Visuals and Sound : Bringing it all together...

In the opening shots of Stalker, during the credits, you find yourself just inside the entrance of a very bleak-looking bar. These dark sepia tones will become familiar to you, as they are used in many scenes throughout the film. Also, right from the beginning you never really know where you are. Get used to it. If the main characters are inside a building or house, rest assured that you will never see the outside of it or how they entered or left it. All the windows and glass doors in this movie are dirty or grimy and allow very little to be seen through them. We know Stalker leaves his house in the beginning and meets up with Writer. You just never see him coming out the door. We know Stalker and Writer walk to the bar, but we only see them from inside as they walk in through the door. Despite this, however, this film is extremely linear! How is this possible, you ask? I've got one word for you: sound. Every scene in this movie is either linked with the one before it or the one after it with sound. As Stalker walks through the train yard, we still hear his wife's agonized cries. Stalker hears Writer talking with his female friend before we see them. Writer can hear Stalker's footsteps before we see him actually come into frame. And on and on. Every time I watch this film, I notice something I have not seen before, or I will decide to interpret a scene differently than I did in previous viewings. This film is so rich metaphorically, not to mention religiously and philosophically, that each viewing can feel like seeing it for the first time.