Stalker

Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being.  Because what has hardened will never win.

Through whose eyes do we witness 1979's STALKER? Its three main characters are certainly symbolic.  The titular individual (Alexander Kaidanovksy) is a guide to and through a decimated (though strangely beautiful) area in the Russian countryside known as the "Zone", a place sealed off by armed government troops and filled with hidden dangers.  There is an invisible path that leads to the "Room", where one's wishes are granted.  The other two characters in this film are identified as "Writer"(Anatoly Solonitsyn) and "Professor" (Nikolai Grinko), paying customers who seek the Room for inspiration and possibly research to win a Noble Prize.

The Stalker can be seen as a deity, Intelligent Design.  He knows the Zone and its shifting landscape. Where certain suicide occurs if one deviates from the path.  The path itself is not straight, even if the destination is in plain view.  The more rational writer and scientist are frequently skeptical, baffled by the Stalker's instructions.  They resist and relent.  They argue about art versus science, how unromantic mathematics are.  Fame is empty and demoralizing.  Faith is increasingly marginalized.  That last idea is probably the main one in director Andrei Tarkovsky's near masterpiece of a movie, one whose glacial pace and long takes (some over four minutes) only add to its stunning essay of sound, vision, and philosophy.

Tarkovsky's symbolism is sometimes elegantly subtle, other times almost embarrassingly obvious.  The Zone is an endless wilderness of flowing water and vegetation, of man's ruins.  A place that may lead Man to further desperation, rather than the expected salvation.  A place the Stalker fears may reveal his inability to satisfy and/or fulfill those who follow him.  As many have pointed out, the Zone resembles the fallout of Chernobyl (the surrounding area called the "Zone of alienation") seven years before that disaster occurred.  Numerous scenes in STALKER were shot in abandoned power plants.

The outside photography (Alexander Knyazhinsky's work is a marvel) allows flowing water and its contents to remain onscreen long enough to make viewers wonder why.  We start creating theories.  Maybe begin doubting them. There's plenty of time.  Even with static shots, we fear we are missing something, perhaps akin to the thoughts of the movie's journeymen. They eventually cut the long silences with their chatter, offering monologues and arguing about problems with which many viewers can relate.  All things that happen on the path to promise.  What is Trakovsky saying when a ringing telephone breaks the tranquil of an antechamber, an area close to the "Room"?  Not so hallowed ground? Cut off from reality? Can the Room truly be entered? Has Man already tainted it? Tried to (or plans to) destroy it? In such an effort, will science prevail over divinity if that plan succeeds? Is it already too late?

Point of view was the question at the beginning of this review.   Are we seeing STALKER through the eyes of God?  A distant god, one that only occasionally moves close enough for us to see the actors clearly? Sees everything outside the Zone in brown monochrome? Near the end of the film, is God speaking through the Stalker, lamenting the behavior of men who seek worldly fame, fortune, and wield intellect, though who find blind faith useless? They can't see the path, but do they care? Do they think there is nothing at the end?

This is an endlessly fascinating motion picture.  Quite close to perfect, and essential for anyone serious about that kind of cinema that can be called "art".