Ok, I'm going to start by saying something that I've said more times on here over the years than I could possibly count: Andrei Tarkovsky was born 50 years too late. He really should've come up during the silent era (and I'm not just saying that to prime us for
@Yotsuya's silent week next week
). His visual sensibilities, his compositions and his camera movements, would've been right at home in the 20s alongside the sweeping camera of Murnau and the strict compositions of Lang, and honestly he probably would've been able to blow their shit off the screen. In the sound era, however, he tries to go beyond being a visual artist to being a poet-cum-philosopher and he sucks at it. Like,
really sucks. It's unbearable listening to his idiot philosophy dialogue. He's at his best, and his films are at their best, when there's no dialogue and it's all about the visuals, about the sound, and about the general mood.
Now, having said that, for this week, super nerd that I am, I couldn't just pop in
Stalker. I haven't seen any Tarkovsky movies in almost ten years, so I needed to at least refresh my memory on his prior sci-fi effort. I had to rewatch
Solaris first, and man, what a surprise that was: That movie's pretty terrible. Back in the day, I used to think that that and
Ivan's Childhood were his best films, but Jesus,
Solaris is not very good at all.
Stalker, on the other hand, has continued to grow in my esteem. I have both
Ivan's Childhood and
Andrei Rublev with me and I plan on rewatching those over the weekend, so I can't say what my current Tarkovsky rankings look like, but between
Solaris and
Stalker, that shit ain't even close.
Obviously, there are tremendous similarities between the two films, not least because they're from the same filmmaker in the same genre from the same decade. But the differences are the keys to
Stalker's superiority. First and foremost, I believe the characters. The characters in
Solaris were laughably cartoonish save for Kelvin, who was just a jackass who, due to the weak script and the worse acting, didn't manage to produce a single genuine moment in three hours, and Hari, who wasn't anything to write home about. In
Stalker, on the other hand, the trio Stalker, Writer, and Professor is great. As I said, Tarkovsky's a terrible poet/philosopher, so some of Writer's lines had me cringing, but psychologically-speaking, I get and buy that character. Same for Professor. And Stalker is probably Tarkovsky's best single character, even better than Ivan (at least from memory; we'll see what the weekend brings).
If you went through Tarkovsky's whole filmography, you'd be able to trace a theme that you
could label nihilism but that I think would be more accurately labeled despair. I don't remember the horrendously boring
Andrei Rublev, so I don't know if/how that one fits, but
Ivan's Childhood,
Solaris, and
Stalker all seem to feature reflections - from the characters within the films and from Tarkovsky with the films - on (a) the unnoticed presence of beauty even in the midst of sadness/horror (the ending of
Ivan's Childhood is one of the GOAT endings and as tragic as it is beautiful,
Solaris has some tender moments despite its general fucked up-ness, and
Stalker is essentially
about finding beauty and serenity amidst sadness and devastation) and (b) the loss of hope because beauty is so rarely noticed.
Stalker is the zenith as far as this theme goes, and Stalker's breakdown near the end is one of the few genuinely moving pieces of dialogue in a Tarkovsky film.
Having said all of that, the film definitely didn't need to be north of 2.5 hours. Tarkovsky could've easily done what he did in 90 minutes. And probably should've. In a way, the languid pacing let's you off the emotional hook, so to speak. Writer will say something telling, or Stalker will tap into something profound...and then there'll be a four-minute tracking shot that's not just superfluous but actually counterproductive. We get it, Andrei. Slowness is your thing. But come on. Kubrick loved zooms, but not
every shot is a fucking zoom. Scorsese loves slow-motion, but not
every shot is in fucking slow-motion. Tarkovsky does the slow thing, I get it, but not
everything has to be so glacially slow. And
Stalker in particular didn't lend itself to that kind of pacing.
Stalker has a trance-like atmosphere and there's a sense at key moments of almost gliding or floating like a spirit through the Zone. That's what Tarkovsky should've zeroed-in on and amplified. Instead, he'd often snuff that out with boredom-inducing nothing shots and kill the mood.
Still, though, I've come to really appreciate
Stalker on the whole. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination - Tarkovsky doesn't have a single masterpiece to his credit, hence my claim that he's massively overrated; the man is nowhere near the league that the Kubricks, the Hitchcocks, and the Bergmans were playing in - but it's a damn good movie and I'm glad I got the chance to rewatch it.
@Cubo de Sangre and
@Tufts, it's taken me ten years and three viewings to come around the way that I have on
Stalker. Obviously, you're not compelled to give it another shot down the road, but I'd recommend it as a viewing experiment if not as a genuine investment in Tarkovsky's work.
