In the Zone: An Excursion into Andrei Tarkovskys Film Stalker

Matthew Pridham

[Editors Note: The following embedded video is not a trailer, but in fact the entire film of
Stalker. Many of Tarkovskys films are in the public domain and can now be viewed for free online
and elsewhere.]

In Andrei Tarkovskys Stalker, three men leave the confines of a rotting Eastern European city
and walk through a pleasant-looking rural setting. Their destination is a room which sits at the
center of this countryside, a room in which dreams are rumored to be fulfilled. This strange
landscape is the Zone, the site of a metaphysical trauma around which armed guards patrol. Twenty
years ago, an object thought to be a meteorite crashed here, and countless people went missing in
the vicinity. The Zone was cordoned off, and is now protected with such zealotry that people are
shot down rather than be permitted to slip into it. Despite looking benign, even cheerful (next to the
grim realities of the city), the Zone is said to be protected by obscure traps, all but unpredictable
dangers which have destroyed careless questers for years. As a result of this situation, a new
profession has arisen, that of the Stalkers. Part tour guide, part coyote, part spiritual advisor, these
people bring their customers into and through the beautiful, perilous Zone, offering counsel on what
might be accomplished in the wish-granting room all the while. Tarkovsky works all this material
into a profound, eerily quiet meditation on faith, nihilism and hope. Had Ingmar Bergman decided
to tackle science fiction, he may have produced a film equally fascinating, but Tarkovskys vision
was, and remains, a unique entry in weird cinema.
Stalker is visually quite arresting. Tarkovsky uses color to set apart the different worlds, filming
the scenes set in Stalkers home city in gloriously dismal sepia and those in the Zone in color. That
city is a grim glimpse of a thoroughly industrialized and poverty-stricken future. Everything seems
to be leaking or cracked and the sounds of machinery predominate. The people are as exhausted and
worn down as their surroundings. The Zone, however, is lush and green, an organic profusion of
growth and chaos which creates a stark contrast to the decaying rigidity of the city. Old and
abandoned mechanisms litter the fields of the Zone, remains of the human habitation which were
displaced by the bizarre catastrophe two decades ago. Clearly, the authorities attempted to evacuate
as many people as possible: what look like tanks and other implements of war are strewn
throughout the Zone. Oddly, though, the sight of these hunks of metal rotting in bucolic glades and
valleys is serene, even calming, rather than dispiriting. An undercurrent of eeriness underlies these
scenes, certainly, as we do not know what sort of force could have turned back such power. And yet,
the impression of nature absorbing back into itself the most brutal of devices dreamt up by
humanity lends a peaceful aura to the Zone. Deeper inside, as the films protagonists approach that
mysterious room, this world takes on a more cryptic air. Shortly before they reach it, Tarkovskys
camera glides across images of drowned detritus, a strange two-minute floating gaze which seems
to herald their arrival at the heart of the mystery. Within a warren of rooms, they find one covered
in sand dunes, a sight simultaneously creepy and beautiful. Stalker unfolds itself in these small, still
ways, content to suggest far more than it will show, possibly far more than other movies even try to
show.
This succession of dreamlike images has a cumulative effect, one out of reach to movies in
which the weird is presented in a more straightforward, heavy special-effects manner. Stalker has
inspired later movies as well as literature with its evocative setup.

