Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Stalker- Minimalist Verse

Hanxiang Zhou 12th November 202012th November 2020 0 Comments

Even among the Master of Film Directors, there are few people who bring enough visual beauty and depth of content in every film, and Andrei Tarkovsky is such a master, who created his own visual aesthetic system in just nine movies. His films make audiences willing to immerse themselves and find their own fun.

Though all of his movies, Stalker is my favorite and also the top two movies in my “movie list”, not only because Tarkovsky showed how to give poetry in the science fiction movie, but also because this movie is an excellent audiovisual language tutorial. The stalker in Stalker refers to the person who sneaks people into the “Zone”, and there is a Room in the “Zone”, which is said to be able to fulfill the most secret desires in people’s hearts. This is not a spoiler. We can’t spoil the Tarkovsky movie. It’s like a roller coaster, knowing that it is so thrilling and actually experiencing it has a completely different feeling. This movie is about how the stalker and the people who follow him get to the Room in the “Zone”. Obviously, the narrative of this movie specifically concerns people and “location” in a symbolic sense. This is why when thinking about the production of a film project about “location”, I first thought of this film. I will explain how this film inspired me both technically and ideologically through the analysis of several shoting.

The first is the scene at the beginning of the movie. Tarkovsky fixed the lens still on a small table with a syringe, some medicine bottles, and a glass of water.

Fill the square picture with a circle, and all the elements inside seem to be placed along the edge of the round table.

For the next few seconds it was still a relatively static shot, but we could hear some different sounds. Then the water in the water glass fluctuated, and then the water glass began to move towards the round table due to the vibration. We knew that the room was close to the railway, even though it was essentially a still shot. At the same time, the slight movement of this element also gives this lens some interesting and internal texture that can evoke our memories.

Please pay attention to the changes in the position of the water cup and the water waves inside

Immediately following the sound and vibration, the camera began to shift to the left, and then the wife in the film appeared, she was asleep. This is a very simple lens operation, straight and stable without any unnecessary changes, and organically combined with the sound and the elements of the picture that have been moved. This minimalist approach achieves a certain visual rule that a good lens should convey new information: combining the previous medicines and syringes, the audience may ask, who is sick?

The camera continued to pan to the left, and the child appeared. She looked more ill. The audience got new information, but they became more confused. The previous shoting have actually shaped a potential psychological dialogue for us.

How did you feel when you saw this kid? Tarkovsky’s lens is not only technical, it also has an emotional core and a certain potentially poetic imagery.

The camera continued to move to the left, and we saw a father, just as we would expect in our hearts. But the difference is that my father woke up and was bathed in light, and the director gave us a close-up. At the same time, the camera paused for a moment to emphasize the father’s concern for his daughter.

When we find that our father has woken up, the rhythm of the movie quietly changes at this time, secretive and internal, like a verse.

Then the camera began to move to the right, moving in the opposite direction to before, and sweeping across the daughter here. The audience may be thinking about why the director repeats and the information that exists at this time, but before the audience feels impatient, the camera returns to the wife——she is awake at this time, but does not look at her daughter or husband.——a metaphor surfaced, Tarkovsky still provided new information to the viewer about the possible disharmony of the family.

The director is always providing new information.

The camera finally returned to the round table. This is the closed loop of its entire trajectory and the closed loop of the information chain. At this time, we discovered that all the information about the family had already been presented on this small table. The sound of the train also awakened his wife, but it disappeared before the picture was complete. From the expression of his wife, we can guess that the sound of this train may have no meaning rather than just being noisy. All information is conveyed in the closed loop of this lens operation.

Suddenly realized the surprise, this is the last sentence of the verse.

From such a continuous two-minute shot, I can draw three reference points about film and cinematography: first, to ensure that the lens always transmits new information; second, the organic combination of sound and picture; third, the closed-loop camera movement surprises the audience.

Such a cyclic structure not only exists at the beginning of the movie, it exists at every moment of the movie, and even constitutes the movie itself (the characters return to the beginning of the story at the end). This structure puts us in an almost hypnotic state, fascinated by the film following the rhythm set by the director. Nonetheless, Tarkovsky still uses different techniques on such a loop structure, including giving it the characteristics of “slow cinema”.

This shot comes from the stalker leading the people in the Zone to the Room, he lay down and began to rest.And please note the hands of the stalker

Then the tone of the movie screen returned to the brownish yellow at the beginning of the movie, and in the background we could hear his wife’s voice. There is no doubt that this is the director’s reminder of the dream of the stalker, and the reference items summarized in the previous article have been repeated here. Tarkovsky chose a direction for the motion of the film lens, and the lens began to gradually move upward, which must be meaningful.

This is the result of the upward movement of the lens. The syringe appears in the frame, which undoubtedly implies that this is a real problem encountered by the stalker in the outside world.

Then there are more things, but they gradually start to become blurred. Tarkovsky inserted a piece of soothing music at this time, the rhythm of the camera movement matched the music, and a poetic psychedelic atmosphere gradually unfolded.

With more blurred pictures and images, the reappearance of the syringe, the fascination of dreams is further strengthened.

Religious metaphor is reflected in this process, but Tarkovsky has dealt with it vaguely, and it is difficult for us to know its exact meaning. Perhaps this is also the imagination left by his film poems.

The camera returned to the stalker’s hand, and a closed loop of camera motion was formed again. We experienced his dream during the whole process, reminding us of his past and the reason why he came to the Zone.

The tones of the movie become colorful again, and the dream is over here.

In fact, the running process of this scene in the movie is quite long. For the purpose of analysis and writing, I have to describe it briefly, but in terms of length in the movie, this scene is actually quite full of slow cinema’s characteristics. In other words, the whole Stalker has the temperament of a slow cinema. To quote Asbjorn Gronstad, “In slow cinema mood takes precedence over action.”, this is exactly the kind of temperament shown in Stalker and Tarkovsky’s other films. The slow long shots and minimalist subjective composition achieve all this. We are focused on the world where the character is, and we focus on the character, the reality of life and the aesthetics of film narration are delicately blended together.

Therefore, from a visual point of view, Tarkovsky’s films are very interesting. The above are only a small part of what I have learned from the single film Stalker, but it has been very useful for my film project. From this, I understood a technical technique of film creation and the poetic core behind it. But Tarkovsky’s story also has great appeal and mystery, but due to space and professional reasons, it will not be expanded here for the time being. No matter what, Tarkovsky and his films have brought great inspiration and influenced my creation.

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