Stalker (1979 film)

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.

This is the most important moment of your life. Your sincerest desire will come true here. The desire that has made you suffer most.

Stalker is a 1979 Soviet science fiction art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. It depicts an expedition led by a figure known as the 'Stalker' (Aleksandr Kaidanovsky) to take his two clients, a melancholic writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) seeking inspiration and a professor (Nikolai Grinko) seeking scientific discovery, to a site known simply as the 'Zone', which has a place within it with the supposed ability to fulfill a person's innermost desires.

The Stalker

• Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.
  • This is a paraphrase of the Tao Te Ching
• Here the shortest path isn’t the simplest. The more indirect, the less risk there is.

• I’ve never met a single happy person in my life.

• This is the most important moment of your life. Your sincerest desire will come true here. The desire that has made you suffer most.

• He wants to destroy your hope. There is nothing left on Earth. This is the only place to come when all hope is lost! Why destroy hope!

• My God, what kind of people are they? The look of their eyes is blank. They're thinking how not to sell themselves cheap. How to earn more, how to get paid for every breath they take. They know they were born to "be someone", to be special! They say, "You live but once." How can such people believe in anything at all?

The Writer

• A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?

• My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?

• While I am digging for the truth, so much happens to it that instead of discovering the truth I dig up a heap of, pardon... I'd better not name it.

• You're a bad judge of human nature if you bring people like me into the Zone.

• What comes true here is that which reflects your true nature. The most secret desire. It is within you. It governs you. Yet you are ignorant of it.

• Porcupine was given the essence of his true nature. Conscience and soul-searching were all invented by the mind. When he realized all that, he hanged himself.

• I won’t go into your room. I won’t pour the filth of my soul on to anyone’s head.

Dialogues

• Stalker. Well, here is the Dry Tunnel.

Writer. [knee-deep in water] Not bad, "dry"!

Stalker. This is a local joke. Usually you need to swim here.

Cast

• Aleksandr Kaidanovsky — The "Stalker"
• Nikolai Grinko — The "Professor"
• Anatoli Solonitsyn — The "Writer"