Post by marchhare on Mar 17, 2006 1:10:02 GMT -5
The following is an essay on Stalker I am submitting for a second year university film theory course. It is meant to be a mixture of personal response and analysis, any feedback and/or corrections (factual, grammatical) would be greatly welcomed.
Here goes....
The word “maverick” is tossed around like a baseball in the annals of film study,
applied to all too many directors outside the mainstream, whether it be for their penchant
for violence, sexuality, etc. But the more obvious the method of division becomes, the
less the term seems to hold merit to those it is applied to. I would, however, be so bold as
to call Andrei Tarkovsky a maverick in a sole class. His films arguably create the greatest
wall between creator and spectator. His vision was sometimes brutally uncompromising,
in terms of sheer length and carelessness towards what is typically construed as tolerable
for the average watcher’s patience. Even when he seems to be entering the realm of
parody, the films and often their individual scenes just will…not…end. Of the 8 features
he directed before his death in 1986, 4 stretch past 2.5 hours, which may not sound like
all that trying until you’ve actually tasted the nature of the delivery. In retrospect they
were never entirely sound for theatrical viewing, restlessness among spectators was
notoriously common.
This is an observation, not a criticism, since it is in my opinion very pedestrian to
censure something as “boring”, since no artist can be expected to anticipate everyone’s
level of endurance. Tarkovsky made no apologies for his films, or for himself, known for
trotting around with a scruffy getup of muddled facial hair, blue jeans and cowboy boots,
a costume more rock star than auteur. He openly declared “the cinema, she is a
sleeper…first she charges a nickel, now she charges 5 dollars”.
In any case, Stalker (1979) is a beautiful, albeit sometimes difficult, masterpiece.
It drifts in quietly and roots itself in the mind. Like a long walk on a grey day, it creates
meditation on the passage of time and the journey of thought rather than action. All of
Tarkovsky’s works are indicative of this, in that through spaces of visual tranquillity we
can find opportunity to reflect. Films are never really spaces through which we can enter
more ourselves than characters created for us, writers grasp instead at the chance to
proliferate and progress their own ideas and only hope we can agree on them. Stalker is
an invitation of our own thoughts, our own memories painted on the often blank page.
However, it is not “empty”, merely open to careful observation and
interpretation. We follow three men, titled by their lives: the Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn),
the Scientist (Nikolai Grinko) and the Stalker (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky). The Stalker is a
paid guide through the Zone, a place outside a ruined unnamed city closed off by barbed
wire and armed soldiers. Inside the Zone is the Room, where it is told the wishes of all
who enter will come true.
The Zone itself is based on a (reportedly) factual disaster. In the late 1940s, in a
cold-war response, the Soviet government hastily built the Mayak nuclear plant in
secrecy, designed to manufacture plutonium for weapons. Conditions were terrible and
safety was virtually unregulated. Sure enough, in 1957, a cooling malfunction caused a
massive explosion, sending vast quantities of radiation into the air. Towns within range
were hit by a “mysterious” sickness that caused deformities and death. Large areas
became uninhabitable, thus the closed off Zone. Where auto travel was permitted, road
signs ordered people to keep their windows rolled up and not stop moving for any reason.
The actual truth about the creation of the Zone was for a long time urban myth, until the
Chernobyl disaster (which happened not long after Stalker was filmed) solidified the
possibility in the minds of the people.
The film is more a theistic metaphor than a political one, however. The trios’
quest is often accurately interpreted as a pilgrimage. All three men seek some kind of
salvation, and visually the journey mirrors a catalogue of religious artworks. The quest
for the room becomes a quest for internal knowledge and peace. As the path through
danger becomes treacherous, the Stalker encourages sacrifice of supplies, as he believes
they will be granted everything they desire upon arrival. Just as the faithful believe
sacrifice in life is significant to achieve prosperity upon entering death. He himself has
left behind a wife and daughter.
He thinks he knows the way through the Zone, or at least the rules of it. It is a
place seemingly with its own conscious thought process. The Stalker believes it will let
them pass because it welcomes the pathetic, the hopeless, just as long as they are careful
enough to decipher its regulations. But what are the regulations? The landscape
constantly changes, once one road is taken it can never be taken back home again. A
traveller must go around, the long way, not through, and think of a new path upon
returning. But his faith turns back on him; it fails him as he discovers new confusions.
