Watching Tarkovsky’s Stalker as a filmmaker

1/ Today I came across this video about Tarkovsky. It is a great video essay, with excellent choice of shots:


If you don’t like or haven’t seen Tarkovsky, watch the 1st 2 minutes.

2/ Last September I watched The Sacrifice and wrote that I had immense admiration for him as a director but couldn’t warm to his films.
Now it’s different with Stalker, the film has haunting imagery, and it touches on something I have thought a lot about—the idea that we may not want our deeply held desires to come true, because we do not know what we really want deep down, and we may not want what we want when it actually happens. But that is not all Stalker is about—the film also touches on other ideas such as the role of the artist, self-doubt and inspiration, boredom, purpose, the meaning of art and the meaning of life, softness/ agility and strength/ hardness, freedom, choice, sacrifice, faith, and so on.
The film is full of evocative images, but I do not want to pin down some meaning. As Tarkovsky said it himself:

“I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning.”

3/ I note that video essays and articles about colours in films never mention the use of colours in Tarkovsky’s films (though they sometimes mention Bergman—Cries and Whispers). Tarkovsky has a tendency to switch between colour and B&W and/or sepia. It is not random.
Stalker starts in sepia. Whilst B&W strips everything of colour and it is all seen in shapes, light and shadow, sepia gives the city a sickly hue. The film starts in the Stalker’s house, then he goes out and we follow him to the pub, then he, the Writer, and the Professor, go to the Zone. They ride through the city, through factories, machines, railway, and so on, then all of a sudden there is a burst of colour—the film is now in colour, as they enter the Zone.
In Stalker, the Zone is in colour, the outside world is in sepia. The Stalker’s dream is in sepia. But why is the ending in colour? Does it not mean that the Stalker’s daughter Monkey’s telekinetic powers are associated with the Zone?

4/ The other day I came across a piece of writing, in which the author said that the auteur theory (which she called “the auteur myth”) was misogynistic.
It is needless to say that I think it is imbecilic. Everyone knows film is a collaborative art, the director is not the sole creator of a film. The concept of the auteur is mostly to distinguish different kinds of directors: there are technicians, there are stylists, and there are auteurs. Why does she think that recognised auteurs such as Bergman, Tarkovsky, and Fellini worked with lots of different people but their films were always recognisable, with a strong vision, recurring images, and recurring themes? Bergman for example might be lucky in finding Sven Nykvist and from that point always used him as cinematographer, but Tarkovsky and Fellini didn’t have the same cinematographer in different films.

5/ It is easy to tell that Tarkovsky likes running water, rain indoors, moss, mud, dead leaves, burning houses, levitation… In his films we can see water, air, fire, and earth.
Here is a video about the water motif:


6/ I maintain that Tarkovsky is a great director but a bad influence, at least if you try to imitate him. Art doesn’t come from long takes and nature shots.
There are only 2 film directors that I think are thinkers—Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman.

7/ Nevertheless, Tarkovsky is a great antithesis to commercial cinema.
I’m saddened by the fact that today cinema is no longer seen as art, only as entertainment. I dislike choppy editing, pointless camera movements, and the pathetic fear of boring the audience and losing money. I dislike the over-use of, and over-reliance on, green screen and CGI. I dislike blockbusters, especially superhero films, but dislike even more films that get acclaimed for being stylistic but have no substance and no depth.
Amidst brainless commercial cinema, a film like Roma gets lots of praise that is undeserved. I have never understood why Roma got the Oscar for best cinematography: compare it to actually great B&W films such as Ivan’s Childhood, 8 ½, Persona, Citizen Kane…, you can easily see the difference—Roma has little contrast, no real blacks, no real whites, only shades of grey like a lazy filter. It is a greyscale film, not B&W, and except for a very long tracking shot following the main character, there is nothing spectacular about the cinematography.
Stalker, on the other hand, is a very beautiful film. It is sometimes very slow, even painfully slow (142 shots in 163 minutes), but the viewing of the entire film is a rewarding experience.

8/ I think Tarkovsky is the most poetic of directors. It is not about composition as much it’s about the choice of image and the atmosphere, and the fact that he slows things down, makes us pay attention to some detail—everything is still, and he makes us just look at something and experience it in the moment and just feel it, and afterwards we see things in life differently.
Another director who also does that is Kieslowski, especially in Three Colours: Blue and The Double Life of Veronique.

9/ As a filmmaker, I’m particularly interested in sound. I can’t work on sound myself, because at the film school I specialised in directing and editing (and briefly in cinematography), but I have a fascination with sound and can work with a sound designer.
Sound is full of possibilities, because putting images to sound can’t change how you hear the sound, but changing the sound (or music) can change how you perceive the images.
Here is a good video about sound in Stalker:


I have always liked sound in Ingmar Bergman, but now I start to like sound in Tarkovsky as well. Sound in Bergman is more expressive and psychological, reflecting the character’s inner world. Sound in Tarkovsky is more atmospheric.

10/ I feel transformed, after watching Stalker.