Stalker

Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky

1979

*****

Upon its release in 1979, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker received a less than favourable reception. Officials at Goskino, a government group otherwise known as the State Committee for Cinematography, were particularly critical of the film. On being told that Stalker should be faster and more dynamic, Tarkovsky replied “The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.” The Goskino representative then stated that he was trying to give the point of view of the audience. Tarkovsky supposedly retorted “I am only interested in the views of two people, one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.” Stalker is a masterpiece, perticularlly in its cinematography but while it certainly isn’t fast, it sure as hell is dynamic. It takes place in the indefinite future, where the "Stalker" (Alexander Kaidanovsky) works in some unclear territory as a guide who leads people through the "Zone" - an area in which the normal laws of reality do not apply. The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside. The area containing the Zone is sealed off by the government and great hazards exist within it. At home with his wife and daughter, the Stalker's wife (Alisa Freindlich) begs him not to go into the Zone but he ignores her pleas. In a rundown bar, the Stalker meets his next clients for a trip into the Zone. The "Writer" (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the "Professor" (Nikolai Grinko) agree to put their fates in the Stalker's hands. They remain nameless and the characters refer to one another by their professions. They evade the military blockade that guards the Zone, surviving gunfire from the guards. They then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway work car. The Stalker tells his clients they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers which lie ahead and explains the Zone's dangers are invisible. The Stalker tests for traps by throwing metal nuts tied to strips of cloth ahead of them. The complicated path that they must take cannot be specifically seen or heard but can only be sensed. The safest path is never the straight path. The Writer is skeptical of any real danger, but the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice. As they travel, the three men discuss their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer expresses his fear of losing his inspiration. He appears angry and stressed. The Professor seems less anxious, though he insists on carrying along a small backpack, its contents unknown. While the Professor's desires are not clear, he reluctantly gives in to repeated pleas from the Writer and admits he hopes to win a Nobel Prize for a scientific analysis of the Zone. The Stalker insists he has no motive beyond the altruistic aim of aiding the desperate. At times, he refers to a previous Stalker named "Porcupine", who had led his brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room, come into possession of a large sum of money, and in shame committed suicide, as the Room only grants true desires. While the Room appears to fulfill a visitor's wishes, these might not be consciously expressed wishes but unconscious desires. In addition it appears that the Zone itself has a kind of sentience. When the Writer later confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, the Stalker replies that his information came from the now deceased Porcupine. After traveling through tunnels the three reach their destination. They determine that their goal lies inside a decayed and decrepit industrial building. In a small antechamber, a phone begins to ring. The Writer answers and cryptically speaks into the phone, stating "this is not the clinic", before hanging up. The surprised Professor decides to use the phone to telephone a colleague. In the ensuing conversation, he reveals his true intentions in undertaking the journey. The Professor has brought a nuclear device with him, and he intends to destroy the Room to prevent its use by evil men. The three then fight verbally and physically in a larger antechamber just outside the Room. The fight ends in a draw with all three of them exhausted. As they catch their breath, the Writer experiences an epiphany about the Room's true nature. He argues that when Porcupine met his goal, despite his conscious motives, the room fulfilled Porcupine's secret desire for wealth, instead of bringing back his brother from death. This in turn prompted Porcupine to commit suicide. The Writer further reasons the Room is dangerous to those who seek it for negative reasons. With his earlier fears assuaged, the Professor gives up on his plan of destroying the Room. Instead, he disassembles his bomb and scatters its pieces. The men rest before the doorway and never enter the Room. Rain begins to fall into the Room through its ruined ceiling, then gradually fades away. The Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor are shown back in the bar, and are met there by the Stalker's wife and daughter. A black dog that had followed the three men through the Zone is in the bar with them. When his wife asks where he got the dog, Stalker declares that it just came to him, and he remarks that he felt unable to leave it behind. Later, when the Stalker's wife