Arts & Ideas Free Thinking - Landmark: Tarkovsky's Stalker.
Apr 19, 2016
Dr Nicholas Rush Cooper, a geographer and former Chernobyl guide, Sophie Fiennes, a filmmaker, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, a film critic, and Konstantin Von Eggert, a Russian journalist, discuss Tarkovsky's Stalker. They explore the Zone's uncanny ties to Chernobyl, the film's soundscape and hypnotic long takes, its troubled production and toxic locations, and the film's gendered world and ambiguous climax.
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Ambiguity Is The Film's Core
- Tarkovsky deliberately resisted fixed interpretations and called the zone simply 'the zone.'
- The film invites multiple allegorical readings rather than a single decoded meaning.
Troubled, Toxic Production
- The production suffered corrupted film stock, location moves, fired crew and Tarkovsky's heart attack.
- The polluted shooting locations later sparked beliefs links to cancers among crew and cast.
Colour Marks Entry Into Another Reality
- Tarkovsky shifts from black-and-white to colour as a literal and psychological passage into the Zone.
- Colour signals a different reality where the stalker feels more 'at home' and the film's inner life dominates.
