spiritual courage to believe in themselves. For the "subconscious mind", Tarkovsky did not go further than Freud, he only
revealed the weakness of human beings through this "subconscious mind" - lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.
The time when the three of them were in the rail car was very long, for three minutes, there was no dialogue, but it was purely a subjective shot, so that the viewer also seemed to be
a passenger on the car and drove to the "area" with them. What are they thinking? Staring aimlessly at the sights passing by on the side of the road? In the heart is
the excitement looking forward to the arrival of the cabin in the district? Or the doubts and fears that your inner wish will soon come true? Many of us have had the
experience , but when I saw this part, I admired Tarkovsky's courage very much, and I also appreciate this part, because
whenever I travel, whether it is a car or a train , I always like to look at the scenery outside the car, I can't remember
what I was thinking, it's that wonderful experience. In my ears, I can hear the rhythmic sound of the wheels on the steel rails, and the faint
music in the background, illusory and ethereal, this part of the tranquility is most worth enjoying and aftertaste, only at this time, you can only let the vehicle You take you
far away, you have no choice, the only thing you can do is wait, and the unknown destination suddenly becomes irrelevant, because if the car takes you
to another place, all you can do is Accept that reality, you cannot go back to the beginning in time, although it is possible to go back to
the beginning in space.
Just before reaching the "house", the stalker recited a poem by A. Tarkovsky from the window:
So summer is gone,
Leaving no epitaph.
It's still warm in the sun,
Only that's not enough.
All that true could have come,
Like a five-fingered fliff,
Folded into may palm,
Only that's not enough.
No evil was slighted
In the good aftermath,
World was festively lighted,
Only that's not enough.
Life forever was tucking,
Caring, making me laugh.
I was really lucky,
Only that's not enough.
No leaves ever seared,
No limbs broken rough.
Day, like glass, washed all clear,
Only that's not enough.
Also at the end of the film, the stalker's daughter reads another poem:
I love your eyes, my darling friend,
Their play, so passionate and bright'ning,
when a sudden stare up you send,
and like a heaven-blown lighting, it
'd take in all from end to end. You stare at the ring speed.
But there's more that I admire:
Your eyes when they're downcast
In bursts of love-inspired fire,
And through the eyelash goes fast A somber
, dull call of desire... A somber, dull call of desire...
This is Tarkovsky's poem dedicated to the "Stalker", and he incorporated his personal emotions in creating the film and shaping the characters into the film, thus
adding to the mystery of the film. If the audience does not impose many "symbolic" meanings on the film, they can clearly hear Tarkovsky saying
: My friend, what did you think when you watched this film? I thought so, let me read a poem to you.
Stalker who had created the Zone's world in order to invent some sort of faith, a faith in
that world's existence. It was a working hypothesis which we tried to preserve during
creation of that world. We even planned an ending variant in which the viewer would find out
Stalker had invented it all and now he is heartbroken because people do not believe him.
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Stalker is not a desperate film. I don't think a work of art can be inspired by this sort of
feeling. Its meaning must be spiritual, positive, it should bring hope and belief. I don't
think my film lacks hope. If this is true — it is not a work of art. Even if Stalker has
moments of despair , he masters them. It is a kind of catharsis. It's a tragedy but tragedy
is not hopeless. This history of destruction still gives the viewer a glimmer of hope. It
has to do with the feeling of catharsis. Tragedy cleanses man.
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The protagonist of his 1979 film Stalker announces: "What they call passion is not some
spiritual energy, but just a friction between the soul and the outer world." Stalker was
filmed in a number of locations near the Estonian capital Tallinn, which can still be
visited today,
main location was found unexpectedly near the Jägala river , 25km from Tallinn. They went to
see the Jägala waterfall, which they didn't like, but nearby they found an abandoned
electrical generating station which had been blown up in 1941 by the Red Army retreating
through Estonia. The building belonged to no-one and was the ideal place for the shoot. We
later found a second electrical station downstream, an overflow weir. These two ruined
constructions became the main locations, providing the style and texture of the whole film ,
and helped to create the atmosphere of the strange and mystical events of the film. We also
shot near the railway bridge over the Pirita river near the road to Leningrad, at a ship
repair yard, an abandoned oil processing plant, at an empty mill , and also near an
electrical station in the centre of Tallinn. The closing episodes of the film were shot in
Moscow."
Stalker and Tarkovsky's last two films, Nostalgia, filmed in Italy, and The Sacrifice, in
Sweden, are sometimes seen as a hermetic trilogy on the themes of faith and cataclysm. As
Estonia sheds its association with Russia and definitively consolidates its independent
identity,
he wrote in his journal of Stalker in 1978, “I think Stalker really is going to be my best
film … It does not for a moment mean that I have a high opinion of my films. I don't like
them – there is so much in them that is fussy, ephemeral, false. (Less in Stalker than in
others. )”1 The Sacrifice is generally considered inferior to the others, a rushed film with
brilliant moments, but problematic whole. Nostalghia and Stalker are considered incredibly
similar in nature, though Nostalghia is perhaps a more autobiographical film.
Tarkovsky writes of the film, “I felt it was very important that the film observe the three
unities of time, space, and action … I want there to be no time lapse between the shots. I
wanted time and its passing to be revealed, to have their existence, within each frame … I
wanted it to be as if the whole film was made in a single shot.” Furthermore, he writes, “
I wanted to demonstrate how cinema is able to observe life, without interfering, crudely or
Obviously, with its continuity.”
his films are not ever strictly political, they are always spiritual but never specifically
Christian, and no image has a single and direct symbolic meaning
And he then wrote on a later date, “In cinema – as in life – the text, the words, are
refracted in everything apart from the words themselves. The words mean nothing – words are
water.”4 Lastly, as Gaston Bachelard wrote, “Indeed, every great image has an unfathomable
oneiric depth to which the personal past adds special color.”5
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