reading the novel demonstrates that there are, in fact, several similarities between the novel and the film. In both works, the Zone is guarded by a police or military guard, apparently authorized with deadly force
Deadly force
Deadly force, as defined by the United States Armed Forces, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm...
. The Stalker in both works tests the safety of his path by tossing nuts and bolts (tied with scraps of cloth), ensuring that gravity is normal (i.e. the object flies in an expected path.) Also, a character named Porcupine is a mentor Stalker to the protagonist. Finally, the target of the expedition (the final expedition in the case of the novel) in both works is a wish-granting device.
An early draft of the screenplay was published as a novel Stalker
Stalker (novel)
Stalker is a novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky based on an early draft screenplay for the movie Stalker that in turn is based on a part of their book Roadside Picnic. The novel is quite short and perhaps better described as a Novelette....
that differs much from the finished film. In Roadside Picnic the site was specifically described as the site of alien visitation; the name of the novel derives from a metaphor proposed by a character who compares the visit to a roadside picnic.
In an interview on the MK2
Marin Karmitz
Marin Karmitz is a French jewish businessman whose career has spanned the French film industry, including director, producer, film distributor, and operator of a chain of cinemas....
DVD, production designer Rashit Safiullin describes the Zone as a space in which humans can live without the trappings of society and can speak about the most important things freely.
Some elements of the original novel remain. In Roadside Picnic, the Zone is full of strange artifacts and phenomena that defy known science. A vestige of this idea carries over to the film, in the form of Stalker's habit of throwing metal nut
Nut (hardware)
A nut is a type of hardware fastener with a threaded hole. Nuts are almost always used opposite a mating bolt to fasten a stack of parts together. The two partners are kept together by a combination of their threads' friction, a slight stretch of the bolt, and compression of the parts...
s down a path before walking along it; the characters in Roadside Picnic do something similar when they suspect they are near gravitational anomalies that could crush them.
In another sharp contrast, the penultimate scene of the movie is a first person monologue by the Stalker's wife, where she looks directly into the camera and explains, with increasing authority, how she met the Stalker and decided to stick with him. It is the only such scene in the entire 160 minutes of the film; the content though is a kind of answer to what the same woman had said in the opening scene, when she blamed her husband for their miseries. It carries clear allusions to Christ (who also called strangers to "follow me") and as some reviewers pointed out, echoes the style of 19th-century Russian novels with their bold and passionate heroines.
Production
In an interview on the MK2 DVD, the production designer, Rashit Safiullin, recalls that Tarkovsky spent a year shooting a version of the outdoor scenes of Stalker. However, when the crew got back to MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, they found that all of the film had been improperly developed and their footage was unusable. The film had been shot on experimental Kodak stock with which Soviet laboratories were unfamiliar.
Even before the film stock problem was discovered, relations between Tarkovsky and the first cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
, Georgy Rerberg
Georgy Rerberg
Georgy Ivanovich Rerberg Soviet Union, – July 28, 1999, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian cinematographer.He is known for his work on Andrey Tarkovsky's Zerkalo...
, had been in serious deterioration. After seeing the poorly developed material, Rerberg left the first screening session and never came back. By the time the film stock defect was discovered, Tarkovsky had shot all the outdoor scenes and had to burn them. Safiullin contends that Tarkovsky was so despondent that he wanted to abandon further production of the film.
After the loss of the film stock, the Soviet film boards wanted to shut the film down, officially writing it off. But Tarkovsky came up with a solution: he asked to make a two-part film, which meant additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up reshooting almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. According to Safiullin, the finished version of Stalker is completely different from the one Tarkovsky originally shot.
The film mixes sepia and color footage; within the Zone, in the countryside, all is colorful, while the outside, urban world is tinted sepia.
