Stalker

*"Suppose I return to our godforsaken city a genius, understand? But a man writes because he is tormented, unsure of himself He has to keep proving his worth to himself and to others But if im convinced im a genius... then why do i need to write? What's the deal?"* Tarkovsky is said to have died of cancer alongside some members of his crew and the actor Anatoly Solonitsyn due to prolongued exposure to radiation in what seemed to be a toxic river in the shooting. By having to re-record the outside scenes twice or thrice after kicking the previous director of photography due to shooting all of the film in an unusable film roll, Tarkovsky spent almost 5000m of film in Stalker. Tarkovsky found in The Stalker, yet another place to express his soliloquies, philosophical monologues about life and what is the purpose of going or being in The Room at all? *A man entered the room with the wish of resurrecting his deceased brother but exited with a handful of cash. * What if that same person wished for the world to end? Or for everyone to be happy? Would a human ever be so selfishless so as to prioritize others? Aren't we all selfish by pure nature? "My consciousness wants the triump of vegetarianism My subconscious longs for a juicy steak. So, what do I want?" Narratively I felt immersed, somehow, by the lack of people, the devastated characters and their superb performance. This being my third Tarkovsky watch I found the zooming and camera work to be spectacular, intrinsicate and delicate in comparison to other work from hin. All of the stills feel immersive, we drift away our eyes from left to right to see what's within this Zone, but the more we look the less we see and realize that the only dangerous thing is ourselves and our greed. Everything was questioned by these three, very human characters that were presentes to us in here and we got no clear answers, as those have to be threaded by ourselves.