For mainstream viewers, watching a Tarkovsky film would be like watching paint dry. It is an expression I hate, especially when applied to one of his films which are often cerebral and poetic. "Stalker" is not one of Tarkovsky's greatest films but it is a maddeningly frustrating and deeply unsettling film about the search for happiness. Or so it seems.
The Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) is not one who stalks people but rather serves as a cautionary guide to the Zone. The Zone is a largely grassy, unkempt, unclean furnace of nothingness yet if you dare enter, you do not leave as the same person you were. The Stalker is the guide for two people of literate background, the Writer and the Professor. The Writer pontificates quite a bit about his loss of inspiration for writing. The Professor doesn't talk as much though he is angling for a Nobel Prize, and after a while I got a little confused as to who the Professor or the Writer were. Not that they seem interchangeable, but they are stripped of their individuality and their personalities when entering the Zone (which may be precisely the point). Sometimes I got lost where the Zone actually began and where it ended (or if it even included where these three live and originated from on their forbidden journey). We see decaying metal staircases that are practically underwater, and an endless tunnel with stalactites that leads to a small metal door (it certainly looks like a gloomy, uninhabited section from a hydro or nuclear plant which is where the film was shot). This all leads to the Room, a place where a former stalker named Porcupine had entered to save his brother and then committed suicide. Whatever sense of relief from gloom and doom exists in the Room and its surroundings is not apparent - it looks uninviting. All three weary, mucky travellers hear a phone ringing - who is calling them and why?
"Stalker" begins in startling monochromatic sepia tones that sure make for arresting images, especially scenes inside decrepit buildings near the railway. I must say that the switch to grainy colors didn't please my eyes as much, no matter how well shot it is (the cinematographer is Aleksandr Knyazhinskiy). Though I am not exactly confounded by "Stalker," I was left feeling a great deal of despair over its stark dystopian look at a world that is practically crumbled already. When it is discussed at the beginning how a meteorite crashed somewhere in the Zone's grasslands with some hint of science-fiction, I didn't think it made any difference for the film's bleak outlook. The Stalker, for example, has a wife and a daughter who has some special gifts, yet the relationship with his wife is fraught with nothing but despair and pain. Almost the whole film has nothing but pain and displeasure in its veins. When Tarkovsky films his subjects in close-up, it bears the stamp of humanity still trying to improve the world and the lives of its protagonists. But is there any hope of change? I doubted it until I felt momentary relief during its closing scenes, a small ray of sunshine. Cloudy with hints of sunshine, which may sum up Tarkovsky's career overall.