The central part of the film, in which the characters move around the Zone, was shot in a few days at two deserted hydro power plant
Hydropower
Hydropower, hydraulic power, hydrokinetic power or water power is power that is derived from the force or energy of falling water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Since ancient times, hydropower has been used for irrigation and the operation of various mechanical devices, such as...
s on the Jägala
Jägala
Jägala is a village in Jõelähtme Parish, Harju County, Estonia. It had 139 inhabitants in 2007.-See also:*Jägala River*Jägala Waterfall*Jägala concentration camp*Jägala Army Base*Jägala Airfield-External links:* *...
river near Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
. The shot before they enter the Zone is an old Flora chemical factory in the center of Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
, next to the old Rotermann salt storage and the electric plant—now a culture factory where a memorial plate of the film has been set up in 2008. Some shots from the Zone were filmed in Maardu
Maardu
Maardu is a town and a municipality in Harju County, Estonia. It is part of Tallinn metropolitan area. The town covers an area of 22.76 km² and has a population of 16,529 ....
, next to the Iru powerplant, while the shot with the gates to the Zone was filmed in Lasnamäe
Lasnamäe
Lasnamäe is the most populous administrative district of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The districts' population is about 115,000, the majority of which is Russian-speaking. Local housing is mostly represented by 5-16 stories high panel blocks of flats, built in the 1970-1990s. Lasnamäe is...
, next to Punane Street behind the Idakeskus. Some shots were filmed near the Tallinn-Narva highway bridge on the Pirita River
Pirita River
The Pirita River is a long river in northern Estonia that drains into the Gulf of Finland in Pirita, Tallinn. The basin area of Pirita is 799 km²....
.
The documentary film Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of "Stalker" by Igor Mayboroda sheds new light on the production of "Stalker". The relation between Rerberg and Tarkovsky suffered tremendously during the production of "Stalker". Rerberg felt that Tarkovsky was not ready for this script. He told Tarkovsky to rewrite the script in order to achieve a good result. Tarkovsky ignored him and continued shooting. After several arguments, Tarkovsky sent Rerberg home. Ultimately, Tarkovsky shot this movie three times, consuming over 5,000 meters of film. People who have seen both the first version shot by Rerberg (as Director of Photography) and the final theatrical release say that they are almost identical. Tarkovsky sent home other crew members in addition to Rerberg and excluded them from the ending credits as well. Many people involved in the film production had untimely deaths, which were attributed to the long, arduous shooting schedule of the film as well as to toxins present at the shooting locations. Vladimir Sharun recalls:
Cinematography
Like Tarkovsky's other films, Stalker relies on long takeLong take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
s with slow, subtle camera movement, rejecting the conventional use of rapid montage. Almost all of the shots not set in the Zone are in a high-contrast brown monochrome.
The film contains not more than 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of almost one minute. Many shots lasting for more than four minutes.
Soundtrack
The Stalker film score was composed by Eduard ArtemyevEduard Artemyev
Eduard Nikolaevich Artemyev is a Russian composer of electronic music and film scores. Outside of Russia he is mostly known for his film scores from films such as Solaris, Siberiade, Stalker or Burnt by the Sun.-Biography:...
, who had also composed the film scores for Tarkovsky's previous films Solaris
Solaris (1972 film)
Solaris is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris , directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to...
and The Mirror
The Mirror (1975 film)
The Mirror is a 1975 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is loosely autobiographical, blending childhood memories, newsreel footage and poems by his father Arseny Tarkovsky...
. For Stalker Artemyev composed and recorded two different versions of the score. The first score was done with an orchestra alone but was rejected by Tarkovsky. The second score that was used in the final film was created on a synthesizer along with traditional instruments that were manipulated using sound effects. In the final film score the boundaries between music and sound were blurred, as natural sounds and music interact to the point were they are indistinguishable. In fact, many of the natural sounds were not production sounds but were created by Artemyev on his synthesizer. For Tarkovsky music was more than just a parallel illustration of the visual image. He believed that music distorts and changes the emotional tone of a visual image while not changing the meaning. He also believed that in a film with complete theoretical consistency music will have no place and that instead music is replaced by sounds. According to Tarkovsky, he aimed at this consistency and moved into this direction in Stalker and Nostalghia
Nostalghia
Nostalghia is a 1983 Soviet film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and starring Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano and Erland Josephson.The plot of the film centers around the meaning of the term nostalgia, which describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form.-Plot:The opening scene is a...
