The very first impression I have of Stalker [seen on a projector] is being stunningly beautiful. Very few films [including all of Tarkovsky's, with maybe the be

The very first impression I have of Stalker [seen on a projector] is being stunningly beautiful. Very few films [including all of Tarkovsky's, with maybe the best being Mirror] manage to create this sense of stunning beauty so that's something that needs to be mentioned. Other than this, the film simply hypnotized and drew me in. I wasn't analyzing or thinking about the story, rather observing and experiencing, which allowed the magic to unfold. There are scenes that freeze time, the only words that maybe do justice to them are "bewitchingly intense". His philosophical magnum opus [1], Mirror, is even more powerful. Tarkovsky was not only an artist extraordinaire but a supreme genius, the kind of person that appears once every few centuries. His films are full of something that you certainly won't find in any movie today [especially American], which is called "soul", and a full appreciation of him and his work entails opening up that part of yourself and allowing it to engage with Tarkovsky's as expressed in his output. [1] I use "philosophy" here to mean meditations on the human condition that are understood / made real through praxis, i.e. its original definition.