Critic Reviews
85
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
16(94%)
mixed
1(6%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 17 Critic Reviews
100
Stalker is a movie to be watched as many times as physically possible, to be picked apart, discussed, argued over, written about, to inspire music, books, poetry, other movies, teachers, philosophers, historians, governments, even the way an individual might chose to live their life. It really is that astounding.
100
Stalker’s greatness lies in the journey.
100
Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest masterpiece, the Russian director’s 1979 film Stalker is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality.
90
His mise en scene is mesmerizing, and the final scene is breathtaking. Not an easy film, but almost certainly a great one.
90
Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work.
90
Stalker abounds with moments of baffling beauty and philosophical heft within its vast finitude, in which the seeming mundanity of the action casts moments spiritual and philosophical rapture further into relief.
90
Tarkovsky realizes the allegorical tale with an overwhelming density of visual detail; the riot and clash of textures—between black-and-white and color, agonized contrasts of light and murk, shimmery reflections on vast pools of water, and abrading striations of grass and stone—form a frenzied vocabulary and lend the film the torrential inner force of Dostoyevskian rhetoric.
88
Subscribing to the belief that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Tarkovsky locates Stalker’s spiritual center in his protagonists’ weathered countenances.
88
Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER is a metaphysical allegory in the guise of a sci-fi adventure, that like most of this visionary director's films, alternates between mesmerizing brilliance and intense boredom.
80
Stalker is an epic and frequently puzzling inquiry into freedom and faith, which unfolds in an unspecified totalitarian society.
