Stalking Annihilation: practical effects and longevity?

Consider the overlapping narratives in Tarkovsky's classic Stalker (1979) and the recent sci-fi horror, Annihilation (2018). Both are well crafted films that describe a similar environment: a deadly "zone" wherein normal physics are warped, through which the characters traverse and so reveal themselves and the fictional world. What strikes me about Stalker (and Solaris (1981)) as an example of sci-fi, in contrast to Annihilation and other solid films in the genre, is Tarkovsky's reliance upon physical effects and editing in his mise-en-scene, over the animated effects that would have been available to him at the time.

The threat in Stalker is largely implied. It is revealed indirectly by the corpses of dead soldiers strewn about rusting vehicles, died fighting god knows what, and by the thousand-yard-stare recollections of the stalker himself. Annihilation uses a similar mechanism, substituting the experienced stalker with found footage to imply these things, but it also brings bizarre creatures to life through animation. For Tarkovsky, the otherworldliness of the "zone" is revealed by edits, causing his characters to appear to be traveling in circles, or by bizarre happenstance - rain indoors. Annihilation goes to CGI to reveal the same, such as an animated distortion effect across the trees as characters survey the zone.

Annihilation nails the CGI. Its creatures have an illusion of mass, are convincingly lit, and interaction with actors lacks conspicuous seams. Meanwhile, Stalker is 40 years old and it looks as if it could have been filmed last year. It's shocking how modern Tarkovsky's sci-fi is. What's up with that?

I don't think it's a question as to whether or not the effects are good. Rather, it's that the effects are real. Depictions of physical reality always map back to mundane human experience and are in this sense relatable to any living audience, no matter the century. Animated effects in contrast map to a specific technological experience, for example the state of the art in rendering, and that ages in pace with technological change. So future audiences, perpetually removed from obsolete tech, will tend to perceive the animation itself as a conspicuous object, working against immersion and dating the film.

If this is true, it seems the focus of CGI in screen fiction and sci-fi in particular shouldn't be to create the most otherworldly scene through completion and fidelity, faster rendering, better AI, but instead to subtly warp the physical world by supporting a realist discipline of practical effects. Perhaps directors don't need to go as far as Klimov and actually fire live rounds at their actors, but I'm starting to think there's an immortality in this kind of filmmaking.

Submitted May 27, 2019 at 08:50AM by ordinary_necrophage http://bit.ly/2JG0ACi