So, the Russian Woody Harrelson, the Russian Robert Duval, and The Russian Ian McKellan (ok, that's a stretch), walk into a bar...
"Let's make a film about nothing!".
"Nothing??"
Stalker is a beautiful film that is difficult to intellectualize, I think because it rarely attempts to explain itself.
Normally, that shit pisses me off. It even kind of pissed me off in
Solaris, which I felt was seriously lacking in imagination/inspiration. But in
Stalker the mystery angle is integrated well with the hope/faith angle.
The sounds add an even higher dimension of hypnotic, trance inducing beauty.
More than the ambient noise, I love the theme song entitled "Meditation."
I'd be comfortable labeling it a masterpiece.
I think it could be interesting to discuss motivations for going to the Room, and ultimate decisions not to enter.
That doesn't require much intellectual stretching I don't think. They get at it pretty explicitly with the whole "innermost" conversation. Plus, there's this crock from Writer:
"How would I know the right word for what I want? How would I know that actually I don't want what I want? Or that I actually don't want what I don't want? They are elusive things: the moment we name them, their meaning disappears, melts, dissolves like a jellyfish in the sun. My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?"
This type of bullshit ("nothing means anything," or "we can't know anything," or whatever) is motivated by fear, and it's the worst kind of fear: The fear of knowing yourself. "Know thyself" isn't just self-help drivel. It's the ultimate moral imperative. It's also the scariest thing imaginable for some people. In his book
The Undiscovered Self, Jung wrote that, in his estimation, "the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear - on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious." That's what we're dealing with in
Stalker IMO. Hope requires a certain kind of bravery, a willingness to move forward and go for something. Fear and hope are mutually exclusive. In Writer's case, he's a man consumed with fear, so of course he's the most hopeless.
Professor wasn't as fleshed out (a weakness in Tarkovsky's script IMO), so it's not as clear-cut, but it's still evident based on his just going along with Writer and not entering the room that he let his fear - maybe fear that he's
not as good/righteous a person as he thought he was, showing up with that bomb to "protect" everybody - make the call.
Stalker, then, is the one who, to use a colloquialism, you could say had "a healthy fear" of the Zone, but, more accurately, Stalker
knew the Zone, he had
faith in his ability to navigate the Zone, and so he had no reason to be afraid. However, by film's end, at which point he'd fallen into despair, he'd become fearful, doubting that the Room would work for his wife. Where's his faith regarding the person with whom he should be the closest and therefore about whom he should have the least doubt? He preached the value of weakness, but it's because he's weak and afraid - and fear is obviously a variety of weakness - that he's in despair.
Not to mention the meaning of Monkey.
That last scene pisses me off. I don't like random nonsense like that which is the definition of inexplicable.
Personally, I'd say its in contention for most beautiful film of all time. I mean, they painted the freaking trees and the leafs to get just the kind of atmosphere Tarkovsky wanted.
That's nothing compared to Kubrick having BNCs fitted with NASA lenses - in short, creating his own personal supercamera - so that he could shoot
Barry Lyndon by candlelight
I think the most obvious and concrete theme in it is Nuclear Fallout.
I definitely get this vibe, too, but I wouldn't say that it's a
theme. It's more like the inspiration or the impetus. Tarkovsky pretty clearly goes beyond anything man-made/Earthly, including anything nuclear.
When critics use the word "meditation", its just some bullshit synonym for artsy that is meant to sound deep and impressive 95% of the times.
Stalker is one of the few films you can call meditative. Other non-Tarkovsky examples? Hmm... Dead Man I suppose?
Dead Man is a good call. And, as Tarkovsky had in
Stalker, Jarmusch had a recurring piece of music to get you and keep you in the mood.
For other non-Tarkovsky examples of meditative films - all of which also have exquisite music, which is something of a prerequisite for hitting that meditative level - I'd nominate
2001 (duh),
Once Upon a Time in America (more dreamlike than meditative on the whole but in parts it's definitely meditative), and
Werckmeister Harmonies.
The real world is dull, opressive and bleary -- the Zone is colorful, magical and intoxicatingly vibrant. Its basically a holy, spiritual realm. As I mentioned, man-made matter seems to break down in it, contrasting with the spiritual lush eternal nature (Tarkovsky seemed to hold nature at almost a religious awe). That scene where Stalker lies down in the grass and just basks in the earthiness of the Zone is such a magnificent statement on just how much he is at home in it.[
Notice that when they're outside The Zone. Whenever his daughter is framed alone, the image is in color instead of tinted brown. Symbolizing how she has something of the spiritual magic of the Zone within her.
