Stalker: A New Soviet Avant-Garde

At the intersection of cinema and poetry lies a film whose expression yields an unending cycle of introspection and ambiguity. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) relies on faith. Embedded in its premise, the film’s divine – a forbidden territory known as the zone – transcends reason, yet the Soviet director establishes the enigmatic setting with the consideration of its audience. An unexplained catastrophe triggers the zone’s appearance, leaving the area characterized by anomalous properties, undefinable dangers, and, at its center, a room that grants its entrants their innermost desire. The film’s extensive duration follows three men, traversing through the zone’s industrial wasteland. The Stalker (Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy) is a man devout to the zone’s allure. In and out of prison, his devotion compels his continual returns to the territory, as he leaves his wife and daughter to uphold the intent of each Stalker – to guide curious individuals across the zone’s distinct, indifferent environment but never enter its coveted room. He is hired by two men — the Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolay Grinko). Driven by the zone’s mystique, the Writer seeks inspiration; the Professor, in search of truth. Through this narrative, Tarkovsky’s venture into the realm of science fiction is defined by methodical camera movements, distinct color gradients, and self-referential addresses to plant a seed of ambivalence that ruminates in each viewer’s mind. This lack of objectivity opposes the propagandistic assertion of the previous Soviet avant-garde that instead sought to harness filmic techniques to prompt psychological uniformity. Reorienting the Pavlovian intention of early Soviet cinema, Stalker's narrative induces a reflexive awareness of its own form that balances the hierarchy traditionally held within the cinematic medium to act as a method of communication through acknowledgment, rather than control.  

Beginning in the 1920s, the Soviet Union became an epicenter of cinematic experimentation. Early classical film theorists believed the medium had inherent ties to the nation’s philosophic and economic ideologies. They speculated that cinematic techniques, such as formulaic editing and montage, were indivisible from the mental processes the art form invoked. Through the opportunity to utilize the medium as a means of producing a shared mental or emotional response, cinema bores an innately communist property where no interpretation belongs to the individual over the collective. Sergei Eisenstein, the original founder of this design, details the efficiency of cinematic rhythm and social cohesion. His theory of montage shapes its use to become an organizational device. To Eisenstein, cinematic montage is “an idea that derives from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another” (Eisenstein 27). By this, he theorizes that the succession of individual, unrelated shots may produce an associative correlation within the viewer. His intention in this strategic arrangement guides the audience’s perception and evokes an orchestrated response. With premeditated elicitation, montage becomes a propagandistic tool that engraves a Pavlovian relationship into the cinematic medium, thus the director becomes an engineer of the audience’s manipulation. Montage “subjects the spectator to a sensual or impact, experimentally regulated and mathematically calculated to certain emotional shocks which, when placed in their proper sequence within the totality of the production, become the only means that enable the spectator to perceive the ideological side of what is being demonstrated” (Eisenstein 77). Consequently, montage alters reality and replaces it with controlled artifice to steer viewers’ perceptions of what appears onscreen. Its associative properties formulate an inherent political ideology — to evoke a collective response among a trained and contained audience, eliminating space for interpretation and individuality within a film.  

In Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky refutes this authoritative status to adjust the relationship between the film and the audience. He utilizes reflexivity, which film theorist Daniel Yacavone identifies as a technique that “involves a film drawing attention to itself as a film, even if implicitly” (Yacavone 86). Through this approach to Stalker’s narrative, Tarkovsky reevaluates the relations of the diegetic and non-diegetic worlds to equate the camera and the viewer as I and you by means of mutual acknowledgment. Just as the viewers spectate the world onscreen, reflexive techniques prompt diegesis to recognize this very speciation, and, therefore, its medium. The film’s characters break the theoretical fourth wall to deconstruct the traditional cinematic code of upholding artifice. While Tarkovsky may still utilize the fundamental technique of cinematic montage, they merely elicit an open emotional or intellectual response, rather than Eisenstein's intended calculated political mechanism. Interrupting this artifice, Stalker’s direct addresses serve as self-referential interludes that convey the film’s awareness of its own form. Through this, Tarkovsky refutes the Einsteinian intention of evoking a collective response within the separated audience and instead embraces ambiguity by blurring the lines between the film and the real world.  

Stalker’s consciousness of the film medium begins during its introduction. A black screen fades into the film’s distinct yellow tint as Edward Artemiev’s ambient electronic score drones behind a long shot that presents an empty, run-down wooden bar. A man opens the door, glances around the room, and subtly into the camera, before averting his focus to lighting his cigarette with a match. He leaves our view but soon returns to switch on a pair of flickering lights. From behind the camera’s position another man enters the frame — the Stalker. At a leisurely pace, he sets his bag on the floor, greets the first man, and stands at a table just off-center of the shot. He pauses and looks outside, checking his watch, and resting his arms on the table’s surface. The first man — his waiter — brings him a plate. Their movements are routine and listless until the Stalker suddenly shifts his gaze back to the camera, and the non-diegetic viewer. Again, the waiter returns with a cup of tea, prompting the Staker to adjust his focus, but he does not forget the subject of his gaze. Only momentarily sipping his glass, he returns to the viewer, unphased. We make eye contact that is only interrupted by the yellow, pump-font Cyrillic text of the opening credits. In the background, the waiter exits, leaving the viewer alone in the room with a man originally thought to be unaware of our surveillance. Yet, as if his eyes were studying us instead, he makes his recognition of our view clear. Both parties become able to spectate the other in silent intimate acknowledgment of each other’s presence. This initial break of the fourth wall sets a precedent for the film’s future self-examination, a precedent that breaks free from the shackles of the segregated diegetic/non-diegetic relationship. This method of introduction immediately creates a reflexive relationship where the film accepts the cinematic nature of its speciation before even alluding to its premise. Whereas prior renditions of Soviet films would attempt to uphold a separation between diegesis and viewer, Stalker refuses to ever establish the distinction. The scene then cuts to a black screen of upward-moving text that prefaces the film in the form of a fictionalized interview. The introduction of the premise acts as reflexive narration through its intermedial technique. A newscast within a film appeals to viewers’ need for context within the introduction, drawing attention to its medium as a method of communication. The textual narration directly explains Stalker’s diegesis to the audience, and we are concisely presented with a contextual explanation of the film’s narrative structure.   

