With the Tunguska explosion as the background, the film described a spiritual realm of space isolated by the military with basically zero special effects. As a snakehead, the stalker sneaked into the restricted area with a writer and a scientist, looking for a mysterious room that can realize the potential desires of human beings in a space that is no different from the world in appearance.
The stalker treated the visions of the entire region with a religious attitude, wandering in the deep forest ruins like a ritual, and constantly warned the two representatives of the humanities and natural sciences that a mistake in the path to the truth would be lost forever. The two representatives constantly teased and doubted the piety of the snake head in the field, but they were afraid of their ignorance here. They could only reluctantly follow the snake head step by step, mocking each other and discussing their understanding of life and the world. When there is only one step away from the end, the writer finds that he only wants to escape the hypocrisy of the world of appearance but dare not face the true desires in his heart. Scientists only want to destroy this dangerous zone that current reason cannot explain. All in all, this is an era where dreams are missing. The stalker despairs of the human nature that he gradually understands. But at the end of the story, the director still used the only clear surreal image, which brought meager hope to the audience.
Ordinary ruins of pipes in dangerous buildings and wasteland, in the hands of the director of the old tower, are in a different dimension. They are full of poetic grotesque thrills. A few simple montages can make the metaphors of symbolic characters more expressed in their background than any language. Powerful and rich. And the opening and closing film are the dilapidated black and white bedrooms of the stalker. As symbols of the family, his wife and children have been obstructing the stalker's dangerous exploration, but after his sneaking return, he brought him the only comfort, and even expressed the only understanding of his perhaps meaningless arbitrariness. Behind the abstract expression of the entire film's video and lines, is this perhaps the greatest real tension?
The biggest regret of watching Old Tower's works is the extreme unfamiliarity with Russian. Due to the excessive literary nature of his works, the Chinese translation on the Internet or on discs seems to be very problematic. In contrast, English subtitles are still relatively reliable, at least the metaphors and poetry in them will not become inexplicable in Chinese translation, making the original obscurity even more difficult. This kind of problem may also be caused by different cultural languages.
Even so, those who are interested in science fiction and humanities should definitely not miss the two classics of the old tower. This kind of low-cost humanistic science fiction wonders, and its film language and concepts have been imitated by many later so-called special effects blockbusters. But no matter how brilliant the effect or the fancy editing, I am afraid it will be difficult to surpass the height of the pure science fiction thinking of the old tower.
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