Stalker (1979)

AKA Сталкер

Directed by
Andrei Tarkovsky        

Writing credits
Arkadiy Strugatskiy (novel "The Roadside Picnic")
Boris Strugatskiy (novel "The Roadside Picnic")
Arkadiy Strugatskiy
Boris Strugatskiy

The setting of the film is a tiny town on the outskirts of the Zone, a wilderness area which has been cordoned off by the government. The film's main character, the Stalker, works as a guide to bring people in and out of the Zone, to "the Room", which is said to grant the deepest, innermost wishes of anyone who steps inside. Residual effects of an undefined previous occurrence have transformed an otherwise mundane rural area scattered with ruined buildings into an area where the normal laws of physics no longer apply.

The film begins, in black and white, with the Stalker in his home with his wife and daughter. His wife emotionally urges him not to leave her again to go into the Zone because of the legal consequences, but he ignores her pleas. The Stalker goes to a bar, where he meets the Writer and the Professor, who will be his clients on his next trip into the Zone. The Writer and the Professor are never identified by name — the Stalker prefers to refer to them in this way. The three of them evade the military blockade that guards the Zone using an 88" Series II Land-Rover — attracting gunfire from the guards as they go — and then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway handcar. The camera follows their passage from urban setting to rural, and from the darkness required for their infiltration of the Zone, to light. This is also the point in the movie where the film switches to color.

The Stalker tells his clients that they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers that, while invisible, are all around them. Although the Stalker describes extreme danger at all times, no harm comes to any of the three men; there is a tension between disbelief of the need for his elaborate precautions and the possibility that they are necessary. The Stalker tests various routes by throwing metal nuts tied with strips of cloth ahead of him before walking into a new area. The Zone appears peaceful and harmless. The Writer is skeptical that there is any real danger, while the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.

Much of the film focuses on the trip through the apparently dangerous Zone and the philosophical discussions that the characters share about their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer appears concerned that he is losing his inspiration, while the Professor apparently hopes to win a Nobel prize. Meanwhile, the Stalker — who explains that he has never gone into the Room himself — quotes from the New Testament and bemoans the loss of faith in society. Throughout the film, the Stalker refers to a previous Stalker, named "Porcupine," who led his poet brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room and gained a lot of money, and then hanged himself. The implication is that our "deepest, innermost desires" are opaque even to ourselves, and the overt desire to win the lottery was coupled with the covert and unexpressed - perhaps unconscious - desire for his brother's death, and when Porcupine realized this, he killed himself to expiate his guilt. When the Writer confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, he says that it all comes from Porcupine.

The trio first walk through meadows and then enter a tunnel that the Stalker calls "the meat grinder." In one of the decayed buildings, a phone inexplicably begins to ring. The Writer answers and says to whoever is on the other end that "this is not the clinic," and hangs up. The Professor then uses the phone to call a colleague. In the resultant conversation he reveals some of his true motives for having come to the Room. He has brought a bomb with him and intends to destroy the Room out of fear that it could be used for personal gain by evil men. The three men fight verbally and physically; the Professor backs down from his plan to destroy the Room. Their journey ends when they finally arrive at the entrance to the Room. A long take leaves the men sitting outside the Room, who then never enter it.[2] Rain begins to fall from a dark sky where a ceiling once was, into the ruined building, and the rainstorm gradually fades away, all in one shot.

The next scene shows the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor back in the bar. The Stalker's wife and child arrive. A mysterious black dog that followed the three men through the Zone is now in the bar with them. His wife asks where he got it; the Stalker says that it got attached to him and he could not leave it in the Zone. As the Stalker leaves the bar with his family and the dog, we see that his child, nicknamed "Monkey" is crippled, and cannot walk unaided. (Earlier dialogue has suggested that the child is affected by some form of genetic mutation as a "child of the Zone.") Later, when the Stalker's wife says she would like to visit the Room, he seems to have doubts about the Zone; he tells her he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. While breaking the fourth wall, the Stalker's wife then contemplates her relationship with the Stalker, only to conclude that she is better off with him. The film ends with Monkey alone in the kitchen. She recites a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev and then lays her head on the table and appears to psychokinetically push three drinking glasses across the table, one after the other, with the last one falling to the floor. After the third glass falls to the floor, a train passes by (as in the beginning of the film), causing the entire apartment to shake.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/

