Stalker

Yet another hauntingly beautiful film from the great Andrei Tarkovsky. He creates an unspecified world that has remote feelings of being post-apocalyptic in which the "stalker" is a guide (illegally) to an almost mythical area known as "the Zone". Rumors have spread that in the Zone, travelers will receive their hearts desire. The stalker takes two men with him on the journey, a rationalist scientist and a phiosophical, materialist writer. The two men react to their situations as their worldviews dicatate, as the film slowly reveals the fallacy of both. It is leisurely paced, to say the least (at over 2 1/2 hours), but hypnotic. Tarkovsky films his scenes often in long shots with long takes and only a minimal amount of dialogue. The few close-up's in the film are almost jarring. He creates a visual poetry with his images that remind me of his masterpiece, The Mirror, though the metaphysical, science-fiction like wandering reminds me of his Solaris. It's not Tarkovsky's best work, but considering I have yet see a film from him that I would consider less than great, that's no insult.