.
In addition to the original monophonic soundtrack a newer, alternative soundtrack remixed in 5.1 surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
exists. This alternative soundtrack was created for the 2001 DVD release by the Russian Cinema Council (Ruscico). Apart from remixing the mono soundtrack into stereo surround sound, music and sound effects were removed and added in several scenes. Music was added to the scene where the three are traveling to the zone on a motorized draisine
Draisine
A draisine primarily refers to a light auxiliary rail vehicle, driven by service personnel, equipped to transport crew and material necessary for the maintenance of railway infrastructure....
. In the opening and the final scene Beethoven's
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
Ninth Symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
was removed and in the opening scene in Stalker's house ambient sounds were added, changing the original soundtrack, in which this scene was completely silent except for the sound of a train.
Film score
Initially Tarkovsky had no clear understanding of the musical atmosphere of the final film and only an approximate idea where in the film the music was to be. Even after he had shot all the material he continued his search for the ideal film score, wanting a combination of Oriental and Western music. In a conversation with Artemyev he explained that he needed music that reflects the idea that although the East and the West can coexist, they are not able to understand each other. One of Tarkovsky's ideas was to perform Western music on Oriental instruments, or vice versa, performing Oriental music on European instruments. Artemyev proposed to try this idea with the motetMotet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
Pulcherrima Rosa by an anonymous 14th century Italian composer dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In its original form Tarkovsky did not perceive the motet as suitable for the film and asked Artemyev to give it an Oriental sound. Later, Tarkovsky proposed to invite musicians from Armenia and Azerbaijan and to let them improvise on the melody of the motet. A musician was invited from Armenia who played the main melody on a tar
Tar (lute)
The tār is a long-necked, waisted Iranian instrument. It has been adopted by other cultures and Azerbaijan. The word tar itself means "string" in Persian, though it might have the same meaning in languages influenced by Persian or any other branches of Iranian languages like Kurdish...
, accompanied by orchestral background music written by Artemyev. Tarkovsky, who, unusually for him, attended the full recording session, rejected the final result as not what he was looking for.
Rethinking their approach they finally found the solution in a theme that would create a state of inner calmness and inner satisfaction, or as Tarkovsky said "space frozen in a dynamic equilibrium." Artemyev knew about a musical piece from Indian classical music
Indian classical music
The origins of Indian classical music can be found in the Vedas, which are the oldest scriptures in the Hindu tradition. Indian classical music has also been significantly influenced by, or syncretised with, Indian folk music and Persian music. The Samaveda, one of the four Vedas, describes music...
where a prolonged and unchanged background tone is performed on a tambura
Tambura
The tambura, tanpura, or tambora is a long-necked plucked lute . The body shape of the tambura somewhat resembles that of the sitar, but it has no frets – only the open strings are played to accompany other musicians...
. As this gave Artemyev the impression of frozen space, he used this inspiration and created a background tone on his synthesizer similar to the background tone performed on the tambura. The tar then improvised on the background sound, together with a flute
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
as a European, Western instrument. To mask the obvious combination of European and Oriental instruments he passed the foreground music through the effect channels of his SYNTHI 100
EMS Synthi 100
The EMS Synthi 100 was a large analogue synthesizer made by Electronic Music Studios Ltd. It was released in 1971 and cost £6,500. It is estimated that fewer than 40 units were built....
synthesizer. These effects included modulating the sound of the flute and lowering the speed of the tar, so that what Artemyev called "the life of one string" could be heard. Tarkovsky was amazed by the result, especially liking the sound of the tar, and used the theme without any alterations in the film.
