"Stalker" vs. "Roadside Picnic"

[touchedbytarkovsky]

What are people's thoughts about the comparison of "Stalker" the film and the novel "Roadside Picnic"?

I just finished reading the Strugatsky brothers' "Roadside Picnic" and enjoyed it quite a bit. However, in comparison to the film, I felt that it was not quite up at the the same level. (This reminds me of the comparison of "2001: A Space Odyssey" the novel by Arthur C. Clarke vs. the movie by Stanley Kubrick--both are great, but the film is better.) Specifically, "Roadside" gives us lots of interesting artifacts to be amazed by (e.g., "empties" or the "golden ball"), and many different dangers to be afraid of (e.g., "mosquito mange" or "witch's jelly"). Tarkovsky's film, on the other hand, is much closer to real life. There are no amazing artifacts to wow us (other than "the room" which is nevertheless subtle in the powers it shows us--raining indoors, or allowing a telephone call to get through when the dialer should not know the number or when to call). Likewise, the dangers are far more subtle in the film. Though the Stalker fills the audience with dread about the dangers of the zone, the actual dangers faced are far more conspicuous in "Roadside Picnic." For example, in "Roadside," we see one character, Buzzard, have his legs turned to jelly, and we later see his son tossed in the air and twisted like rag being wrung out. In "Stalker," we see one long-dead corpse from a distance, but that is it. Nevertheless, there are definitely some scary scenes, not least of which was the original appearance of the dog(!). In sum, though I enjoyed the Strugatsky brothers' novel, I felt that Tarkovsky's film is more subtle, and partly for that reason, that the film is higher art.

[MaKS]

Indeed, Tarkovskiy's ability to deal with cinema art is so amazing, he's widely appreciated. Cinematography deals with visual experience, just like music does. Literature deals with a reader in rather different way, and requires some other approach. It's quite useless, i believe, to compare two pieces in so different genres, especially by involving bodycounting. You jast can't actually see any of the "horrors", you have to percieve it with your mind. In fact, as it seems to me, Tarkovskiy "wows" the viewer even more straightforwardly - and with greater effect. His artistic skill per se, disregarding any "storytelling", is presented in the "Mirror" to be carefully examined.

(Beware, reader, some spoilesrs are on the way.)

On the other hand, by comparing the literatural, storytelling part of "Stalker" and the "Roadside Picnic", i tend to give no exclusive credits to any one of them (no wonder, because the script is heavily influenced by Strugatskie). Indeed, they are very different and seem to touch different matters, but both are highly successful in reaching their goals. I see the Redrick's sudden conversion into the naive religion he just found as natural and beautiful as the "Stalker" characters dealing with the viewes they achieved. No doubt Tarkovskiy is a great master of his art, but it doesn't means each time he had to make masterpieces out of nothing. ^^

[Pauk]

I agree with Maks - just because Tarkovsky made it even better, it does not mean the lesser qualities of the original story.
For example, in the movie, relationship between Little Monkey and Stalker is rather vague, somewhat left between the lines (implicit), while in the book it's the driving force for him. And also relations to other family members, they make the 'mad' Redrick look rather unlike the 'mad' Stalker of the film. And for me they stay separate, although, as I first read the book, then saw the film, Stalker still has some shades of Redrick.

The book is worth to become a film as it is, I hope it will be chosen by some Russian director someday.

[MaKS]

hmm, Redrick doesn't even seem to be "mad" to me. (spoilers, spoilers) He's perfectly normal, he goes to the Zone like others go to office... He has some visions, but they don't seem to turn out into any kind of significant mystical experience for him. Indeed, Redrick, not Stalker, is the "common man" in a nonconformist way. Redrick deals with his marginal life the best way a common man can; but in the end he founds out he can't get this way anymore. That's how i see it; maybe i got some things wrong.

[Pauk]

SPOILERS
With 'mad' I did not mean anything negative. Firstly, the dialog between Noonan and Gutta: "His hair still red?" "You bet!" "Hot-tempered?" "What else! He'll be that way to the grave." And his father, and his attitudes toward business and family, one must be really mad to comprise everything within oneself, and he differs from the other stalkers. So.
/SPOILERS

[MaKS]

I see, it does make sense. True, even in anger they're very unlike each other.

[The Ferret]

I think to them as two heavily-separated alternative dimensions. You can't really compare them, they work on very different levels. The background, the characters, the Zone itself... everything changes from one "product" to the other.
In the same league, the Stalker is not Red, Red is a Stalker but *NOT* our cinematic Stalker. They are two different people.

On the other hand, I see Tarkovsky's opus like science fiction the same. Even if it strands to philosophy, religion and "dramatic cinema", I also see it as a valid exemple of sci-fi.

[touchedbytarkovsky]

"Cinematography deals with visual experience, just like music does. Literature deals with a reader in rather different way, and requires some other approach. It's quite useless, i believe, to compare two pieces in so different genres, especially by involving bodycounting. "

I agree that cinema and writing are two very different media, with different modes of expression. In some ways, literature is much more powerful, exactly because it is automatically, by its very nature, tailored to the mind of each reader. Cinema, on the other hand, must work with concrete images and sounds, which are still open to interpretation, but less so than is the case with literature.