Solaris (1972)

 AKA Солярис

Directed by
Andrey Tarkovskiy       

Writing credits
Stanislaw Lem (novel "Solaris")
Fridrikh Gorenshtein
Andrey Tarkovskiy

Psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) spends his last day on Earth reflecting on his life while walking by a lake near his childhood home where his elderly father still lives. Kelvin is about to embark on an interstellar journey to a space station orbiting the remote oceanic planet Solaris. After decades of study, the scientific mission at the space station has barely progressed in its goal of understanding the planet. To make matters worse, most of the crew has succumbed to a series of emotional crises. Kelvin is dispatched to evaluate the situation aboard ship and determine whether the venture should continue.

Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), a former space pilot, visits Kelvin. They watch film footage of Burton's own testimony years before of seeing an over-sized child on the ocean surface of Solaris while searching for two lost scientists. However, the cameras of his craft recorded only clouds and the flat ocean surface; Burton's report was dismissed as hallucinations. After failing to convince Kelvin of the truth of his experience, Burton leaves angrily only to later call Kelvin. He explains that he met the child of a scientist lost in that mission, and the child was reminiscent of the one he saw on Solaris.

Before departing Earth for Solaris, Kelvin destroys most of his personal mementos in a bonfire, noting the volume of keepsakes he has accumulated. In Kelvin's last conversation with his father (Nikolai Grinko), they realize that the father will not live to see Kelvin return. Although he readily accepted the mission, it is a choice that weighs heavily upon Kelvin's conscience.

Upon arrival at the Solaris space station, none of the three remaining scientists meet Kelvin, who finds the disarrayed space station dangerously neglected. He soon learns that his friend among the scientists, Dr. Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan), has mysteriously died. The two surviving crewmen are unhelpful, and give contradicting and confusing information. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) warns Kelvin not to overreact if he sees anything “unusual” on board the station. However, Kelvin soon glimpses other people aboard the station. While Kelvin sends news of the chaos on board the station, the oceans of Solaris begin swirling on the planet's surface.

Waking exhausted from a restless sleep, Kelvin finds a woman with him in his quarters despite the barricaded door. To his surprise, it is Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), his late wife who committed suicide some years before. However, she is mysteriously unaware of having committed suicide on Earth, and she is equally puzzled as to her presence in Kelvin's quarters. Grasping that she is a psychological construct brought on by the mysterious effects of Solaris, he lures her to a spacecraft and launches the illusion of his wife into outer space. In his haste to be rid of her, he is burned by the rocket’s blast. Dr. Snaut tends his burns and explains that the “visitors” began appearing after the scientists attracted the attention of Solaris, seemingly a sentient entity.

That evening, Hari reappears in his quarters. This time calm, Kelvin embraces Hari through the night. Later, Kelvin causes her to panic when she discovers the clothes of the first apparition and tries to leave the room. She beats her way through the room’s metal door, severely cutting herself. Kelvin carries her back to his bed, where her injuries heal before his eyes. Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) calls for a meeting, and Kelvin introduces Hari as his wife, insisting they treat her respectfully. In their symposium, the scientists begin to understand that Solaris created Hari from Kelvin’s memories of his dead wife. The Hari present among them, though not human, thinks and feels as though she were. Sartorius theorizes the visitors are composed of neutrinos and that it might be possible to destroy them.

Kelvin shows Hari films of himself and his parents when he was a boy and, later, of his wife. While she is asleep, Snaut proposes beaming Kelvin’s brainwave patterns at Solaris in hopes that it will understand them and stop the disturbing apparitions as communication. However, Sartorius suggests a radical attack of heavy radiation bombardment. In time, Hari becomes independent and is able to exist beyond Kelvin’s sight. She learns from Sartorius that the original Hari had committed suicide ten years earlier, and Kelvin is forced to tell her the entire story. Distressed, Hari kills herself again by drinking liquid oxygen, only to painfully, spasmodically resurrect a few minutes later. On the surface of Solaris, the ocean is moving even faster.