Sound design
The title sequence is accompanied by Artemyev's main theme. The opening sequence of the film showing Stalker's room is mostly silent. Periodically one hears what could be a train. The sound becomes louder and clearer over time until the sound and the vibrations of objects in the room give a sense of a train's passing by without the train's being visible. This aural impression is quickly subverted by the muffled sound of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The source of this music is unclear, thus setting the tone for the blurring of reality in the film. For this part of the film Tarkovsky was also considering music by Richard WagnerRichard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
or the Marseillaise
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
. In an interview with Tonino Guerra
Tonino Guerra
Tonino Guerra is an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world.-Biography:Guerra was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna....
Tarkovsky said that he wanted "music that is more or less popular, that expresses the movement of the masses, the theme of humanity's social destiny. But this music must be barely heard beneath the noise, in a way that the spectator is not aware of it.". As the sound of the train becomes more and more distant, the sounds of the house, such as the creaking floor, water running through pipes, and the humming of a heater become more prominent. While the Stalker leaves his house and wanders around an industrial landscape, the audience hears industrial sounds such as train whistles, ship foghorns, and train wheels. When the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor set off from the bar in an off-road vehicle, the engine noise merges into an electronic tone. The natural sound of the engine falls off as the vehicle reaches the horizon. Initially almost inaudible, the electronic tone emerges and replaces the engine sound as if time has frozen.
The journey to the Zone on a motorized draisine features a disconnection between the visual image and the sound. The presence of the draisine is registered only through the clanking sound of the wheels on the tracks. Neither the draisine nor the scenery passing by is shown, since the camera is focused on the faces of the characters. This disconnection draws the audience into the inner world of the characters and transforms the physical journey into an inner journey. This effect on the audience is reinforced by Artemyev's synthesizer effects, which make the clanking wheels sound less and less natural as the journey progresses. When the three arrive in the Zone initially, it appears to be silent. Only after some time, and only slightly audibly can one hear the sound of a distant river, the sound of the blowing wind, or the occasional cry of an animal. These sounds grow richer and more audible while the Stalker makes his first venture into the Zone, initially leaving the professor and the writer behind, and as if the sound draws him towards the zone. The sparseness of sounds in the zone draws attention to specific sounds, which, as in other scenes, are largely disconnected from the visual image. Animals can be heard in the distance but are never shown. A breeze can be heard, but no visual reference is shown. This effect is reinforced by occasional synthesizer effects which meld with the natural sounds and blur the boundaries between artificial and alien sounds and the sounds of nature.
After the three travelers appear from the tunnel, the sound of dripping water can be heard. While the camera slowly pans to the right, a waterfall appears. While the visual transition of the panning shot is slow, the aural transition is sudden. As soon as the waterfall appears, the sound of the dripping water falls off while the thundering sound of the waterfall emerges, almost as if time has jumped. In the next scene Tarkovsky again uses the technique of disconnecting sound and visual image. While the camera pans over the burning ashes of a fire and over some water, the audience hears the conversation of the Stalker and the Writer who are back in the tunnel looking for the professor. Finding the Professor outside, the three are surprised to realize that the have ended up at an earlier point in time. This and the previous disconnection of sound and the visual image illustrate the Zone’s power to alter time and space. This technique is even more evident in the next scene where the three travelers are resting. The sounds of a river, the wind, dripping water, and fire can be heard in a discontinuous way that is now partially disconnected from the visual image. When the Professor, for example, extinguishes the fire by throwing his coffee on it, all sounds but that of the dripping water fall off. Similarly, we can hear and see the Stalker and the river. Then the camera cuts back to the Professor while the audience can still hear the river for a few more seconds. This impressionist use of sound prepares the audience for the dream sequences accompanied by a variation of the Stalker theme that has been already heard during the title sequence.
