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IMHO, if you’ll be watching your first Tarkovsky film start with Stalker, which is how my girlfriend (now wife of 27 years), introduced me to him many years ago
by Jun8 3y ago
IMHO, if you’ll be watching your first Tarkovsky film start with Stalker, which is how my girlfriend (now wife of 27 years), introduced me to him many years ago. I was very much a Fellini person, and the Bergman-Tarkovsky school seemed cryptic (at best) at the time. When finished, ask yourself (1) if you would have gone into the room and (2) what the dreamlike sequences with Stalker’s son meant.
Second one should be Solaris, if you’re into SciFi or The Mirror if you’re not of if you’d like a challenge. I think The Mirror is the better movie, the woman (stand in for T’s mom) looking at the wheat field (T had these specifically planted for the film!) haunts me to this day.
I personally couldn’t relate to The Sacrifice, perhaps his most personal film. His earlier films (Ivan and Rublev) I could not watch at all.
To be a genius artist like him in the Soviet Union meant privileges unheard for art film directors in Europe (let alone US), eg see the wheat field thing above. It also meant you’re at the mercy of the “masses”. I had read an article once that included a comment for The Mirror from a regular filmgoer, saying after 30mins it caused such a headache! The funding was based on such feedback and the movie was labeled as elitist (it is) which greatly impacted his career. It’s infuriating to think T lost time due to such petty interference (OTOH, I could only finish the film on my third try, falling asleep in first two attempts! So she had a point)
- thriftwy 3y ago[flagged]
- f6v 3y agoI don’t get what you’re talking about.
- thriftwy 3y agoYou start dating someone, you become another person with different customs and passions. The more you invest in relation, the more is the difference, unless you had exactly the same prior background.
- weekendvampire 3y agoYes, that is a good thing.
- thriftwy 3y agoGo watch Marvel then. Objectively good guys on display, always getting the bad ones.
- upsetdiscourse 3y agoOk, tell us what you know about personal volition protectionism. I’m interested.
- dingusdew 3y agoThis is literally how all social relationships work, including non-romantic ones. Mimicry is the basis of how social groups are formed. You're literally participating in it (whether you know it or not) by communicating with others, period. This is an instance where the statement "if you think you think outside of the box, you're trapped in one" applies.
- coldtea 3y agoHe's talking about how some "alpha/sigma" male types fear that women are after their money and worry about that (that's what I understand the grandparent to mean by "mercantile fears"), but (surprisingly to him) they don't fear that they will affect their psyche/personality. A paradox which I don't think exists in the real world, as these types, absolutely do fear women will do that (e.g. they fear that women would effeminate them, or make them docile, or p...whip them, and so on).
- thriftwy 3y agoParadoxically, having relations with women will not effiminate one (etc) any more than NOT having these relations would. For all what it is worth, incel community is strikingly peculiar in comparison to other males. Truth is that we do really need each other.
- Zardoz89 3y agoAn embarrassment of riches y’all
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago>> Stalker’s son Um, daughter.
- Jun8 3y agoYou’re absolutely right, called Martyshka (little monkey) same as in the book. As I was searching for material on her on Google I came across this interesting article: https://przekroj.pl/en/society/the-stalkers-daughter-renata-lis https://przekroj.pl/en/society/the-stalkers-daughter-renata-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoStalker is a beautiful movie but perhaps not the easiest one to watch, especially if you are not used to 10 min long shots of nature (e.g., water in a stream). Possibly Solaris, which you recommend too, would be an easier movie to watch first.
- kamranjon 3y agoI've tried twice now to watch Solaris and fell asleep both times - someone let me know if it's worth it! I've seen every other Tarkovsky film and love his work, this one just felt particularly difficult for me.
- the_oh_of_ples 3y agoIt's worth it.
- crazydoggers 3y agoYou have to approach the movie like sitting down with a good book. Make a day around it! Brew some tea/coffee ahead of time, watch it when you are refreshed and can soak it in. And not just the plot.. but the art of what’s on the screen; how it’s shot. You’ll be rewarded in the end.
- emmelaich 3y agoI liked Solaris well enough, but in the end it was far less interesting than say the better Star Trek episodes.
- tleilaxu 3y agoWhen I rewatch Solaris I always skip the first 30 minutes or so (the part on Earth). Makes it a much easier and less slow watch!
- joemi 3y agoThe first time I watched it, I fell asleep part way through and woke up at the end. But then I decided I really wanted to watch it, so I immediately restarted it and and stayed awake and LOVED it. I think it's worth it.
- coldtea 3y ago>His earlier films (Ivan and Rublev) I could not watch at all. Those also require a familiarity and understanding of the relevant culture of those places.
