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| Stalker (Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky) |
Stalker (1979), Tarkovsky's fifth feature film and the final one he shot in the Soviet Union before defecting to the West. Following his voluntary exile, only two more fiction works were planned: Nostalghia, shot in Italy and released in 1983, and The Sacrifice, shot in Sweden (1986). The director died of cancer in 1986, just outside Paris, at the age of fifty-four.
Stalker was his second attempt at science-fiction subject matter, following the space adventure Solaris (1972), though it is nearly indistinguishable from both that earlier film and The Mirror. The film is an adaptation of the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady (1925–91) and Boris (1933–2012) Strugatsky, which Tarkovsky read shortly after it was published in the literary magazine Avrora in 1972. The casual observer may wonder why he was drawn to this particular tale. Unlike high-art sources such as Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, it is firmly rooted in the hard-boiled end of the literary spectrum; it is rife with slang and violence, as well as characterization and sentiment to match. Yet beneath the surface, and more specifically in the psychology of the character who would become the film's eponymous protagonist (in relation to his wife and their mysteriously damaged daughter, Monkey), there is a difficult-to-define tenderness of outlook more in keeping with the director's usual preoccupations: a humanistic belief (if one can put it that strongly) in the sacrament of marriage. Although the book's central vision is dystopian, this may have contributed to its appeal. Certainly, there were numerous reasons to be dystopian about the Soviet Union at the time.
Having said that, the film is a loose adaptation of the novel. The Zone's basic premise—that it was created years ago by an alien incursion and is full of mysterious dangers that have been explored illegally over the years by freelance agents known as stalkers (who occasionally offered themselves as guides to gullible tourists)—is common to both book and film. However, the book contains numerous additional incidents, characters, and digressions, and, unlike the film, it unfolds over an extended period of time. Tarkovsky's work necessitated a rigorous simplification of the story line. For example, the book's multiple incursions into the Zone are reduced to a single encounter, while the Stalker's companions, the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko), are director inventions (though they contain composite elements from the original). At the heart of the Zone, and only accessible to those who have survived the invisible terrors of the "Grinder" (a seemingly endless tunnel filled with jagged stalagmites and stalactites), is the legendary Room, entry into which is said to grant the wayfarer the fulfilment of his deepest desires. (In the novel, magic is associated with an object—a "Golden Sphere"—rather than with a destination, but the two concepts are otherwise identical.) Viewers of the film, as well as readers of the book, may have varying perspectives on how "deep" a concept we are confronted with here, when viewed through the lofty lens of philosophy or religion. Yet "innermost desire" is saved from glibness by the sheer complexity of its distribution throughout the film: what those deepest desires are (whether altruistic or cynically selfish) is never finally pin-pointed to any of the three characters in a coherent manner.
Tarkovsky creates an immersive world that is rich in material detail and has an organic feel to it. As a religious allegory, a reflection of contemporary political anxieties, and a meditation on film itself, Stalker surrounds the viewer in a series of possible interpretations.
“Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1980) came second, behind Blade Runner, in a recent BFI poll of its members’ top movies. In outline, it’s one of the simplest films ever made: a guide, or Stalker, takes two people, Writer and Professor, into a forbidden area called the Zone, at the heart of which is the Room, where your deepest wish will come true. It is this simplicity that gives the film its fathomless resonance. If Tarkovsky’s previous film, Solaris, seemed like a Soviet 2001, was Stalker Tarkovsky’s take on The Wizard of Oz?
“The starkness of its conception did not prevent the production traumas that seem integral to the creation myths of other favourites: the likes of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo. Plans to shoot in Tajikistan had to be abandoned because of an earthquake. Having relocated to an abandoned hydroelectric power station in Estonia, Tarkovsky was dissatisfied with the cinematography and decided to shoot a pared-down version of the script all over again – in the same place. The price paid for this pursuit of an ideal is incalculable. Sound recordist Vladimir Sharun believes the deaths from cancer of Tarkovsky (in 1986), his wife Larissa and Anatoly Solonitsyn (who plays the Writer) were all due to contamination from a chemical plant upstream from the set.
