Director: Andrei TarkovskyWriters: Arkadiy Strugatskiy, Boris Strugatskiy and Andrei Tarkovsky
A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes. -IMDB.com
Cast Character
Alisa Freyndlikh ... Zhena Stalkera
Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy. ... Stalker
Anatoliy Solonitsyn ... Pisatel, Writer
Nikolay Grinko ... Professor
Natalya Abramova ... Marta
The first thing I'll say is that I admire a Science Fiction movie without any special effects. That takes creativity and courage. I also like the rich colorful shots of nature. It can remind one of a Terrence Malick film in a way. "Stalker is visually quite arresting. Tarkovsky uses color to set apart the different worlds, filming the scenes set in Stalker’s home city in gloriously dismal sepia and those in the Zone in color." (Pridham) The Stalker has a daughter named Monkey.
This is not the first time has been to the Zone. He has been there many times. He was offered a job says his wife. Stalker must like the excitement of taking people to the room that grants wishes.
"They have a daughter together, a crippled girl named Monkey, who suffers from disabilities apparently brought on by her father’s repeated visits to the Zone. He has been recently released from prison for his excursions into the forbidden area, and she fears he will get an even longer sentence. The Stalker, however, feels his everyday life is already a prison. From the beginning, we see signs that he regards the Zone as an oasis in his gritty, down‐trodden life, as a salvation from the position of non‐entity in which he finds himself in the city. What we cannot be sure of is just how much his psychological bond with the alien space informs his explanations of it." (Pridham)
The Writer feels life is boring with its cast iron laws. He feels there is no Bermuda Triangle, no telepathy, no apparitions and no flying saucers. He says this world has laws that cannot be broken. He said The Zone was a product of some superior civilization. Alien perhaps. He says that God must be logical and boring like a triangle or holy trinity. He is immediately blasphemous but intelligent. He is probably bored with life, but his reason for going to the room is to get inspiration to write again despite being already successful. The Professor is a physicist so he must be smart to say the least. One's mind is scientific (The Professor) and the other is artistic (The Writer). There is a lot of rain in the movie because Tarkovsky said it rains a lot in Russia so it isn't necessarily an artistic choice. A police officer wears a helmet with an AT probably initials for Andrei Tarkovsky. There is an AK painted on the wall. I believe this may be the initials of Akira Kurosawa as he admired his work.
Stalker's home town looks cold, ugly and industrialized as oppose to the lush green natural setting of the Zone. When they enter the Zone it is green, natural and beautiful as nature always is.Porcupine was a stalker who took people to the Zone for years is revealed. Porcupine went into the room and within a week became abundantly rich. He hung himself soon after.
It is revealed that meteorite landed there and maybe it had energy to cause wishes to come true in that special room. Whatever the case the area around the room is heavily guarded as wishes that come true can be curses in reality.
There is a great shot of a rusted old car overcome by grass and nature as if modernity and industrialization will lose to nature. It is highly symbolic and hinted lightly. When The Writer pulls at some plants the Stalker throws an iron pole at him. He tells him The Zone wants to be respected or else it will punish. The Stalker says it doesn't let bad or good people pass through but those who have lost all hope.The room wants to be approached indirectly as if found by accident almost. It warned The Writer in an ominous voice. It demands and expects total respect as it is doing people a favor and not the other way around. The Writer talks too much and The Professor tells him he does. They bicker.
A fight between Sepia and colors take place as misery and joy try to fight as well symbolically between the men. There is poetry in the film, unsurprising as Tarkovsky's father was a poet. This must have influenced him deeply. The Stalker confides everything has sense and reason. The Writer brings a gun but is urged by Stalker to drop it. After all there is virtually no-one around.After traveling through the tunnel they enter a room with beautifully synchronized shapes of sand. Despite breaking so many of Stalker's rules The Writer loves to philosophize about them and nature in general. He is a contradiction of sorts. One would think of a writer being reserved and quiet but he is neither. He asks what kind of writer is he if hates writing.
