Stalker and the need for a purpose
Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being. / A. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
It is rare to encounter a work of film that fundamentally challenges the way a person views an art form and what it is capable of doing. I first watched Stalker (1979) in the beginning of 2023, and it is probably the film that lingers in my mind the most. It combines the techniques of cinema, such as long shots and visually abstract imagery, with a poetic and often literary script. Stalker does not lend itself to simple, straightforward interpretations and explanations, rather it invites the viewer inside its own calm, meditative universe to explore the ideas of science, art, purpose, faith and desire.
By drawing from a rich spiritual foundation and Tarkovsky’s own outlook, it manages to move into the territory of a transcendent work of art, as the film evolves. Yet it’s not explicitly religious or faith focused, making it a more compelling experience, unlike Andrei Rublev (1966), which is explicitly Christian in its nature. Whereas Stalker explores ideas of faith in the frame of a science-fiction film, making the nature of the film more inquisitive and reflective, and thus more compelling. I have since watched the film two more times, each time with a growing admiration for it and its three main characters. Through its beautiful script, the film has created a whole new adoration for faith as a driving force behind creating art.
The film is loosely based on a short novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. The film takes the key idea of the Zone from the novel - a mystical and strange place brought into existence by aliens - and the idea of stalkers, people who explore and guide others through this forbidden place, often at a cost to themselves. The book contains several journeys into the area and multiple characters, whereas the film only has the Stalker, his daughter and wife, and the Writer and the Scientist. In the film the destination is a room, in the book it is an object called the Golden Sphere. By going into the Room, one is meant to have their innermost wishes fulfilled. Stalker serves as an excellent example of taking the key elements of a story, stripping away the unnecessary and creating something new in a different art form.
The film starts with a sequence at the Stalker’s home, with his wife begging him not to go, however he goes anyway, leaving his family behind. He meets the Writer and the Scientist and after getting past the security measures, there is an extensive and hypnotizing long shot of them being on a railway cart, moving from the sepia coloured ordinary world into the vividly green and natural landscape of the Zone. It is a film that is almost three hours long, yet is composed of only 142 shots. Through utilising the function of the long shot,the camerawork makes the viewer immersed in the imagery by making the viewer focus and pay attention. Geoff Dyer has called the sequence of the film’s three main characters going into the Zone ‘the greatest sequence in film history’. The sound design changes as the cart approaches the Zone and after a period of looking at the characters’ heads and hearing the clanking sounds of the trolley, the viewer, along with the three main characters, enters the Zone.
The Zone is lush and quiet, it’s a living landscape, containing hidden dangers that only the Stalker is capable of guiding people through. Throughout the film these dangers never truly materialize, they are only spoken about. This leads to many interpretations of what the Zone is meant to represent, with interpretations ranging from a post-nuclear fallout zone to life itself.
I do not consider myself as a person of faith and have always avoided the label of spirituality, as I have often perceived it as oppositional to ideas of rationality. However in Stalker spirituality and faith are presented in an almost spellbinding way, as a desire to resolve the tension between the human spirit / soul and the world that values the material and provable. The dialogue between the Writer and the Scientist is often confrontational and combative, each trying to prove their superiority to the other. However, in contrast to them, there is the Stalker’s character. He goes out and accompanies people in the Zone as that is the way he defines his purpose. Towards the end of the film, he gets accused of doing these incursions into the zone for selfish purposes by the Writer and the Stalker responds by saying :
“Yes, you’re right, I’m a nit, I haven’t done anything in this world and I cannot do anything... And neither could I give anything to my wife! And I do not have any friends and I cannot have, but you cannot take what’s mine from me! Everything is already taken from me, there, on the other side of the barbed wire. All I have is here. Can you understand! Here! In the Zone! My happiness, my freedom, my dignity – everything’s here! For I lead the same as me in here, unhappy ones, suffering. They... They have no other hope left! And I – I am able to! Can you understand – I am able to help them! Nobody else can help them, but I, nit (shouts), I, nit, am able to! I am ready to shed tears of happiness that I am able to help them. That’s all! And I want nothing else.”
Tarkovsky once explained that for him the Stalker embodied the kind of character that he most wanted to be like out of the three men. He was someone the world saw as too weak, yet he was actually the strongest out of the three. He has a sense of faith, of purpose, one that is independent from the pressures of the modern world. He defines himself through his ability to provide hope to others, a life in the service of trying to lessen the suffering of other people. And the purity of this portrayal of a life of devotion and clear purpose has stuck with me since I first saw the film. The Stalker is a poor man,living in bleak circumstances, yet, as he exclaims above, the Zone provides him with a space, where his mission is clear and he can help others. Upon returning home, he despairs that the people have lost their faith:
“ [..] nobody believes. Not only those two. Nobody! Whom should I lead in there? Oh, God... And the most terrifying thing is ... that nobody needs it anymore. And nobody needs that Room. And all my efforts are worthless!”
Stalker is a character, who embodies a childlike belief in the good and the possibility of humans to experience it. However, his despair comes from the fact that the commitment to the material, to ideas of success and glory (the Writer) and the purely rational (the Scientist) have led to the loss of belief, the idea that something more meaningful is possible, this breaks his heart, because, if that is the case, then what place does the world have for someone, whose reason for existing is to give others their ability to believe?
The film does not offer a neat answer to this question, it ends on an ambiguous and supernatural note, but having seen it three times, I cannot help but explore questions of faith, belief and meaning within myself a lot more and through that Tarkovsky has definitely achieved his stated purpose - to create a work of art that serves a higher spiritual purpose.
