Stalker

14/07/2024

Cinema • Culture

By RAFAEL MANTOVANI & NICOLÁS GONÇALVES

Considerations about Andrei Tarkovsky's film

Stalking, nowadays, is a crime in Brazil. The term refers to chasing someone like a kind of predator. But that’s not what Сталкер (“stalker”) means in Russian culture. Second Ekaterina Vólkova Américo and Edelcio Américo, the neologism was created by the Strugatski brothers in the book Picnic on the road from 1971 (which, incidentally, is the inspiration for the film stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky from 1979) and designates the guides in abandoned buildings in Russia, who ended up taking on the image of madmen or seer beggars and would be very beloved figures among their compatriots.

As Andrei Tarkovsky's adaptations of literature to cinema used to be, stalker It is also sui generis, as it is not an image version of the book's narrative sequence, but rather the capture of one of its elements to address some philosophical and social problems with visual and sound poetics.

The first consideration regarding the Strugatski text is the stalker's stance. In the book, Redrick Schuhart, the stalker and main character, is a captivating, haughty, arrogant, confident and also violent individual. And, for the vast majority of the book, he understands the Zone – a place where waste was left by a quick alien passage on the planet – as a place to profit and finance his drunken life. The curious artifacts left there that defied the laws of physics were worth good money, but would need to be trafficked, as there was an attempt to control access by the State.

Tarkovsky's stalker is a somewhat haggard and submissive individual. Second Luiz Carlos Oliveira Jr., facial scars and creases have a great strength in the film. The stalker here, although initially trying to show himself as a leader, then begins to obey and be beaten (unlike Redrick who orders and hits) and calls himself a louse.

The second consideration is that Andrei Tarkovsky focuses his plot, for most of the film, on three characters: the stalker himself, the teacher and the writer. The writer, by the way, is the only one who tries to say his name, and is quickly stopped. They are not named in any other way, they are identified only with their social places – prestigious ones, by the way.

The third is that the film focuses on the final point of the book: in the “room” that fulfills the most intimate desires and, in the book, goes by the name “golden sphere”. However, she does not fulfill any desire, only the deepest ones. In the book, when Redrick asks young Arthur Barbridge what he would ask for from the golden sphere, he responds “well, legs for my father, of course.” The father had lost both in a previous foray into the deadly Zone. “Bullshit”, responds Redrick, reaffirming that the golden sphere performed exclusively the most intimate desires. Arthur blushes and cries.

In the film version, as soon as the three enter the Zone, the stalker tells the story of another stalker, a suicide known as Porcupine, whose brother died there. Porcupine would have crawled through the mud to resurrect his brother, but, on the contrary, the “room” did not bring his brother back to life. She revealed to him his deepest desire, making him extremely rich. The conclusion is that he would have killed himself because, despite supposing that he wanted to have his brother back, his spirit desired luxury. Porcupine hanged himself like Judas, perhaps not out of regret, but because he could not bear to live in a world where he knew of his betrayal. What gave them away? The richness.

Finally, Andrei Tarkovsky puts a dog on the scene that follows the three main characters at curious moments and has a very important presence at the end of the film. One of them is when they leave the Zone and meet the stalker's wife. She asks the teacher if he needed a dog. Her suggestion was that he adopt him. The teacher replies that he has five at home. The wife recognizes that the professor likes dogs and says that “that’s really good.” In one of the final sequences of the film, the canine is given a pot of milk on the floor and, next to it, lying on the floor, the stalker appears and begins to lament about the loss of hope that people have in the future.

These filmic elements seem to pose a classic philosophical problem, a reflection on self-care and the modern tendency to cling to known hierarchical pleasures instead of providing an ethical way out of the problems we face. Added to this are the philosophical influences of a Russia that criticized the weakening of the spirit since its 19th century classics, the fall of the Soviet regime and the Christian streak of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Demoting the stalker to the category of lice puts him on a biological level. Living without the joys offered by the society in which you live. Furthermore, Andrei Tarkovsky's stalker claims that they, stalkers, cannot “even think about their own interests”. Its objective is different, it is not the realization of individual interests. Interestingly, here, the filmmaker's very different character comes very close to the Strugatski brothers' stalker, who, in front of the golden sphere, states that he cannot think of any other desire other than “happiness for everyone, for free, and that no one be wronged.”

