So, I finally got around to watching one of the most revered science fiction films of all time: Stalker (1979)… and I’m still not sure what happened. It’s not really science fiction. There are no gadgets and no visible monsters. It is a long movie with slow shots, sound manipulation, and an extremely fluid feel. Sounds often follow the camera and remain unheard until the audience is unreasonably close. To put it simply, Stalker distorts one’s sense of space and time. More importantly, Stalker brings to bear the question of truth, being, and faith. The film concerns existential themes of risk, danger, uncertainty, faith, knowledge, and reality. The point of the film, is essentially what Heidegger calls the “piety of thought”: questioning. By drawing everyday assumptions into question, Tarkovsky seeks to look beyond idle talk and find something capable of understanding, or at least capable of questioning casual understanding which presumes to know everything.

Stalker fulfills the three classical unities of Aristotle’s Poetics: unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time. The story follows a single plot into the so-called Zone within a 24-hour period through a single location. Stalker is a Christic figure “leading” people into the Zone to a threshold where wishes are supposedly granted. This I found most significant: Stalker leads by following; he throws markers for his disciples to follow and sends them first through the danger. One never feels like Peter on the water during the storm. It is as if Jesus Christ stays in the boat and orders you to walk to the shore. To be fair, this is more how faith works than the example in scripture. Their destination, a creepy house, is visible for much of the film, but Stalker takes them on a circuitous and “arbitrary” route, much to the annoyance and suffering of his followers. The path of faith is narrow, but it is never straight.

The fundamental uncertainty of faith is affirmed again and again, and reason and faith are put equally into question. Danger is on every side. Dream and reality blend and belief in either faith or reason become a matter of faith. “It’s life,” Tarkovsky says about the Zone. There is more symbolism than I can possibly fathom anytime soon. For those of you who’ve seen Solyaris (1972), the similarities in style will be evident. Stanislaw Lem, the childhood friend of Pope John Paul II, wrote the book Solaris, from which the movie is a fair adaptation. Lem’s philosophy comes out of every page of his science fiction. The summer he died, I read a number of his works: His Master’s Voice, Fiasco, The Investigation, and The Cyberiad. (Note: if you read Lem, find any and all translations by Michael Kandel, a true artist with words). Lem, like Tarkovsky, deals with the problem of communication, of language, and perception. According to Lem, a statistician, knowledge is merely statistical correlations. The image of mirrors works in both of these artists’ work. For Lem, it is almost a solipsistic tool by which he attempts to show that everything we see in the world is merely a reflection of ourselves.  Stanislaw Lem says that philosophers project an image of themselves onto the rest of humanity, so all writing (and therefore all life) is biopic.  Tarkovsky takes a more ambiguous approach as dream and reality blur and reason and faith both become questionable.

Stalker is not a firm allegory, nor is it meant to be. The characters are composites, Writer most notably of the director himself, though also of Simon Peter: when he attempts to use a weapon his hand is stayed by Stalker. At another, his followers fall asleep and he asks, like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Are you awake?” The entire film could be entirely supernatural or superstitious.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s affinity for pantheism and other Eastern ways of thinking is evident. The blurring of space and time borders on a statement like “Being is Becoming” or “Being is Time” or “Atman is Brahman.” Nothing I’m saying is new. But for those of you who had not discovered Tarkovsky until a few years ago (or until now), his artwork is worth encountering.

Heidegger says, “Art, as the setting-into-work of truth, is poetry. Not only the creation of the work is poetic, but equally poetic, though in its own way, is the preserving of the work; for a work is an actual effect as a work only when we remove ourselves from our commonplace routine and move into what is disclosed by the work, so as to bring our own nature itself to take a stand in the truth of what is.” Tarkovsky says something strikingly similar: “Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.”

Not everyone will (or can) appreciate Tarkovsky. His works are slow (I would say graceful) but at 3+ hours each, they provoke months of contemplation. I don’t even believe I appreciate him correctly yet—certainly not fully. But I recommend his films to you.

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