In a fevered sleep, Kelvin dreams of his mother and of many Haris walking about his quarters. When he awakens, Hari is gone, and Snaut reads him the good-bye note she wrote him. The note indicates that Hari asked the scientists to kill her. Snaut tells Kelvin that since they broadcast Kelvin’s brainwaves at Solaris, the visitors stopped appearing, and islands began forming on the planet's surface. Kelvin debates whether or not to return to Earth or to descend to Solaris in hope of reconnecting with everything he has loved and lost.

Again at the shore of the frozen lake, Kelvin finds himself at his father's house. His dog runs to him, and he happily walks towards it. He realizes something is wrong when he sees water is falling inside the house but is unnoticed by his father, who appears in the house. Father and son embrace on the front step of the lakeside house, on an island in the middle of an ocean on Solaris.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/

Wild Strawberries (1957)

AKA Smultronstället

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writer:
Ingmar Bergman

 

Eberhard Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) is an elderly physician. His medical and scientific specialty was bacteriology according to the script. Before specializing he served as general practitioner in rural Sweden. He drives 400 miles, with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) from Stockholm to Lund to receive the honorary degree Doctor Jubilaris 50 years after graduating from Lund University. During the trip, he is forced by nightmares, daydreams, his old age, and his impending death to reevaluate his life. He meets a variety of people on the road, from Sara, a female hitchhiker traveling with her fiancé and escort, to a quarreling married couple who remind Isak of his own life and unhappy marriage. He reminisces about his childhood in the seaside, his sweetheart Sara (played by Bibi Andersson, who also plays the other Sara). He is confronted by his loneliness and aloofness, recognizing these traits both in his ancient mother and in his middle age physician son, and gradually advances towards acceptance of himself, his past, his present, and his soon-to-occur death.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050986/

Winter Light (1962)

AKA Nattvardsgästerna

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writer:
Ingmar Bergman

The film opens with the final moments of Tomas's noon service. In attendance are only a handful of people, including fisherman Jonas Persson and his wife Karin (von Sydow and Gunnel Lindblom), and Tomas's ex-mistress, the atheistic Märta (Ingrid Thulin). After the service, Tomas, though coming down with a cold, prepares for his 3 o'clock service in another town.

Before he leaves, however, the Perssons arrive to speak to him. Jonas has become morose after hearing that China is developing an atomic bomb. Tomas speaks to the man briefly, but asks Jonas to return after taking his wife home. No sooner have the Perssons left than Märta enters, attempts to comfort the miserable Tomas, and asks if he's read the letter she wrote to him (he hasn't). Tomas tells her of his failure to help Jonas, and wonders if he will have anything to say, since he is without hope as well. Märta states her love for Tomas, but also her belief that he doesn't love her. She leaves, and Tomas reads her letter.

In an unbroken shot lasting almost six minutes, Bergman has Märta face the camera and speak the contents of the letter. In it, she coldly attacks Tomas for his neglect of her, relating a story of how a rash that disfigured her body repulsed him, and neither his faith nor his prayers did anything to help her. Tomas finishes the letter, and falls asleep. Awakened by the return of Jonas, Tomas clumsily tries to provide counsel, before finally admitting that he has no faith as well. He tells the depressed man that his (Tomas's) faith was an egotistical one — God loved humanity, but Tomas most of all. Serving in Lisbon during the Spanish civil war, Tomas could not reconcile his loving God with the atrocities being committed, so he ignored them. Tomas finally tells Jonas that things make more sense if we deny the existence of God, because then man's cruelty needs no explanation. Jonas leaves, and Tomas faces the crucifix and declares himself finally free.

Märta, who has been lurking in the chapel, is overjoyed to hear this, and embraces Tomas (who again does not respond to her affections). They are interrupted by the widow Magdalena, who tells them that Jonas has just committed suicide with a rifle. Tomas drives, alone, to the scene. Shot in an awkward, distant style (as contrasted with the claustrophobic close-ups of the rest of the film), Tomas stoically helps the police cover Jonas's body with a tarp, then stands guard while waiting for the "van" to collect the body, which arrives shortly. Märta arrives on foot, and she and Tomas drive off to her home, where she invites him in to take some medicine for his cold.

