Post by The Ferret on Mar 21, 2005 4:05:27 GMT -5
On the Threshold
Last year I watched Bergman’s Winter Light after seeing Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Bresson’s Mouchette. And Bergman’s film, so marvellous, so towering, seemed somehow fake. The acting was theatrical, which is to say, and I wish I could make myself clearer, somehow aware of itself . This is hard for me to write because I admire Bergman's films very deeply. But I write because of my shock of finding the performances of the great Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow hollow after watching Tarkovsky. They were only actors, whereas Alexander Kaidanovsky in the role of the Stalker is much more. The whole film revolves around his shaven head, his strange mixture of nobility and self-pity, of weakness and authority, of poverty and resplendence.
If Nostalghia looks towards the apocalypse, and the Sacrifice dramatises what happens at its brink Stalker is a film which occurs after the apocalypse has happened.
Somehow, the Zone has appeared. A place one has to cross a national border to enter. What is it? We know it is terrifying and wonderful. Stalkers, semi-criminals, earn a precarious living by leading people into the Zone. There are rumours that there is a miraculous golden ball which can grant wishes hidden in the Zone. We know Kaidanovsky’s character only by his nickname. We begin in his shabby house, where he sleeps with his wife and his paralysed child in a single bed (his wife blames the child’s paralysis on the Zone), and which shudders with the sound of the trains that pass nearby. The Stalker is going to take two people known, in order to protect their identities, by the nicknames Writer and Professor, into the Zone. His wife despairs. But he must go, and he goes. He leads the others into the Zone. He takes them to the threshold of the room with the golden ball. Then what? It is mysterious. We don’t know the outcome.
Tarkovsky, in Sculpting in Time:
People have often asked me what the Zone is, and what is symbolises, and have put forward wild conjectures on the subject. I’m reduced to a state of fury and despair by these questions. The Zone doesn’t symbolise anything, any more than anything else does in my films: the zone is a zone, its life, and as he makes his way across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his capacity to distinguish between what matters and what is merely passing. (200)
Self-respect? Are we to understand the Zone as this world, our world, through which most of us learn to find our way, however hard it is for some, and however easy it is for others? Tarkovsky seems to suggest that we need to be led, to follow someone. And I wonder, when he writes, continuing his reflections in the paragraph I quoted, ‘My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him' (200) – I wonder whether he understands his films as a way of guiding us through life. More: are they a way of giving us life?
Stalker finds his way through the meadows by hurling bandages full of nuts into the distance to test for danger. Stalker and his party pass abandoned and decaying technology, broken military equipment. They proceed through a deserted house, through a tunnel, through a room full of sand dunes. A bird seems to disappear into thing air. An Alsation dog joins them, then disappears.
STALKER (picking his words carefully and slowly): The Zone is a highly complex system … of traps, as it were, and all of them are deadly … But people have only to appear for the whole thing to be triggered into motion. Our moods, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings can bring about change here. And we are in no condition to comprehend them. Old traps vanish, new ones take their place; the old safe places become impassable, and the route can be either plain or easy, or impossibly confusing. That’s how the Zone is. It may even seem capricious. But in fact, at any moment it is exactly as we devise it, in our consciousness …
At one point, Stalker remembers his teacher, the greatest Stalker, one of the first, whom he calls Master. The Master returned from the Zone one day to find himself amazingly rich. But his brother had died in the Zone. The Master had led him to his death. The suggestion is that he found the golden ball and had had his wish granted - a murdered brother, riches. The Master hung himself; thereafter, he was known as Porcupine (why that name?). But the Stalker will not fail. Above all, he has learnt from the episode with Porcupine that he can never give what he gives to himself:
STALKER (frenzied): […] Stalker’s aren’t allowed in the room! They aren’t allowed! […] I am a worm, I never did anything there, now will I ever be able to … I could never provide for my wide and daughter! … And I’ve got no friends there, not can I have. But don’t take away what little I’ve got! Everything I had, there, beyond the barbed wire, that’s all been taken away! Everything I have is here, understand, here in the Zone! My freedom, my happiness … it’s all here … Since I bring people here as unhappy as me, as tormented … it’s their last hope! But I can help them! I can help them! I weep with happiness at being able to help them! Nothing in this whole wide world can help, except for me, a worm! That’s my whole life. It’s all I want. And when the time comes for me to die, I will drag myself to this spot, to this room, and my last thought will be: happiness for all! And let nobody go away empty-handed.
