Movie Analysis: Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky

In Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 masterpiece Stalker, a writer suffering from writer's block and a science professor aspiring to win the next Nobel in physics join a Stalker in a journey to a strange and desolate location inside but completely isolated from the habitable world. The location is called the zone. Although the Origin of the zone is unclear in the movie, it is told that the land is littered with tripwires of dangerous natural anomalies invisible to the human eyes. Only a stalker can know his way inside this killing ground known as the zone and lead us to a fabled room that has a magical ability to fulfil our innermost wishes.

Through their journey, many times we come across terrifying scenarios where we sense that the lives of our travellers are in jeopardy. However, we don't see any threat visually we only feel a sense of tension as if a pair of invisible eyes are watching their every step. Gradually we get to know many strange things about this place from the Stalker. In stalker’s own words: “The zone wants to be respected otherwise it will punish. It is a very complicated system. A maze of deadly traps. I don’t know what’s going on here in the absence of people, but the moment someone shows up everything comes into motion.” Watching this it feels as if the very conviction of the stalker makes us believe in the invisible forces at play here and we follow his rituals of moving forward without any question to make our journey through the zone.

In the end, after several instances of tension-ridden hardships, they reach their destination. But neither the writer nor the professor enters the room. The professor reveals that he carried a bomb to destroy the room. He thought before the journey, that a room with the power to grant any wishes would pose a threat to mankind as anyone can come and wish power and domination. But later in the movie, he decides otherwise.

So why didn't they enter a room that has the power to fulfil their innermost wishes? The overwhelming narrative across the film critics is that they didn't have faith in the room. Even we find the stalker lamenting the same at the end of the movie as well. He says, "the world is devoid of faith and people are devoid of any spiritual root." Still, this reason doesn’t fit right. they may not have faith in the room, but wouldn’t they enter it just out of curiosity? Lack of faith doesn't seem to be a strong reason here.

I think this movie is a discourse between the ontology and teleology of faith. It delves into the questions of whether we should ask if faith is real or should we ask what purpose does faith serve? Teleologically faith serves as a moral anchoring. a compass, a social thread unifying people.

It’s not that they don’t have faith in the room’s magical power. The Stalker explains at one point that once inside the room, one doesn’t have to ask anything. The room will sense what’s one’s innermost wishes are and will grant them. Maybe the writer and the professor didn't know what their innermost desires were. Maybe that’s why they didn’t enter the room.

Think about it for a moment… If you wish to become a venerated author and your wish is granted magically and instantly, will there be any creative drive in it or sense of self-actualization? Creation seems to stem out of imperfection, a striving. We create art to surpass our limitations of expressing ourselves.

That's precisely why, I think, the writer doesn't enter the room. It's not the lack of faith in the room. It's that he doesn't know exactly what he wants. For a moment he thinks that he wants to be that genius writer but what for? Once he becomes genius, would writing still retain its values? Coz no matter what he does, he'll never be able to surpass himself. And the same applies to the professor. Where is the sense of self-actualization if you reach your goal apriory without any experience of the journey?

Now let’s talk about why the professor changed his mind about destroying the room. He thought that in the age of hopelessness, we must preserve a beacon of hope that this room symbolises... amid the loss of hopes, people will know that there is something magical…spiritual. They may come and want riches and prestige and that'll be granted. But in today’s world of human mediocrity, nobody has any desire that'll affect humanity on a large scale. He didn’t have any faith in humanity to create a transcending desire which would go beyond self-preservation.

At the end of the movie, the Stalker laments about the people having no faith. It’s because for the Stalker the zone and the room are transient, something sacred. For him, the zone is his existential anchor. His life in the industrialized Sepia real world is bleak. Only inside the zone, he feels a sense of purpose, that’s where he’s needed. And he needs other people to show faith in the zone and enter the room. Without the social reciprocity of his faith, he feels that he’s deserted in a faithless world.

This makes us ask the question: why do we need compatriots in our shared belief? Do we practise our faith in solitude or communion? The answer is that we need social validation of faith. The purpose of faith is to connect people and give them a sense of direction and moral underpinning. without faith the world is chaotic. And that's what freaks the Stalker...The stalker is obligated to make others believe in the zone and the room. that's what gives his suffering and this world that he doesn't understand… a meaning.

Stalker was a loose adaptation of a book called Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers... an iconic and gem of philosophically deep science fiction. But the book and the movie address two different philosophical premises. Through the prism of the movie, Tarkovsky deconstructs faith as a human condition and explores the interplay of faith through the interaction of three men and a strange place.