Following this explicitly displayed context, the Stalker, Writer, and Professor meet, and travel past the zone’s guarded perimeters into its serene untouched atmosphere. Once inside, the film’s original yellow tint subsides, making way for the green and blue haze of the zone’s complexity. Together, the three men traverse the area’s irrational landscape in an attempt to reach the ethereal phenomena of the room. The Stalker acts as the men’s self-proclaimed spiritual guide. He insists the zone operates on a plane beyond human logic. They are supposedly at its will, subject to the inconceivable dangers of its traps and obstacles. His claims rely on establishing the setting as outside the bounds of time and space. Yet, this is not demonstrated through Tarkovsky’s camera work which operates with continuity editing techniques. His pronounced long takes throughout the film allow the viewer to soak in the zone’s stillness. We see a world similar to our own, only abandoned and serene. With the difference in portrayal between the zone’s verbal characterization and the camera’s documentation, the viewer is left uncertain of its true nature. Calling for an element of faith, the audience must choose to believe in the zone’s metaphysical properties. There is only one brief exception to the zone’s natural, logical presentation, serving as the viewer’s only glimpse into its anomalous nature. This excerpt prompts another reflexive expression that simultaneously testifies for the Stalker’s blind faith and foregrounds Tarkovsky’s employment of narrative as a means for direct address.  

Roaming deeper into the barren industrial landscape, the men near the climactic room. They enter a corridor of mounds. The Writer, ignoring the alleged hazards inside, steps forward first. In a burst of fear and angst, the Stalker screams his concerns and tosses his poorly fashioned bolt-and-cloth tool to test the area’s safety. The film cuts to a slow-motion shot of the device softly bouncing over the mounds of dirt, filling the air with dust in its trail. Its motion triggers the flight of a bird. A long shot again presents the full corridor, as it flies across the frame and briefly vanishes. Neither the viewers nor the characters are left with an explanation beyond the previous assertion that the subtle disappearance is merely the zone’s illogical will. For only this moment, the Stalker’s claims are validated by this skip in time.  

The unexplained sequence prompts a monologue that further reinforces Tarkovsky’s intended awareness of the viewer. The Writer, now lying in a puddle, appears to no longer be able to endure the zone’s uncertainty. He slowly rises and sits on the rim of the adjacent pipe. He begins his sermon. First, glancing back to his diegetic peers, but, as the camera’s long shot gradually tracks forward, he disregards their presence and instead turns his attention toward the viewer.  

His direct address serves as a form of Phatic reflexivity, which Yacavone cites as “the social relationship between speaker and hearer, and the channel of communication itself” (Yacavone 101). The Writer’s poetic commentary expands into a ramble on the state of consciousness, truth, filth, and the soul. He peers directly into the camera and the frame becomes ever closer to his troubled face. For this first time, Tarkovsky grants no room for ambiguity — the intent of his gaze is clear. We, the audience, are the sole recipients of his words. The Writer gives a speech to his non-diegetic crowd as if to scold the outside world watching.  

The inherent quality of the film medium’s spectator/spectated relationship is recognized and utilized as a method of linguistic conveyance. Yacavone defines this form of the phatic function as one of the “various ways that films acknowledge the audience as engaged in an active relationship with them and with cinema more generally” (Yacavone 121). Tarkovsky immerses the viewer into a relationship with the diegesis through first-hand address. The characters speak face-to-face with the viewer to convey their message, rather than attempt to elicit its communication through strategically formed artifice. The audience becomes not the subject of manipulation, but an individual engaging with their film counterpart.  

Through these reflexive notions, Eisenstein's original propagandistic intent of the cinematic form is reproduced as a medium cognizant of its own communicative abilities.  Tarkovsky’s reflexive breaks of the fourth wall transcend the separated narrative that upholds Eistenstein’s calculated elicitations. The Writer’s address and the Stalker’s subtle nod act as gestures of reflexivity that announce their awareness of their circumstance within the medium. Through reflexivity, the classical distinction between diegesis and non-diegesis becomes obscured to subvert the illusion of their separation. Tarkovsky rejects the Pavlovian relationship that derives only a homogenous, desired response. By contrast, his approach to the film medium places importance on the recognition of itself and its viewer. This technique pulls the audience into Stalker’s zone, respecting their presence within its seemingly separated world. By communicating through acknowledgment, rather than manipulation, Tarkovsky renounces the film medium as a Soviet ideological tool and re-establishes it as a poetic and subjective art form.