Tarkovsky is making a comment on our own philosophical laws. The question is, if we
can trust what we believe, must we still constantly question it? Is it ever just as easy as
taking the hard way there?
The Writer evidently begins to question his desire for enlightenment. In perhaps
the film’s most provoking moment, he queries “let’s say I enter this room and return to
town a genius. A man writes because he’s tormented, he doubts, because he has
something to prove. If I know I am a genius, what’s the point?” I don’t know if I’ve ever
encountered a greater supposition on the nature of suffering. There must, above all, be
room to grow, to develop until we die. If we could enter a room and suddenly be
everything we wanted to be, our lives would be over. We would cease to exist as
thinkers, and have reached an impasse. If we could know for sure if God exists, what
would we have left to wonder? He is saying he wants to be what he is, a being of
confusion and doubt. There is glory in our failures.
The Scientist is not a tragic theocrat, nor is he a tortured artist. His nature is to be
much more benign and sure of his purpose. He retrieves his knapsack above pleas from
the Stalker to abandon it, without questioning himself. The bag is simply a part of him, a
physical object he can connect with as a means of comfort (evidently, whatever instinct
drives him turns out to be correct as he collects it again without incident). The writer
mocks him as a fame-seeker, he derides the mans’ desire to reach the room as a way to
gain respect when they return. This is the paradox of science, how great finds often help
the individual discoverer in ways above the satisfaction of serving others. But the
Scientist continues, without question, to the end point. Maybe a folly, maybe just a being
driven through what is calculable rather than what is emotionally logical.
So each of the three men, with their faults and drives, continue on for reasons that
vary but contain a thread of inevitability. The Stalker, faithful as he is, is doomed to be
assaulted when his rules fail him, when what he believes to be true changes itself and he
must continue without a backup plan. The Writer, an artist, must learn to accept his
suffering as the reason for his evolving creativity. And the Scientist, who follows simple
fundamental instinct as it comes to him, will probably find solace in whatever conclusion
he ends up at.
The final scene forms a conclusive shadow over a densely thoughtful work. After
the protagonist has completed a journey and returned home, the camera peers at his
daughter, alone, sitting at a table. She stares at three glasses, each filled with liquid, in
front of her. Without provocation the table begins to rattle and they move towards the
edge. “Ode to Joy” creeps into the soundtrack, first a quiet stir then turning into a
magnificent crescendo. It is a hammering moment of spirituality, putting a lid on a film
that up to that point had held its themes and notions at a whisper. Tarkovsky the
notorious stickler for subtlety earns his right to be boisterous, and he takes it, with a
vengeance.
Those who criticize Tarkovsky’s films as overlong are right on one level, there
are times when he focuses on stillness for purely superficial reasons, but they must not
ignore the effect he has on his enthusiasts. Even though only Solaris (1972) found much
of an audience, each work that I’ve encountered, which includes Andrei Rublev (1963)
and Nostalgia (1983) has been valuable to me as a film lover and amateur theorist. In
many ways better admired than watched, but greatly admirable nonetheless.
I must confess that there is a grappling within myself to acknowledge the ever-
present detractors of Tarkovsky’s work. To repeat myself, no director has created a
greater wall between creator and spectator. He lived for the idea of a noble artist, one
who was simultaneously intelligent, thoughtful, and unwavering. He was a very spiritual
man, and this bled into every one of his films. This did not sit well with his own
government, and he died in exile. But that is not what he is criticized for. Stalker is not
thematically obtuse, most viewers come away with a strong awareness of its dilemma of
knowledge, but in form it requires utmost, well, to repeat myself again, patience. If art
does not firstly reach to be “entertaining”, some ask what it is good for? Even Kubrick
noted that the worst thing a film can do is bore the audience. Well, everyone goes to the
movies for their own reasons, some just for a 90 minute escape. Some believe that art can
penetrate, that it should last beyond its own viewing span. Whether or not the search for
reflection above entertainment is horribly pretentious is something I believe serious
students should ask, and decide, on their own terms. In reality Tarkovsky never found a
wide audience, never mind one that can be called fiercely divided. Furthermore, all the
films are so rigidly constructed they may repel the idea of even reaching the end. But I
know what I find valuable, and I know if I’ve found it or not. I have found it here, which
will be my final unwavering stance. I think Tarkovsky would be mildly pleased.
