Weird fact about Stalker, they were shooting in disused USSR factories that had just been left as-is -- a lot of people on set got cancer not much longer after shooting, likely from being around so much industrial waste.
It's also way better than the book it was based on IMO (Roadside Picnic).
Hard to compare. They’re completely different in terms of plot, mood, style… everything, really. Roadside Picnic has the signature Strugatsky Bros dark comedy running through it, while Stalker really has no comedic elements whatsoever. I prefer the book, for what it’s worth. OTOH, I prefer the film Solaris to the Lem novel.
IMO the Stalker game is like the darkest and most raw take of the general theme, the movie is the most philosophical and artsy take and the book is somewhere in the middle. And they’re all worth it.
I think the Stalker game bears little to no relation to the novel. The novel is not about shooting things up and there are neither monsters nor radioactivity.
The Stalker shooting locations are actually close to Tallinn in Estonia, a former Soviet republic that’s an EU and NATO member today. So if watching the film turns you into a super fan, it’s not too hard to go visit the sites!
that is so crazy i was in one of the shooting locations yesterady by accident (it is now a kultural venue location) and wondered why an area there had the name "stalker", of course i thought about my favorite movie but i never considered it being filmed where i live. thanks for this mind blow
... because I was just reading about Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease (because of his recent movie "Still") and apparently he and two other people who worked in his earliest TV show (where he was a secondary character) got early onset Parkinson's, and he claims this is a mere coincidence, not enough to consider this a relevant "cluster" of Parkinson's.
In both cases it's three people who worked closely together catching a relatively rare disease. I wonder if it's relevant for Tarkovsky, given that Michael J. Fox thinks it wasn't relevant for him...
well the main difference seems to be that some crew in stalker stated they had the sense of being poisoned in that dust and fume cloud and also developed accute allergic reactions. Its still all just based on the statements of the sound technician, i did not find interviews with other crew that said the same, but i'm sure there are some interview transcriptions in russian print somewhere. In the end the best source would probably be the estonian death statistics for cancer increases closer to those areas or further downstream the same river.
It was initially supposed to be filmed at factories, but there was a change of plans and circumstances (the first of many others which resulted in constant rewriting of the script, succession of three cameramen, and summer of 1978 spent on remaking shots from summer of 1977).
Outdoor shooting happened at Rotermanni Quarter, an old factory area next to the port of Tallinn, at various factories and train stations around the city, and at the old unused dam nearby. Scene of family leaving the bar takes place at the ash pond of Moscow Combined Power Plant #20 (in background) with its drainage chutes:
As for foamy wastewater, it came from the pulp mill. Its contents and potential toxicity could be anything, depending on part of the cycle that dumped the byproducts. Turpentine was a good candidate, and it could be combined with sawdust particles. However, if spending a couple of months by the river could give people cancer, local people would also have it.
Note that the mill opened in 1938, so, depending on who you ask, either the river had already been dead before Soviet era, or it was constantly being polluted in each year of it. To my unprofessional eye, the flow of Jägala river is way too small to effectively dilute the waste (nor all the little dams help it), but it was an important project economically:
The film was also lost in a lab and completely reshot
edit: by lost I mean the usability was lost. it was destroyed in chemical process. thx for pointing out it was just half. but his textural differences are explained also by technique, he did it in his other works even through his late career (mixing sepia segments, different processing even in his final film)
It wasn’t lost but something went wrong with the film development on about half of it. I believe that’s why it has two such distinct film styles (which also happens to work quite well for the film).
It's also way better than the book it was based on IMO (Roadside Picnic).