Andrei Tarkovsky’s body of work is a thing of such wonder and depth that I didn’t believe myself capable of writing about, but something has compelled me to write about Stalker, and I will leave up to the reader to decide if I was up for the task or not.
Stalker is a movie with a very personal and spiritual message, like many if not all of Tarkovsky’s movies. It takes place in a world where a mysterious “Zone” appeared due to a strange event whose origins are never clear. Men called “stalkers” are able to traverse the Zone, although it is heavily guarded, and bring people to visit it. What lies within the Zone is a danger that is lethal to humans, but also a “Room” that is able to grant the visitor his/her most wanted wish.
In the movie, the characters are all identified by their professions: the main character, a Stalker is hired by two men, a Writer and a Professor, to take them to the Room inside the Zone. The Stalker’s wife tries to keep him from going forward with this “job”, but he goes nonetheless, and the three men traverse the real world obstacles until they manage to get to the Zone. It is an interesting, and logical choice, was made by Tarkovsky to film most of the world outside the Zone in black and white, and the Zone itself in color.
Once inside, the men exchange stories about the Stalker’s mentor, another stalker named Porcupine, who taught him how to traverse this dangerous place where the short path is never the safe option, and where everything changes every time as though the Zone were a living thing that wishes to keep humans out.
The path is beautifully shot and once the trio manage to reach unharmed the antechamber of the Room (the viewer never gets to see what it is like), but neither the Professor nor the Writer choose to enter (the first wished to destroy it and the second wanted to make a wish). In the end, only the Stalker has managed to get what he wants: to be again in the Zone, the one place where he feels peace (in the beginning of the movie he tells his wife: “Can’t you see that everything is a prison to me?”).
In fact, the secret of the Room is a simple one: it will grant you your dearest desire, the thing you want the most. However, there is a danger to this fact: no one truly knows what lies in their hearts until they enter the Room and it reveals that to them, for what one wishes is not always, in fact it rarely is, what one thinks he/she wants. That is the conclusion the Professor comes to when revisiting the story of Porcupine: that man had probably wished for his brother to be alive again but the Room gave him money instead (which lead to his suicide afterwards).
The truth is, as always, something complicated and always subjected to ones’ personal judgment, no one knows what they really want. Unlike the last movie I reviewed, “Obsession”, where the wish asked for was granted (even if with disastrous consequences), here a wish is made, but the place that grants the wish probes the individual that makes the wish and grants them what they want in their heart of hearts, not necessarily what they think they want.
For the Professor, the Room is no longer a danger for even if people come to it with dark intentions, their wish may never be granted, since no human knows himself well enough. On the other hand, the Writer backs down from going into the Room for he does not wish to expose his most inner feelings to such a place.
In conclusion, the movie to me has a deeply spiritual meaning, since no man can truly know what he wants in his inner self. But both the Zone and the Room within it are devoid of an origin point: they appeared and disturbed the world outside in an alien fashion, not being meant to be neither traversed nor understood. Only those who are weak of spirit, like the Stalker, can truly appreciate being in it. This is how his wife describes him when addressing the viewer in the final part of the film, she married a man who people consider weak of spirit and worthless, who gave her a crippled daughter and emotional pain, but who she still loves, in spite of his flaws. In fact, their daughter, although crippled, is shown in the end to have a power akin to that of telekinesis, probably due to her father visiting the Zone so often. There is a lot to unpack in such a movie, but the experience of doing so will make you think and stand in sheer wonder of its’ beauty.