However, I think my point about artifacts and 'body counts' is entirely valid, regardless of the differences in media. Tarkovsky could easily have shown the same sorts of scenes as in the book (e.g., the jelly legs, the young man tossed into the air), but deliberately chose not to (special effects were surely not the exclusive province of only Hollywood films). I think he chose not to show such scenes precisely because he wanted to create a more subtle form of terror in the viewer--for example with the silence of the nap in the water disrupted by the dog splashing up to the stalker, or the phone ringing in the room, which everyone momentarily ignores, until they realize that it is actually ringing. Indeed, I have a hard time thinking of examples of such powerful, yet subtle uses of cinema to create shock and surprise than by Tarkovsky. (I suppose there are a couple of other examples I can think of [SPOILERS]: In "2001," in the penultimate scene in the film, when David Bowman is eating, looks up and sees himself, older, looking at himself, and the shock leads him to knock a glass off of the table, shattering on the floor, in an otherwise completely silent environment. Then the visage of himself is gone, and he continues eating. The other example is in David Lynch's "Lost Highway" in the thingytail party scene in which Fred Madison is met by the 'mystery man' who tells Fred that he, the mystery man, is right now at Fred's house, and Fred can talk to him (the mystery man) on the mystery man's cell phone, and he dials Fred's house and hands him the phone to prove it, at which point Fred hears the mystery man answer Fred's home phone.)

In any case, my main point is that I think Tarkovsky was able to create more profound and subtle effects than the novel, and I don't think that this difference was due to the difference in medium (movie versus book). Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed "Roadside Picnic" and it stuck with me, and I pondered it for quite a while after reading it. Furthermore, I fully agree that "Stalker" could never have come into being without "Roadside Picnic" having been written first. So, I certainly take my hat off to the Strugatsky brothers for having created a wonderful piece of literature.

[MaKS]

This horror-centric view on "Stalker" is rather new for me, and i must admit i didn't took it right at first; in fact i'm not sure i did it for now as well... o.o I feel sort of puzzled ^^

[The Ferret]

Touched (welcome back),

I agree with everything you're saying and must add: the 'Meat Grinder Scene' is one of the most thrilling scenes ever coinceived for the big screen - if not the most thrilling one ever been (Personally, I'm sure it's the greatest sequence of all the times in terms of atmosphere, groove and suspence, and I'm surely everyone would agree).

Nothing can be compared with the 'Meat Grinder Scene', and it features... NOTHING as the greatest danger to face! Nothing happens, and at the same time it happens everything.
Can you dig it? Surely, you can.

Amazing. That's one of the many reasons 'STALKER' is the greatest movie of all the times.

[blue]

touchedbytarkovsky said:

"Cinematography deals with visual experience, just like music does. Literature deals with a reader in rather different way, and requires some other approach. It's quite useless, i believe, to compare two pieces in so different genres, especially by involving bodycounting. "

I agree that cinema and writing are two very different media, with different modes of expression. In some ways, literature is much more powerful, exactly because it is automatically, by its very nature, tailored to the mind of each reader. Cinema, on the other hand, must work with concrete images and sounds, which are still open to interpretation, but less so than is the case with literature.

However, I think my point about artifacts and 'body counts' is entirely valid, regardless of the differences in media. Tarkovsky could easily have shown the same sorts of scenes as in the book (e.g., the jelly legs, the young man tossed into the air), but deliberately chose not to (special effects were surely not the exclusive province of only Hollywood films). I think he chose not to show such scenes precisely because he wanted to create a more subtle form of terror in the viewer--for example with the silence of the nap in the water disrupted by the dog splashing up to the stalker, or the phone ringing in the room, which everyone momentarily ignores, until they realize that it is actually ringing. Indeed, I have a hard time thinking of examples of such powerful, yet subtle uses of cinema to create shock and surprise than by Tarkovsky.

You argued that cinema is less open to interpretation since it has to work with concrete images and sounds. It’s interesting then how amazingly differently we experience the film. For me the scene with the Stalker lying in the swamp with the dog appearing is filled with such deep beauty, it's the very height of the film! I also find it more enigmatic that frightening: Where does the dog come from? What relationship does it have to the Zone? One way to see it is as representing a link between Man and the Unknown, the Zone. Even the Stalker might be seen as such a link. But then he is it by learning, while the dog likely is it by nature.

The scene with the telephone ringing in the ante-room is absurd. I think it’s illustrating that the order of things is more or less upside-down in the Zone. Euclidian logic doesn’t rule there as in the rest of the world.

To return to your view that film is less open to interpretation than literature I would say that it holds for mainstream films but not for a film like Stalker. It’s correct that the film leaves nothing to the imagination as how things look, but obviously as what things mean. If the scene with the dog had been in a book I think it would have been more difficult to leave it so open for interpretation and still have such an emotional meaning.