Re: Stalker Clear Sky English And Russian Localization
Shay Silvertooth
A group of stalkers, for the first time, reaches the very heart of the Zone-the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant-and triggers a cataclysm on the brink of a catastrophe. An immense blast of anomalous energy transforms the Zone: the once reliable and relatively safe roads are no longer so, the landscape is wiped clean by outbursts of anomalies, and previously unknown areas appear on the Zone map. Stalkers and expeditions perish or end up isolated within the lost territories.
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The film was initially filmed over a year on film stock that was later discovered to be unusable, and had to be almost entirely reshot with new cinematographer Alexander Knyazhinsky. Stalker was released by Goskino in May 1979. Upon release, the film garnered mixed reviews, but in subsequent years it has been recognized as one of the greatest films of all time, with the British Film Institute ranking it #29 on its 2012 list of the "100 Greatest Films of All Time".[6] The film sold over 4 million tickets, mostly in the Soviet Union, against a budget of 1 million roubles.[2][4]
The meaning of the word "stalker" was derived from its use by the Strugatsky brothers in their novel Roadside Picnic, upon which the movie is based. In Roadside Picnic, "Stalker" was a common nickname for men engaged in the illegal enterprise of prospecting for and smuggling alien artifacts out of the "Zone". According to author Boris Strugatsky, "prospectors" and "trappers" were potential word choices before "stalker" was decided on, which was at least partially inspired by Rudyard Kipling's character "Stalky" in his Stalky & Co. stories, of which both authors were fans. Their adaptation of the English word into Russian is pronounced slightly differently as "Stullker", and it came into common usage after being "coined" by the authors.[7]
A man works in an unnamed location as a "Stalker" leading people through the "Zone", an area in which the normal laws of physics do not apply and remnants of seemingly extraterrestrial activity lie undisturbed among its ruins. The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside. The area containing the Zone is shrouded in secrecy, sealed off by the government and surrounded by ominous, supernatural hazards.
At home with his wife and daughter, the Stalker's wife begs him not to go into the Zone, lest he risk another long prison sentence, but he dismissively rejects her pleas. In a rundown bar-caf, the Stalker meets his next clients for a trip into the Zone, a Writer and a Professor.
They evade the military blockade that guards the Zone by following a train inside the gate and ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car.[n 2] The Stalker tells his clients they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers which lie ahead and explains that the Zone must be respected and the straightest path is not always the shortest path. The Stalker tests for various "traps" by throwing metal nuts tied to strips of cloth ahead of them. He refers to a previous Stalker named "Porcupine" who entered the Room and left, became very rich, and then hanged himself. The Writer is skeptical of any real danger, but the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.
As they travel, the three men discuss their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses his fear of losing his inspiration. The Professor seems less anxious, although he insists on carrying along a small backpack. The Professor admits he hopes to win a Nobel Prize for scientific analysis of the Zone. The Stalker insists he has no motive beyond the altruistic aim of aiding the desperate to their desires.
After traveling through the tunnels, the three finally reach their destination: a decayed and decrepit industrial building. The men hesitate as the room is guarded by a "Meat Grinder" anomaly which requires a death for someone to enter the Room proper, causing an argument. In a small antechamber, a phone rings. The surprised Professor decides to use the phone to telephone his former boss to taunt him over finding the room. As the trio prepare to enter the Room, the Professor reveals his true intentions in undertaking the journey. The Professor has brought a 20-kiloton bomb to destroy the Room and prevent evil men from abusing it for their own gain, blaming the Room, Stalker, and Stalkers' clients for the rise of crime, social strife, military coups, and destructive science.[10] The three men enter a physical and verbal standoff just outside the Room that leaves them exhausted.
