You’ll have to let me know what he says, in particular about Stalker.
Here’s the preview of his talk from their YouTube channel.
His family were big movie buffs and his grandfather would tale them to foreign films often. Rian grew up loving Star Wars (of course), Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Scorsese films and such. He started out shooting parody films on Super-8 format in junior high and his interest in filmmaking progressed until he got to the point of considering directing film a serious career applied to various film school once he was old enough, but he was rejected repeatedly. Though, he managed to get in to USC during the midterm with his last application which was written as an “obnoxious screw you” diss but ended up getting accept because of it, lol.
About Stalker, he says that he had only seen the film within the past year (of the interview) and he’d seen The Sacrifice, Ivan’s Childhood and Solaris beforehand which prepared him for Stalker. He calls the film mesmerizing, says that people should go into the film thinking of it as a mountain to be climbed and that although the film uses “boredom” as a tool in it’s storytelling that it is ultimately rewarding. He also said that he would not want to go into the Room lest he actually discovers his true heart’s desires. Which yeah, can’t blame him.
And yes, I finally got around to watching Stalker myself. I feel less inclined to speak on how I feel about Stalker than even Solaris, but if I could say anything, wowwie! I indeed love the film. It’s obvious from this film and Solaris the Tarkovsky will let his films take as much time as he needs to build their atmosphere and tone and it works incredibly well. If Stalker were a Hollywood production it’d be cut an hour shorter at minimum and the film would utterly suffer for it, the effect he was going for totally demolished. This will be another blu-ray I’ll be picking up whenever the next Criterion sale occurs, for sure.