Waiting in the classroom attached to her house (Märta is a substitute teacher), Tomas finally lashes out at her, telling her first that he rejected her because he was tired of the gossip about them. When that fails to deter her affections, Tomas then tells her that he was tired of her constant talking, and that Märta could never measure up to his late wife, the only woman he has ever loved. Though shocked by the attack, Märta agrees to drive with him to the Persson house. Informed of Jonas's suicide, Karin collapses onto the stairs and wonders how she and her children will go on. Tomas makes a perfunctory offer of help, and leaves.

Arriving for the 3 o'clock service at the second church, Tomas and Märta find the building empty except for Algot, the hunchbacked sexton, and Fredrik, the organist (who arrives late and slightly inebriated). Fredrik tells Märta that she should leave the small town and Tomas and live her life, rather than stay and have her dreams crushed like the rest of them. Meanwhile in the vestry, Algot questions Tomas about the Passion. Algot wonders why so much emphasis was placed on the physical suffering of Jesus, which was brief, versus the many betrayals he faced from his disciples (who denied him, did not understand his message, and did not follow his commands) and finally from God, who did not answer him on the cross. Wasn't God's silence worse, he asks. Tomas, who has been listening silently, answers "yes". Fredrik and Algot wonder if they should have a service since no one showed up, but Tomas replies that someone has shown up: Märta. Tomas speaks the first lines of the service as the film ends.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057358/

Red Desert (1964)

AKA Il deserto rosso

Director:
Michelangelo Antonioni

Writers:
Michelangelo Antonioni
Tonino Guerra

As the film opens, Giuliana (Vitti) has been released from the hospital after having attempted suicide. She lives with her husband Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), director of a nationalized plant which is going through a strike, along with their young son. Giuliana feels estranged from her family and disconnected from the world. Ugo's friend Zeller (Richard Harris) comes to Ravenna to make a business deal and is drawn to her. Zeller may understand her troubles more than Ugo does, but this is not enough to sway Giuliana from her worries.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058003/

Fando y Lis (1967)

Directed by
Alejandro Jodorowsky

Writing credits
Fernando Arrabal (play)
Alejandro Jodorowsky

The film follows Fando (Sergio Klainer) and his paraplegic girlfriend Lis (Diana Mariscal) through a barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of the mythical city of Tar, where legend has it all wishes come true. The film is divided into four acts:

Act I

This first part begins with a flashback of young Fando hanging around with his father. The father says that when he dies, his skin would make a beautiful drum, and that, if ever Fando should ever feel lonely, he should go to the wonderful city of Tar. Fando and Lis begin their journey in a destroyed city (Fando drives Lis in a small wooden cart, which also carries Fando's drum and Lis' phonograph), where they meet a group of aristocrats having a ball in the midst of the destruction. Fando is lured away by a group of seductresses into a junkyard, where he is blinded and made to chase after them. In the end he is tricked into kissing a man and paid for amusing them. Meanwhile, Lis is surrounded by the arisocrats and a flashback occurs, where we see young Lis being lured backstage by a puppeteer (played by Jodorowsky) and being harassed by the artists yonder. Fando throws the money away and goes back to get Lis and leave the city. They hang around in a cemetery: Lis sings "I shall die, and no-one shall remember me..." and Fando reassures her that he will remember her and will visit her grave bringing a flower and a dog. A musical sequence follows, "Qué bonito es un entierro" (how beautiful is a funeral), during which the couple play dead and cavort around the cemetery.

Act II

Fando and Lis pull into what appears to be a dead end until they are guided out by the Pope, who also signals the road to Tar. He also advises them against the coming of the night, which is signaled by the beating of drums, "for those who are asleep become awake". Shortly afterwards the couple come across a marsh in which the bodies of men and women lie asleep. As they approach, they wake up and bathe in mud. Fando leaves Lis behind, planting her in the muddy swamp, much to her chagrin, but changes his mind and rescues her shortly after. Not long afterwards, however, he becomes tired of Lis and mistreats her, dragging her across the desert and abandoning her at the bottom of a spiraling canyon. Fando runs away and upon reaching a mountain top witnesses a card game between three old ladies, playing for the right to suck fruit pulp off a young man's mouth. Fando runs away from the scene and into an ambush composed of desert women armed with bowling balls and a scantily clad woman with a whip. The group chases Fando and sends him tumbling down a hill and right next to the grave of his father, who proceeds to come back to life and send his son into the tomb. Fando eventually goes back to Lis and the two leave. He promises never to hurt her again.

