257 - Stalker, 1979, Soviet Union. Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky.

Thursday, September 13, 2017

257 - Stalker, 1979, Soviet Union.  Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky.

The term stalker traditionally refers to a hunter, trapper, falconer, or fisherman.  One who uses stealth in the search for quarry or prey.

If one stands uprightly, like a plant stalk, then one might blend in with the environment and not be seen.

Because one might stealthily pursue a person as well as an animal, the word has deteriorated in common parlance into a term for harassment.

This is not a movie about someone who harasses people.

It is a movie about a professional wilderness guide, an explorer, like a Sherpa.

Tarkovsky is also said to have been influenced by the popular series of Rudyard Kipling stories known collectively as Stalky & Co.

For two hours and forty minutes Stalker will guide two men, the Writer and the Professor, through the Zone to get to the Room.

The Zone is a mysterious place in nature where strange things may happen.  It can be dangerous, and one must respect it.  Stalker refers to it as "a maze of traps."

The Room is a place where one gets what one desires.

The challenge is that one gets what one really desires, deep down, rather than what one thinks he desires.

Thus, the mysterious outcome of the previous stalker, a man named Porcupine, still looms largely in the air over their heads.

Porcupine had led his brother into the Zone.  His brother died.  When he got to the Room, Porcupine got rich.  Then he committed suicide.

Why?

Ostensibly, Porcupine wanted his brother's life back, but the Room knew that deep down he wanted money more than his brother, so the Room supplied it.  The conscious awareness of this fact drove Porcupine to his own despair.

In the Room the fulfillment of desire brings suffering with it.

Stalker wends his way through the Zone by tossing metal nuts with cloths tied to them.  By doing so, he can test the force fields and discover invisible paths for the men to take.

Unfortunately, his headstrong companions do not understand the need for respecting the Zone as Stalker does.  One of them tries to walk ahead.  The other grows obsessed with going back for his rucksack.  They keep Stalker's hands full in his responsibility to keep them safe.

The film begins, in the real world, in sepia tone monochrome.  Only when they get to the Zone do we revert to color.

Stalker gives its characters and its landscapes time and space to breathe.  To seek.  To find.

And the film, like nature, emerges through slow and steady growth through the artifacts of human ruin.