- PyWoody 3y ago> ...eg see the wheat field thing above Not the same but it made me think of Akira Kurosawa spends 12 hours on a single shot...only to cut it[0] [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/criterion/comments/pamqsd/akira_kurosawa_spends_12_hours_on_a_single_shot/ https://old.reddit.com/r/criterion/comments/pamqsd/akira_kur...
- myth_drannon 3y agoThe wind in the field scene is mesmerizing, one of my favourites as well.
- kodt 3y agoAndrei Rublev is by far his best film in my opinion.
- rwmj 3y agoThe version on youtube is 20.48GiB(!) so I hope it's the best possible quality. Input #0, matroska,webm: Metadata: ENCODER : Lavf59.27.100 Duration: 03:02:38.36, start: -0.007000, bitrate: 11990 kb/s Stream #0:0(eng): Video: vp9 (Profile 0), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 3840x2160, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 24 fps, 24 tbr, 1k tbn (default) Metadata: DURATION : 03:02:38.333000000 Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: opus, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default) Metadata: DURATION : 03:02:38.361000000
- 0xr0kk3r 3y agoSame here. That was the gateway film for me. It reminds me of the Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance).
- Sharlin 3y agoAnnihilation is pretty clearly "heavily influenced" by Stalker.
- dclowd9901 3y agoI consider myself a person who really loves and appreciates film, but I could not parse Stalker. It’s clearly dense with meaning and subtext, but I think I had too much going on in my head when I was watching it to appreciate what was going on.
- omazurov 3y agoMy personal recommendation for a Tarkovsky's first is his diploma film The Steamroller and the Violin (1960, 46 min, co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky). It was surprisingly watchable [for me] and I wish I had watched it first myself before I was exposed to the Mirror when I was 16. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steamroller_and_the_Violin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steamroller_and_the_Violin
- jwilk 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jiwaPYslA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7jiwaPYslA
- the_gipsy 3y ago> (1) if you would have gone into the room and (2) what the dreamlike sequences with Stalker’s son meant (3) did the stalker / Tarkovski just bring you to the room
- virgulino 3y ago>To be a genius artist like him in the Soviet Union meant privileges unheard for art film directors in Europe (let alone US), eg see the wheat field thing above. It also meant you’re at the mercy of the “masses”. It also meant being at the mercy and whims of the Communist party. Like Polish genius director Andrzej Żuławski, who filmed almost his entire magnum opus "On the Silver Globe," only to have the Communist government cancel the project and order the destruction of what was filmed. The greatest science fiction movie never made. I get goosebumps every single time I watch these trailers: https://youtu.be/zBFRiSlcBAg https://youtu.be/zBFRiSlcBAg https://youtu.be/HFf5BGNpnJ0 https://youtu.be/HFf5BGNpnJ0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Silver_Globe_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Silver_Globe_(film)
- tinideiznaimnou 3y agoŻuławski is amazing! He manages to strike the right balance between abstraction and action; between soulful Slavic opaqueness and, well, viewers wanting to understand what's happening on the screen without having to read the characters' minds through an inverted Christology or some such implied cultural context. Żuławski's movies contain enough mystery to thrill the imagination, yet it is crystal clear that they are telling a particular story, with an intended authorial meaning, the further implications of which we are free to ponder - not simply painting a vast, inhospitable landscape for us to project our own meaning onto, like Tarkovsky does, or many West European filmmakers like Bunuel or the aforementioned Bergman. Now I want to get me a projector and organize a pirate Żuławski marathon in a warehouse, culminating with a screening of On the Silver Globe, once someone's brought a decent pusher to the party and the shit has started to kick in... Eh, if only my city's avant-garde art scene and I hadn't recognized each other for the pretentious good-for-nothing wankers that we are. More effectual personalities can be found among the wannabe gangsters, for fuck's sake - but those lives are little movies in their own right, and avant-garde cinema's got nothing on them. Unfortunately, without an overt repressive apparatus for people to struggle against, it seems their finest qualities end up going down the drain a little bit. Creative people end up inventing novel schemes for making money out of ever more primitive illusions, instead of dedicating their brain cells to creating those increasingly elaborate visions that kept our forefathers struggling onward with dignity against inhuman conditions. Which leads us to the big question: if the Communist authoritarian project was a necessary condition to get all these fascinating, singular (anti-/post-)Communist works of art... was it worth the millions of lives sacrificed or devastated?
- lordfrito 3y ago> what the dreamlike sequences with Stalker’s son meant I though he had a daughter, am I misremembering? Interesting tidbit, after a year of filming scenes the prints were damaged in processing and were unusable. [1] He had to completely (almost) reshoot the film a second time. I always wondered about the difference between the original shoot and the reshoot, what no one got to see. [1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/trivia https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/trivia
- signa11 3y agostalker is based on the beautiful book ‘roadside picnic’ iirc. just a lovely, lovely read.