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#569 - Roadside Picnic (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-28 01:17:58
Imported:
2026-06
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Downloads

  • #569 - Roadside Picnic.mp3
  • 569_-_Roadside_Picnic - audiogram.mp4
  • 569_-_Roadside_Picnic - audiogram.mp4

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Content

Is Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER (1979) about the Soviet Russia in which it was made? And if not, then where exactly is "The Zone"? We wade into one of the most forbidding cinematic objects of all time, but realize that the answer is only ever found within. PLUS: Justin Trudeau is historically unpopular - so why hasn't he stepped down?

"US Politics Has Reached a Dead End" by Luke Savage - https://novaramedia.com/2024/10/23/us-politics-has-reached-a-dead-end/

"Revealed: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake" by Hugo Lowell - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk

Our episode on Ivan's Childhood - https://www.patreon.com/posts/263-sculpting-in-55465791

Our episode on Solaris - https://www.patreon.com/posts/317-hunters-in-64139407

Files

Previews only

Comments

Austin Serif

Wow, what a treat! In college one of my favorite Russian lit courses was soviet science fiction. Lots of Strugatsky bros and Tarkovsky!

Malaparte_Animal

The boys have made up, folks. You love to see it.

Horseloverfat

Very grateful for this and I humbly suggest Mirror for future consideration

Jonathan Ziemba

Just started listening, but excited to hear what you think. I’d second the Mirror suggestion, however for me it’s Andrei Rublev above all other Tarkovsky.

Nate

You guys would like Annihilation. I feel like it’s a similar concept

NormalCat

i dont live in toronto anymore and i dont listen to the beaches-east york liberal podcast yet... but im going to start tonight!

Kijib

its amazing how this movie predates the Chernobyl disaster and how it was brilliantly adapted into the video game where the devs ran with the irradiated uneasiness of The Zone

Myles Bartoli

Will, and for all people ill in bed, I’m sure I’ve recommended before, but I’ll recommend again; the PC game The Curse of Monkey Island. Gorgeous, lush, easy on the eye, easy on the ears, east on the head, easy on attention, easy humour, point & click game. The easiest, most legible control system ever, can be played with two fingers on a touchpad. Perfect if you have flu, serious cold, Covid, or otherwise. It’s not just a game. It’s not just a precursor to ASMR. It’s genuinely therapeutic.

Boris Michajlovic

Green grass, rusty metal, and water, water everywhere.. Another great one, cheers.

Matthew

The only thing that can feasibly explains the baffling Zaslav era WB is tax write offs, I guess

Michael and Us
>>153580632

One of my faves growing up and have played it many times, including during a bout of illness in the past few years. An absolute classic. - Luke

Neoinean21

Just fyi - the link to Luke's article is wrong (and it's a great article!)

Gabriel Flynn

Great episode guys! Really glad you went long for this one. I highly recommend Geoff Dyer’s book Zona, which takes the form of a shot by shot commentary on Stalker with digressions in the footnotes.

Ciaran Colley

Wonderful film pick (and available on YouTube, along with most other Tarkovsky works). Quite the companion piece to Bring It On: All Or Nothing

Arid

Just recently saw this movie and absolutely love the commentary. It's a beautiful film just to sit and enjoy the cinematography It is fun that it's stated fairly plainly that the room WILL fulfill your desires, like porcupine getting rich, but the writer is too disaffected and the scientist is too anxious or petty to actually use this amazing power to wish for something good. I think the stalker says something to this effect? Especially in response to the scientist's attempt to destroy it. That it's sad that neither of these characters can have some pure true desire for good that the room can grant.

Arid
>>153572291

The game is a pretty direct adaptation of Roadside Picnic the novel. It's essentially the same general setup with the addition of people actually living in the Zone, and its actual location. But the games definitely took some aesthetics and the concept of the wish granter from the movie

Devon Hansen

One of your best episodes guys, really enjoyed this. It’s kind of interesting to think about the Room as a stand-in for belief and faith in general. I think one of the things about faith that creates so much friction in the secular materialist environment of late modernity is that it reflects our flaws and anxieties and vulnerabilities back to us. Once you invest belief into the ineffable or the immaterial in some way you’re immediately confronted with the fear of being wrong and being made to feel weak and stupid and deluded. A totally disenchanted culture is a great place to be when we don’t want to be reminded of how spiritually needy and delicate we inevitably are. The stakes are compounded in the context of modernity because, like Porcupine being given wealth instead of the resurrection of his brother, the things that belief in the ineffable reflect back to us become increasingly ugly as modernity transforms our inner character and desires.

Jeremy Hawkins

Just want quickly point out that just as he poslished Come and See into Civil War, Alex Garland made Stalker into Annihilation

Oliver Crane
>>153606078

I second that recommendation, and will say it’s much more fun than that description suggests.

Ashley Naftule
>>153614866

That’s why I think the Professor really wants to blow up The Room—it’s not so much the fear of it falling into the wrong hands, it’s the fact that “the miracle” exists at all. A magic wishing room makes a mockery of his rationalistic model of the universe and thus must be destroyed.

Ashley Naftule

Though tonally and subject matter wise they are VERY different films I’ve always thought of Godard’s Alphaville in relation to Stalker. Their commonality is that both films convey a sense of otherworldliness/futurism without any effects or set dressing. They make the “real world” look just a little off and it conveys that heightened reality without the need of any additional genre trappings. The Zone feels like an alien place but it’s just a field with some burnt out jeeps in it. And yet Tarkovsky frames it all in a way where you can believe it’s a dangerous place covered in invisible traps.

Oliver Crane

The last time I watched this was at a theater that ended up being inside Seattle’s Autonomous Zone. Tbh I did start to flag during the philosophical dialogues in the middle, the moment that hits me the hardest is just the stalker throwing himself to the ground when they first arrive, looking so desperately relieved.

giant gorilla

I liked that little clip you played of Clint singing. I think he's doing a Chet Baker voice

Ekaterina Sedia

I think that there’s a larger point to be made re: how utopias are often perceived as dystopias (true of both Stalker and Roadside Picnic).

Ekaterina Sedia
>>153566008

The author of Annihilation repeatedly said there was no influence and I think the trilogy is very different in everything except the notion of an unexplainable area. The fourth book of the trilogy just dropped too… haven’t read it yet and definitely recommend those books, just think they’re worth approaching on their own terms

MOC

I couldn't stop myself thinking where is the belief that the room is real coming from? But then how the telekinesis scene at the end seems to cement that it is real and we should therefore walk away from a viewing thinking about it all within that parameter. Or something. Oh, and the sleep break halfway through where they're resting on little knolls above the water. I'm not sure what to make of it but it's staying with me.

Pete Lawson

Unrelated to this ep (which was great and finally got me to watch and savour Stalker) but just wanted to say that today this Australian had their mind blown, while watching some SCTV clips, to learn that the Great White North song isn't one obscure but catchy Tourism Canada jingle you unearthed but a hit Geddy Lee/ Rick Moranis/ Dave Thomas collab. Just one of those nice moments of dot connection that happens when you're taking in the work of a culture you didn't grow up in. Love the show!

Tyler Sutherland

instinctively standing up and saluting at the beginning of this episode like the party apparatchiks in Rocky 4

Elliot Smith

In Canada, Mayor Pete's last name is BUTT igieg. haha that had me going Luke - good stuff!