Cube, for instance, with its enigmatic setting and bizarre traps, seems to me a descendant of
Tarkovskys film, as does YellowBrickRoad. This film, however, takes a radically different path
than most of those in genre cinema, which may explain why it is rarely cited as a great SciFi
movie when it in fact is. Andrei Tarkovsky was a prime example of the filmmaker as poet, and that
is precisely how Stalker is best approached: as a poem. The premise of the film, baldly stated, may
mislead viewers into expecting something closer to a monster movie, or a travel through alien
territories. That is unfortunate, as disappointment and confusion may obscure an appreciation for
what Stalker has to offer. This film is a cousin to such stories, but a subtler, dreamier and, in the end,
more puzzling one. At two-and-a-half hours, Stalker means to immerse you in its spell. Tarkovsky
uses this time not to introduce lots of plot convolutions or fast-paced set-pieces, but rather as a way
to dwell on the encounter between three men and their interactions, as well as on their intentions in
seeking out the room at the center of the Zone. While his camera meditates on the quiet, potentially
doom-laden landscapes of the Zone, Tarkovskys characters engage in a series of increasingly
contentious philosophical arguments and personal attacks. The Stalker on which the film centers
(who bears an amusing resemblance to Woody Harrelson) is drawn to the Zone like an addict to a
fix. At the beginning of the movie his wife angrily tries talking him out of going back to his
precious Zone, but he calmly rejects her pleas. They have a daughter together, a crippled girl named
Monkey, who suffers from disabilities apparently brought on by her fathers 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. This is an ambiguity which his customers will recognize and verbalize. Is the
Stalker preternaturally attuned to the dangers of the Zone, to its muted voice? Or is it merely a
space in which this working-class schmuck gets to play sherpa and guru to clients wealthier and
more respected than he? The Stalker is weary of the clichd and low-minded desires of his charges.
They enter this miracle, this space which is virtually holy to someone such as himself, all motivated
by venal desires for revenge, for money, for professional advancement. One of these clients is the
Writer, a shabby, talkative man who despairs of ever writing anything of lasting worth. He treats the
Zone carelessly, at least at first, as his cynicism barely lets him conceive of anything beyond his
own tired comprehension. While he grows more wary of the dangers this place may pose, the
Writers nihilism just seems to grow more rank. His literary output is little more than squeezing
out hemorrhoids, and even the production of a deathless work of literature may not be enough to
wish for. The Professor, the third of this merry bunch, claims to have a more objective purpose in
his visit to the Zone. He wishes to study this space, a region fascinating to scientists but one which
has been inaccessible since the government closed off the area. He comes to disdain the Stalkers
superstitious fears regarding the traps in the Zone and he despises the Writers endless palaver. As
they move deeper into the Zone, he more confidently strides across barriers the Stalker insists must
be respected, and he behaves as if he is on nothing more than a field trip. But is he actually
indifferent to the Zones ominous reputation, or does he have secret intentions of his own?
The arguments between these men slowly close in upon Stalkers central concerns: the
relationship between hope and reality, the vagaries of human intentions, the need for mystery. The
Professor seems intent on measuring the forces at work within the Zone. He is, the Writer claims,
putting miracles to an algebra test. Even the seemingly supernatural granting of wishes, this
materialist believes, will leave some physical trace, something which can be measured (or
annihilated, for that matter). A disappointed idealist (that is, a nihilist), the Writer expects little
good to come of hope. He would agree with Friedrich Nietzsche, that great enemy of nihilism, in
one respect, when the philosopher wrote of Pandoras Box and the final horror it conceals: Hope:
in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of Man (Human All Too
Human). While the Writer seems to be searching for new inspiration, his journey into the Zone may
actually be the act of a doom-eager man, a man hoping to lose hope.

If he can only see this last great mystery demystified and proven to be worthless, then how can
he owe the world anything more than the filth he has already given it? The nature of the Zone may
even be amenable to this cynical desire. According to the Stalker, the wretched have a better chance
of surviving a trip through it, while hopeful people seem to fall prey more easily to its dangers.
 For the Stalker, though, the Zone is itself a last hope. It gives him a meaning along with a
profession, a vision of greater purpose than any afforded in the depressing world outside. More
pragmatically, he is tempted to use the room to wish away the ill effects his genes have conferred
on his daughter. He is frightened, though, to ask for something. His mentor in Stalking, a man
named Porcupine, once broke the rule that admonishes Stalkers not to use their travels for their own
selfish ends. Porcupine retired from Stalking, became rich, then hung himself. The succession of
causes which produced these effects are only explained when the group reaches the room, but they
explain much of the Stalkers ambivalence over asking the Zone for what he desires the most, the
healing of his daughter Monkey. Finally, though, it is the effect the Zone has as a mystery on these
characters that reveals not only the depths of their characters, but also one potential meaning the
alien space may hold in Tarkovskys film.