During the journey in the Zone, the sound of water becomes more and more prominent, which, combined with the visual image, presents the zone as a drenched world. In an interview Tarkovsky dismissed the idea that water has a symbolic meaning in his films, saying that there was so much rain in his films because it is always raining in Russia. In another interview, on the film Nostalghia, however, he said "Water is a mysterious element, a single molecule of which is very photogenic. It can convey movement and a sense of change and flux." Emerging from the tunnel called the meat grinder by the Stalker they arrive at the entrance of their destination, the room. Here, as in the rest of the film, sound is constantly changing and not necessarily connected to the visual image. The journey in the Zone ends with the three sitting in the room, silent, with no audible sound. When the sound resumes, it is again the sound of water but with a different timbre, softer and gentler, as if to give a sense of catharsis and hope. The transition back to the world outside the zone is supported by sound. While the camera still shows a pool of water inside the Zone, the audience begins to hear the sound of a train and Ravel's
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
Boléro
Boléro
Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel . Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel's most famous musical composition....
, reminiscent of the opening scene. The soundscape of the world outside the zone is the same as before, characterized by train wheels, foghorns of a ship and train whistles. The film ends as it began, with the sound of a train passing by, accompanied by the muffled sound of Beethoven's Ninth symphony, this time the Ode to Joy
Ode to Joy
"Ode to Joy" is an ode written in 1785 by the German poet, playwright and historian Friedrich Schiller, enthusiastically celebrating the brotherhood and unity of all mankind...
from the final moments of the symphony. As in the rest of the film the disconnect between the visual image and the sound leaves the audience in the unclear whether the sound is real or an illusion.
DVD
- In GDR DEFA did a complete German synchronization of the movie which was shown in cinema 1982. This was used by Icestorm Entertainment on a DVD release, but was heavily criticized for its lack of the original language version, subtitles and had an overall bad image quality.
- RUSCICO produced a version for the international market containing the film on two DVDs with remastered audio and video. It contains the original Russian audio in a enhanced Dolby DigitalDolby DigitalDolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
5.1-remix as well as the original mono version. The DVD also contains subtitles in 13 languages and interviews with Alexander KnyazhinskyAlexander KnyazhinskyAlexander Leonidovich Knyazhinsky was a Russian cinematographer, noted for his work on Andrey Tarkovsky's Stalker.-External links:* *. Iskusstvo kino 1999....
, Rashit Safiullin and Edward Artemiev.
Reception
Officials at GoskinoGoskino
Goskino USSR is the abbreviated name for the USSR State Committee for Cinematography in the Soviet Union...
were critical of the film, on being told that the film should be faster and more dynamic, Tarkovsky replied:
The Goskino representative then explained that he was trying to give the point of view of the audience. Tarkovsky supposedly retorted:
The Western Reception has been a little timid, the movie was slowly made available and since it was after the release the reviews were not concurrent, nevertheless, it currently holds 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Film critic Derek Adams compared Stalker to Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
also released in 1979, "as a journey to the heart of darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
, [Stalker] is a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's."
The film is rated at #12 on the website Rate Your Music
Rate Your Music
Rate Your Music is a metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos, bootlegs, and movies are rated and reviewed by users. This data is then used to generate recommendations for users and to create rated lists of albums...
's top 100 films chart.
Influence
Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident led to the depopulation of an area rather like that in the film. Some of those employed to take care of the abandoned nuclear power plant refer to themselves as "stalkers" and to the area around the damaged reactor as "The Zone."Footnotes
- In the Soviet Union the role of a producer was different from that in Western countries and more similar to the role of a line producerLine producerA line producer is the key manager during the daily operations of a motion picture production.The line producer supports the vision given by the director but does not have direct influence on the creative expression or narrative of the film....
or a unit production managerUnit production managerA Unit Production Manager is an on-set manager responsible for the administration of a film's production.-Overview:A UPM is usually hired by a Producer of a film or television show, and is responsible for managing the production and regulating the costs of delivering the expected film or...
.
External links
- Stalker at Nostalghia.com Geopeitus.ee Filming locations of Stalker