Hmm. It's interesting that you're kind of going Zone-to-characters whereas I'd go characters-to-Zone. In other words, whereas you say that Stalker's daughter "has something of the spiritual magic of the Zone within her," I'd want to say that she and her father have something of the spiritual magic within them that is necessary to appreciate/get the most out of/what have you the Zone.
Now, that's on the
thematic level. On the
dramatic level, if the Zone really was the product of a meteor or nuclear fallout and Stalker was genetically altered and produced a genetically altered offspring, then there's a direct (as opposed to thematic/allegorical) link. The fact that that's murky is, IMO, another knock on Tarkovsky's script. But it's interesting enough to think about to where I don't think that it does serious damage.
This is steeped in ancient Christian teaching. The world is metaphysical. We have matter which is base and sinful (non-Zone). And we have a spiritual realm that is home of holiness and higher ideals (Zone).
And, once again, non-believing sinner that I am, I'd want to say something like "the Kingdom of God is within," meaning that it's not the
actual,
physical place (Eden, Heaven, the Zone, what have you) that's the key but the state of mind/spirit that's the key and that the Zone
as a place helps (the way that for some people going to yoga helps) people tap into that.
The conflict of the film between him and Writer/Proffessor is played like a crisis of fate, with others not thinking that human minds are pure enough to take what the Zone is offering them, since mankind is inherently base and sinful (and unknowlagable of its excact self) so the results would only be more evil. Stalker is spiritually destroyed by this, almost appearing as if at the stage of dying. But Stalker did manage to impart some of the Zone on another person. He just didn't notice it. Because it was his daughter.
I'm with you on all of this except the daughter part. Tarkovsky left that shit too WTF to say anything as concrete as this and for anything that happens to be tied to her in any definitive way.
By jove this is the greatest correction of an injustice since Shogun-Machida 2!
Chinatown will always suck, but
Stalker's not a bad piece of cinema
Going back to stalker though I think you can see a very significant influence from it in Scott's Blade Runner.
Maybe it's just me, but I can hear Rutger Hauer's voice in those lines from Writer that I quoted earlier.
"They are elusive things: the moment we name them, their meaning disappears, melts, dissolves, like a jellyfish in the sun."
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
Then again, it could just be the presence of similes
You could argue I spose perhaps a view of human progress generally highlighting that new discovery's in themselves may not lead to advancement is they don't go hand in hand with moral advancement. Something he'd stated much more obviously in the past with Solaris.
Good point. In
Solaris, there's the back-and-forth about how: "Knowledge is only valid when it's based on morality"/"Man is the one who renders science moral or immoral"/"Then don't make science immoral." In
Stalker, it's more in the vein of: If the world is our oyster then we need to cultivate our appetites to truly appreciate it.
Stalker believes only the truly unhappy can make it through
Which makes no fucking sense. And that this is nonsensical seems to be confirmed by the fact that neither the wretched Writer nor the wretched Professor enter the Room. It's not because they're
not wretched that they don't enter the Room;
it's because they're wretched. What's more, it's on this trip that they both seem to come to the realization that they're wretched and how wretched they are.
How that squares with the "logic" of the Zone and/or the Room, I have no idea. But that shit from Stalker about the wretched and the weak and all the rest of it has never made sense to me and seems to be flatly contradicted by the film itself.
In the final scene it seems like maybe Stalker has never seen anyone actually make it through and go inside.
BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL WRETCHED!!!!!!!!!
Stalker tells them that the Zone reacts and changed depending on whose observing it.
We do see the Stalker mention that the zone "wakes up" when people enter it so the idea it was being built partly by the minds of those entraining it could be said it still be hinted at.
I don't think that there's any actual
creating going on on the parts of those in the Zone any more than there's any actual creating going on on the parts of the crew orbiting Solaris. Rather, there's a response from the Ocean/the Zone that I analogize in my head to the effect that observation has on particle behavior. Only, in
Solaris and
Stalker, the Ocean/Zone seem, unlike electrons, to be sentient if not conscious.
I have always wondered at the significance of the nuts
It's always seemed pretty straightforward to me: Since "everything is always changing" in the Zone, going from nut to nut keeps the perceptual field intact and precludes the kind of insane spatial dislocation that Stalker and Writer experience with Professor during the knapsack fiasco.