Watching Stalker

The opening dolly shot slowly entering Stalker's bedroom.

Simply perfect composition and a beautiful shot though there is little beauty in it.

There is a Room where your deepest desires come true.  All you have to do is step inside.  This room has a mysterious origin to its strange power.  A meteorite exploded while crashing to Earth.  Or something.  No one is quite sure what happened.  The result was a “zone” of geography that became off-limits.  The government has it militarily sealed off.  It is illegal to enter the Zone.  Authorities want to contain it and forget it.  But that is just the problem.  Slowly word is getting out about the Room.  

Whatever happened happened over two decades ago.  Apparently, the Room was discovered by a few people who broke into the Zone.  The Room became known about outside.  More people wanted to sneak into it.  They had to have guides because the Zone is a special place filled with traps and it will mess you up if you are out there on your own.  The guides are called Stalkers.

Our Stalker has no name.  Stalker (1979) is about aliases.  The only person in the entire film whose name is actually uttered is Luger, the bar keeper at the beginning of the movie.  Our Stalker takes two men in to the Zone.  There are a couple of moments when a character (major or minor) is asked for their name or is about to state their name.  They are always interrupted and the film moves on so that the audience knows only Luger's name.  Stalker gives his two paying customers the names Writer and Professor. 

Stalker is obviously a metaphorical film in the best kind of way.  Director Andrei Tarkovsky literally crafted a maze of possible interpretations.  Writer is a pessimistic person, an artist.  Professor is a scientist, a continually nonplussed character, almost blasé but for the fact he's secretly carrying a bomb.  Each of these characters could represent the rational and creative aspects of humanity, and how those aspects can potentially interact toward something like the Room.  Part of the appeal of Stalker is how it naturally lends itself to a myriad of conversations between viewers.  It is the same with Tarkovsky's  Mirror and most of his other films.  You want to share them and discuss them with other people.

Stalker has spent five years in prison for doing this before.  Why he continues to take the risk despite the threat of a further ten years in prison is part of what Stalker is all about.  He feels at home in the Zone, for a variety of reasons.  The Zone is sacred to him.  He is comfortable there.  He can navigate it because he approaches it with purity and reverence.  He puts his faith into the Zone.  Over most of the 2 hour, 41 minute film he guides Writer and Professor to the Room.

Professor, Stalker, and Writer in the cafe bar with Luger the barkeep. 

The three enter the Zone through a B-Grade action sequence.

They mount a small rail car to take them the rest of the way.

The Zone is in a muted green color.  There is no Sun in the Zone, just sunlight.  This telephone pole is slanted in the same way as part of the Russian Orthodox cross.

Stalker has a slow-moving narrative which comes at the viewer strangely.  You have to figure out all of what I have just told you as the film unfolds.  In the process of unfolding there is a marvelously photographed, mood-evoking mix of black and white (sepia tone) and color images where Tarkovsky does his real work in the film – subconsciously, affectively.  Stalker is a visual feast.

Like almost all of Trakovsky's filmography, Stalker (1979), is considered a masterpiece, one of greatest movies ever made.  As with Mirror, I found this film to be brilliant and fascinating at times as well as boring at times.  But this movie is not as disjointed as Mirror (which had to be somewhat disjointed given the nature of that film).  Stalker fits together as an interesting narrative balanced with a strange beautiful-ugliness aesthetic.  The cinematography and sound combine to immerse the viewer in this green but toxic place that is so inviting to behold.  It strikes me as a more complete film than Mirror in that it is a more integrated experience between the film's various elements.  
 

Mirror is not grounded in the physical whereas Stalker is a physical as well as spiritual journey.  The Zone is a physical place.  The mystery is not just in what created it but also a physical place and room. Who wouldn't want their deepest desires to be granted to them?  But, getting into the Zone is dangerous.  You will be shot at by inept military security guards (frankly, the film is funny here, it is so incredibly dated by the B-Grade “shootout” sequence where Stalker and his two clients navigate their break-in).

