Stalker a stunner

Though it remains to be seen if it will capture hearts the way Deep Space Nine did

EVAN JOHNSON STAFF

Russians: known for their charmingly discombobulated alphabet, their knavishly inversenapiform rooftops, the immutable dynamism of their constructivist stage-plays (The Magnanimous Cuckold, anyone?), and their evil, evil president who murders journalists who criticize him (and, as George W. Bush perceptively noted, has “a good soul”). Now, god-willing and thanks to Cinematheque, we’ll be able to add science-fiction cinema to that already impressive list, as the wittily titled “From the Tsars to the Stars” runs at Cinematheque from Feb. 16 to 22 and features six films of the “Russian Fantastik.”

Of particular note in this fine and entertaining crop of films is Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker, a true masterpiece of world cinema and one of the most visually arresting films ever made — in this it’s no different than most of Tarkovsky’s other work. With nary a spaceship or wookie in sight, the “science-fiction” aspect of Stalker has very little to do with the typical action/adventure/special effects concerns of the genre, though it does feature a science fiction setup: near an anonymous, presumably Russian, city is “the Zone,” a heavily guarded mystery area that is rumoured to have come into some kind of contact with alien life. The film follows the “Stalker” as he conducts an illegal tour of the Zone for two men/archetypes, an artist and a professor known, respectively, as Artist and Professor.

Of particular note in the Zone is “the Room,” which, it is said, has the ability to realize one’s deepest desires. The film follows the three men as they struggle with the Zone’s strange spatial logic, though, because most of this struggling is internal, portions of the film resemble a mushroom-trip as viewed by a sober third party.

The Zone is an area of lush, moist vegetation containing a series of decaying, debris-strewn rooms. Nothing about it is particularly alien, but the fact that it is declared forbidden — it is heavily guarded by an army and, apart from the protagonists, is devoid of human life — seems to give it some kind of weighty and inscrutable metaphysical power. It seems unlikely that the Zone, or the Room for that matter, are simple, one-dimensional metaphors, but they’ve got to mean something. For his part, Tarkovsky has claimed that the Zone “doesn’t symbolize anything . . . it’s life,” while the perceptive and unkempt philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek has suggested that it is “ultimately the whiteness of the cinematic screen,” onto which we project fears, dreams and desires.

Tarkovksy fans (you know who you are) can happily look forward to experiencing all of that sombre director’s filmic staples: a visual and philosophical obsession with time and material decay; incredible, close-up portrait photography; a fascination

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with the elements, not the noble gases, lanthanides, actinides, etc., but the four elements — wind, fire, water and earth, especially earth, mother earth; at least one character that physically resembles a frog; and all sorts of other things that I’m too facetious and shallow to have noticed.

Some science fiction fans insist that the true interest in the genre lies in the philosophical implications of its various fantastical scenarios, and while this is certainly true of select works, I suspect these fans are bullshitting me if they think that Jedi mythology and psychology have any interesting philosophical ramifications. Even with TV’s Battlestar Galactica (which I thoroughly enjoy) the “intelligent” and “political” dimensions of the show are really just tools used to obfuscate its true nature; what it’s really about is silly space-battles and weepy lovetriangles. And that’s fine.

With Stalker, however, it really is true that the science-fiction backdrop is mere backdrop; the real interest lies in the debilitating spiritual anxiety and existential confusion that the Zone seems to engender; and, even more, in the way the Room, by failing to follow through on its supposed ability to grant wishes, illustrates the fundamental incoherence of desire.

And in that way, and if you’ve got six hours to spare and more patience than the rest of your generation combined, Stalker is an excellent double-header companion piece to Tarkovsky’s other foray into science fiction, Solaris (1972). Solaris, in dealing with an alien planet that generates physically one’s deepest fears, desires and obsessions, is in some ways the very opposite of Stalker. Solaris’s planet shows desire to be both perpetual and promiscuous, while Stalker’s room seems to indicate that desire’s true nature will always remain hidden, obscured by the material world.