It is the start of my Summer of Art House. I am going to take my time combing the depths of The Criterion Channel's archives to catch up on all of the classic and esoteric cinema that I've been lacking.
We begin with a trip to Soviet Russia, with Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi fable, Stalker. I've never seen a Tarkovsky film, but understand that all of my favorite filmmakers have, and revere his work. So here we go.
I. What Is It?
This is the story a Stalker, a man who leads the worthy to The Zone, a forbidden place at whose center is a Room that grants the pilgrim's deepest held desire, and the two men that he shepherds to its core. The film is a meditation on faith, art, and truth. And what a world without those things is.II. Have a Little Faith
This movie is Russian as fuck.
The three main characters, The Stalker, The Writer and The Professor, are each emblematic figures prone to long pontifications on the nature of faith, art and truth. The Stalker is our man of faith: he lives to serve others by playing by the Zone's rules and regulations. He is trapped in his circumstance, refusing to enter the Room himself and thusly living a life unfulfilled, but finding joy in shepherding others to its door. He finds his meaning in this sacred duty.
The Writer and The Professor are the Intelligentsia. The Writer muses on what art means, and the value of critics, and the reasons why someone who hates writing so much would make it their life's work. He also delivers a poignant dissertation on the nature of desire, and how people trick themselves into believing that they want one thing, while truly desiring selfish gains. Ultimately, The Writer cures his own artistic funk and resigns himself to the life he's made for himself. It is hard not to feel a certain amount of judgement from Tarkovsky, here: The Writer is a deeply unsatisfied man who is given an opportunity to bask in the divine, but limits himself by his own inability to have faith. While the character seems pleased to come to this apotheosis, I believe we, the viewer, are meant to pity such a faithless man.
The Professor is out for truth. He wants to define the Zone, and open it to everyone. Or destroy it, and make sure that NO ONE can access it. He says that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. And he finds his peace, in the end, but it is no noble prize. He assembles a bomb to explode the Room, but decides not to enter the room, dismantle the bomb, and shy away from whatever truth the Room would show him. He cannot enter the room because he does not want to know the truth he thinks he desires. I feel like this, too, is a judgement on Tarkovsky's part. A man without faith is left with facts. But what does one do when one does not like the facts one is left with? A man of faith can at least cling to his belief. A man who finds a terrible truth is fucked. What does The Professor decide to do? He declines to have the truth revealed to him. It is meant to be a selfish and hollow decision. A pitiable one.
And while The Stalker is trapped in this life of endlessly providing the way for others, he is satisfied by his faith and rewarded with a life of struggle. But it is also a life with meaning. It is a life he chooses knowingly. I believe that Tarkovsky sides with the man of faith, while never shying away from the cost of such a life.
To compound the metaphor, scenes set outside the Zone are awash in yellowed sepia, while scenes inside the Zone are in rich green and blue-hued color. For all of the ruins of mankind scattered in the area, the Zone is treated like some kind of sylvan wonderland. The world of man is colorless and drab. The world of faith, the Zone, is vibrant and full of life, even while it is devoid of human life. Tarkovsky gets some beautiful mileage out of dwarfing the three men in open fields of wildlife. Men and their worries are nothing in this place. Their weapons of destruction, tanks and guns, are left to rust and become entwined with greenery.
And then there's the final shot of the film, with its almost imperceptible use of Beethoven's Ode to Joy playing over the image of the despondent mutant daughter of the Stalker. The girl lays her head down on the table, and quietly uses tele-fucking-kinesis to move three bottles on the table. The movie makes a point to tell us that the Stalker's daughter, indeed the children of all Stalkers, has been irrevocably affected by her father's frequent forays into the Zone. She's lost the use of his legs, and seems unnaturally quiet and sad. But here she is, at the end of the film, gifted with an incredible power. Gifted by her father's faith. Notice by no one. And maybe that's true of the gifts of devotion: they so often go by unnoticed, or condemned as curses.
This movie is not immediately likable. It is not easy. It demands reflection, and, in my case, the reference of a few think pieces and YouTube scholars. But once you begin to engage with it, the themes are heady and thought-provoking. It is a kind of experience that will force you at reckon with your own understanding of creativity, truth, and belief.