Tarkovsky does a great job of creating the look and feel of the Zone.  The viewer is there.  The three arrive in utter stillness and nature sounds within a very large wooded, deserted place,  In reality it was a surrounding a dilapidated factory in the heart of industrial Estonia.  Originally, Tarkovsky wanted to shoot the film in Tajikistan.  A major earthquake wrecked a good portion of the country and he made the switch to Estonia, which completely affected his approach to the film.

Stalker became a different, ironically more focused film when Tarkovsky was disappointed and forced to change locations.  The factory area in Estonia was filled with toxic waste and pollution.  Incredibly, the film was actually shot three times.  All the physical film from the first shoot was improperly exposed and given an unacceptable greenish tinge.  (Supposedly, only two shots from this footage remain in the final film.)  I've never been clear on exactly what happened to the second shoot.  Apparently, Tarkovsky rejected it.  No footage still exists from that one.

The third shoot is what we see today.  As a result of spending so much time in the toxic conditions of the Zone as shown so clearly in the film, Tarkovsky and his entire cast and crew were exposed to excessive amounts of hazardous pollutants in a time when the Soviet Union did absolutely nothing at all about pollution control or toxic waste management.  Seven years later, Tarkovsky was dead from cancer.  The actor who plays Writer, a few crew members and Tarkovsky's wife, who accompanied him on the shoots, all died within a few years due to the same type of cancer.  Did filming Stalker actually kill these people?

Stalker, Writer and Professor survive the shootout reach the Zone by a small rail car.  The area is a lush darkish green landscape, alive but subdued, not bright.  This is when we start to learn about Porcupine, Stalker's teacher.  The first thing we learn is that he stamped out some flowerbeds near the railroad stop many years ago.  When Stalker asked him why the reply was simply: “One day you'll understand.”  

This seems like a throwaway line but it is actually a key to the film.  I'll quote Stalker telling the others about his teacher: “For years he brought people to the Zone and nobody could stop him.  He was my teacher.  He opened my eyes.  They didn't call him Porcupine then, just Teacher.  Then something happened to him, something broke inside him though I think he was simply punished.”

Soon Writer and Professor find themselves alone while Stalker scouts ahead (actually he just wants the lie down alone in the thick green vegetation). Professor seems to know about Porcupine.  When Writer inquires what Stalker meant about punishment, Professor replies that one day, suddenly, Porcupine returned from the Zone very rich.  He hung himself within a week.  Why?  But the conversation is suddenly interrupted by a strange animal howl in the distance.  As much as anything, Stalker is the unfolding of the story of Porcupine.

You can't go straight from one place to another in the Zone.  White strips of cloth are tied through large metallic nuts and are tossed in a zig-zag fashion to guide the three through the lush nature and contaminated filth of the Zone.  Writer soon tires of this when they can plainly see the building they need to enter.  He is going to walk straight there.  First, Stalker has him acknowledge verbally that he is going of his own free will and was not sent by Stalker.  What's the big deal?  Of course, he accepts.

Writer approaches the large opening to the dilapidated building very cautiously.  Just before he reaches it a voice says “Stop!  Don't move!”  The camera pulls back to reveal a large piece of netting or something (it's dark and out of focus) falling downward over the opening.  It is back lit so we can't see what it is and the film cuts a half-second later.  Writer stops.  None of the three know who gave the command.  Upon retracing his steps back, Professor accuses Writer of cowardice and ordering himself to stop.

Stalker speaks: “The Zone is a very complex maze of traps.  All of them are death traps.  I don't know what happens without humans but as soon as humans appear, everything begins to move.  Former traps disappear, new ones appear.  Safe ways become impassable and the path becomes first east, then incredibly confused.  This is the Zone.  It may seem capricious but at each moment it's just as we've made it, we and out state of mind.  I won't hide the fact that some people had to turn back half-way empty-handed.  Some perished on the threshold of the Room.  But everything that happens here depends on us, not on the Zone.”

