The film ‘Stalker’ from 1979 by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky is a profoundly original – in the best sense of the word: inspired – masterpiece with a message for our times.
It tells the story of a journey into ‘the Zone’, an abandoned area where something unknown once struck. Access is blocked by the military, for the Zone harbours something ‘dangerous’, namely an innermost space that fulfils the deepest desire that humankind carries within.
According to Bergman, Tarkovsky was the greatest of all directors, for he found a new language for the art of film, in which life could be captured as a dream. It is also for this reason that the characters in the film have no names, but fulfil exclusively archetypal roles. There is the Stalker, the guide, who leads the two travellers, the writer and the professor, into the Zone.
The writer is weary, vain and cynical. He has lost faith in his own art. The professor is a sober-minded scientist who – as it turns out – has brought a bomb with him, so that he can blow up the innermost chamber of the Zone before it falls into the wrong hands. He intends to destroy the sacred in order to protect humanity from its powers.
The Stalker is poor, scorned and tormented, plagued by thoughts of humanity’s lack of true faith, and ridiculed in the eyes of others. Here, Tarkovsky follows the Russian tradition of portraying the hero as a holy fool wandering in the twilight of unbelief. His lament that no one believes any more – not even the two he has led into the Zone – is the film’s central theme.
The Wish Machine
It is a crucial point that the innermost room in the Zone does not necessarily fulfil what one says or believes one desires. The room fulfils the wish one in reality harbours.
‘The Hedgehog’, the Stalker’s predecessor, entered the room to retrieve his brother, who had perished within the enigmatic Zone. When the Hedgehog returned home, he quickly became rich and hanged himself shortly afterwards. The Hedgehog thus had the desire he in reality harboured fulfilled – and could not live with it. He sought brotherhood, but found lust and despair.
When the Stalker recounts the Hedgehog’s fate, the professor and the writer understand the consequences and refuse to enter the room, for they fear that the room, rather than fulfilling their inherent goodness, will reveal the darkness in their souls.
‘Stalker’ thus contains a fair amount of conservative cultural criticism. The cheerful message of our time is: Listen to yourself. Follow your heart. Be authentic. For the therapeutic culture turns one’s innermost desire into a guiding principle. Tarkovsky’s film says the opposite: one’s innermost desire may be the most dangerous thing one possesses.
In the words of Oscar Wilde: There are only two tragedies in the world. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it.
Slowness
On another, formal level, the film also runs counter to our times.
The film lasts two hours and forty minutes, but contains only around 140 scenes. That is approximately one minute per scene. The average duration of a scene in American films has fallen from around twelve seconds in the 1930s to a couple of seconds today.
The film therefore demands a great deal from us, not only intellectually, but also in terms of patience. In other words, what we are in the process of losing: in essence, our capacity for attention. We live in a desert of attention, where the gaze never rests. But as the writer Simone Weil writes somewhere: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. To give attention is to give of oneself.
‘Stalker’ shows, on a metaphorical level, that patience is a prerequisite not only for thinking, but also for praying and loving.
The connection to the transcendent
People who do not believe – that is, truly do not believe – have their wishes fulfilled, and this creates a grey world where the ash-grey plains of contentment spread. The world outside the Zone is depicted in colourless tones of sadness, whilst the world within the Zone’s territory takes on colour.
Tarkovsky’s masterpiece shows the way out, and it does so through its very form: the slowness and the dangerous, yet colourful Zone.
None of the travellers, then, end up entering the room. Towards the end of the film, a black dog appears in the Zone, following the Stalker home. In Tarkovsky’s universe, dogs are symbols of transcendence, of receptiveness and a connection to the supernatural.
The dog follows the Stalker, and his wife welcomes it without asking any questions about it. The sacred cannot be sought out with a wish list. It comes to those who believe.