It is, therefore, a bet on a complete change in social, economic and political relations. But, in Andrei Tarkovsky's film, the stalker's achievement is simply to take people into the “room”. “Being a stalker is a vocation”, as the professor says. However, as already mentioned, the “room” does not fulfill each and every desire, but only the true ones. This means that, just as with Redrick in the book, those who enter it need to do some soul-searching. This examination is not easy and, in the case of Arthur (in the book) and Porcupine (in the film), it is not even pleasant. Reflecting on yourself and your own desires can lead to the conclusion that you are someone who is ethically reprehensible.

We thus have the second important transformation in the film of the main character in the book's plot: in the film, he is an “insultable” being, subject to physical violence and perhaps even pity. But he is the only one who accepts his desire: what gives him the most pleasure is taking people to the “room”. This attitude of leading people to confront themselves is very close to the Socratic maxim of “know yourself”.

Self-care, in Socrates' version, concerns putting oneself to the test. But we also have to consider the “loous” version of the Tarkovskian stalker, who finds great proximity to another ancient philosopher who found in poverty, misery, in the scandal of an animalistic and shameless life a way of accusing social relations. of his time: Diógenes, the cynic, who was perhaps the most punk individual in the history of humanity, pardon the anachronism.

The first moment the dog appears in the film is when the teacher and the writer start to poke fun at each other. The writer says that the certainties of science are not worth much and the professor says he is not interested in the writer's insecurity. Afterwards, the professor admits that he is interested in the Nobel Prize, the dog appears and the writer says that he is only interested in himself and his independence: either he should make a difference or recognize that he is “a piece of shit”. Then, they ask the stalker why he didn't want to enter the “room”, to which he responds that he is fine as he is and the dog goes to meet him in a sepia tone, which reappears in the film at that moment.

In your last course, The courage of truth 1984, Michel Foucault tells us about what the cynics – those of the philosophical current – considered to be true life, sovereign life, which is expressed in routines that distort all the values, labels, postures and hierarchies of their time. Diogenes would be the true sovereign because he is his own man, regardless of any social determination. And his wisdom was based on self-practices that would make him autonomous in relation to other people's judgment. He was able to deliver effectively truthful speech while defecating in public and living on alms.

The relegation to animality was necessary to exercise disinterest in the superficialities of life. Dishonor, for the cynic, would be a tool to develop autarky. This stance is close to a canine attitude: cynics would act like dogs. In Greek, “cynicism” is said Κυνισμός. In German, there is the differentiation made by Paul Tillich between Kynismus, the old cynicism, and cynicism, contemporary cynicism. Kynismus begins with the phoneme /k/, which is the same as dog, canine, dog. The etymological origin, according to Michel Foucault, is the same. Bio kynikós: live like a dog. Only in this way is it possible to truly know yourself. In one of the verses recited by the stalker, it talks about the flexibility of men and young trees in contrast to the rigidity of when they are about to die. The metaphor that flexibility is a sign of life and rigidity is an expression of death also makes sense in a philosophical context.

In another scene with the dog, the metaphor of death appears more strongly and clearly. He is lying in front of a couple of embracing corpses, on which a plant has grown. We could be left with the considerably superficial interpretation that “life grows from love”. However, there is perhaps another, more sinister possibility: the waste that bathed the plant where the film was recorded was no secret to anyone. The director knew the risks to which everyone involved was exposed by radiation. His location at a hydroelectric plant in Estonia was close to a chemical plant that dumped waste into the Jägala River, the river from which the plant drew its water.

Anatoli Solonitsin, who plays the writer, was overcome by lung cancer three years after filming. The director himself died from the same illness four years after Solonitsyn. His wife and assistant director, Larisa Tarkovskaya, died, also of cancer, a year after her husband. Others who were involved in the film also lost their lives within a short span of time. Art survives even if there are no longer those who conceived it.

Returning to the dog: Andrei Tarkovsky's stalker lives, in a way, like one. He is an outcast in his society, he was arrested, he is looked down upon by the other illustrious visitors to the Zone and, in the end, he finds himself in mise-en-scène equal to the dog. He is hurt by the fact that there is no more hope among people. After all, in the film, no one decided to enter the “room”. In the book version, Redrick asks that general happiness and justice be established. Cynicism presupposes a certain theoretical poverty, but a heroic and ethical life. He is always at the service of humanity. Not dissimulating, not becoming a soul without truth is the cynic's first ethical principle.