He goes on to say that the Zone “let's those through who've lost all hope....the wretched.”  At this point the viewer is beginning to see Stalker as a man of faith.  He believes in the Zone.  But the Professor has had enough.  He will “wait” for the other two to come back.  (Why he so suddenly claims not to want to go to the Room apparently from Writer's minor freakout seems odd here, but it sets up a later reveal.) But Stalker tells him they won't return the way they came.  All three have to go forward together.

Professor, Stalker, and Writer arrive in the Zone.

Writer approaches the opening but Stalker tried to stop him from approaching directly.  You are not supposed to go directly from one place to another in the Zone.  That is why you need a Stalker to guide you.

Some sort of veil falls as Writer approaches.  This is the last frame of the shot.  The scene cuts at this moment.  This is reminiscent for the white wad of cloth thrown across the doorway in the boy's dream in Mirror. 

Soon the building in enshrouded in mist.  A beautiful shot of utterly overgrown decay.  Stalker has a beautiful ugliness aesthetic.

During a "prayer" by Stalker we see this abstract watery image.  "May everything come true," he says in hope.  This is a sort of doxology for entering the complex that contains the Room.

A switch back to black and white.  And a random dog, of course.  This may be a dream.  The alteration between black and white and color is intentionally disjointed in Stalker.

Not everything seems contaminated in the Zone.  The quiet, isolated beauty and the prospect of helping people find their deepest desires keeps bringing Stalker back.  He is at home here, whereas in the "real world" he feels imprisoned everywhere.

Toxic sludge filmed by Tarkovsky and his crew.  The wind whips the residue of the scum into the air like a desert.  Oddly, green foliage still grows and the surroundings are lush.

Strangely, once they near the degraded complex they end up by taking different directions  which end up back to the point where they had just left.  Stalker finds a metal nut with the white strip of cloth hanging from the nearby tunnel.  Porcupine placed it there.  The passageway is a trap, through which two of them had just emerged.  How they all departed and came back together makes no sense.  This is how the Zone works.  “A maze full of traps.”  This time they were all lucky.

Ultimately, they pass through a series of tunnels.  Afterwards, Stalker tells them the last tunnel was called the “meat-grinder.”  Then we learn something shocking about Porcupine. Into the meat-grinder he “sent his brother instead of himself.  A brother who was so sensitive, so gifted.  Listen to this.”  Stalker recites a poem by the brother that is actually written by Tarkovsky's father.  The subtitles are beautiful but to hear his voice flow so lyrically in Russian is wonderful, as it is in Mirror.  

Mysteriously, there is a working phone inside the building.  And electricity.  Professor calls “Laboratory Nine” and has a brief conversation with someone, explaining he is near the entrance of the Room.  This is another bizarre and unexplained occurrence.  Then Professor explains to Stalker and Writer that this Room is only going to become more popular.  More people will want to come here.  Especially those who thirst for power over the Earth and other evil people.  What about the Mafia, Professor asks?  What about the human use of laser weapons and deadly bacteria?  Why would we want a place where everybody's deepest desires come true?  Some deep desires are wicked and dangerous.

Professor has actually come to destroy the Room.  Remember, he has a bomb.  Stalker fights Professor for the device but Professor is actually assisted by Writer who tosses Stalker into the filthy shallow water they are all standing around.  Writer does this several times until the fight ends.  Stalker is filled with emotion at the fact these men are going to destroy the Room.  There is no place like it in the world and he has helped so many people through the years.  

At this Professor becomes discouraged, possibly ashamed, of what he is doing.  He decides to defuse the bomb and toss it into the murky water.  Slowly the scene transforms into a completely different moment, which is rather magical to watch.  They are standing before the Room, a soft glow coming from it.  Professor will not destroy it.   Stalker offers the Room to Writer.  Stalkers themselves cannot enter the Room. They cannot have “mercenary motives” in the purity of the Zone, which is why the Zone grants him and those he brings safe passage.   

