Stalker

"There's no need to speak. You must only...concentrate and recall all your past life. When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder."

1979 2h 42m RU

🙌

8.1

BANGER

🔥

100%

CERTIFIED FRESH

💯

METACRITIC

⭐

IMDB

★8.1TMDB · 2,635🍅100%Rotten Tomatoes●85Metacritic★8IMDB · 155,355

Science FictionDrama

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.

“There's no need to speak. You must only...concentrate and recall all your past life. When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder.”

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Cast

Alisa Freyndlikh
Stalker's Wife
Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy
Stalker
Anatoliy Solonitsyn
Writer
Mykola Hrynko
Professor
Natalya Abramova
Marta
Faime Jurno
Writer's Companion
Evgeniy Kostin
Lyuger, Owner of Cafe
Raimo Rendi
Police Patrol

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Writers: Arkadiy Strugatskiy, Andrei Tarkovsky, Boris Strugatskiy
Languages: Russian
Countries: Soviet Union

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

Clocks in at 162 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.1M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

47 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, shot by Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Eduard Artemyev. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Lyudmila Feiginova shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Alisa Freyndlikh and Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy and Anatoliy Solonitsyn carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "There's no need to speak. You must only...concentrate and recall all your past life. When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Andrei Tarkovsky directs. Aleksandr Knyazhinsky behind the camera. Eduard Artemyev scores. Lyudmila Feiginova cuts. A long sit — settle in. Produced in Soviet Union. Dialogue in Russian.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Clocks in at 162 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.
2Shot for just $0.1M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
347 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
4Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, shot by Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Eduard Artemyev. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Lyudmila Feiginova shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Alisa Freyndlikh and Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy and Anatoliy Solonitsyn carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "There's no need to speak. You must only...concentrate and recall all your past life. When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder.".
9IMDB entry: tt0079944 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 12 themes, including "based on novel or book", "guard", "wish", "stalker".

The technical file

Cinematography: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky
Original score: Eduard Artemyev
Editing: Lyudmila Feiginova
Production design: Aleksandr Boym
Costume design: Nelli Fomina
Makeup / hair: Vitaliy Lvov
Sound: Vladlen Sharun
Runtime: 162 min · 2h 42m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $120,000
Original language: RU
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: Stalker (1979)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 85/100
IMDB rating: 8/10 · 155,355 votes
MPAA: Not Rated
US box office: $292,049

Awards

2 wins & 2 nominations total

Also by

Andrei Tarkovsky

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

Infra2017-09-17
This movie is like an onion, has multiple layers. To understand it, you have to be very careful and pacient. You have to focus on movie and not doing anything else while you watch it, because if you don't, you won't understand it. http://cinematol.ro/pareri-filme-stalker-calauza-1979/
CinemaSerf2022-06-14
★ 7/10
This really is the cinematic equivalent of "be careful for you wish for". Two characters - a teacher and a professor, seek out a "stalker" who can lead them through the maze of challenges that culminates in an heavily restricted area know as the zone. Why? Rumour has it, that when in that zone you may make wishes that will immediately come true. What is this place? Is it real, imaginary, alien, all of these - or it is all just a cerebral hallucination of a place that, like El Dorado, we imagine to be where all of our problems can go away, be solved, eradicated. It is loosely based on the Strugatsky brothers early seventies sci-fi novel "Roadside Picnic" but it's fair to say that Andrei Tarkovsky opens up the more linear aspects of their story leaving us with a much less defined and more intangible series of threads as these men undergo significant travails to get to a place - that frequently resembles what I imagine Chernobyl to have look like after it exploded. As with so many aspects of human aspiration, the narrative is all about what I would call the chase - the journey or the means - without the characters ever really knowing what it is they will truly want if they do actually achieve their goal. Again, the director provides us with lots of bits of this mischievous, sometimes perilous and thought-provoking Rubik's cube - but it is incomplete. We know it is always going to be. We, the audience, have to bring a bit of ourselves to this particular party. There is a denouement - three men in a room. One (Nikolai Grinko) with a hefty nuclear bomb that he believes may offer a solution; another (Anatoly Solonitsyn) who's darkest id well outmanoeuvres his ostensibly well meaning reasons for being there and of course the stalker himself (Alexander Kaidanovsky). This production is deliberately, and effectively slowly paced. The dialogue can be intense, their frustrations and dreams well encapsulated; but it can also be sparing - there are plenty of periods of protracted silences from them all. Accompanied by an eerily complimentary score from Eduard Artemyev, we are left with an experience rather than just a film. I saw it on a big screen, and if you can I'd recommend that. It helps you to stay focused on the complex and quirky plot whilst bringing out the finely crafted bleakness, and hope, of the photography.
Filipe Manuel Neto2023-05-31
★ 2/10
More style than content. This was my first contact with the cinematographic work of Andrei Tarkovsky, a Soviet filmmaker who would end his career outside his native country when he fell into disgrace for allegedly spending too much money on films that were not worthy of the expense. A regrettable attitude, but typical of countries that prefer to spend money on missiles than on support for culture and education, especially after considering how dangerous and insubmissive can be a cultured population capable of thinking without anyone from a party saying what It's the right thing. This is not, however, an ordinary Soviet film, loaded with subliminal messages, more or less direct, demonizing the rich and praising the effort and dignity of workers. On the contrary. Tarkovsky takes us to a desolate world, apparently hostage to repressive authority. There is nothing beautiful there. And there is a space where no one can go, called the Zone, in which there is, supposedly, a room that makes the dreams of those who arrive there come true. However, the difficulty is immense. Being a Russian film, it is obviously a huge, dull, heavy film. Let's face it, it's to be expected: Russians like big things. Big countries, big armies, gigantic cannons and missiles. Russia cultivates that taste for gigantism, of which the Tsar-Pushka is a prominent symbol. It's difficult to see everything, the way the film develops, in deliberate slowness, is exhausting and dark. The cinematography is partly in sepia (color comes later, and the colors are directly associated with entering the prohibited area) and has been well crafted, as have the sets and filming locations. The rest simply doesn't matter: it's a film that is almost silent, and that puts style above substance.