tells him that she would like to visit the Room herself, he expresses doubts about the Zone. He states that he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. As the Stalker sleeps, his wife contemplates their relationship in a monologue delivered directly to the camera. She declares that she knew perfectly well that life with him would be hard, since he would be unreliable and their children would face challenges, but she concludes that she is better off with him despite their many trials. "Martiška" the couple's daughter, sitting alone in the kitchen, recites a love poem by Fyodor Tyutchev. Martiška holds the large book and lays her head on a table. She then appears to use psychokinesis to push three drinking glasses across it, one after the other moving across the table, the third one falling to the floor. A train passes by where the Stalker's family lives, and the entire apartment shakes. As the noise of the train begins to subside, the film ends. The screenplay was written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and was loosely based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic which combined elements of sci-fi with dramatic philosophical and psychological themes – themes that Andrei Tarkovsky explored so well. The meaning of the word "stalk" was derived from its use by the Strugatsky brothers in Roadside Picnic, which alluded to Rudyard Kipling's character "Stalky" in his Stalky & Co. stories. In Roadside Picnic, "Stalker" was a common nickname for men engaged in the illegal enterprise of prospecting for and smuggling alien artifacts out of the "Zone". After reading the novel, Tarkovsky initially recommended it to a friend, the film director Mikhail Kalatozov, thinking that Kalatozov might be interested in adapting it into a film. Kalatozov abandoned the project when he could not obtain the rights to the novel. Tarkovsky then became increasingly interested in adapting the novel and expanding its concepts. He hoped that it would allow him to make a film that conforms to the classical Aristotelian unity, that is the unity of action, the unity of location, and the unity of time. The film departs considerably from the novel. The film has basically nothing in common with the novel except for the two words "Stalker" and "Zone". Tarkovsky viewed the idea of the Zone as a dramatic tool to draw out the personalities of the three protagonists, particularly the psychological damage from everything that happens to the idealistic views of the Stalker as he finds himself unable to make others happy. It is interesting that Apocalypse Now was released at the same time. At the height of the Cold War, Russia and America were making films that dealt with a journey to the heart of darkness, although I feel that Stalker asked far more questions. Both films however, are well known for the problems they had during production. Tarkovsky spent a year shooting a version of the outdoor scenes of Stalker. However, when the crew returned to Moscow, they found that all of the film had been improperly developed and their footage was unusable. The film had been shot on new Kodak 5247 stock with which Soviet laboratories were not very familiar. Even before the film stock problem was discovered, relations between Tarkovsky and Stalker's first cinematographer, Georgy Rerberg, had deteriorated. After seeing the poorly developed material, Tarkovsky fired Rerberg. By the time the film stock defect was discovered, Tarkovsky had shot all the outdoor scenes and had to abandon them. Tarkovsky was so despondent that he wanted to abandon further work on the film. After the loss of the film stock, the Soviet film boards wanted to shut the film down, but Tarkovsky came up with a solution. He asked to be allowed to make a two-part film, which meant additional deadlines and more funds. Tarkovsky ended up reshooting almost all of the film with a new cinematographer, Aleksandr Knyazhinsky. The finished version of Stalker is said to be completely different from the one Tarkovsky originally shot, although some of the crew who saw both versions argued that they were identical. It is said that the rushes of the first version of the film were kept by editor Lyudmila Feyginova in her home for years. They were destroyed by a fire that also claimed her life. The film uses sepia for the world outside the Zone and color footage within the Zone. To allow changes to the color tone of a long strip of film over an extended take, Tarkovsky built a long film processing vat which had different temperatures along the way. Like Tarkovsky's other films, Stalker relies on long takes with slow, subtle camera movement, rejecting the use of rapid montage. The film contains 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of 88 seconds and many shots lasting for more than four minutes. The central part of the film, in which the characters travel within the Zone, was shot in a few days at two deserted hydro power plants on the Jägala river near Tallinn, Estonia. Several people involved in the film production, including Tarkovsky, died from causes that some crew members attributed to the film's long shooting schedule in toxic locations. Sound designer Vladimir Sharun recalled “We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker of snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris.” The film’s