tarkovsky's stalker

thanks. make me aware of upcoming trips!

they are presenting 'alphaville' as an architectural film, here, too. they say it is a reorganisation of the city [paris] and its component parts. they also said something about strewn and 'like a situationist map'!!!! I've seen it.

Huh, I now recall the peculiar circumstances (the very early 80s, Moscow of all places) of watching Rublev myself...

stalker, funnily enough, was the film i had least patience. like, ive seen most of his films but that was the first time i got a bit fidgety. but i really wanted to fall asleep.

it just seems like lots of things in this movie were absurdly stretched out for minimal payoffs. how many times do i have to watch stalker take a nap??

exceptions: the trolley ride into the zone was great, the part where they are taking a nap in the creek is great, too, where we see all the different bits of detritus in the stream.

Maybe I will go rent Rublev tonight!

how about a 9-hour documentary on decaying abandoned chinese factories??

I liked Andrei Rublev, though.

(genuinely curious, not be snarky)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chernobyl

this movie is also at fantasia film fest... everyone seems to say it's worth checking so i may do so! i amde a thread for the fest, as well.

this is one of the best films ever!

and it's not boring!

I should've gone.

it better be not boring! I am going to see it, and if I fall asleep like i did in solaris...

Probably the most beautiful movie I've ever seen that looks like it was filmed in a vat of toxic sewage (in other words, this film has got to be the Russian equivalent of "The Conqueror", no?)

i saw this with a group of friends the other night and loved it. it's really beautiful, although it kind of killed everyone's desire to go out drinking afterward.

it brought to mind lots of things that were made later...cube, house of leaves, lots of video games (half-life 2, fallout 3, uh, super mario bros).

yeah i don't get why people hate this one so much, i think it's great

Actual Stalker videogame would be 1000x awes.

uh, see the previous revive!

!!!

Mosfilm has so much good stuff up. The other day I watched a 90's comedy about a 19th century noblewoman who dreams she works in a canteen in Moscow in the 90's, it basically felt like Traumazone: The Movie.

what was it called?

Dreams

🇨🇳 China discovers 'limitless' energy source that could power the country for 60,000 years, geologists in Beijing claim. pic.twitter.com/ieLQIURhwf

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) March 2, 2025

More information on the technical side of those new nuclear reactors

"Unlike uranium-based reactors, thorium molten-salt reactors (TMSRs) are compact, do not require water cooling, cannot experience a meltdown, and produce very little long-lived radioactive waste."

"Molten-salt breeder reactors are the most viable designs for thorium fuel, says Charles Forsberg, a nuclear scientist at MIT. In this kind of reactor, thorium fluoride dissolves in molten salt in the reactor’s core. To turn thorium-232 into fuel, it is irradiated to thorium-233, which decays into an intermediate, protactinium-233, and then into uranium-233, which is fissile. [...] When thorium is transformed into uranium-233, it becomes directly usable in nuclear weapons."

"China isn’t alone in its thorium aspirations. Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in addition to India, have shown interest in the fuel at one point or another."

Sources:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/endless-thorium-supply-china-help-135908082.html
https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-thorium-molten-salt-reactor

I've been thinking a lot about Stalker since watching it on Imax last year with those lovely UK ilx0rs whose handles I am totally blanking on. I read it so much differently from all the other kinds of media related to Roadside Picnic that I've seen.

It's not something I could have watched alone. I'm a fraidy cat when it comes to movies, especially when it comes to psychologically scary movies. Stalker is very psychologically scary. It's got this terribly oppressive atmosphere. At some point, though...

This might be a weird take, but I see Tarkovsky's Stalker as a distinctly Russian comedy, a comedy about people who are scared of changing, even for the sake of the thing they want most in the world.

I guess that's a personal take, based on my own experience. The Stalker, I think, says that in order to reach the Room, one has to approach with an attitude of complete despair, complete hopelessness. I've been there. I've felt that. I've spent years crawling through a landscape that _looked_ ordinary, a landscape I knew to be dangerous and terrifying, where it felt like every move meant my certain and inevitable doom. I've spent years _not_ moving as well. Paralyzed. Not knowing which way was safe. Looking for a guide, someone to show me the way, but not trusting them, quite, in those times when they appeared. Most of all, in the depths of my despair... not knowing, or at least not being able to name, what it was I wanted most, what I wanted more than anything. Afraid of what it could be. Afraid of what I might find. Afraid that what I wanted would mark me as terrible, depraved, as a monster, as life unworthy of life.

At some point in the film, I realized this. I realized that I had walked into the Room, that I was just as terrified and fractious and suspicious as the Stalker and the Professor and the Writer. And I talked a lot of shit, like the Stalker and the Professor and the Writer do. A lot of shit about what I didn't know, even though I _could_ know it. And in the end, when none of them enter the room, they all make their excuses, I laughed, and I said these foolish, superstitious men.

I think of the Room as a sort of basilisk. And I think basilisk are just as silly. Roko's Basilisk is superficially scary but when I really look at it, it's not an inevitable doom. It's a call to change. It's the realization that _on this path_ lies doom, that change is required. This fear that a computer will be malign... computers know only what we tell it. And if the only truth is the assumption underlying Roko's Basilisk, it will happen. The basilisk is an acknowledgement of who we are, at heart. It is the fear that we are, at heart, like the mythical "Porcupine", that we will die as Porcupine does.

I'm not. I know that because I walked into the Room and what awaited me was not riches or wealth but something _else_. And maybe I am _special_ but I don't believe that I am, not truly. I think all of the things that the Stalker and the Writer and the Professor fear are within themselves. They hear a voice. Did you speak? Did you speak? All of them believe they didn't speak. Perhaps one of them spoke and was too afraid to acknowledge it. Afraid of their own fear, that spiral, that recursion. That's why to enter the Room one has to abandon everything, let go of everything, what one knows, what one wants, what one _is_, because that is the only way to break that cycle. That's why to fail to do that is death, in whatever form you like.

It's distinctly Russian, in a way. The joke is on humans. What fools we humans are! When the Stalker gets back to his home and there's that wonderful camera angle reveal, to me that is so hilarious, and so telling, so indicative of the film. Suddenly, we see things from a different perspective. All the adults in the film, they refuse to do so. The Stalker's wife refuses, as well. And she makes the excuses and the hard-luck stories and the CHILDREN, won't somebody think of the CHILDREN, to be a child of a stalker is such a cruel fate. And then we see that last shot and it is the only thing in the film that can genuinely be called "science fiction". This is cruel fate? This is to be lamented? They seek miracles in despair, they see joy as a cause for despair. They blind themselves to the joy that is already part of their lives. Is this not too human? Do I not choose to do this, over and over and over again?

I haven't finished reading Roadside Picnic - I've read only the first chapter. But it seems to me to be a very different book. I've also started reading... there is a yuri manga based on Roadside Picnic, "Otherworld Picnic", a sort of isekai yuri take on it. And I find that interesting as well. I'd like to read more. But Tarkovsky's Stalker, that speaks to me most of all. I think to think of Tarkovsky as a "science fiction" director is... at best reductive. I should like to see more of his films.

Sure, five of his seven features have no science-fiction content at all (though I guess at a stretch The Sacrifice could be seen as a very slow Twilight Zone-type story). I think of him as a religious director.