Here goes....
The word “maverick” is tossed around like a baseball in the annals of film study,
applied to all too many directors outside the mainstream, whether it be for their penchant
for violence, sexuality, etc. But the more obvious the method of division becomes, the
less the term seems to hold merit to those it is applied to. I would, however, be so bold as
to call Andrei Tarkovsky a maverick in a sole class. His films arguably create the greatest
wall between creator and spectator. His vision was sometimes brutally uncompromising,
in terms of sheer length and carelessness towards what is typically construed as tolerable
for the average watcher’s patience. Even when he seems to be entering the realm of
parody, the films and often their individual scenes just will…not…end. Of the 8 features
he directed before his death in 1986, 4 stretch past 2.5 hours, which may not sound like
all that trying until you’ve actually tasted the nature of the delivery. In retrospect they
were never entirely sound for theatrical viewing, restlessness among spectators was
notoriously common.
This is an observation, not a criticism, since it is in my opinion very pedestrian to
censure something as “boring”, since no artist can be expected to anticipate everyone’s
level of endurance. Tarkovsky made no apologies for his films, or for himself, known for
trotting around with a scruffy getup of muddled facial hair, blue jeans and cowboy boots,
a costume more rock star than auteur. He openly declared “the cinema, she is a
sleeper…first she charges a nickel, now she charges 5 dollars”.
In any case, Stalker (1979) is a beautiful, albeit sometimes difficult, masterpiece.
It drifts in quietly and roots itself in the mind. Like a long walk on a grey day, it creates
meditation on the passage of time and the journey of thought rather than action. All of
Tarkovsky’s works are indicative of this, in that through spaces of visual tranquillity we
can find opportunity to reflect. Films are never really spaces through which we can enter
more ourselves than characters created for us, writers grasp instead at the chance to
proliferate and progress their own ideas and only hope we can agree on them. Stalker is
an invitation of our own thoughts, our own memories painted on the often blank page.
However, it is not “empty”, merely open to careful observation and
interpretation. We follow three men, titled by their lives: the Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn),
the Scientist (Nikolai Grinko) and the Stalker (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky). The Stalker is a
paid guide through the Zone, a place outside a ruined unnamed city closed off by barbed
wire and armed soldiers. Inside the Zone is the Room, where it is told the wishes of all
who enter will come true.
The Zone itself is based on a (reportedly) factual disaster. In the late 1940s, in a
cold-war response, the Soviet government hastily built the Mayak nuclear plant in
secrecy, designed to manufacture plutonium for weapons. Conditions were terrible and
safety was virtually unregulated. Sure enough, in 1957, a cooling malfunction caused a
massive explosion, sending vast quantities of radiation into the air. Towns within range
were hit by a “mysterious” sickness that caused deformities and death. Large areas
became uninhabitable, thus the closed off Zone. Where auto travel was permitted, road
signs ordered people to keep their windows rolled up and not stop moving for any reason.
The actual truth about the creation of the Zone was for a long time urban myth, until the
Chernobyl disaster (which happened not long after Stalker was filmed) solidified the
possibility in the minds of the people.
The film is more a theistic metaphor than a political one, however. The trios’
quest is often accurately interpreted as a pilgrimage. All three men seek some kind of
salvation, and visually the journey mirrors a catalogue of religious artworks. The quest
for the room becomes a quest for internal knowledge and peace. As the path through
danger becomes treacherous, the Stalker encourages sacrifice of supplies, as he believes
they will be granted everything they desire upon arrival. Just as the faithful believe
sacrifice in life is significant to achieve prosperity upon entering death. He himself has
left behind a wife and daughter.
He thinks he knows the way through the Zone, or at least the rules of it. It is a
place seemingly with its own conscious thought process. The Stalker believes it will let
them pass because it welcomes the pathetic, the hopeless, just as long as they are careful
enough to decipher its regulations. But what are the regulations? The landscape
constantly changes, once one road is taken it can never be taken back home again. A
traveller must go around, the long way, not through, and think of a new path upon
returning. But his faith turns back on him; it fails him as he discovers new confusions.