score was composed by Eduard Artemyev, who had also composed the scores for Tarkovsky's previous films Solaris and The Mirror. For Stalker Artemyev composed and recorded two different versions of the score. The first score was done with an orchestra alone but was rejected by Tarkovsky. The second score that was used in the final film was created on a synthesizer along with traditional instruments that were manipulated using sound effects. In the final film score the boundaries between music and sound were blurred, as natural sounds and music interact to the point where they are indistinguishable. Initially, Tarkovsky had no clear understanding of the musical atmosphere of the final film and only an approximate idea where in the film the music was to be. Even after he had shot all the material he continued his search for the ideal film score, wanting a combination of Oriental and Western music. In a conversation with Artemyev he explained that he needed music that reflects the idea that although the East and the West can coexist, they are not able to understand each other. One of Tarkovsky's ideas was to perform Western music on Oriental instruments, or vice versa, performing Oriental music on European instruments. Artemyev proposed to try this idea with the motet Pulcherrima Rosa by an anonymous 14th century Italian composer dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In its original form Tarkovsky did not perceive the motet as suitable for the film and asked Artemyev to give it an Oriental sound. Later, Tarkovsky proposed to invite musicians from Armenia and Azerbaijan and to let them improvise on the melody of the motet. A musician was invited from Azerbaijan who played the main melody on a tar based on mugham, accompanied by orchestral background music written by Artemyev. Tarkovsky, who, unusually for him, attended the full recording session, rejected the final result as not what he was looking for. Rethinking their approach they finally found the solution in a theme that would create a state of inner calmness and inner satisfaction, or as Tarkovsky said "space frozen in a dynamic equilibrium." Artemyev knew about a musical piece from Indian classical music where a prolonged and unchanged background tone is performed on a tambura. As this gave Artemyev the impression of frozen space, he used this inspiration and created a background tone on his synthesizer similar to the background tone performed on the tambura. The tar then improvised on the background sound, together with a flute as a European, Western instrument. To mask the obvious combination of European and Oriental instruments he passed the foreground music through the effect channels of his synthesizer. These effects included modulating the sound of the flute and lowering the speed of the tar, so that what Artemyev called "the life of one string" could be heard. Tarkovsky was amazed by the result, especially liking the sound of the tar, and used the theme without any alterations in the film. This in turn effected the overall sound design. The title sequence is accompanied by Artemyev's main theme. The opening sequence of the film showing Stalker's room is mostly silent. Periodically one hears what could be a train. The sound becomes louder and clearer over time until the sound and the vibrations of objects in the room give a sense of a train's passing by without the train's being visible. This aural impression is quickly subverted by the muffled sound of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The source of this music is unclear, thus setting the tone for the blurring of reality in the film. Tarkovsky said that he wanted "music that is more or less popular, that expresses the movement of the masses, the theme of humanity's social destiny." He added, "But this music must be barely heard beneath the noise, in a way that the spectator is not aware of it.” In one scene, the sound of a train becomes more and more distant as the sounds of a house, such as the creaking floor, water running through pipes, and the humming of a heater become more prominent in a way that psychologically shifts the audience. While the Stalker leaves his house and wanders around an industrial landscape, the audience hears industrial sounds such as train whistles, ship foghorns, and train wheels. When the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor set off from the bar in an off-road vehicle, the engine noise merges into an electronic tone. The natural sound of the engine falls off as the vehicle reaches the horizon. Initially almost inaudible, the electronic tone emerges and replaces the engine sound as if time has frozen. The film ends as it began, with the sound of a train passing by, accompanied by the muffled sound of Beethoven's Ninth symphony, this time the Ode to Joy from the final moments of the symphony. As in the rest of the film the disconnect between the visual image and the sound leaves the audience in the unclear whether the sound is real or an illusion. Stalker explores our memories, our fears, fantasies, and nightmares, our paradoxical impulses, and that yearning for something that's simultaneously beyond our reach. It is essentially an allegory about human consciousness and a starkly beautiful one at that. It is an unquestionable masterpiece, one that would sadly kill it’s creator.