“The film itself has become synonymous both with cinema’s claims to high art and a test of the viewer’s ability to appreciate it as such. Anyone sharing Cate Blanchett’s enthusiasm for it – "every single frame of the film is burned into my retina" – attests not just to the director’s lofty purity of purpose, but to their own capacity to survive at the challenging peaks of human achievement. So a certain amount of blowback is inevitable. David Thomson included Stalker in his pantheon of 1,000 memorable movies, but was dubious about the notion of the Room. Perhaps it’s "an infinite, if dank enclosure in which an uncertain number of strangers are watching the works of Tarkovsky. Equally, it may be that as malfunction of one kind or another covers the world, we may have a hard time distinguishing the Room, the Zone, and the local multiplex.”
– Geoff Dyer.
The following interview with Andrei Tarkovsky was conducted by the renowned Italian scriptwriter Tonino Guerra in 1979.
TG: What does "Stalker" mean?
AT: It’s a made-up word that comes from the English verb "to stalk": to approach furtively. In this film this word indicates the profession of one who crosses the borders and penetrates a forbidden Zone with a specific objective , a bit like a bootlegger or a smuggler. The stalker’s craft is passed on from one generation to the next. In my film, the forbidden Zone represents the places where desires can be satisfied. The spectator may doubt its existence or see it merely as a myth or a joke . . . or even as the fantasy of our hero. For the viewer this remains a mystery. The existence in the zone of a room where dreams come true serves solely as pretext to revealing the personalities of the three protagonists.
TG: What kind of person is the Stalker?
AT: He’s a very honest man, clean, and intellectually innocent. His wife describes him as "cheerful." He leads men into the Zone to, he says, make them happy. He gives himself completely to this task, with total lack of self-interest. He believes that it’s the only way to make people happy. In the end his is the story of the last of the idealists. It’s the story of a man who believes in the possibility of happiness independent of the will and the capacity of man. His job gives meaning to his life.
As if he were a priest of the Zone, the Stalker leads men there to make them happy. In reality, no one can say for sure if anyone there is happy.
At the end of his journey in the Zone, under the influence of the people he is leading, he loses faith in the possibility of making all of mankind happy. He can no longer find anyone who believes in this Zone or in the happiness to be found in this room. In the end he finds himself alone with his idea of human happiness achieved by a pure faith.
TG: When did the idea of this film come to you?
AT: I had recommended a short novel, Picnic on the Roadside, to my friend, the filmmaker Giorgi Kalatozishvili, thinking he might adapt it to film. Afterwards, I don’t know why, Giorgi could not obtain the rights from the authors of the novel, the Strugatsky brothers, and he abandoned the idea of this film. The idea began to turn in my head, at first from time to time and then more and more often. It seemed to me that this novel could be made into a film with a unity of location, time, and action. This classic unity -Aristotelian in my view - permits us to approach truly authentic filmmaking, which for me is not action film, outwardly dynamic.
I must say, too, that the script of Stalker has nothing in common with the novel, Picnic on the Roadside, except for the two words, "Stalker" and "Zone." So you see the history of the origins of my film is deceptive.
TG: : Do the images that you’ve shot suggest specific musical accompaniment?
AT: When I saw the rushes for the first time, I thought the film wouldn’t need any music. It seemed to me that it could-that it must even - rely solely on sounds. Now I would like to try muted music, barely audible, behind the noise of trains that pass beneath the windows of the Stalker’s home. For instance, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ("Ode to Joy"), Wagner, or even the Marseillaise’ In any case music that is more or less popular, that expresses the movement of the masses’ the theme of humanity’s social destiny. But this music must be barely heard beneath the noise, in a way that the spectator is not aware of it. Moreover, I would like most of the noise and sound to be composed by a composer. In the film, for example, the three people undertake a long journey in a railway car. I’d like that the noise of the wheels on the rails not be the natural sound but elaborated upon by the composer with electronic music. At the same time, one mustn’t be aware of music, nor of natural sounds.