“There's no need to speak.  You must only concentrate and recall all your life.  When a man thinks about the past he becomes kinder.  And most importantly...(long hesitation)...most importantly...You must believe.”  But Writer protests that if he thinks of his own past he will not become kinder.  He apparently has a shameful and probably abusive past.  He refuses to enter because of something he has figured out about Porcupine.  When Procupine's brother died in the meat-grinder, Teacher broke the rule for Stalkers.  He entered the Room and begged that his brother live.  Instead, he received immense wealth.

Porcupine hanged himself.  The Writer now knows why.  “He realized that it is not merely a desire but one's most secret desire that is granted here. [...] What comes true here is that which reflects the essence of your nature.  It is within you. It governs you.  Yet you are ignorant of it.  You've understood nothing.  Greed didn't do Porcupine in.  He crawled on his knees to plead for his brother, but he got a pile of money.  He couldn't get anything else.  Porcupine was given the essence of his true nature. Conscience and soul-searching
were all invented by the mind.  When he realized all that, he hanged himself.  I won't go into your Room.  I don't want to pour the filth in my soul onto anyone's head — even yours — and then hang myself as Porcupine did.”

They pass through a series of tunnels.  This one is called the meat-grinder where Porcupine's brother died, although Writer does not know this until afterwards.

Through a doorway and into a watery world.

Over this bizarre warehouse of sand or powder.

Tarkovsky was fond of shooting scenes through a doorway so as to block out most of where the actors were.  He used this technique in most of his films.

Writer cynically fashions a crown of thrones out of a dead branch. As much as anything else, Stalker is about faith.

Stalker has a wife and daughter.  The daughter was born “mutant” from the contamination of the Zone.  At the beginning of the film, the wife rips into Stalker before he leaves for yet another illegal guide trip.  He has already spent 5 years in prison, she doesn't want him to be arrested again.  He was supposed to get a regular, decent job.

But he's a Stalker by nature.  He probably can't help himself.  The only place he feels at home is inside the Zone.  Once there, the simply falls into the rich dark green vegetation, at peace.  Stalker and his wife have even discussed living in the Zone.  But Professor and Writer, in their different ways, affect Stalker, bum him out. When Stalker, dejected, returns from the Zone he is brokenhearted.  He despairs that his clients were so unappreciative and did not respect the wondrous qualities of the Zone.  They were ultimately disinterested in it which is like putting a knife into Stalker's heart.

Professor (the scientist) becomes disinterested in blowing up the Room after he sees how fiercely Stalker fights Writer to make him stop.  Writer (the artist) becomes disinterested when he learns that the Room gives you your deepest desires, not necessarily what you might ask for.  Your deepest desires might be hiding from you altogether and only the Room knows what you really want.  Which is sort of the way the internet works, come to think of it.  

He despairs and his wife is compassionate with him.  She shows her deeply human side.  She puts Stalker to bed and comforts him.  In this way, Stalker is simultaneously, extraordinarily, a bleak yet hopeful film.  With the compassion of his wife, there is a grounding of the whole strange experience.  Grounded in basic human love – fear of being without him.

The mutant daughter cannot use her legs.  She is silent and introverted, though she can read and enjoys being carried around on her father's shoulders.  She is called Monkey.  Stalker ends with her.  She is reading a book next to a wooden table with three different styled glasses on top.  She turns her face toward them and tilts her head as if she were slowing laying down on the edge of the table.  Then she proceeds to make all three glasses move away from her without touching them, telepathically pushing one of them off the far side of table.  Stalker ends on that shot.

Simultaneously with this, a train passes nearby and you hear the heavy rhythmic clanking of it on the steel tracks.  This loops back to the beginning of the film when a train passes and rattles a glass on the bedside table of the family's bedroom.  The wife is awake but lying on her side in bed looking away, Monkey is asleep, Stalker is awake and about to get out bed.  A hypnotically long dolly shot through some half opened double doors into their bedroom serves as the film's magnificent opening shot.  A small work of art.