SCROLL DOWN (The Ferret: Note)
Last year I watched Bergman’s Winter Light after seeing Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Bresson’s Mouchette. And Bergman’s film, so marvellous, so towering, seemed somehow fake. The acting was theatrical, which is to say, and I wish I could make myself clearer, somehow aware of itself . This is hard for me to write because I admire Bergman's films very deeply. But I write because of my shock of finding the performances of the great Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow hollow after watching Tarkovsky. They were only actors, whereas Alexander Kaidanovsky in the role of the Stalker is much more. The whole film revolves around his shaven head, his strange mixture of nobility and self-pity, of weakness and authority, of poverty and resplendence.
If Nostalghia looks towards the apocalypse, and the Sacrifice dramatises what happens at its brink Stalker is a film which occurs after the apocalypse has happened.
Somehow, the Zone has appeared. A place one has to cross a national border to enter. What is it? We know it is terrifying and wonderful. Stalkers, semi-criminals, earn a precarious living by leading people into the Zone. There are rumours that there is a miraculous golden ball which can grant wishes hidden in the Zone. We know Kaidanovsky’s character only by his nickname. We begin in his shabby house, where he sleeps with his wife and his paralysed child in a single bed (his wife blames the child’s paralysis on the Zone), and which shudders with the sound of the trains that pass nearby. The Stalker is going to take two people known, in order to protect their identities, by the nicknames Writer and Professor, into the Zone. His wife despairs. But he must go, and he goes. He leads the others into the Zone. He takes them to the threshold of the room with the golden ball. Then what? It is mysterious. We don’t know the outcome.
Tarkovsky, in Sculpting in Time:
People have often asked me what the Zone is, and what is symbolises, and have put forward wild conjectures on the subject. I’m reduced to a state of fury and despair by these questions. The Zone doesn’t symbolise anything, any more than anything else does in my films: the zone is a zone, its life, and as he makes his way across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his capacity to distinguish between what matters and what is merely passing. (200)
Self-respect? Are we to understand the Zone as this world, our world, through which most of us learn to find our way, however hard it is for some, and however easy it is for others? Tarkovsky seems to suggest that we need to be led, to follow someone. And I wonder, when he writes, continuing his reflections in the paragraph I quoted, ‘My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him' (200) – I wonder whether he understands his films as a way of guiding us through life. More: are they a way of giving us life?
Stalker finds his way through the meadows by hurling bandages full of nuts into the distance to test for danger. Stalker and his party pass abandoned and decaying technology, broken military equipment. They proceed through a deserted house, through a tunnel, through a room full of sand dunes. A bird seems to disappear into thing air. An Alsation dog joins them, then disappears.
STALKER (picking his words carefully and slowly): The Zone is a highly complex system … of traps, as it were, and all of them are deadly … But people have only to appear for the whole thing to be triggered into motion. Our moods, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings can bring about change here. And we are in no condition to comprehend them. Old traps vanish, new ones take their place; the old safe places become impassable, and the route can be either plain or easy, or impossibly confusing. That’s how the Zone is. It may even seem capricious. But in fact, at any moment it is exactly as we devise it, in our consciousness …
At one point, Stalker remembers his teacher, the greatest Stalker, one of the first, whom he calls Master. The Master returned from the Zone one day to find himself amazingly rich. But his brother had died in the Zone. The Master had led him to his death. The suggestion is that he found the golden ball and had had his wish granted - a murdered brother, riches. The Master hung himself; thereafter, he was known as Porcupine (why that name?). But the Stalker will not fail. Above all, he has learnt from the episode with Porcupine that he can never give what he gives to himself:
STALKER (frenzied): […] Stalker’s aren’t allowed in the room! They aren’t allowed! […] I am a worm, I never did anything there, now will I ever be able to … I could never provide for my wide and daughter! … And I’ve got no friends there, not can I have. But don’t take away what little I’ve got! Everything I had, there, beyond the barbed wire, that’s all been taken away! Everything I have is here, understand, here in the Zone! My freedom, my happiness … it’s all here … Since I bring people here as unhappy as me, as tormented … it’s their last hope! But I can help them! I can help them! I weep with happiness at being able to help them! Nothing in this whole wide world can help, except for me, a worm! That’s my whole life. It’s all I want. And when the time comes for me to die, I will drag myself to this spot, to this room, and my last thought will be: happiness for all! And let nobody go away empty-handed.
SCROLL DOWN (The Ferret: Note)