Tarkovsky is making a comment on our own philosophical laws. The question is, if we
can trust what we believe, must we still constantly question it? Is it ever just as easy as
taking the hard way there?
The Writer evidently begins to question his desire for enlightenment. In perhaps
the film’s most provoking moment, he queries “let’s say I enter this room and return to
town a genius. A man writes because he’s tormented, he doubts, because he has
something to prove. If I know I am a genius, what’s the point?” I don’t know if I’ve ever
encountered a greater supposition on the nature of suffering. There must, above all, be
room to grow, to develop until we die. If we could enter a room and suddenly be
everything we wanted to be, our lives would be over. We would cease to exist as
thinkers, and have reached an impasse. If we could know for sure if God exists, what
would we have left to wonder? He is saying he wants to be what he is, a being of
confusion and doubt. There is glory in our failures.
The Scientist is not a tragic theocrat, nor is he a tortured artist. His nature is to be
much more benign and sure of his purpose. He retrieves his knapsack above pleas from
the Stalker to abandon it, without questioning himself. The bag is simply a part of him, a
physical object he can connect with as a means of comfort (evidently, whatever instinct
drives him turns out to be correct as he collects it again without incident). The writer
mocks him as a fame-seeker, he derides the mans’ desire to reach the room as a way to
gain respect when they return. This is the paradox of science, how great finds often help
the individual discoverer in ways above the satisfaction of serving others. But the
Scientist continues, without question, to the end point. Maybe a folly, maybe just a being
driven through what is calculable rather than what is emotionally logical.
So each of the three men, with their faults and drives, continue on for reasons that
vary but contain a thread of inevitability. The Stalker, faithful as he is, is doomed to be
assaulted when his rules fail him, when what he believes to be true changes itself and he
must continue without a backup plan. The Writer, an artist, must learn to accept his
suffering as the reason for his evolving creativity. And the Scientist, who follows simple
fundamental instinct as it comes to him, will probably find solace in whatever conclusion
he ends up at.
The final scene forms a conclusive shadow over a densely thoughtful work. After
the protagonist has completed a journey and returned home, the camera peers at his
daughter, alone, sitting at a table. She stares at three glasses, each filled with liquid, in
front of her. Without provocation the table begins to rattle and they move towards the
edge. “Ode to Joy” creeps into the soundtrack, first a quiet stir then turning into a
magnificent crescendo. It is a hammering moment of spirituality, putting a lid on a film
that up to that point had held its themes and notions at a whisper. Tarkovsky the
notorious stickler for subtlety earns his right to be boisterous, and he takes it, with a
vengeance.
Those who criticize Tarkovsky’s films as overlong are right on one level, there
are times when he focuses on stillness for purely superficial reasons, but they must not
ignore the effect he has on his enthusiasts. Even though only Solaris (1972) found much
of an audience, each work that I’ve encountered, which includes Andrei Rublev (1963)
and Nostalgia (1983) has been valuable to me as a film lover and amateur theorist. In
many ways better admired than watched, but greatly admirable nonetheless.
I must confess that there is a grappling within myself to acknowledge the ever-
present detractors of Tarkovsky’s work. To repeat myself, no director has created a
greater wall between creator and spectator. He lived for the idea of a noble artist, one
who was simultaneously intelligent, thoughtful, and unwavering. He was a very spiritual
man, and this bled into every one of his films. This did not sit well with his own
government, and he died in exile. But that is not what he is criticized for. Stalker is not
thematically obtuse, most viewers come away with a strong awareness of its dilemma of
knowledge, but in form it requires utmost, well, to repeat myself again, patience. If art
does not firstly reach to be “entertaining”, some ask what it is good for? Even Kubrick
noted that the worst thing a film can do is bore the audience. Well, everyone goes to the
movies for their own reasons, some just for a 90 minute escape. Some believe that art can
penetrate, that it should last beyond its own viewing span. Whether or not the search for
reflection above entertainment is horribly pretentious is something I believe serious
students should ask, and decide, on their own terms. In reality Tarkovsky never found a
wide audience, never mind one that can be called fiercely divided. Furthermore, all the
films are so rigidly constructed they may repel the idea of even reaching the end. But I
know what I find valuable, and I know if I’ve found it or not. I have found it here, which
will be my final unwavering stance. I think Tarkovsky would be mildly pleased.
