It’s possible that one of renowned filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s final films took his life, as well as the lives of his wife and the films main star.
The Strugatskiy brothers’ science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, which they themselves developed into the script, served as the basis for Stalker. Although Stalker falls under the same genre umbrella as the novel, it is a philosophical and psychological drama.
The movie, which is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, follows the eponymous Stalker as he leads travellers through an area that has been made uninhabitable. Tarkovsky’s first film was published in 1979, and he passed away in 1986.
After an earthquake rendered the original site in Tajikistan unusable for filming, Tarkovsky decided to shoot the picture in an area of Estonia that had been left unoccupied.
The movie is still considered a masterpiece even decades later, with one recent viewer writing: “I want to say somethings about the most poetic, philosophical and intuitive director, Tarkovsky and his movies ,especially Stalker.
“First of all, we must all know that, Tarkovsky is not for all. his poetic understanding of life and human and putting this understanding to his movies is unique in the world for my opinion. one of the most poetic and philosophical movies of him, Stalker is that kind of movie. it is like a poem written with objects. we must feel before we try to understand.”
Vladimir Sharun, a sound engineer working on the film, has subsequently expressed his belief that the alleged poisonous workplace Tarkovsky, his wife Larissa, and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn worked in contributed to their deaths.
Back 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.”
While filming the movie, the extreme conditions may have contributed to the fatalities, although this has never been proved. Sharun, though, grew to believe that there is a link.
After finding out about the tragic backstory to the film, one social media user wrote: “You think before they do a movie they would go ahead and investigate the waters or anything around it before they shoot the picture the way they can cut and splice things nowadays it can always cut and splice and make it look like they were at the river when they weren’t so sad such a tragic death.”
While another said: “What a shame to lose your life for a movie. Like the cast and crew of “the Conquerer” of whom so many died of cancer because the were filming downwind from the US nuclear test site.”