Stalker is also unique because of its sound.  The music is minimal and mostly done with keyboard synthesizer.  There are moments when the classical music of Wagner, Ravel, and Beethoven are barely audible through the glaring mix of noise.  But the most impressive sounds are the electronic twanging of steel cables and the strange reverberation of natural sounds.  It gives the film a sharp, precise edge to it.  These are hard harmonics along with a lot of sounds of water and other things like feet tramping through the mud.  I have never heard a movie sound the way Stalker sounds.  It is highly affecting.

In the end, the narrative is actually a strong one in Stalker.   It is highly metaphorical by intent, though Tarkovsky declined to try to interpret the film.  The movie is ambiguous and abstract which makes those metaphors easy to rearrange in your head.  Lots of plausible explanations.  But, along with all that, there are beautiful, often strange, images.  There is this incredible sound.  There is a wonderful mystery being unraveled through the unfolding story of Porcupine and the Room, which turns out to be the basis for Writer deciding not to enter it.

I think it is also what Porcupine meant by stamping out those flower beds by the rail track.  Stalker asked him about it.  He said that Stalker would one day understand.  I believe that is fundamentally what Stalker understands coming out of the Zone this time.  How the people of the world will not respect the Zone for what it is.  People will not respect its beauty.  Professor is right.  As more people come they will ruin the Zone by the nature of their deepest desires.  Nevertheless, Stalker wants to do good.  He wants to help people.  But, Professor (the destroyer) and Writer (the nihilist) did not accept his help.  It breaks his heart and his wife can feel that.  The whole film is shot with this magnificent perspective of an incredible mystery.   

They arrive at the Room.  The camera does not see it from their perspective. 

Instead we cut to already being inside the Room looking out at the three.  The Room turns out to be this scummy place slightly submerged in water.

During an extended take it starts to rain inside the room.  Whereas the Room previously took on a slight, warm glow, now it is dark and the splattering of raindrops lights the scene.  A beautiful ugliness.  Magnificent shot.

 

Back in the real world, Monkey rides on her father's shoulders.  The dog has come back with the three.  Again, this is shot in color when it should be black and white.  Does this mean a part of the Zone has escaped into the world?  The film invites all sorts of musings about itself.  It is a puzzle as to why the dog is in black and white in the Zone but in color in the real world.  The filth of the industrial world pervades everything, in contrast to the apparent natural world inside the Zone.

Back to black and white.  The wife comforts a disillusioned Stalker.  We have returned to the bedroom of the opening shot.

Back to color.  Monkey can move objects with her mind.

Does Monkey possess a part of the Zone?

Stalker is strangely affecting, as are all of Trakovsky's films.  You don't know much about any of the characters.  You don't know much about the Zone.  But the images you are shown, the sounds that you hear, the brief philosophic exchanges of dialog, the unceasing juxtaposition of ugliness and beauty, all of this coalesces in your mind along with the contrasting use of color and black and white.  You feel...something while watching this film.  It is a powerful experience if you can handle the slow pacing and assorted ambiguities.

Of all the Tarkovsky films I watched recently, I have seen Mirror and Stalker multiple times.  I've watched Stalker five times now and it is clearly my favorite of his films.  Stalker gets better every time you see it (so does Mirror).  It is a powerful film, perhaps the best example of Tarkovsky's genius.  It makes you think.  It makes your feel.  It is a mystery of many possible interpretations.   

Stalker is a wonderful piece of art that can touch anyone uniquely and intimately if they can get beyond the apparent boredom of it.  Stalker is a 10.  It is one of the greatest movies of all time.  The prestigious British Film Institute Sight and Sound Poll has it currently at #29 on their Top 100 list.

How lucky I feel to have seen two great films these past few months!  New movies have not impressed me of late.  These wonderful works from the 1970's are an inspiring surprise.  It is exciting to get into Trakovsky's style.  I will be watching his movies repeatedly as I do with Nolan and Kubrick.  He puts a smile on my face.  A consummate artist of his craft.

There are a ton of first impressions and documentary type videos about Stalker on YouTube (check out here and here and here).  There is also a plethora of articles about the film online.  Examples of decent ones are here and here and here.

Watch Stalker on YouTube here.