In the claustrophobic world Stalker presents to us, the Zone is the only open space, it is a
clearing in which the new can become manifest. In it, the laws of nature are supposedly suspended,
ready to shift with little notice. Flowers are scentless in the Zone, as if they form part of a faade
just barely maintained. The room brings out the hidden desires of those who reach it, fulfilling not
those daydreams which people carry around in their conscious minds, but rather the deeper wishes,
even those which are horrid. The Zone works like the imagination, and that is where I see the focus
of this film. Tarkovsky seems to be wrestling with, among other things, his artistry, the very eye
through which we are seeing this story. Going into the Zone involves trying to be attuned to a
shifting landscape, a world which changes in accord with its visitors. Every work of art which
transcends mere didacticism or advertising changes in similar ways based on its reader, its listener,
its viewer. The imagination poses a threat to the most literal and materialistic of worldviews, as it
threatens to disrupt all those tidy little categories into which the world is supposed to fit. Creativity
threatens, as the Professor seems to intuit, not only the established order but also the very way in
which order comes to be established. Lest that sound like an empty platitude, consider the role
charisma and the use and abuse of art has played in movements from Nazism to the struggle for
human rights. What sort of threat could imagination pose to members of the intelligentsia, though,
or to artists? The Writer, for one, may represent a nihilistic strand of the same. This sort of creature,
whether affecting ennui or the endlessly parodic manner of the thorough-going post-modernist,
depends on the perception of the imagination as being exhausted. You can only declare The Novel
(or Poetry or Film or etc.) is Dead if you can successfully avoid a brush with creativity. If
Tarkovsky identifies with anyone in this film, it is obviously the Stalker: a frustrated poet, a man
haunted by what he is leaving future generations and how much better a job he could have done.
The Stalker stands vulnerable to the Zone, respectful of it, yet also aware of its treacherous and
changeable nature. He knows this realm cannot be wrestled into stable categories and he knows a
reckless, cynical approach will yield nothing but ashes. That the Zone, as interpreted in this way,
could be seen as a threat to ardent materialists and burnt-out intellects should come as no surprise.
The threat such a space presents totalitarian governments is more obvious. Tyrannical regimes, be
they based on extreme political ideologies, fanatic religious interpretations, or simply on the cult of
some personality, all depend on the suppression of the imaginations of their subjects. After all, the
imagination may enable the public to envision a better system of governance than the utopian
system under which they slave; creativity may strip orthodoxies of their thin veneer of
verisimilitude, exposing the myths hiding beneath the claim of absolute truth. The creative
imagination can be particularly troublesome to hero cults, be it through the sort of de-idealization at
work in Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida (in which the heroes of the Iliad are exposed as
drunken louts, fame-hungry fools, and sociopaths) or in the more humanizing, though admiring,
portraits we see in films such as Spielbergs recent Lincoln. Creativity, be it political, imaginative,
metaphysical or even erotic, is a constant threat to those who would impose rigid systems on
humanity. The Zone is patrolled for a reason, and not simply that suggested by the Professor at the
end of the film.
Whatever the Zone may be said to stand for, Tarkovsky lays down a striking hint at the end of
the film that it has not finished having its say. In the last two minutes of Stalker, he not only upends
many of the conclusions viewers may have reached, he does so with a casual, rather self-assured
gesture. I first saw this movie when I was 17, and I must admit I missed it at first. I had to rewind
and watch those two minutes again. I still remember the goosebumps which accompanied that sight.
I imagine for many viewers, as it did for me, that ending retroactively changed the mood of
everything I had just watched. Give it a try and see what the Zone provokes in you.

Hatem Krema says...

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.