The black dog follows the men. The three men are in a room shot in a frame within a frame. The Professor uses a phone to call a laboratory. The Professor wishes to have a phone to brag to another scientist he is within a stone's throw of the room. The other scientists threatens to report him and call the authorities. The Professor wants to get even with him because 20 years ago the man slept with the Professor's wife. This is probably a part of the film that is inside The Professor's head. His innermost wish to brag at and belittle his co-worker. He said before to The Writer and Stalker his wish was to win a Nobel prize for researching the Zone.The Writer puts on a "crown of thorns" to mock Jesus and to tell the Stalker he doesn't forgive him for all his poem reciting and making detours. Outside the room The Stalker tells the other two, "This is the most important moment in your life." Their most sincere wish will be granted if they enter the room. He tells them the most important thing is to believe. This may be a hidden language Tarkovsky was using saying faith in God gets you into heaven.
The Writer doesn't want to go into the room first as he feels it is shameful. The Professor brings with him a 20 kiloton bomb. He feels the room will bring happiness to no one and wishes to destroy it because it could get in the wrong hands. The Stalker asks, "Why destroy hope?"
The Writer says he sees why Stalkers never enter the room. They revel in all that power, mystery and authority. They want play God. The Stalker says his happiness, self-respect and freedom is all here in the Zone. He breaks down crying knowing what curses can befall men who cannot bear see themselves for who they really are. The Stalker says he just wants to help people.The Professor disassembles the bomb and decides not to blow up the room despite all the evil it can bring into the world.
With no one entering the room the three men return to the bar where they met up. They bring back a black dog that followed them around to the bar.
His wife after finding out what happened tells Stalker he should pity them not be angry with them. The stalker tells his wife no one needs the room, it's all in vain.
The Stalker's wife talks about Stalker and explains why he is how he is to the audience breaking the fourth wall.
At the end Monkey, Stalker's daughter, moves glass cups on the table with her mind. It is believed she can do this because of the "radiation" of sorts that Stalker gets being near the room so much which Monkey gets exposed to.
Ending:
It's hard to imagine why someone would deny getting their deepest wishes granted, but to see yourself as you really are shows the ugliness and the realness of who you really are. Sometimes your deepest wishes are the most petty like with the Professor. If you wish that you want to cure a loved one of some ailment but instead get a million dollars this would cause guilt and could lead to suicide for seeing how selfish we really are. What I like about the film is that it's quiet and meditative. Shots linger for a while to give you time to digest what is going on. There are no special effects in todays terms or of the past as it doesn't need any. It would detract from this film if anything.Style:
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 more than one minute and many shots lasting for more than four minutes.[12]
Almost all of the scenes not set in the Zone are in Sepia or a similar high-contrast brown monochrome. -WIkipedia.org
"The Zone prefers to grant secret and half-felt wishes, rather than the wishes we think we have.The Stalker maybe wished, he thought and we think, for his daughter to be well and able-bodied. But when he entered the Room on his first journey there, he cured Monkey differently, leaving her infirmity in tact but granting her a strange and uncanny power instead.In this way the Zone is just the onrushing future, for which the approaching train is also a metaphor. The future does not precisely deliver what we want it to, but something else stranger and somewhat terrifying." by poliphilo on reddit.com
SPOILERS … What was the hidden concept ?? I think the movie Stalker with its strong symbolism can be interpreted in the context of the Soviet era when religion was brutally suppressed. “The zone”/religion is a place that provides a comfortable sanctuary from the material dull life, and is guarded from entering by the military/ communist authorities. It came to exist from a meteorite/ a heavenly message to earth. For the stalker/ the religious man, it represents home and comfort, although he always enters it with fear to make it/God angry. The zone/ religion has its own natural laws/miracles that defies logic, but you have to get along with. It promises a “room”/paradise were your innermost wishes come true. The road/ life work to reach the room/paradise is tough and requires guidance from a stalker/ religious man. The existence of the room/ paradise has been always challenged by science/the professor and philosophy/the writer, and despite that they try to explore the facts of religion, and have some understanding for it, they could not accept it at the end. Science/the professor was ready to destroy what he could not rationalize, and from the standpoint of the stalker/religious man, science/the professor and philosophy/the writer are completely ignorant despite their knowledge. The stalker personal life/ the religious man life is not materially fulfilling and may be disappointing. The daughter may represent the outcome of following religion blindly, the mind/body may be crippled to move freely but it may have sensitivity and mysticism not owned by others.
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/07/in-the-zone-an-excursion-into-andrei-tarkovskys-film-stalker/
Works CIted:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1wcute/a_question_on_the_ending_of_tarkovskys_stalker/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
Pridham, Matthew. http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/07/in-the-zone-an-excursion-into-andrei-tarkovskys-film-stalker/
