Brennan Keller

2/13/08
A37526021
Discussion section #
Tarkovsky’s Stalker

Since the beginning his existence man has wondered the meaning of life? Why are

we here? What are we here for? What defines us as humans? Andrei Tarkovsky addresses

these issues his celebrated film; Stalker. Tarkovsky, like the stalker in the film, guides the

viewers this film through the zone, but it's the travelers themselves who must cross over

the threshold of intense self-examination into revelation. Through the quest of the

Stalker, Tarkovsky expresses that man is a spiritual being. Tarkovsky expresses that faith

is essential for the existence of man.

The plot is fairly simple; a stalker takes two men, a writer and a professor,

through dangerous terrain to the zone, where anything innermost in said person can be

realized. The angry, self-loathing Writer has embarked on this journey in search of

"inspiration"; the Professor is determined to make a "discovery"; and the Stalker, a man

who finds escape from his wife and deformed child in the ‘Zone’, performs his duty out

of a belief that it brings "hope" to his lost, wretched clients. The Stalker is a man haunted

and obsessed by the possibility of belief, although he never explains what it is he believes

in. He is a holy victim in an unbelieving world. The ‘Zone’ is his life, and he trusts no

one (not even his wife), he can only find solace in the ‘Zone’, saying that it is the rest of

the world is like a prison. He has nothing to offer but hope, and he doesn’t really know

what the hope is for, except that only the most wretched and helpless can reach for it. He

is a guide through a landscape of corpses, ruins and vast emptiness. It’s a world that

offers glimpses of a beauty that flourishes beyond human desires and yet can provide a
home for the unspeakable, unattainable longing that reaches beyond the confines of the

self. Tarkovsky uses the Stalker to describe how there can be a world (or a form of a

world) where the ideal of Godlessness is given full form into a world without belief, and

where decay and industrialization are all there is to be seen. The ‘Zone’ provides the idea

of there being order, of hope, yet also the total despair in getting something otherworldly.

Does the ‘Zone’ need human beings as much as human beings need the zone? This is the

question we must ask ourselves. I noticed the film is interspersed with Christian

iconography - the underwater scrolls and fish, the crown of thorns, prayers and Bible

quotations, allusions to Renaissance paintings of love and death. But it seemed to me that

these do not reconstruct religion so much as they mourn its ruins. Rather, Tarkovsky is

expressing the faith that people attempt to explain by inventing God, the spiritual desires

that consume us, and which we can neither explain nor ignore. Tarkovsky does no more

than convey this faith: its meaning and purpose are beyond the purview of the film,

perhaps beyond the realm of our own vision. In reading about the movie I found that

Tarkovsky said ”People have often asked me what The Zone is, and what it

symbolizes…The Zone doesn't symbolize anything, any more than anything else does in

my films: the zone is a zone, it's life." Tarkovsky’s stance is that man is a spiritual being.

In today's theatres, if spirituality is dealt with at all, it is never treated as the foundation of

our existence, but is there as an added bonus, something the characters concern

themselves with in their spare time. In other words, while in other films spirituality may

be part of the plot, but in Stalker spirituality and of mankind is the plot. All of the

characters in Stalker are involved in an intense spiritual struggle. And while the nature of

this struggle is uniquely personal for each of them, the basic objective is the same: to
keep the flame of the human spirit within them alive. The character of the Stalker

struggles to find the right path by using his intuition. I believe most people are used to

following only their worldly desires in creating their path in life (paying little or no

attention to this "intuition"). Because of this the Stalker's behavior produces an initial

reaction of confusion. Instead of rushing through the "Zone" (or life), grabbing and

experience everything in his path, he proceeds with caution, watching for signs to

indicate the next move to him. He is careful not to disturb anything around him,

constantly looking for traps. What is it that he is waiting for? Tarkovsky summed it up

best when he wrote about Stalker, "In the end, everything can be reduced to the one

simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to

love."