stalker (1979)
As the rumbling force of a freight train, or perhaps just the future in its relentless drive onward, begins to make its presence known in the small home of all the would-be small inhabitants of the world, their relative tranquility is disturbed, their sleep disrupted and their mind’s nocturnal journey in dreaming is snuffed by their waking eyes. We feel it in the displacement of the objects that seemed stationary if not for being acted on by the force, the glass of water that might sit unchanged for eons on its own begins to rattle and quake, the chair quakes beneath it and suddenly we see it sliding inward toward the center of the chair. Tarkovsky finds small moments in Stalker and elaborates them to their true spiritual and cosmic significance. The smallest act in our eyes can be as a super nova in the great chain of happenings that make up existence, but only if the eyes that witness it are tuned toward the divine. With Stalker, each of our characters in this sparse play provide a differing viewpoint for how to interpret the existence we live, the occurrences we witness and the life of the world around us. We’re offered the three men in the group that will traverse The Zone; The Stalker, The Writer and The Professor. Our lead, The Stalker, who ushers the other two and we the audience through the world of The Zone is concerned primarily with what this mysterious place is, as is our Writer character, though he is decidedly of the alternative viewpoint on its significance. The Professor, caring little about what the The Zone is, cares only for what it means; what its existence will mean for the world and the people in it. Our Stalker explains the rules of the alternate dimension we enter and, as with the parameters of all fiction, we take it at face value, but not for long. Minute by mundane minute we begin to question, we begin to doubt, we begin to lose our faith and our belief is shaken. There seems to be nothing magical or special in this place. As the film stretches out before us, we begin to wonder if the Writer speaks the truth; perhaps life is a dull nothing, no telepathy, no ghosts and no flying saucers.
Stalker builds, like a time bomb, to its final conclusions. Our characters enter with desire, The Stalker to escape the mundane world and enter, once again, his place of hope, where life has meaning, his place of purpose. For The Stalker, it is The Zone, a place he knew nothing of until his mentor showed him the light. It was with this light that he was saved; saved from the terrors of a mundane existence, living in the fog of confusion, never knowing the truth. In short, he would have been like his guests. The Writer, a nihilist, unable to believe, unable to see anything but the liquor in his bottle, the words (his own words) on his page, the thoughts in his own mind. This man is limited in his ability to see, and selfish is the lens through which he sees at all. The Professor, who is also searching, he is a skeptic who has the capacity to believe anything that is proven to him beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once proven, The Professor wonders what the practical application of his findings are, of course. The Stalker, having never known anything of The Zone by his own volition or findings, merely believing in what he was taught by his mentor, finds reverence for all he sees while inside this alternate reality. The entire place takes on an intense purpose in his mind; The Zone has wants, needs and desires that it would also like to fulfill. The Zone sees all and the it knows all; it knows our inner self even better than we do; it sees our deepest subconscious desires, the things we should be careful to wish for, and it gives them to us. What sets Tarkovsky’s Zone apart from other cautionary tales of our desires is this; The Zone does not give us our wishes, it gives us the things we wish we did not desire, it finds the deepest and darkest of our wants and shows them to us in all of their horror (or so we are told by The Stalker). We are also told by The Stalker that our group is avoiding certain doom at every turn, being spared by The Zone and narrowly escaping disaster. By the time our troupe finds their way to The Room, our Writer can no longer stomach the dogma. Their time in The Zone has neither been harrowing nor dangerous, it has been dull and pointless; their journey has brought them to the place they desired and yet our Writer has his mind no longer on his desires, but on the farce of their trek and on The Stalker most of all. The Writer desires that the Stalker would blaspheme by entering the room, angry by the very persistence of The Stalker’s beliefs in the face of the seemingly obvious; The Zone is ridiculous, pointless, and above all, most likely bullshit. The Professor, on the other hand, clearly realizes that if he crosses the threshold, he will learn one way or another, he will find certainty. If he is successful and The Room’s power is real, there will be nothing to stop the masses of Earth from pouring into it to gain ultimate power, it will be chaos. However, if it is not true, then he will seem a gullible fool to the colleagues he returns to. The Professor deems the only logical solution to destroy The Room altogether so as to never know the answer.
By Tarkovsky’s conclusion, our Stalker is in dejected disgust with the world around him, how these passionless men defile the sacred ground he has taken them to walk on, how their lack of belief spits in the face of his entire existence. The Zone, in the mind of The Stalker, is impassable, unknowable; just when we think we have grasped it, it changes right before our eyes. Just as all who devote their lives to something, it is barely understood by the master, merely grasped at for eternity, unattainable and requiring the deep study and sacrifice that the master has given to it. How jealous they are that the novice seems to traverse it just as well; that there seems to be no difference in their outcomes. Take your choice of the metaphors here, for Tarkovsky can see this as the relationship between the person and their God, between the artist and their craft, between lovers and friends, between life and the living. The Stalker’s wife provides our closure, the beacon of light that guides many of us through existence, to cherish the happiness and the suffering, to know one in order to know the other, to live with intensity in both areas to further illustrate the good times and bad. The Stalker has practically become an addict for the way that The Zone makes him feel, the sense of purpose it provides (and in some ways it may even emit some form of radiation that his body is in withdrawal from). Above all, we hear rumors throughout the film that his daughter is damaged from birth as a result of The Zone’s toxic influence. In Tarkovsky’s final statement in the film we are left to wonder, is she damaged, or has The Zone granted her a gift for telekinesis? Or is it just another train passing by, rattling the glasses? Is there some magic in this world we can believe in? Or is it really ‘unutterably boring’ as our Writer suggests? Is our conscious mind and all of its logical hopes, dreams and desires really our selves? Or is it the subconscious with all of its irrational needs and selfish aims? Tarkovsky has devised the perfect canvas for these questions and then some, a hypnotic cinematic and spiritual journey that signifies nothing, or perhaps, signifies everything.
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