In the Mood for Tarkovsky.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for The Sacrifice.

There's No Place like the Zone.

"Who knows what kind of wish someone might cherish..."
- from Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker.

The Wizard of Oz turns 71 today. During those seven decades, the film has become one of the most discussed, loved and influential pieces in cinema history.
This is why it's so fascinating to discover the ways in which has influenced the works of world renowned auteurs in the most singular of forms.
From the obvious like Baz Luhrmann and George Lucas to the more avant garde like Kimberly Peirce and Akira Kurosawa, Oz has charmed its way into the hearts and subconsciousness of all kinds of artists.
It shouldn't be surprising then, that Andrei Tarkovsky's seminal Stalker is perhaps the movie that most resembles it structurally and aesthetically.



Tarkovsky was a master at exploring the metaphysical, the dreamlike and anything that had something to do with the machinations of the soul. When Stalker was released in 1979 Tarkovsky was 47, it's easy to assume at some point in life he had seen Oz and the similarities are not mere coincidences.
But let's start with those.



In a nutshell both The Wizard of Oz and Stalker are movies about an external quest that leads to inner discovery.
In Oz, Dorothy (Judy Garland) is taken by a tornado to a magical land, where the powerful title wizard will grant her one wish.
Joining Dorothy on her trip are a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) who wants a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) in need of a heart and a Lion (Bert Lahr) looking for courage. The four of them, and Dorothy's dog Toto, must endure perilous tasks and missions to have their wishes granted.
In Stalker, there is a mysterious place simply called "The Zone" where it is said your innermost wish is granted, this place of course is surrounded by military forces and danger.
The Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) has become an expert in getting people into "The Zone" and on the mission we see in the film takes a Professor (Nikolai Grinko) seemingly trying to win a Nobel prize and a Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) who has lost inspiration.
They too must endure all sorts of peril given that "The Zone" is known for its capricious nature.



When I first got the idea for this piece, I did some research and found there was an article in GreenCine which pretty much did a thorough comparison of why the movies were similar. It seems that great minds think alike huh, so why not read that piece as well? Be warned though, the article contains several spoilers.


(The Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow encounter immense danger in a poppy field before arriving to the Emerald City)

(The Stalker, the Professor and the Writer get existential in a field before reaching "The Zone")

But what I'd like to explore goes beyond the aesthetic, formal and structural similarities between both films.
Sure both are divided in monochromatic, sepia sequences and lush vivid moments to separate the "realities" they deal with.
Both deal with dreams, wishes and the fear that comes when we see them about to materialize.

But more than an interpretation of The Wizard of Oz, Stalker gives it a new dimension by removing the main female character.
Under this reading, Stalker could very well be an alternate version of The Wizard of Oz, one without Dorothy.
There is a lot that can be drawn from the fact that both films refuse to give proper names to their three supporting male characters.
From the Scarecrow to the Writer, they are all merely known by adjectives mostly related to their work. With this they are not only robbed of something that would resemble an identity, they also become symbolic figures at their most basic form.



This is obviously intentional given that both the Stalker (if he is to supply Dorothy's protagonism) and Dorothy, have beings with proper names they use to link back to home.
The girl has her dog Toto, whom she refers to and talks as if he was the only connection she has to what she originally thought to be true.
The Stalker has his daughter Monkey (Natasha Abramova) who doesn't come with him but is often mentioned and most of the time is a mysterious figure who reminds her father about something he might've chosen to forget or ignore.

If we concentrate on Stalker we come to find that Monkey might very well be the Dorothy who stayed behind.
An alternate version of the perky heroine Garland played who might've missed the tornado and never got to realize her destiny.
When the movie ends we learn something about Monkey, probably no other character knows.
It's as if Tarkovsky is reminding us not only about the fact that the young female presence is essential to these plots but also giving us insight into the tragedy that would be for some art-forms to be altered.
"Mankind exists in order to create works of art" declares the Writer with absolute certainty.
It's also curious to see how Dorothy serves as a compass of sorts and her non-presence in Stalker makes the male characters seem lost at all times.
More than expressing some basic form of male-female complementarity, it seems to be saying something about the nature of the elements we carry with us.


You might say that having Dorothy on board didn't make things any easier for the Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow but at the end of Oz Dorothy has learned something about herself and the people in her world. She has found home.
The Stalker though remains the same, perhaps even more detached from a world he no longer recognizes and fully aware that magic might not be what he needs; after all he himself declares "everything that happens here depends not on The Zone but on us".
But where is his accountability for his own actions? Why isn't he able, like Dorothy, to learn from past mistakes? How many more times will he do this journey?
This eternal search for the Emerald City is what makes Stalker such a moving essay about traveling down the confines of the human soul, where yellow brick roads might not always point in the right way.


Which of your favorite classic movies has inspired another movie you love?

Raining in My Heart.

Few filmmakers studied the human soul as thoroughly and as constantly as Andrei Tarkovsky.
In Stalker, the Russian master delivered his most acute and precise dissection of what it is to be alive despite your knowledge that the whole world is pretty much made out of pain.
The movie follows three men in their attempt to enter a restricted area called "The Zone", where, who knows why, it's said that your deepest wishes are granted.


There's not really much of a "plot", in the common sense, to spoil about Stalker, since the film mostly relies on atmosphere and Tarkovsky's heart-stopping timing.
However in what could be the film's centerpiece (really could be, since it has so many truly majestic moments) we receive an unexpected punch in the gut.
As the three men come to a realization regarding their destiny, they sit next to each other contemplating what the future might bring them. Again, this is completely subjective, given how Tarkovsky makes no effort to elaborate or over-explain what goes inside his characters' minds.
As the camera moves away from them we see they appear to be framed, as if time had stopped for a moment and for the first time we see them as what they are; nothing but mortal beings in a universe that won't cease to exist once they're gone.
As they come to terms with their mortality and their utter smallness in the face of something that will prevail (in their particular case "The Zone"), Tarkovsky hits us with rain.


The fact that it's raining inside a room shouldn't be an issue, after all "The Zone" does as it wants, what's most surprising about this moment is the way in which Tarkovsky makes this rain feel purifying, mocking and dreamlike.
Rain has become a manipulative staple filmmakers use to highlight specific moments ("oh no my heart has just been broken", "uh oh here comes the serial killer") and Tarkovsky knows he wants to do just the same.
What becomes stunning is the ways in which he layers this common film trick. The rain begins as the sadness and longing in the characters becomes more evident but as the camera distances us from these men, this meteorological phenomenon takes on a different symbolism.
It has become yet another division between them and "The Zone" and between us and the film.
As if everything was about adding covers, layers and disguises, we never learn the true nature of what "The Zone" is and we are left with a deep sense of sadness at the realization that as a thinking species we are more limited than we would like to think.


This post is part of the "Loved Getting Wet Just Now" blog-a-thon hosted by my friend Andrew of Encore's World of Film & TV.