Stalker

For some time, the 16-year old has been mentioning a movie he’d like to watch …this science fiction movie by this Russian director.

It took a while for the suggestion to register, but I finally realized he was talking about Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, a director of whom I’d never heard until the past few months, first because of one of my older’s son’s blog posts and secondly because Rod Dreher spent time last year watching his films and writing about them here and there.

Ah, okay I said….look…here it is on the Criterion Channel….must be a sign…but almost three hours long? You sure you want to watch it?

He was sure. So we did. And it was not what either of expected. I mean, I knew it would be thoughtful and philosophical, but I didn’t know it would be this thoughtful and philosophical, and my son certainly expected something with more of an action/plot focus. But he enjoyed it nonetheless, and it prompted some good conversation.

Here’s the plot:

The Stalker was made in Estonia in a ruined, dreary, uninhabited landscape littered with dilapidated military machinery and hauntingly overgrown structures leaking water at every turn. This setting is referred to as “The Zone.” The characters, Writer (representing culture, the arts, emotions) and Professor (representing science, technology, rationalism) come here on a search from an unnamed city in a military industrial wasteland. It is said that in The Zone is a Room where all the desires of those who reach it are satisfied. It is carefully guarded by fences, watchtowers, and military police. Since The Zone is illegal, tricky, and unpredictable, travelers hire guides, called stalkers, to show them the way in and out. The Zone seems to be a region suffering from a nuclear accident, either military or industrial.

(Or an alien visitation)

The film is “slow” and meditative. Tarkovsky gives you little choice but to put your expectations aside and just watch, wait and listen.

The Stalker is not a suspenseful adventure thriller. Packaged as science fiction, the film lacks the slick futuristic appearance one expects from that genre. In fact, it seems to be, rather, a contemporary allegory. This is undoubtedly one of the ambiguities in the film that infuriated Soviet film authorities. As the railroad car stops in The Zone, the film shifts from black and white to color. Three cruciform telephone poles fill the frame, symbolically marking the passage. The characters in The Stalker are approaching God with reverence and humility. To make this understood, the issue remains hidden. The timing of revelation is up to God. In this way God makes the most of the process. In the Emmaus story Jesus conceals his identity to make the most of his presence. The astonishment experienced by the disciples upon recognition deepens the meaning of their encounter. Tarkovsky mimics Jesus’ method here. Instead of quick, efficient movement, the approach is poetic and ritualized. The process in the film, like the process in the Emmaus story, becomes as important as the result. The danger of Writer’s direct approach is that discovery would be merely obvious. The outcome would be trite, even spectacular, but not vital. By contrast, the Stalker’s humble approach allows God to transform characters (and viewers) through the journey.

I experienced The Stalker as a beautiful, haunting and true allegory of the spiritual life.

The Room that’s at the center of the Zone is, as this says, a location where one’s deepest desires – whether you consciously realize them or not – are fulfilled. It’s also a deep and profound mystery. The Stalker himself has never entered it – he just sacrifices himself to lead other there, convinced of its reality and its truth.

The way there? It’s dangerous, certainly, and one can’t approach it directly. One must take a careful, circuitous route, watching and paying attention. The journey there is one that we make with others but also, paradoxically, alone. We learn from each other as we go, we sharpen each other, we argue, we wouldn’t even be able to get close without the presence of those others – but also, in the end, we gaze upon it in a type of solitude.

And, as the Stalker lets them know, the way you get there won’t be anything like the way out.

There are three on this particular journey. All three are a mixture of certitude and questions, the latter of which come to predominate as the journey progresses, with many utterances made that begin as firm declarations, but then peter out into silence, unfinished. I want……I need…

The Professor, who, it turns out, can’t deal with the mystery and the possibilities of what others might experience and use the Room for – wants to destroy it. The Writer wants something, doesn’t know what he wants – perhaps, he indicates at the beginning, nothing more than inspiration. But he eventually acknowledges that as soon as he knows exactly who he is and what he wants, he’ll have no reason to write anymore – ultimately can’t face what the Room offers.

And the Stalker?

He’s in agony and despair because he completely believes in the mystery and possibility at the heart of the Room, but it seems, no matter what he does or who he leads there – no one is willing to really believe, enter and be embraced by the hope he is convinced the Room offers.

It struck me that The Stalker is a very apt film for those in ministry to watch. Perhaps not at the beginning , when they’re full of idealism and convinced of the fruit that will undoubtedly grow from their efforts. That would be dispiriting. No, sometime later, though.

And not as an affirmation of those negative, despairing moments of frustration those in ministry (or any helping profession) experience, but simply more of an …. explanation of it and a meditation on the experience, one that rings very true, in the hardship, the hope, the frustration of that life and all the countless, endless questions it raises:

Then to what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’ For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’