Day 299
Wednesday 25 April 2018 2.44am
‘Below Tarkovsky’s Stalker’ 2018
This afternoon after returning three Fellini films to Lane Cove library I borrowed two of the three Roberto Rossellini films I have been able to track down, Rome – Open City (1945) and Journey to Italy (1954). I already found a copy of Germany Year Zero (1948). I’m planning on ticking off the Rossellini films next week as well as watching Les enfants du paradis (1945).
Before picking the girl’s up from school and while they were eating dinner and watching The Voice Blind Auditions, I started to watch the last seventy-five minutes of Stalker (1979) again from the time when the three characters rest and the Stalker dreams. There is something sitting below the surface of the film that is out of focus for me, but it is to do with what the room represents and who the Stalker represents. Sometimes I think the Stalker is a Christian trying to lead someone to heaven or paradise, or some place where wishes comes true and yet the room never delivers (according to the dialogue between the three characters) the happiness that should come from getting the desire of one’s heart. Therefore, it can’t be heaven. All of the characters don’t believe in happiness and have never seen a truly happy man and the one person they know reached the room and received abundant riches killed himself a couple of days later.
I paid close attention to the voiceover during the Stalker’s dream, the voiceover after the dream when he’s lying by the creek with his eyes open, and the images Tarkovsky shows as the camera glides over the creek’s shallow water revealing numerous objects on the creek-bed. I also paid close attention to the dialogue between the Writer and the Professor and how the Professor turns out to be a terrorist and the Writer suddenly loses his antipathy for the Professor when they discover the Professor has a bomb and intends to destroy the room. He then turns his venom towards the Stalker. There’s are clues which must explain why the Writer sides with the Professor at this point. The Writer represents creativity – obviously – and the Professor – equally obviously – science and knowledge.
I then started writing notes comprising about two thousand words, hopefully towards an essay that I can publish about the allegory or the illustration that Tarkovsky has in mind.
Finally, it is time to wrap-up and go to bed, because in eight-hours the girls and I leave for Leura for a three-day holiday my wife’s organised, starting today, with the ANZAC Public Holiday.
