Sinister story behind movie with 100% Rotten Tomatoes score which killed its director, his wife, and the leading man
An ‘uncanny’ movie described as having one of the ‘most gripping and visionary moments’ in cinema has a rare 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes - but it's thought to have claimed the lives of three creatives who worked on it.
Andrei Tarkovsky, a lauded Soviet film director and screenwriter, is considered by many to be one of the silver screen’s greats.
The All-Union State Institute of Cinematography alumnus directed seven films before his death in 1986, including his debut, Ivan’s Childhood, 1966’s Andrei Rublev and Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name.
However, it’s his 1979 effort, Stalker, that fans believe cost the artist his life, as well as two people close to him on the set.
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Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Stalker opens with titular character (played by the late Alexander Kaidanovsky) guiding people through a hazardous ‘Zone’ which has been rendered uninhabitable.
The restricted area is supposedly home to a room which grants a person’s innermost desires.
It’s understood that Tarkovsky chose an industry-ravaged section of Estonia to bring the flick to life.
“The opening is one of the most gripping and visionary moments I have ever seen in the cinema,” wrote one Rotten Tomatoes viewer.
A second typed: “No one tops Tarkovsky's ability for immersion, and the metaphysical enigma of Stalker is one of cinema's most impressive achievements.”
“An uncanny cinematic landscape to explore, investigate, and reflect upon, Stalker is an immersive and unwavering search for meaning in terms of what appears onscreen and how audiences have responded since its release in 1979,” said another.
Seven years after the iconic film, loosely based on brother Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic, was released, Tarkovsky died of lung cancer.
Sound recordist Vladimir Sharun has since said he believes that the deaths of the director, his wife Larissa, and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn - who portrayed ‘the Writer’ - were linked to the toxic environment they were working in.
In 2001, he said: “We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream.
"There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison.”
He added: “Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too.
"That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris."
It should be worth noting that the deaths being attributed to the poisoned river are only Sharun's theory.
It's never been confirmed if the deaths were indeed linked to the harsh surroundings while filming the movie.
Stalker has since become viewed as a hugely important piece of Soviet cinema, and is regularly included on lists of the greatest films of all time.
Whether the film contributed to the deaths or not, it raises some interesting questions about how far people are willing to go to create their art.
Stalker, which currently has a 100 percent score on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and an average 4.4 star rating on Letterboxd, is available to rent on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video.
Topics: Film and TV, Health, Cancer, Hollywood, Entertainment
Ella Scott