Stalker - Enzian Theater

***WINNER – Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – 1980 Cannes Film Festival

Enzian Film Club: Summer School Edition
Summer school is in session! Our Enzian Film Club professors are on a well-deserved vacation, but you’ve still got a lot to learn. Join us June–August for screenings and talkbacks with Enzian programmers and community guests, and keep your brain (or at least your social skills) sharp until our return to class in September. It might not be Driver’s Ed, but it’s better than independent study.

One of the most immersive and rarefied experiences in the history of cinema, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker embarks on a metaphysical journey through an enigmatic post-apocalyptic landscape. A hired guide—the “Stalker” of the title—leads a writer and a scientist into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires.

Adapting a science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and making what would be his final Soviet feature, Tarkovsky created a challenging and visually stunning work, his painstaking attention to material detail and sense of organic atmosphere further enriched by this vivid new digital restoration. At once a religious allegory, a reflection of contemporary political anxieties, and a meditation on film itself—among many other interpretations—Stalker envelops the viewer by opening up a multitude of possible meanings.

1979, 161 minutes, Soviet Union, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Not Rated

“Stalker is a movie to be watched as many times as physically possible, to be picked apart, discussed, argued over, written about, to inspire music, books, poetry, other movies, teachers, philosophers, historians, governments, even the way an individual might chose to live their life. It really is that astounding.”
– David Jenkins, LITTLE WHITE LIES
“The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own."
– Mark Olsen, LOS ANGELES TIMES
“An eerie frightening film, Stalker makes use of spectacular natural locations... The last scene of the film (which I wouldn't dream of revealing) packs such an enormous punch (visually, thematically: it is different from all that came before) that it acts as a catalyst in the viewer. It tells us something we have not yet learned. It suggests that things really ARE not what they seem, that they are far more mysterious than anyone had ever dreamed.”
– Sheila O’Malley, THE SHEILA VARIATIONS
”Stalker, it seems, mourns the impossibility of religious (political, technocratic) faith even as it acknowledges the damage this faith inflicts. It's a vision of despair illuminated by only the faintest ray of hope.”
– J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE (1982)