TG: But will there be a central theme?
AT: I think the theme will be Far Eastern, a kind of Zen music, where the principle is concentration rather than description’ The main musical theme wiII have to be, on the one hand, purged of all emotion, and on the other, of all thought or programmatic intent. It must express its truth about the world around us in an autonomous way. It must be self-contained.
TG: Can you describe to me, image by image, the end of the film, as if I were blind?
AT: It would probably be great not to make films, but instead to simply describe them to blind people. A wonderful idea! One would only need to buy a tape recorder. "Thought expressed is a lie," said the poet.
TG: So, I can’t see. Tell.
AT: In the foreground, a sick little girl, Stalker’s daughter’ She holds a large book in front of her face. She is wearing a scarf’ She is in profile against an illuminated window. Slowly, the camera pulls back and frames a part of the table. The table in the foreground with dirty dishes on it: two glasses and a teapot. The little girl puts the book down on her knees, and we hear her voice repeating what she has just read’ She looks at one of the glasses. The glass, under the force of her look’ moves towards the camera. The child looks at the other glass and the other glass also begins to move forward. And then the child looks at the glass at the edge of the table and it falls to the floor without breaking. We then hear a train passing very close by, making a strange sound. The walls shake more and more. The camera goes back to the girl in the foreground and in the midst of this crashing noise the film ends.
TG: Are you thinking about another film right away after Stalker?
AT: I would like to make the film that we decided to make together: Italian journey. But you can talk about that better than I can. I would like to make a film that would lose some viewers and gain others, new ones. I would like our film to be seen by different people than those we call film viewers.
TG: I was told that you would like to change your style completely. Is this true?
AT: Yes, only I don’t know how yet . . . It would be great for me to make a film with the freedom of a beginner. To turn down big financing. To have the possibility to observe nature and men at my leisure, without haste. And the subject would emerge of itself, as the result of these observations and not necessarily planned down to the smallest detail.
Such a film would have to be made in complete freedom, independent of inspiration, of actors, of camera angles and shots. And with a discreet camera . . . It seems to me that making a film in this way would push me to go much further.
TG: What images do you think you’ve "stolen" from someone else, even though you’ve obviously transformed them into your own style?
AT: I’m generally very wary of this and I try to avoid it. I don’t like the suggestion that I may not have acted in such or such a situation with complete independence. Yet, lately, these references begin to interest me. In The Mirror for instance, there are two or three shots that are very clearly inspired by Brueghel: the boy, the small silhouettes of then, the snow, the bare trees, and the river in the distance. I created these shots very consciously and deliberately, not with the idea of copying or to show culture but to bear witness to my love for Brueghel, of my dependence on him, of the deep impression that he has made on my life.
In Andrei Roublev, there was a scene that might have been from Mizoguchi, the great departedJapanese director. I wasn’t aware of it until it was projected. It’s the one where the Russian prince gallops across the countryside on a white horse, and the Tatar is on a black horse. The quality of the image in black and white, the landscape, the opacity of the overcast sky had a strange resemblance to an ink-drawn Chinese landscape.
The two riders gallop after each other. Suddenly the Tatar cries out, whistles, whips his horse, and overtakes the prince. The Russian goes after him but cannot catch up. In the next shot, they have stopped’ There is nothing else. Just the memory of the Russian prince on his white horse trying to catch the Tatar and unable to do it’
It’s a scene that has nothing to do with the plot of the story. It attempts to express the state of a soul and to throw light on the nature of the relationship between the two men. It’s like a game that two boys play. One runs ahead and says, "You can’t catch me!" The other one takes off after him running as fast he can, but he can’t catch him’ Then right afterwards, they forget their game and stop running.
– Stalker, Smuggler of Happiness. Andrei Tarkovsky interviewed by Tonino Guerra, 1979
“The starkness of its conception did not prevent the production traumas that seem integral to the creation myths of other favourites: the likes of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo. Plans to shoot in Tajikistan had to be abandoned because of an earthquake. Having relocated to an abandoned hydroelectric power station in Estonia, Tarkovsky was dissatisfied with the cinematography and decided to shoot a pared-down version of the script all over again – in the same place. The price paid for this pursuit of an ideal is incalculable. Sound recordist Vladimir Sharun believes the deaths from cancer of Tarkovsky (in 1986), his wife Larissa and Anatoly Solonitsyn (who plays the Writer) were all due to contamination from a chemical plant upstream from the set.
