Stalker

Andrei Tarkovsky's magnum opus, Stalker, is the Russian director's second foray into science fiction after Solaris. It seems a simple film. A Stalker guides the Professor and the Writer to the Zone, a place where your innermost desires come true. However, the film is far from simple. Some critics have seen the film as prescient, the barren wasteland of the Zone suggestive of the surroundings of Chenobyl, whilst others see the film as having poltical parallels with the history of East and West Germany. Tarkovsky himself even said the zone might not exist. Perhaps our endless searching for meaning is futile, an apophenic search leading us astray. Instead, for me, Tarkovsky is dissecting cinema itself. The use of sub-monochromatic and lucid colour, the apparently normal surroundings that have 'mystical qualities', long, musing shots and ending that leaves the audience with jaw ajar trying to piece things together, all lure us into making something meaningful of Stalker. Instead maybe we should search for the Zone within ourselves where we can revel and take great enjoyment in cinema for just being cinema. This is what cinema was made for.

Mesmerising Media

During the past week or so I've watched some fascinating cinema: Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa Vie and James Marsh's Man on Wire.