The Writer realizes Porcupine sent his brother to his death in the Meat Grinder and entered the room to wish for his brother back - but the Room instead fulfilled Porcupine's secret desire for wealth, rather than bring back his brother from death. This prompted the guilt-ridden Porcupine to commit suicide. The Writer tells them that no one in the whole world is able to know their true desires and as such it is impossible to use the Room for selfish reasons. The Professor gives up on his plan of destroying the Room. Instead, he disassembles his bomb and scatters its pieces. No one attempts to enter the Room.
The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are met back at the bar-caf by the Stalker's wife and daughter. After returning home, the Stalker tells his wife how humanity has lost its faith and belief needed for both traversing the Zone and living a good life. As the Stalker sleeps, his wife contemplates their relationship in a monologue delivered directly to the camera, saying she'd rather live an interesting life of hardship than an easy, boring one. Martyshka, the couple's deformed daughter, sits alone in the kitchen reading as a love poem by Fyodor Tyutchev is recited. She appears to use psychokinesis to push three drinking glasses across the table, one falling off, although this is made ambiguous as simultaneously a train passes by where the Stalker's family lives, and the entire apartment shakes.
In a review in Slant Magazine, critic Nick Schager describes the film as a "dense, complex, often-contradictory, and endlessly pliable allegory about human consciousness, the necessity for faith in an increasingly secular, rational world, and the ugly, unpleasant dreams and desires that reside in the hearts of men", while conceding that the obliqueness of the imagery renders definitive interpretation "both pointless... [and] somewhat futile".[5]
Several critics have identified the nature of human desire as a central theme of the film. James Berardinelli interprets the film as suggesting that "one's innermost desire may not be what one thinks it is and that one may be better off not achieving it",[11] while Schager describes the film as capturing "the essence of what man is made of... a yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach and yet intrinsic to every one of us".[5]
Geoff Dyer argues the Stalker is "seeking asylum from the world", and says that "while the film may not be about the gulag, it is haunted by memories of the camps, from the overlap of vocabulary ("Zona", "the meat grinder") to the Stalker's Zek-style shaved head".[12]
Writer Lilya Kaganovsky says the film's mysterious Zone drawn comparisons with the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that was established in 1986 (seven years after the release of the film) in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster,[13] and some of the people employed to take care of the Chernobyl power plant referred to themselves as "stalkers".[14] Though the film does not specify the origin of the Zone, near the end, in a shot of the Stalker with his family outside the Zone, what appears to be a power plant is visible in the background. The themes of nuclear radiation and environmental degradation would be revisited by Tarkovsky in his final film, The Sacrifice.
Midway in the film, the Stalker has an interior monologue in which he quotes the entire section 76 of Lao Tse's Tao Te Ching, the text of which characterizes softness and pliancy as qualities of a newborn, hence, new life; hardness and strength, on the contrary, are qualities nearing death. ("Man, when he enters life, is soft and weak. When he dies he is hard and strong.")[15]
In this film, Tarkovsky wishes to emphasize two essentially human aspects, faith and love. He believes that faith "cannot be dissolved or broken down, [it] forms like a crystal in the soul of each of us and constitutes its great worth," and that when humans feel that there is no more hope in the world, love is what proves them otherwise.[18] The Writer feels as though the world has become mundane and ordinary, and has become cynical of it, he desires to be shaken by the unknown that is the zone. What ends up surprising him is not the zone, but instead, the Stalker's wife and her faithfulness to the stalker even after all he has put her through, "her love and her devotion are that final miracle which can be set against the unbelief, cynicism, moral vacuum poisoning the modern world, of which both the Writer and the Scientist are victims", in Tarkovsky's films, he believes that it is his responsibility to make his viewers aware and reflect on their need to love and to give their love.[18]
After reading the novel Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky initially recommended it to a friend, the film director Mikhail Kalatozov, thinking Kalatozov might be interested in adapting it into a film. Kalatozov abandoned the project when he could not obtain the rights to the novel. Tarkovsky then became very interested in adapting the novel and expanding its concepts. He hoped it would allow him to make a film which conformed to the classical Aristotelian unity; a single action, on a single location, within 24 hours (single point in time).[9]
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