Andrei Tarkovsky

Three men spend most of Stalker walking through a guarded exclusion zone toward a room said to grant whatever a person most deeply wants. Nothing is hurried anywhere else either: a monk takes a vow of silence after a massacre in Andrei Rublev, a psychologist sent to the station above Solaris finds the planet dredging his repressed memories back up, and a man in The Sacrifice learns at his own birthday party that nuclear war has begun. Water stands in the rooms, rain comes through the ceilings, and the takes run well past the point another film would cut. Give the pace an hour and it stops reading as a demand.

Signature

• Very long takes with the camera drifting instead of following.
• Standing water, rain and dripping interiors in nearly every film.
• Dream, memory and present tense given equal weight.
• Faith and doubt used as structure.