Stalker

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."

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Brennan Keller

is essential for the existence of man.

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