On watching Tarkovsky's Stalker for the second time

Trylon cinema is having this Tarkovsky festival right now so we decided to go see Stalker today.

I think I saw it for the first time five or six years ago, just at home. Since then I have considered it one of my favorite movies.

Memories from the first viewing were mainly that it was very slow and it involved three men mostly just walking through fields. And there was the guy throwing the nuts before they walked.

This time I noticed a lot more and got a lot more out of it.

I was surprised at how much more dialogue there was.

The strongest part of the movie was the scenery and the shots. The ruins and the tanks and how everything is taken over by nature is spectacular.

After that (and as cheesy and embarassing as it is) I found that I identified with the 'writer' a lot, his reasons for writing, et c.

I found that the ideas of the movie stuck out to me more and everything in the movie, the meager plot, the scenery, everything seems to be a scaffold for the ideas that the movie presents.

I like how the movie doesn't have so much of an agenda or attempts to direct any answers, rather it just ask a lot of questions: how do we approach our desires, are our desires and goals genuine or illusory, what do we sacrifice for our desires, when we come to what we have desired what do we really find?

Then there are more pointed questions about the role of science and art in society: is it society's job to enable the artistic or scientific pursuits of those who want to explore them even if those pursuits do not directly benefit society.

And whether it is intentional or not there is a sort of elegance in the long shots: they are really sort of meditative. These questions sort of arise and then Tarkovsky leaves you staring at these guys sitting in this room and you just sort of have to mull things over, at the conscious level or otherwise.

It's a great film, challenging and imperfect but with a weight and a resilience that is mighty to behold. Its got a bit of the iceberg to it, you watch it and can only take in a bit of what if provides, but over time it opens up and continues to open up.