Film Review
The last film that Andrei Tarkovsky made in the Soviet Union is almost
certainly his greatest, an enchantingly poetic contemplation on the
meaning of life that deserves to be on everyone's top ten list of the
greatest films ever made. Like his heroes, Bresson, Bergman and
Dreyer, Tarkovsky brings to cinema an aesthetic of breathtaking
originality that allows him to create a purely transcendental
experience, one that is imbued with profound observations on the nature
of man and his relationship with art.
Stalker is a uniquely captivating
film, not only mesmerisingly beautiful in its composition but also
endlessly fascinating in its meticulous probing of the human
psyche. It is a film that, once seen, is never forgotten - a work
of eerie stylistic brilliance with a totally indefinable charm.
Any attempt to summarise
Stalker's
pared-back narrative is doomed to end up making it sound like an insane
cross-between Joseph Conrad's
Heart
of Darkness and
The Wizard of Oz (1939).
The fact that the film employs the same sepia-to-colour switch of the
famous MGM musical can only reinforce this impression (mercifully there
are no Munchkins - well, not visible ones). If you had to
categorise the film it would probably fall within the 'quest'
genre. Looking suspiciously like characters in a Russian version
of the British sitcom
Last of the
Summer Wine, three creepy middle-aged men set off on an
expedition across open country, each looking for something to bring
meaning to his empty existence. These represent three archetypes
of Soviet intelligentsia - the tormented writer, the dedicated
scientist and the fanatical faith zealot.
The characters are not even given names; they are referred to by their
function: Writer, Professor and Stalker (meaning guide). As in
The Wizard of Oz, this happy bunch
of Dostoyevskian losers are lured to a place that offers them
redemption but what in fact redeems them is not the goal but the
journey. The Room that lies at the heart of the Zone, a place
which promises to fulfil the deepest wish of anyone who enters it,
turns out to be a pure MacGuffin. Or does it? The
importance of the Room is not that it exists or has the powers
attributed to it, but that the protagonists
believe it exists. If we
equate the Room with hope then one interpretation of
Stalker becomes readily
apparent. It is a film that invites us to ponder whether human
existence is bearable, indeed possible, without hope. For the
word 'hope' you could equally substitute the word 'faith'.
Tarkovsky's liberal use of Christian iconography (including
rows of telegraph poles shot as crucifixes) suggests that
a rational mind's conflict with religious belief is
what lies at the heart of the film.
Stalker is the film that
killed Andrei Tarkovsky. Well, that's one theory. The
cancer that claimed Tarkovsky's life, seven years after he made the
film, is believed to have been caused by exposure to toxic chemicals at
the various East European locations used to depict the rooms
within the Zone. In several locations, Tarkovsky and his crew
came into contact with water that was polluted by poisonous chemicals,
and as a result several of them subsequently fell ill and died.
This tragic outcome has added to
Stalker's
reputation as a jinxed production.
The first major setback encountered by Tarkovsky very nearly scuppered
the film before it even reached the editing stage. Having spent
almost a year shooting the location exteriors Tarkovsky found, on
developing the footage, that it was totally unusable. The
director was under pressure from the film's backers to abandon the film
and his relationship with his cinematographer Georgy Rerberg ended in
acrimony. Only by offering to make
Stalker as a two-part film was
Tarkovsky able to raise the money to complete it. The hiatus was
to be providential, as it gave its author time to put more work in on
the script, to give more depth to the main characters and make the
Stalker a more central figure. Through an almost soul-destroying
quirk of fate, Tarkovsky was compelled to distil his art and ended up
delivering what is not only his best film but also one of the all-time
masterpieces of cinema.
And there is no doubt that
Stalker
is a masterpiece, a piece of
film poetry that is unlike anything else the seventh art has given
us. It is hard to account for the hypnotic effect that the film
has over its spectator throughout its ample two-and-half hours of
runtime. Most of the film consists of three pathetic individuals
ruminating on the emptiness of their lives and arguing amongst
themselves. The dangers that they talk about never arise and we
are tempted to dismiss all three as delusional cranks.
Tarkovsky's habitual use of the long take, with some takes lasting as
long as four minutes, slows the pace of the film down to an
imperceptible crawl. Within a take, the camera scarcely moves and
the editing is so subtle that you hardly notice the cuts. Indeed
the only transition that is apparent is the sudden switch from sepia to
colour in the first part of the film, a transition that is so abrupt
and unexpected that it almost causes you to leap out of your
seat.
Expressed in these terms,
Stalker
would seem to be an endurance test for even the most hardy of arthouse
film enthusiasts, and yet it is a film that is so inexpressibly
rewarding once you have surrendered yourself to it, its undercurrent of
dark humour adding to its appeal and mystique. Right from its
eerie opening you cannot help being drawn into its strange, subtly
surreal landscape, to become a willing prisoner in Tarkovsky's opaquely
allegorical fantasy. We are as keen to get into the Zone as the
three protagonists, and their journey of enlightenment and
self-discovery becomes ours. When we leave the Zone we are not as
we were. The world has changed. Like Dorothy after her
colourful escapade in Oz, things will never be the same again.
The Stalker will be with us always, haunting our consciousness
forever. Are you brave enough to enter the Zone...?
© James Travers 2014
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