- The film will make you think and engage with it, which will yield a more experiential feel after a viewing; if you love digging in, there is plenty of depth to mine, hereThe three main characters, The Stalker, The Writer and The Professor, are each emblematic figures prone to long pontifications on the nature of faith, art and truth. The Stalker is our man of faith: he lives to serve others by playing by the Zone's rules and regulations. He is trapped in his circumstance, refusing to enter the Room himself and thusly living a life unfulfilled, but finding joy in shepherding others to its door. He finds his meaning in this sacred duty.
The Writer and The Professor are the Intelligentsia. The Writer muses on what art means, and the value of critics, and the reasons why someone who hates writing so much would make it their life's work. He also delivers a poignant dissertation on the nature of desire, and how people trick themselves into believing that they want one thing, while truly desiring selfish gains. Ultimately, The Writer cures his own artistic funk and resigns himself to the life he's made for himself. It is hard not to feel a certain amount of judgement from Tarkovsky, here: The Writer is a deeply unsatisfied man who is given an opportunity to bask in the divine, but limits himself by his own inability to have faith. While the character seems pleased to come to this apotheosis, I believe we, the viewer, are meant to pity such a faithless man.
The Professor is out for truth. He wants to define the Zone, and open it to everyone. Or destroy it, and make sure that NO ONE can access it. He says that he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. And he finds his peace, in the end, but it is no noble prize. He assembles a bomb to explode the Room, but decides not to enter the room, dismantle the bomb, and shy away from whatever truth the Room would show him. He cannot enter the room because he does not want to know the truth he thinks he desires. I feel like this, too, is a judgement on Tarkovsky's part. A man without faith is left with facts. But what does one do when one does not like the facts one is left with? A man of faith can at least cling to his belief. A man who finds a terrible truth is fucked. What does The Professor decide to do? He declines to have the truth revealed to him. It is meant to be a selfish and hollow decision. A pitiable one.
And while The Stalker is trapped in this life of endlessly providing the way for others, he is satisfied by his faith and rewarded with a life of struggle. But it is also a life with meaning. It is a life he chooses knowingly. I believe that Tarkovsky sides with the man of faith, while never shying away from the cost of such a life.
To compound the metaphor, scenes set outside the Zone are awash in yellowed sepia, while scenes inside the Zone are in rich green and blue-hued color. For all of the ruins of mankind scattered in the area, the Zone is treated like some kind of sylvan wonderland. The world of man is colorless and drab. The world of faith, the Zone, is vibrant and full of life, even while it is devoid of human life. Tarkovsky gets some beautiful mileage out of dwarfing the three men in open fields of wildlife. Men and their worries are nothing in this place. Their weapons of destruction, tanks and guns, are left to rust and become entwined with greenery.
And then there's the final shot of the film, with its almost imperceptible use of Beethoven's Ode to Joy playing over the image of the despondent mutant daughter of the Stalker. The girl lays her head down on the table, and quietly uses tele-fucking-kinesis to move three bottles on the table. The movie makes a point to tell us that the Stalker's daughter, indeed the children of all Stalkers, has been irrevocably affected by her father's frequent forays into the Zone. She's lost the use of his legs, and seems unnaturally quiet and sad. But here she is, at the end of the film, gifted with an incredible power. Gifted by her father's faith. Notice by no one. And maybe that's true of the gifts of devotion: they so often go by unnoticed, or condemned as curses.
This movie is not immediately likable. It is not easy. It demands reflection, and, in my case, the reference of a few think pieces and YouTube scholars. But once you begin to engage with it, the themes are heady and thought-provoking. It is a kind of experience that will force you at reckon with your own understanding of creativity, truth, and belief.
