the make-believe zone

[bluedevi]

We came to the Ultimate Picture Palace to see Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker through the sort of soaking wet, freezing cold night where the air is thick with damp that seems to wind its way in among your clothes, defying gravity. We found a surprisingly large number of people queueing in the rain. Students and film buffs, one guy just behind me

Comments

[braisedbywolves]

Ah! That's what the game is based on! Or, on checking, it's based loosely on the movie and the book (which the movie is loosely based on).

[bluedevi]

I've not played the game, but I presume it's got artifacts and traps etc, and isn't just about navigating a large field in a zigzag fashion. That would be a strange game.

The game's set in Chernobyl, isn't it? I was creeped out at first by the fact that the film seemed to anticipate Chernobyl, but Wikipedia told me that there were several deserted, environmentally devastated places in Russia already. It also told me that quite a few of the film crew died of horrible diseases due to them filming near a toxic chemical plant. Brrr.

[amuchmoreexotic]

I recently stayed in a hotel in Tallinn which was right near where they filmed some of Stalker. The "Rotermann salt store" mentioned on Wikipedia is a design museum now, but the factories they go through before entering the zone seem to have been pulled down

[bluedevi]

I didn't know that about the resistance fighters - that's very interesting. As is the whole comment.

And yeah, there were old industrial buildings that were deserted and falling to pieces all over Siberia, for the same reason I imagine.

[bateleur]

I love that film! First watched it more than 15 years ago, but I still find it influences a lot of the creative stuff I do.

I don't ever want to read the book, though. In case it's not exactly like the film and spoils it for me.

[undyingking]

It's not very much like the film at all, but just enough to be nagging -- so well might.

I read the book first by some years, and found that the film then spoiled that for me :-( but it hadn't been a very big deal to me in the first place, so sounds like you potentially have more to lose than I did!

[hoshuteki]

Stalker was one of my big epiphany films when I was first getting into film properly. I've retained, as clear as when I watched it first, so many of the film's images. Of the men travelling into the zone along the railway lines, watchful all eyes on the horizon; of the preternaturally green grass they cross little-by-little, throwing pebbles forward and collecting them; of the water splashing around the ruined tessellated floor of the derelict building near the centre of the Zone; the water again, the Stalker resting, a wolf standing alert; the dune-like waves of sand inside a factory building.

I'm wary of actually ever re-watching it, for fear that my memories of it will be dispelled. I know that Tarkovsky has a predilection for sententiousness, as was never more clear in Solaris (which to my mind is a disappointing film and one of T's weakest). But Stalker seemed just right to me. His last film, The Sacrifice, is another film with similar protean mystical-religious themes allied to a grandeur of imagery (though again some of the

[bluedevi]

I'm haunted by the image of him lying down to sleep on a tiny patch of ground barely the size of his body, surrounded by water. Like something you'd do in a dream.

I did my best with Solaris a few years ago, but it turned into an endurance test. I think I actually fell asleep at some point. I brought some strong dark chocolate to Stalker expecting to need to wake myself up with little caffeine bombs, but no, it was a joy.

[verlaine]

Yes, I remember being baffled and slightly mortified by Solaris (shamefully I preferred the Soderbergh version with Gorgeous George) but this sounds like one for me to watch someday. Edmonton is a bad place to keep up with cinema sadly, though I did catch Control last week and am hoping to see The Darjeeling Limited tomorrow.

I remember the Ultimate Picture Palace with great fondness, though it was still the PPP for a little while even in my day. O golden age!

[verlaine]

Ah, I succumbed and ordered it for Chapters. Not that I've even gotten round to watching any of the other DVDs I've bought this year yet...