“The film itself has become synonymous both with cinema’s claims to high art and a test of the viewer’s ability to appreciate it as such. Anyone sharing Cate Blanchett’s enthusiasm for it – "every single frame of the film is burned into my retina" – attests not just to the director’s lofty purity of purpose, but to their own capacity to survive at the challenging peaks of human achievement. So a certain amount of blowback is inevitable. David Thomson included Stalker in his pantheon of 1,000 memorable movies, but was dubious about the notion of the Room. Perhaps it’s "an infinite, if dank enclosure in which an uncertain number of strangers are watching the works of Tarkovsky. Equally, it may be that as malfunction of one kind or another covers the world, we may have a hard time distinguishing the Room, the Zone, and the local multiplex.”
– Geoff Dyer.
The following interview with Andrei Tarkovsky was conducted by the renowned Italian scriptwriter Tonino Guerra in 1979.
TG: What does "Stalker" mean?
AT: It’s a made-up word that comes from the English verb "to stalk": to approach furtively. In this film this word indicates the profession of one who crosses the borders and penetrates a forbidden Zone with a specific objective , a bit like a bootlegger or a smuggler. The stalker’s craft is passed on from one generation to the next. In my film, the forbidden Zone represents the places where desires can be satisfied. The spectator may doubt its existence or see it merely as a myth or a joke . . . or even as the fantasy of our hero. For the viewer this remains a mystery. The existence in the zone of a room where dreams come true serves solely as pretext to revealing the personalities of the three protagonists.
TG: What kind of person is the Stalker?
AT: He’s a very honest man, clean, and intellectually innocent. His wife describes him as "cheerful." He leads men into the Zone to, he says, make them happy. He gives himself completely to this task, with total lack of self-interest. He believes that it’s the only way to make people happy. In the end his is the story of the last of the idealists. It’s the story of a man who believes in the possibility of happiness independent of the will and the capacity of man. His job gives meaning to his life.
As if he were a priest of the Zone, the Stalker leads men there to make them happy. In reality, no one can say for sure if anyone there is happy.
At the end of his journey in the Zone, under the influence of the people he is leading, he loses faith in the possibility of making all of mankind happy. He can no longer find anyone who believes in this Zone or in the happiness to be found in this room. In the end he finds himself alone with his idea of human happiness achieved by a pure faith.
TG: When did the idea of this film come to you?
AT: I had recommended a short novel, Picnic on the Roadside, to my friend, the filmmaker Giorgi Kalatozishvili, thinking he might adapt it to film. Afterwards, I don’t know why, Giorgi could not obtain the rights from the authors of the novel, the Strugatsky brothers, and he abandoned the idea of this film. The idea began to turn in my head, at first from time to time and then more and more often. It seemed to me that this novel could be made into a film with a unity of location, time, and action. This classic unity -Aristotelian in my view - permits us to approach truly authentic filmmaking, which for me is not action film, outwardly dynamic.
I must say, too, that the script of Stalker has nothing in common with the novel, Picnic on the Roadside, except for the two words, "Stalker" and "Zone." So you see the history of the origins of my film is deceptive.
TG: : Do the images that you’ve shot suggest specific musical accompaniment?
AT: When I saw the rushes for the first time, I thought the film wouldn’t need any music. It seemed to me that it could-that it must even - rely solely on sounds. Now I would like to try muted music, barely audible, behind the noise of trains that pass beneath the windows of the Stalker’s home. For instance, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ("Ode to Joy"), Wagner, or even the Marseillaise’ In any case music that is more or less popular, that expresses the movement of the masses’ the theme of humanity’s social destiny. But this music must be barely heard beneath the noise, in a way that the spectator is not aware of it. Moreover, I would like most of the noise and sound to be composed by a composer. In the film, for example, the three people undertake a long journey in a railway car. I’d like that the noise of the wheels on the rails not be the natural sound but elaborated upon by the composer with electronic music. At the same time, one mustn’t be aware of music, nor of natural sounds.
