“Stalker” (1979)
While “Solaris” is probably Tarkovsky’s most well-known film because of its genre associations and its 2002 remake, the post-apocalyptic setting of “Stalker” holds just as many genre trappings, but is arguably more successful (the filmmaker himself asserted as much). Set in a world that appears to be a post-nuclear-Russia (but this is only loosely implied), the film chronicles two men’s journey into the Zone — a strange, mystical, abandoned place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, which houses a room which allegedly contains the opaque utopia of ones innermost hopes and dreams. Not bounded by the laws of physics and inexplicably and invisibly dangerous, the Zone can only be navigated with the help of a Stalker — an individual with special mental gifts who risks government imprisonment for taking the desperate, or the curious, into this forbidden area. Against his wife’s wishes, one particular Stalker accompanies a writer in an existential crisis and a quiet scientist into the zone, where, as the three men spiral down into the depths of the building each one of them faces moral, psychological, existential, philosophical and even physical questions and conflicts. As enigmatic and mysterious as any of Tarkovsky’s pictures, like in “Solaris,” the vague sci-fi-ish elements give it enough narrative to make it one of his most engaging pictures, yet it never compromises in grappling with the metaphysical and spiritual themes that haunt all of his work. Marked by tactile sound design, gorgeous brown monochrome sepia tones and a dilapidated atmosphere both decayed and waterlogged, it’s almost a miracle that “Stalker” came to pass, considering Tarkovsky worked for a full year shooting outdoor sequences with a different cinematographer, recording footage he eventually burned. One could argue the picture is a heart of darkness-like voyage into the unknown, albeit a much more surreal and metaphysical picture than Joseph Conrad’s story ever intended. [A]
“Voyage in Time” (1982)
After years of facing untenable censorship in his homeland of Russia, Tarkovsky would defect to to Italy in 1982, making the the 1979-shot “Voyage In Time” documentary a formative snapshot of the filmmaker’s personal history. Visiting his friend, Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra — the man responsible for Michaelangelo Antonioni‘s classic tetralogy from 1960-1964 — the documentary is part location scout for “Nostahlgia” (he eventually settles on the desolate countryside of Bagno Vignoi), part Italian travelogue and part free-form conversation piece between two friends discussing the art of cinema and life. The pair discuss Tarkovsky’s favorite filmmakers — Alexander Dovzhenko, Robert Bresson, Antonioni, Fellini, Jean Vigo, Sergei Paradzhanov — give advice to younger filmmakers and broach topics such as Italian architecture, poetry and the “fiction” of narrative and action. While the conversation is interesting, it’s not especially illuminating for those that aren’t devout Tarkovsky-ites, though there are a few minor revelations. Tarkovsky claims he doesn’t enjoy genre or commercial films and in that sense says “Solaris” — regarded as his best film by many — is his least successful because he “could not escape from the [trappings] of the genre, from the fictional details.” However, in the case of “Stalker,” he believe it works because he “got rid of all the science-fiction signs completely. That gives me great pleasure.” Like all of Tarkovsky’s films, the rhythm is slow and meditative which somehow lends itself less to the documentary format than to his fiction films. As such, it’s really for hardcore Tarkovsky complete-ists only. [C+]
“Nostalghia” (1983)
A heart attack, an aborted feature, and egregious censorship, kept Tarkovsky from being able to work sanely in his homeland, but it was this, his first out-of-country production that confirmed his vehement refusal to return, a decision only strengthened when the picture machinations of the Soviet delegation successfully campaigned against his chances at a Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Co-written with Tonino Guerra (“Eternity And A Day,” “Blow-Up,” etc.), the film’s spellbinding eye follows a Russian poet in Italy (the locations captured in cinematography that doesn’t just love, but adores its subject). The poet is supposedly there researching deceased composer Pavel Sosnovsky, but instead he becomes enamored with a deranged vagabond he meets (Domiziana Giordano), and, filled with a longing for home and plagued by dreams in which he is the troubled nomad, he eventually commits to performing a spiritual ritual that will, according to the stranger, save the world from damnation. Abstract and opaque, still, there’s no denying how entirely it reflects the filmmaker’s inner conflict over abandoning country and family to work safely abroad. More than just a comment on some sentimental lust, the word “Nostalghia” means the same in both Russian and Italian, and so evokes the movie’s observation of how two separate elements can compound, to make a greater/more extreme “one.” This unity-from-duality theme is also evidenced by “Nostalghia” featuring not one surrogate for the director, but two — the homesick, yet rational, artist, and the lunatic; both impossibly dedicated to a single philosophy. It is the contrast between these two that directly mirrors Tarkovsky the family man vs. Tarkovsky the auteur, but in a duality, one side usually prevails and here, rationality loses out: the poet dies, and the filmmaker, in real life, leaves his family for his art. “Nostalghia” can certainly be seen as a melancholic longing for home, but it can also be read as a highly self-critical work, full of remorse and castigation for choosing artistic freedom over kin. Either way, it’s a gut-wrenching tour de force. [A]