III. A Dream
Through clever perspective shifts, long shots that linger almost uncomfortably long, and a deteriorated sense of time and space, Tarkovsky establishes the Zone as a dreamlike landscape. It is at once incredibly mundane, and also the stuff of dreams. The Zone is essentially an overgrown field, and the room is nestled in an abandoned building. But Tarkovsky doesn't allow the trio to approach directly: they must zig-zag and double back and loop around to get to it. And by the time they get to the Room, we never actually see inside. The camera sits inside the Room and stares out, capturing the final moments of our three protagonists, but we never venture past the threshold. I like this because it leave much of the experience in our own minds. We are dependent upon the actors reactions to what they are seeing and experiencing, which allows us to enter our own dreams and decide what is there. If Tarkovsky had shown us the Room, it might all have been anticlimactic. As it stands, because the three never enter it, and the audience is thus never shown what resides there, we can never be sure whether the Zone is really magical or a bunch of bullshit. We know they went there. But the Zone did not affect them physically: the Zone affected their belief and their ideas and their identities. The three men return much the same as they left, physically. But they seem altered by the Zone in other ways. Deeper ways. Despite the presence of an antagonist, or a monster, or blood, or gore, there is a permeating sense of danger the entire time they are there. There is a sense that these men will never be the same.
That flies in the face of our expectations, and I love it. Hollywood blockbusters demand a foe, and a face off, and a noble struggle, perhaps a heroic sacrifice. Tarkovsky doesn't give us those things. He lets the Zone, and its effects, be almost entirely psychological. Which makes it even more scary.
That flies in the face of our expectations, and I love it. Hollywood blockbusters demand a foe, and a face off, and a noble struggle, perhaps a heroic sacrifice. Tarkovsky doesn't give us those things. He lets the Zone, and its effects, be almost entirely psychological. Which makes it even more scary.
IV. Gorgeous Imagery
Tarkovsky is a big deal, and I can understand why after a single film. The man knows how to tell a visual story with bombast and attention to detail. The landscapes are beautiful: he finds beauty in grassy fields dotted with rusted tanks and moss covered brick ruins of man's excess. The shots are well composed and painterly: Tarkovsky's penchant for slow zooms and pulls allows for images to change shape and tenor without losing their construction or balance. The sound design is lush and eerie: footfalls and water drops echo, while birds sing in the background. This is no big-budget blockbuster. It is a piece of art through and through and illustrates the power of the cinematic medium.
This film is wonderful just to look at. Come for the visual feast, and stay for the metaphorical dilemmas.
This film is wonderful just to look at. Come for the visual feast, and stay for the metaphorical dilemmas.
V. It's a Whopper
Tarkovsky has allowed his movie to breath in epic scale. The ideas are heady, and difficult, and the runtime swells at 162 minutes. While I have praised the film for being thought-provoking, I can't help but feel that this movie is not meant for everyone. There is a version of this film that is probably thirty to forty minutes shorter, but one would lose Tarkovsky's jaw-dropping visuals and smartly worded monologues.
This ain't everyone's cup of tea, and it certainly isn't a movie one should just turn on, willy-nilly. You kind of have to be ready for it.
This ain't everyone's cup of tea, and it certainly isn't a movie one should just turn on, willy-nilly. You kind of have to be ready for it.
Why You Should See It
- The visuals are absolutely beautiful, and any fan of well-constructed images will find plenty to love
- All of your favorite filmmakers know and love Tarkovsky's work: his fingerprints are all over modern cinema, even if you don't know it
Why You Shouldn't See It
- It is so LOOOOOONG
Miscellany
- The sound designer, Vladimir Sharun, believes that Tarkovsky and his wife, Laris, and actor Anatoli Solonitsyn, who all died of the same form of lung cancer, died due to poisoning from the chemical plant that the film used as its central location.- A year's worth of work went into shooting the film. But because the film was shot on stock unfamiliar to Soviet labs, that stock was destroyed in the lab. Tarkovsky had to reshoot the entire thing with a new cinematographer, making even more drastic changes to the original cut and the source material.
- Tarkovsky used his father's poetry as inspiration for much of the film.
- Tarkovsky was obsessed with visuals, and crafted his films to present impeccable images; he said, later,"those who are looking for meaning while viewing will miss everything. My ideal viewer watches a movie like a traveler observes the country he is visiting."
- The film's average shot length is over a minute, with some shots lasting as long as four minutes.
- Upon initial release, the film was criticized for being too slow, especially by the Soviet State Committee for Cinematography. Tarkovsky responded by saying, "The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts."
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