The aim is to break with customs, laws, habits and conventions. In this sense, there would also be an obligation to be beneficial to others in this exercise of leading everyone towards the truth. Knowing yourself is, therefore, a condition sine qua non to overcome our addictions. The “room” in the film would then be an ideal technical and technological tool for both self-knowledge and self-improvement. The lament of Andrei Tarkovsky's stalker could be understood as Diogenes' anguish upon realizing that humanity would be doomed to irremediably submerge in simulation, in false life. No one assumes self-examination.

No one expects to suspend all social rules, as this would result in the loss of status. Both the professor and the writer want the maintenance of society and the prevention of the utopia desired by Redrick. Perhaps because the preliminary step to achieving this – getting to know oneself by members of modern society – may be banned.

A very Russian theme comes into play here. In Chekhov's words, Ward no. 6, text that is cited in The mirror (another film by the director), Russian society is bathed in sleepy nonsense, fakirism, and a dull spirit. Is our moment a time of revolutions of thought or of ethical and philosophical elevation? No. However, Russia was still the basis of the most important egalitarian experiment that failed dismally in the 20th century. The pessimism of Russian writers of the 19th century revealed itself politically in the following century. And so we have the emergence of the analysis of individual psychologies in modernity: a society that does not favor personal ethical analysis cannot reap good results even if it abolishes private property.

An element that runs through Andrei Tarkovsky's film – as well as all of his work – is water. Here, in particular, appears to be the element of mediation between journey and sacrifice. It appears as an external representation of the changing sensations of the three characters who venture into the Zone. Marco Fialho tells us that it can be a sign of discomfort and instability. It changes scenarios and, even when static, it carries with it the force of all its destruction, which can be understood both as impossible to stop and as renewal. Nature continues amidst the wreckage and will inevitably overcome whatever is done in the name of alleged progress.

The film has around 140 cuts, each lasting, on average, 70 seconds. Time is another important point in understanding the meanings of the film. Stopping a world that advances at cruising speed and that does not experience every sensation that art should bring seems to be a clear intention of the author. The sequence of arriving at the Zone and the sound made by the cart running on the tracks carries us along with the characters. Its almost 4 minutes represent the pavement or, perhaps, the resurrection of a world that, walking on the tracks, is regaining its color.

The search for happiness – a principle that seems to accompany anyone who dares to enter the Zone – always appears at a distance that was previously unattainable. Even though both the teacher and the writer are, within a certain vision of success in modernity, successful in their trajectories, they never achieved what, in fact, they wanted and not even what they should have wanted. If, for Tarkovsky, making art is serving (as he himself says in Cinema as prayer), only the stalker would be trying to fulfill his mission.

The writer has the pretension of legitimate, perennial art; the teacher, that of science, methodical, that moves in the direction of progress. But, in the end, they both accept the lives they led and the privileges that their positions lent to the detriment of something that could be truly transformative. The industry that swallows the writer gave him the mansion where he would return after the raid. It allowed him to be desired by women, as he even stated at one point. From science, the professor receives the tools for his own destruction represented by the bomb that he refuses to activate.

If there is an external element that becomes internalized in the characters, it is the presence of the muse, an intangible force that, when mediated by the intellect, allows both the teacher and the writer a talent that is not available, for example, in the stalker or his wife. They are capable of things that other men cannot do. That would be your mission. Therefore, the Zone is kind to them. Note that, at the beginning of the incursion, the writer is warned, loud and clear, that he should stop. Although deadly to the bold, the Zone spares him from death. The careless path he was taking should be stopped. Could this be a warning for him to return to his mission?

In the book, in particular, any carelessness in the Zone becomes fatal and the place's patience with those who enter it is not very long. Unless the place understands that those guys can still return to their mission. The mission to serve, whether as a stalker, a writer or a scientist. The stalker warns the writer: this is a kind of “don’t go alone”. He disobeys him, but is spared. Then, when the teacher returns alone to get his backpack, despite the stalker stating that they won't see him again, they are reunited in the next scene. The Zone had its plan.

Unlike the book, in which the message of equality and justice appears only in the last sentence and from the most unlikely mouth of the stalker Redrick, in the film, it appears in the most important dialogues, whose most emblematic word is “hope”. Andrei Tarkovsky removes the aliens from the cause of the Zone's existence. At first, there is talk of “meteor shower or visit from the cosmic abyss”. Later, asked what that was, the professor replies that it could be a “message to humanity” or a “gift”. By taking into account the filmmaker's Christianity, we can open up to the fact that it could also be divine intervention. Reaching the end of the film, we discover that the professor's purpose was to blow up the Room.

