Tarkovsky's STALKER

I just watched my first Tarkovsky film last night, Stalker. I don't know how popular this one is among his fans, and the only reason I started with this one is that I liked the sound of the synopsis on Netflix. I wasn't disappointed.

I love these kinds of stories, the kind that are science fiction in name only, but are really philosophical character pieces. This is an incredibly complex film, not to mention beautiful. We begin with a sepia toned image, the color is the brown rust of hopeless industrial slum life (the color of modern life?), and then our three main characters reach the Zone, and we come upon a beautiful green waste land. Nature runs wild over the civilization that used to be there, and the ruined objects that Tarkovsky draws our attention to are significant: wasted buildings, discarded weapons, sewer drains.

The film really picks up once the characters reach the Zone. The stalker, a guide of sorts and our main character, is taking a writer and a scientist to room deep within the Zone where, apparently, one's innermost wishes are fulfilled. Throughout their journey, we are treated to a bit of philosophical conflict between the writer and the scientist, with the stalker stuck in the middle.

It is a bit hard to really get what Tarkovsky is going for here, especially after only one viewing and taking spoilers into account. But, the stalker seems to represent a common sort of fellow, and his dueling employers (who eventually reach a synthesis of sort against him) are obviously the voices of the intellectual classes. The stalker is a man who dreams and hopes, and his companions eventually try very hard to crush those hopes. And it seems that they do, in the climax, but Tarkovsky's cinematic flourishes toward the end of the film seem to suggest that they are right about the Zone, but ultimately wrong about what that entails.

What about the stuff at the end with the daughter, though? Not only is she filmed in color, but she's capable of things that no one else is.

I think that the three main characters can also serve as parts of Tarkovsky himself. I'm not well-versed in the man's life or work at all, but I can see the Writer being the part of him that is successful and needs to remain so, with the Stalker being the part of him that struggles and strives to reach something better, for example.

Maybe intellectual class was a poor choice of words. This is also the first film I've seen to come out of Soviet-era Russia, so it was kind of hard for me not to have that in mind.

I know almost nothing about Tarkovsky, so that's very interesting. Stalker is a very layered film, so it is kind of hard to tell whether the criticism of the intellectuals in the movie is completely genuine. What they say about the room when they get to it (and don't even go in!) rings true to me, and I think that we have a statement about making something real in this film. The main character could go on living as a dreamer, but I think that his final decision to return to his family speaks volumes. This line of thought makes the film pretty subversive for it's time and place, actually, making it a criticism of the revolutionary ideals of the USSR (hell, maybe even the USA!). The lingering shots of the daughter in the last chunk of the movie convey this, I think, and she represents Stalker's sacrifice of the ideal and a renewed commitment to reality, and the final shot of the film (it's in color, a lingering shot of the daughter moving some glasses around with her mind may even illustrate a marriage between the fantasy of the Zone and the real.

Thematically, I think this is something that is extremely relevant for a post-Obama America. During the campaign, we were besieged by a sort of revolutionary, inspirational rhetoric. Hope and change are the new buzzwords in our political realm. The new president is coming under fire for not bringing the change he promised, etc., as if he were meant to be its lone harbinger. This film has something to say about that: Hope is a type of fantasy, and will remain so unless we manifest it, and not simply in a political way.

Well, I am sympathetic to elements of Rousseau's political theory, mainly the stuff he expounds on in his first two discourses and Emile. Mainly the theory that the development of personal virtue and the health of systems that we typically think of as outside the political milieu (friendships and families, for example) are central to truer notions of human progress, happiness, and freedom.

I suppose that I can see this reflected in this film to some extent with regard to some feelings toward the USSR, especially taking the last half-hour or so into account. The main character, if we take him as a common man-type, is dependent on a dream, and notions of happiness that are rooted in the satisfaction of deeply rooted desires. He seems to stand for a philosophy of receivership, and before the climax of the film he is extremely neglectful of the things that he has created, his marriage and his daughter. By the end of the film, he has excepted his family, and seems to have given up going to the Zone (the hope-driven dream world).

The film doesn't seem to say that this makes him ultimately free, though. Stalker still lives in his sepia world, but it has a splash of color in it, his daughter, and this only happens when he accepts and begins to live with what he's created.

The film seems to be saying something about the politics of receivership inherent in all as yet existant political systems. There's a call here for the dreamers to wake up and start creating their own lives. It's odd, though, because it doesn't do this in a "revolutionary" way, but rather a cathartic way, if that makes sense.