If Andrei Rublev is an epic biography and The Mirror is a personal memoir, both of which celebrate the individual subject in the throes of history, then Stalker is Tarkovsky going back to what is most fundamental - objective metaphysics. More specifically, Stalker is about how metaphysical ideals interact with desire. These ideals are transcendental excesses that call or beckon us, they fill us with the highest emotions such as hope and anxiety, while we ponder over ways to navigate…
Amongst Hong Sang-soo's entire body of work, this film is perhaps the most tightly rigorous in explicating the recurrent themes of difference that unfolds with repetition, and repetition that subsumes difference. Hong would often employ parallelism in narration and structure across his entire oeuvre - with neither "perspective" or "part" claiming more truth/reality than the other. Both are simultaneously true at once, and the concept of right and wrong becomes a normative claim that later on gets retrospectively attached onto…
"The repetition of daily life amplifies the existence of time. And when time stops, life appears." Wang Bing
The illusion of progress disguises the fundamental nature of primordial existence, one which is defined by tireless repetition. Aren't most of our lives already revolving around such institutions like the factory or office? Aren't we all already, in some sense, threshold figures? Forms of life that philosopher Agamben aptly calls "bare life" is a life that has been stripped down to its…
The most insightful film I've seen depicting deep seated suspicions that have been perpetuated by the prevailing socio-political codes and norms on those working in rural agrarian areas, and the inertia for implementing progressive policies designed by well-intended urban intelligentsia. We get to witness how the local elite and his group of ers ally themselves with the corporation and judicial chief, using every trick in the book (and outside) to stymie any form of collective ownership. Complex due to its subject matter and also different from Benegal's other films which typically focused on the theme of forbidden love. Possibly the director's best (and underseen) film.