TG: But will there be a central theme?
AT: I think the theme will be Far Eastern, a kind of Zen music, where the principle is concentration rather than description’ The main musical theme wiII have to be, on the one hand, purged of all emotion, and on the other, of all thought or programmatic intent. It must express its truth about the world around us in an autonomous way. It must be self-contained.
TG: Can you describe to me, image by image, the end of the film, as if I were blind?
AT: It would probably be great not to make films, but instead to simply describe them to blind people. A wonderful idea! One would only need to buy a tape recorder. "Thought expressed is a lie," said the poet.
TG: So, I can’t see. Tell.
AT: In the foreground, a sick little girl, Stalker’s daughter’ She holds a large book in front of her face. She is wearing a scarf’ She is in profile against an illuminated window. Slowly, the camera pulls back and frames a part of the table. The table in the foreground with dirty dishes on it: two glasses and a teapot. The little girl puts the book down on her knees, and we hear her voice repeating what she has just read’ She looks at one of the glasses. The glass, under the force of her look’ moves towards the camera. The child looks at the other glass and the other glass also begins to move forward. And then the child looks at the glass at the edge of the table and it falls to the floor without breaking. We then hear a train passing very close by, making a strange sound. The walls shake more and more. The camera goes back to the girl in the foreground and in the midst of this crashing noise the film ends.
TG: Are you thinking about another film right away after Stalker?
AT: I would like to make the film that we decided to make together: Italian journey. But you can talk about that better than I can. I would like to make a film that would lose some viewers and gain others, new ones. I would like our film to be seen by different people than those we call film viewers.
AT: Yes, only I don’t know how yet . . . It would be great for me to make a film with the freedom of a beginner. To turn down big financing. To have the possibility to observe nature and men at my leisure, without haste. And the subject would emerge of itself, as the result of these observations and not necessarily planned down to the smallest detail.
Such a film would have to be made in complete freedom, independent of inspiration, of actors, of camera angles and shots. And with a discreet camera . . . It seems to me that making a film in this way would push me to go much further.
TG: What images do you think you’ve "stolen" from someone else, even though you’ve obviously transformed them into your own style?
AT: I’m generally very wary of this and I try to avoid it. I don’t like the suggestion that I may not have acted in such or such a situation with complete independence. Yet, lately, these references begin to interest me. In The Mirror for instance, there are two or three shots that are very clearly inspired by Brueghel: the boy, the small silhouettes of then, the snow, the bare trees, and the river in the distance. I created these shots very consciously and deliberately, not with the idea of copying or to show culture but to bear witness to my love for Brueghel, of my dependence on him, of the deep impression that he has made on my life.
In Andrei Roublev, there was a scene that might have been from Mizoguchi, the great departedJapanese director. I wasn’t aware of it until it was projected. It’s the one where the Russian prince gallops across the countryside on a white horse, and the Tatar is on a black horse. The quality of the image in black and white, the landscape, the opacity of the overcast sky had a strange resemblance to an ink-drawn Chinese landscape.
The two riders gallop after each other. Suddenly the Tatar cries out, whistles, whips his horse, and overtakes the prince. The Russian goes after him but cannot catch up. In the next shot, they have stopped’ There is nothing else. Just the memory of the Russian prince on his white horse trying to catch the Tatar and unable to do it’
It’s a scene that has nothing to do with the plot of the story. It attempts to express the state of a soul and to throw light on the nature of the relationship between the two men. It’s like a game that two boys play. One runs ahead and says, "You can’t catch me!" The other one takes off after him running as fast he can, but he can’t catch him’ Then right afterwards, they forget their game and stop running.
– Stalker, Smuggler of Happiness. Andrei Tarkovsky interviewed by Tonino Guerra, 1979
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