FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Andrei Tarkovsky - Stalker (engl. subt.) 

When I looked at a few photos of today's atomic environment of Fukushima, I involuntarily thought of Tarkovsky's vision of an abandoned world in Stalker. Of course, the size of a film cannot be missed because of its relevance to the real world. Nevertheless, Stalker is something of a melancholy warning. Stalker is Tarkovsky's most cryptic film and therefore also the work that will always occupy us the most. Wasn't Stalker then also seen as a Chernobyl memorial? The idea of an eerie, depopulated "zone" - the prophecy of a "zone of alienation". Only seven years later it was to become a reality through a terrible conflagration at home. Yesterday I was looking at stalkers again. The zone with its wild fauna, this totemic black dog - that is exactly what happened to the landscape around Chernobyl. Deserted roads that have been reclaimed by nature. It's the quietest place in the world. The proliferating nature is reflected in the enormous station from which the three protagonists begin their insecure mission. Every step means a completely unknown danger to them. If you look at Stalker and think of Fukushima, you should know that Tarkovsky himself had an obsessive love for the Japanese masters of the 1950s. Influences can also be found in stalkers. A filmmaker who was familiar with Japanese haiku poetry and incorporated similar enigmatic twists into stalkers. The story of Stalker himself is claustrophobic. We can read how a first version was destroyed in the laboratory and Tarkovsky had to give up the original venues after an earthquake. The deepest and darkest needs come true in the zone. Even when Tarkovsky's protagonists follow the stalker, the leader, countless traps of sensitive intelligence lurk. It is this intelligence that controls the Zone. It can only be crossed on a given path and also only by means of one's own foreboding. The stalker's skull is shaved, his face expresses restlessness. He is dependent on the energy of the Zone, but also willing to help his followers. The motives of his followers are less altruistic. Very quickly philosophical arguments become very personal reasons for their journey. Stalkers are not to be imagined as narrative cinema. Stalker is like hypnotic suction. The world outside the Zone is bleak, damn it. Within the zone, however, everything seems lush and colourful. A place of wonder and beauty. Stalker works as a parabola. But if you ask yourself what the parable should stand for at all, you will end up back in Fukushima. Don't they? Trust? Religion? Art? The cinema itself? But isn't the Zone a symbol of life itself?