| Author | Message | ||
     Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
OK, since no one wants to tell me what the epilogue in Antichrist means, how about this one? I've had Tarkovsky's Stalker sitting here for a while now - just hadn't been in the mood for Soviet bleakness. But when I saw LvT had dedicated Antichrist to Tarkovsky (and why on earth did that make people laugh at Cannes???), I thought it was time to watch it. (I'm certain the film is partly to blame for my sleepless night and then my freaky Cronenberg/Giger dream this morning, such was the freakish, haunting atmosphere and incomprehensible ending.) I can't say I "liked" it, but I was definitely affected by it. A bleak Existential Wizard of Oz prefiguring Chernobyl with some utterly unforgettable imagery. There's something inherently unsettling about those long, languid takes, as though it's stopped being a film and become real. I found myself not wanting to breathe or blink until I saw a cut. And I've no idea what to make of the ending. Am I just destined not to "get" such endings? Mr Campbell, sir, if you've ever done a column about it for Video Watchdog, I'd really love to read it! That goes for any thoughts on LvT's latest too. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I love STALKER. I've seen it twice, both times in cinemas. But I haven't seen it in ten years, and don't remember how it ends. I remember the strange slow-paced opening and the incredible journey through a blighted landscape, and I remember the weird underground stuff (maybe that's the ending). It's all kind of about the link between trauma and vision, I think: the more people suffer, the more they seek redemption. It's kind of a religious film, but not in an evangelical way. It's a 'perspective' film rather than a 'message' film. Too much fucking perspective, as Spinal Tap would say. Why in any case should we know what films mean? The unknown is good. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.126 |
I'm enjoying STALKER a lot more than SOLARIS. (slight spoiler) I see the last couple of minutes of STALKER as deliberately ambiguous. Is the boy telekinetic or is it a passing train moving the glass? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
That! Of course! And yes, agreed. For some reason it didn't stay in my mind. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Niki, I haven't reviewed Stalker, but let me say this. It was one of the very first films Channel 4 ran, and I taped it to watch. I found it so oppressively disturbing in a wholly indefinable way that for the only time in my life I didn't fast-forward through the ads in a film I'd recorded but used them to recover. And that Antichrist ending - well, Jenny says it reminded her of Nazareth Hill. Not me, though! I thought that (like the final moments of Breaking the Waves) it was an unexpected lurch into the numinous. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.163.6.13 |
Yes Stalker is amazing. That slow opening, beautiful and unsettling. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.126 |
The fellow carrying his plastic shopping bag around is the detail that makes the whole film gel for me. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
I love STALKER. Easily one of my top ten favorites. Tarkovsky was brilliant. | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
@Ramsey: Using the ads to recover... Yes, I can definitely see that! It was properly nightmarish, in a uniquely Soviet way. An existence like that terrifies me more than the prospect of death. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm not sure I'd want to subject myself to its bleak world again, but the film itself is strangely beautiful. Why in any case should we know what films mean? The unknown is good. @Joel: Usually I agree. I love Lynch's incomprehensibility, for instance. But Antichrist and Stalker both seemed fairly linear until the epilogues, so I just wondered if I was missing something obvious. |