Act III

A sequence of scantily-clothed Fando and Lis follows, painting each others' names in black in a room and proceeding to throw buckets of paint at the walls and at each other. Back in the desert, the couple come across an array of different characters: a man and his blind son begging for blood (which they extract from Lis but the father drinks and leaves nothing for his son), a party of transvestites (who cross-dress Fando and Lis) and an apparition of Fando's mother (who is then shown in a flashback along young Fando, in which we see her death and how she taunted Fando's father - her servants are the young women from Act II), now begging to be killed. Fando subsequently strangles her with her own hair and walks her to her grave.

Act IV

Yet again, Fando becomes tired of Lis, and tearing her clothes apart, chains her up to the cart and hides nearby. He leaves her to the mercy of three men (the clowns from the circus flashback of Lis' childhood)) who slowly approach the scene. Fando reappears and encourages the men to look at her and feel her and kiss her. They do so, but shyly walk away after Fando proudly claims she is his girlfriend. The couple drifts some more but constantly reaches the same barren spot between the mountains. Lis points it out and a frustrated Fando charges against the hills, but to no avail. He then proceeds to handcuff Lis and torture her once more. In retaliation, she throws Fando's treasured drum away, breaking it. An enraged Fando beats Lis up, killing her. Lis is taken away by a mob, who puts her in a coffin and cannibalize parts of her skin. Fando interrupts the ceremony to retrieve Lis' body and eventually bury her. In the film's last scene, Fando visits Lis' grave as promised with a flower and a dog. Calling her name, he lies down by the grave and is covered by crawling ivy. Then, we see a naked Lis rising from the grave, spotting an also naked Fando, and the couple running off into the woods. But we cut back to Fando, lying by Lis' grave, calling her name in dreams, wrapped in ivy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061643/

Late Autumn (1960)

AKA Akibiyori

Directed by
Yasujirô Ozu        

Writing credits
Ton Satomi (novel)
Kôgo Noda
Yasujirô Ozu

 

Three middle-aged friends and former college mates – Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura) and Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) – meet up for the 7th memorial service of a late college friend, Miwa. Miwa's widow Akiko (Setsuko Hara) and 24-year-old daughter Ayako (Yôko Tsukasa) are also present. The three friends remark amongst themselves how good Akiko looks despite being in her forties.

The party chats and thinks that it is time for Ayako to get married. Taguchi tells them he has a prospective suitor for Ayako, but it later turns out the man already has a fiancée. Mamiya instead offers his employee, Goto (Keiji Sada), as another match, but Ayako confides privately in Akiko that she has no wish of getting married. Ayako, who lives alone with Akiko, is close to her mother, who teaches dressmaking.

Ayako meets Goto one day at Mamiya's office. Later, after a hiking trip, a fellow colleague offers to introduce him to Ayako again. Ayako and Goto rapidly progress to be a couple, but Ayako is unwilling to get married because that will mean Akiko will live all alone. Ayako puts forward to Mamiya her theory that "romance and marriage could be separate". The three friends think that all this is an excuse and begin to speculate that Ayako will marry if Akiko remarry. The other two offer Hirayama, a widower, as Akiko's prospective remarriage partner. Hirayama warns them not to go ahead with their plan, but after privately obtaining permission from his son to remarry, changes his mind.

Hirayama now approaches Taguchi and Mamiya for help. Before they can break the subject to Akiko, however, Mamiya tactlessly lets Ayako know about their plan. Thinking that her mother has known about this, an unhappy Ayako goes home to question her and then leaves for her colleague and friend Yukiko's (Mariko Okada) place in a huff. Yukiko however approves of Akiko's remarriage. She persuades Ayako not to be so selfish, which gains Ayako's displeasure.

Displeased, Yukiko confronts the three friends, and finds out the truth from them. Mamiya apologizes for their mishap; however, seeing their cause, Yukiko decides to help Hirayama. Unfortunately, when Akiko and Ayako go for their last trip together, Akiko tells her daughter she has decided not to marry. She urges Ayako not to worry about her. With her assurance, Ayako successfully marries Goto, leaving her mother to live all alone in her apartment.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053579/