He tells his colleagues (who had built the bomb with him, but who then regretted it and decided to abort the plan) on the phone that he had found the bomb. She was in possession of it. The voice on the phone says that he is not Herostratus: Herostratus, the figure of Antiquity who blew up the time of Artemis in Ephesus with the sole aim of being remembered, that is, to become known.

The professor, called Herostratus and who recognizes that he would like to receive the Nobel Prize, also reveals what his greatest fear is: there would be the possibility of frustrated emperors seeking the “room” and, also, that those who want to change the world would seek it. world, “self-appointed benefactors of humanity”. The writer then retorts that the desires that individuals would have are individual and that there would not be so much love or so much hate for humanity in general. It would be impossible, according to him, for something like this to happen, as it would be the implementation of a just society or the kingdom of God on Earth.

Annoyed, the stalker responds that there cannot be happiness at the expense of someone else's unhappiness. Then we learn that his greatest discomfort is the hopelessness of those two. But it is not restricted to just the two: people have become like this: hopeless, with empty eyes and with the “organ of belief” atrophied due to lack of use. And those two would want to destroy hope, after all, according to the professor, he could not be at peace with the open-air “room”, available to the scum. Now, the indiscriminate possibility of fulfilling desires would be the end of the hierarchical society from which he obtains his pleasures.

The film returns to sepia tone when outside the Zone (as opposed to the colors when inside it). The real life for the stalker was in there. To paraphrase Chekhov, Russian society would have a “dull spirit”, perhaps in sepia. Only twice, at the end of the film, are the colors recovered outside the Zone: both times when there is a Close on the stalker's daughter, Martuska. In fact, the only person named in the film. In the book, it is Monstrinho, daughter of Redrick and Guta, a direct result of the effects of the Zone on those who enter it. Little Monster, at the end of the book, was practically no longer human. In the film, the effects on Martuska are not as intense, but still, she is the fruit of the Zone.

Before appearing for the second time in color, his mother gives her monologue, looking at the camera, saying that that life, despite the deprivations, was the life she wanted. That she never envied anyone and that living alongside the stalker gave her bitter happiness instead of a gray life. Without him, perhaps there would not have been so many misfortunes, but there would not have been hope either.

Bitter happiness seems to be an analogy to the Soviet world, a life devoid of much, but which made it possible to at least glimpse the possibility of a better and fairer future, to the detriment of a gray life that would exist on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a life that accepted the superficialities dictated by the market. Hope was symbolized by the “room” and personified in the daughter, Martuska, who appears next, as already mentioned, in color. Martuska is reading a book. Then she closes it and a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev (by the way, also set to music by Birch) is recited:

“I love your eyes, dear friend,

its sparkling, bright, fiery wonder;
When suddenly those eyelids go up,
then, lightning rips through the sky,
you take a quick look, and there is an end.
There is a greater charm, however, to admire:
when lowered are those divine eyes
in moments kissed by the fire of passion;
when through the downcast eyelashes shine
the smoldering, dark embers of desire.”

Unlike the empty eyes of the hopeless, Martuska's are kissed by the fire of passion and cast embers of desire. Martuska has love and desire. And with her eyes, whose wonder is sparkling and fiery, she begins to move the objects on the table. The daughter, being the result of the most intimate desire made possible by the “room” and not of human socialization, accustomed and dejected by the alleged irreversibility of injustice and exploitation and, despite being lame (perhaps the worst “scum”, in the teacher’s view, as she is the disabled version of the descendants of the “rabble”), she can change whatever she wants. After all, it is even capable of suspending the laws of physics. Perhaps she will become the best guide among the rubble.

*Rafael Mantovani He is a professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at UFSC. Book author Modernizing order in the name of health: the São Paulo of military, poor and slaves (1805-1840) (Fiocruz). [https://amzn.to/461cNJh]

*Nicolás Gonçalves He is a doctoral student in political sociology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC).

Reference

stalker (Stalker)
USSR, 1979, 163 minutes
Directed by: Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay: Arkadi Strugatski, Boris Strugatski, Andrei Tarkovski
Cast: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Alisa Freindlich, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko.