Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Andrei Tarkovsky
Cast
Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy,
Anatoliy Solonitsyn,
Nikolay Grinko,
Alisa Freyndlikh,
Natasha Abramova,
Faime Jurno
Genre
Science Fiction,
Drama
Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone. Behind barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers, the Zone is a place where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men to an area in the Zone in which deep seeded desires are granted.
Little White Lies by David Jenkins
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.
Salon
Stalker abounds with moments of baffling beauty and philosophical heft within its vast finitude, in which the seeming mundanity of the action casts moments spiritual and philosophical rapture further into relief.
The Observer (UK)
Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
His mise en scene is mesmerizing, and the final scene is breathtaking. Not an easy film, but almost certainly a great one.
Empire by David Parkinson
Seminal feature from Tarkovsky, the master of atmosphere and multi-functional allegory is truly affecting, as well as fodder for countless film studies curricula.
Los Angeles Times by Mark Olsen
The film has a hypnotic pull, drawing the viewer deeper and deeper into its enigmatic adventure by crafting a world all its own.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Like Solaris, his earlier meditation on the future, Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker is mysterious and compelling though in my view not, like Andrei Rublev, in the realms of greatness: a vast prose-poem on celluloid whose forms and ideas were to be borrowed by moviemakers like Lynch and Spielberg.
BBC
Stalker is an epic and frequently puzzling inquiry into freedom and faith, which unfolds in an unspecified totalitarian society.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
It is by no means an “easy” movie with its somnambulant pace being a significant drawback. However, the movie has qualities that make it hard to forget and, on that basis alone, it is recommended viewing material for anyone serious about film.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Directed by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky with the same unearthly visual style, and the same mingled concern with technology and psychology, that he showed in his towering ''Solaris'' a few years ago.
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