Stalker 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky

Incidentally I read somewhere something about Andrei Tarkovsky. And I saw a documentary on his life and work. At the end, I began with his own films. So, I made the work vice versa.

I Selected "Stalker" 1979. The title is the same in Russian and English. In those years the word "stalker" was used to identify that type of huntsman that goes hunting unarmed and without greyhounds. The one who observes, the one who waits for a long time to see something and tell what has seen to the other huntsmen.

Today  this word has another meaning. It is used random for followers and listeners.

Tarkovsky used this term to personify someone who is obsessed with something. To the one who knows every detail of every corner of that thing, no matter how dark it is, but has no power to act over that.

I say "to personify" even because stalker has no name. He is recognized only as stalker.

Neither the other characters do not have names, the writer, the professor, the writer’s wife, stalker’s wife and stalker’s daughter. There are not used toponyms neither. We can listen some people’s names through the stories they tell, but not when the characters address to each other.

Pardon ... can not wait till the end to tell you this: This movie is perfection. Is the reason why some crazy guys created cinema!!!

There are long scenes, terribly long, at the beginning they bore you, but than...you can’t get them out of your head and you want more and more.

Official plot: "Three men embark the Zone. There is a room where wishes come true. "

Andrei Tarkovsky

For all of us to be a little clearer:

Film starts with the stalker’s bedroom. This guy,his  wife and his daughter are lying on the bed. A cup moves for no reason on the closet. Man rises from bed. He changes his clothes and get ready to go out. Woman pleads not to go. He does not obey te her. He goes out. There he meet the professor, the writer and the writer's wife (we see this woman only in this scene). The three men sit in a bar. They make a presentation alla Tarkovsky (without giving importance to events). They hear a train horn, get out of the bar, escape successfully from the guards (who protect the area of the Zone) and begin a journey toward Zone.

into the bar

These occur around 45 min. The picture is sepia-toned. There's a glare brightness in the lightened areas.

When entering the Zone, the picture becomes colored. There is too much green. The contrast with the last part becomes even stronger, but at the same time staying balanced.

I will not tell you in details what happens "Into the Zone". I’m enough with: "There happens  almost Nothing."

There was thought that the laws of physics were different into the Zone. Stalker mentions several times that.

Now the scenes are even more extended by the director, so producing a different kind of time dimension into the minds of viewers.

The three men don’t talk too much,they almost soliloquy, without being in any way clear for the real reason that has pushed them towards Zone.

They return to the starting bar. Picture becomes sepia-toned again. There comes stalker’s wife. Than both go home. The man lies in bed, saying: "They do not believe in anything. They think that they are designed to fulfill any major purpose" (more or less). And he falls asleep.

The woman addresses directly to  the camera. She explains that she knew her destiny before getting married. But even if she had made another choice, it would be all the same again.

Tarkovsky shows here that  vanity of existence that characterizes all and everything outside the Zone, referring to our world. The one that remains the same beyond any coincidence.

And through the point-blank communication of the women, emphasis on this scene.

Then stalker, girl on his back (because she can not walk) and his wife are traveling.

Picture becomes colored.

last scene

Last scene: Highlighted colors. For the first time we see red. The girl sitting in the chair. A front desk. Three cups on it. An empty, two filled. Girl moves glasses without touching them. She leads the three of them in the corner of the table. The empty glass slumps without getting broken. (she moves glasses with her mind) That's it.

There are some who believe that through this film Tarkovsky shows the futility of the communist regime in the former Soviet Union. There are others who think that this movie is an environmental anthem.

But I have come to the same conclusion that I had at first (the one that i realised in the end of the film, before I read all of these):

"Stalker is not directed to a specific group or a specific phenomenon. It is directed to all of us. Each one of us. "

There are some others who think the same.

To justify this approach:

Stalker is dreaming

During the journey into the Zone, stalker has two dreams. At first he hears a voice that says among other things that “weakness is power and power is nothing”. In the second dream there is a thrilling female voice that recites verses from the Apocalypse (Revelation) in the Bible.

He himself is a powerless man, who can not do anything else but leading curious people to the Zone. But even that remains evasive, cause it is not shown clear if he has lead any other person there, before leading writer and professor.

He insists that it is dangerous to cross at the Zone twice in the same way. At one point the professor crosses twice the same way because he has forgotten a sandwich to the bag...and nothing happens.

Stalker refers to some Prokupini, who has been stalker before him. He had left his brother to be dead, in the "meat cutter" into the Zone. When the professor and the writer escape this  trap " meat cutter", Stalker says that they are good people. The scene is accompanied by photographic images that hardly get forgotten.  Compressed sand dunes and green walls.

"meat cutter"

The writer is carrying explosives. He will destroy the Zone. That place is not helpful to anyone.

Stalker cries. The Zone is very important for him. The landscape is so calm. He must bring even his wife and daughter in there. They will feel safe.

Professor withdraw immediately from the idea of ​​a few moments ago.

Those three need the Zone. They never enter into the room where wishes come true. They return home.

These details I intended not to mention before, but I realized that I needed them to reinforce the idea that "Stalker" is a philosophy for life, not for any particular aspect of life.

The Zone is a common place. Stalker admits (more or less) this fact. When his wife asks him : “Why don’t you take us (mother and daughter) to that room, so we can be happy?”He says that maybe the room has no effect over them. So there is no room where wishes come true at all.

The writer and the professor knows this fact. Although they do not  not explicitly accept, they continue to see the Zone as the only point of breakup from reality. Not because it has magical powers, but because it is like that in their minds.

The Zone

The journey through the Zone is a good thing happening to them. The interaction between them is the real magic. "Stalker 1979" combines the vanity with the beauty of the simple life. You see it in their eyes, without allegories or parables.

Tarkovsky did not give many explanations for his films. This film remains one of the most discussed art forms even today. Author almost doesn’t help us at all: "If Bergman and Bresson liked it, I'm alright", he said.

Or the whole film is a brilliant part of our imagination ;)

Ps: The excessive repetition of the words: Zone, stalker and any verb time.....are not random choices!!!

+I m so sorry for any spelling or grammar mistake (but english is not my mother language)

Keep stalking, by Led Kasapi