Rev Left Radio - "Stalker" by Andrei Tarkovsky: Modernity and The Sickness Unto Death

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Breht is interviewed as a guest on Left of the Projector (along with Amanda Joy Moon). Together, with the host Evan, the three discuss Soviet Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" from 1979. In case you missed our first collab on Tarkovsky's film "Solaris" you can find that discussion HERE Left of the Projector: Subscribe: https://leftoftheprojector.com ⁠⁠Letterboxd⁠⁠: https://boxd.it/5T9O1 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: https://www.patreon.com/LeftoftheProjectorPod ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: https://www.instagram.com/leftoftheprojectorpod/   Amanda Joy Moon: ⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandajoymoon/ ⁠ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get 15% off any book in the Left Wing Books Library HERE Support Rev Left Radio Follow Rev Left on IG 

Hey everyone, welcome back to RevLeft Radio. On today's episode, we are double releasing an episode that I was a guest on on the podcast, the left of the projector with Evan. We also had another guest, Amanda. So Evan and Amanda and I tackled a few months ago, we tackled Solaris by Tarkovsky, Andre Tarkovsky, the Soviet filmmaker. And this time around, we decided to tackle another one of his films. the stalker. And so

Evan invited me and Amanda on left of the projector to have a discussion our second discussion on a Tarkovsky film and it's really fascinating. I highly encourage people to check out these films. Obviously having watched the film or having some understanding of Tarkovsky will help in digesting this episode, but we also just

touch on deeply human themes that anybody can relate to regardless of whether or not you watch the film. I do encourage people to watch these films I think for many reasons, but one of the reasons is that, you know, engage And reaching with these really deep artistic films that are incredibly long is, I think, a way to also reclaim our attention spans, which are so scattered in today's hyper-digital social media environment in which we're constantly scrolling and getting hit after hit of dopamine and, you know, hardly able to get through a movie, even a regular hour 20 movie these days without checking our phone compulsively. and And Andrei Tarkovsky, his films really test us.

And so, you know, one of the ways that you can reclaim your attention is like deep reading or meditation. And I think another way is watching films like this, these deeply artistic, atmospheric, reflective films that are not here to constantly entertain, but are here to bring you on an artistic journey. And Tarkovsky does that just about as well as anyone that I'm aware of. So great film, great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And before we get into the episode, I also want to remind listeners that we have a special collaboration going on

with our friends over at leftwingbooks.net in which any RevLeft listener, if you type in RevLeft at checkout, you get 15% off any of their books in their library. And they have an ever-expanding library with lots and lots of wonderful gems in that library that I highly recommend people check out. And it's really cool that they reached out to me

and said that our listeners can get, you know, those books at a cheaper cost. So if you're interested in that, if you want to buy books for comrades or friends, upcoming birthdays of people who might be interested in that stuff, or even just for yourself, you want to get a discount on some really interesting books.

Go check it out. Type in Rev. Left at checkout. But you won't even have to do that because the link I'll put in the show notes will immediately apply that discount in that RevLeft code. So you just click on that link, pick out your book, get 15% off, support really good comrades, over at Left Wing Books and Kersplabab, and you, of course, support your own educational journey.

So check out Leftwingbooks.net. The show link will be in the show notes. And without further ado, here's my discussion with Evan and Amanda on Left of the Projector about Andrei Tarkovsky's famous film from 1979, The Stalker. Enjoy. Sit back in your seats, get something to eat. Watch this movie. Don't like to can you see it.

Well, we'll let you. Thank you. Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host, Evan, back again with another film discussion from the left. You can find subscribe to the show on all platforms at leftof theprojector.com. Back in January, I had a really wonderful conversation about the self, humanity, love, and so much more through the film. Solaris by Andre Tchaikovsky.

The discussion was deep, profound. It made me think about film in a whole new way. And this week, I'll be diving into a second helping of Tarkovsky and discussing his 1979 film Stalker. And since this is, I guess, turning into a Tarkovsky series, I have the same guest back as I did last time. So I'm joined by Amanda and Brett O'Shea. Thank you both for being here.

Thanks for having. Absolutely. It's an honor and a pleasure. So I think before we maybe get into like, the meat of the movie. And I'll also give a very quick, you know, snapshot of kind of the plot, although I guess from a plot standpoint, it's not a lot happens. It's all over the course of a single day. But I remember, Brett, you telling me last time when you were watching Solaris, it was during like a snowstorm and there was this kind of weird, you know, atmosphere that went along with the

movie. And I guess I'm wondering how you both felt watching this movie. If there was, you know, reminiscing of, you know, okay, I have, I have Solaris in the back of my mind. Now I'm watching watching Stalker and I'm kind of more in tune to, you know, kind of what Tarkaski's trying to do. I certainly I feel that way. So I'm curious how you both felt about that. Go ahead, Barry. Okay, sure. Yeah.

Well, I didn't have the wonderful backdrop of a blizzard going on this time. But I knew I was, I was in for something. After the first Tarkovsky film, you understand that when you enter these films, you're going to enter with patience. There's going to be deep, reflective moments, long periods without, dialogue, little to no music, and in our hyper-stimulated modern culture of scrolling and having dopamine hits everywhere you turn, this is an interesting, it's an interesting thing to have to engage with. And I would actually encourage people who are wanting to maybe watch this film or any

of these films, that this is a great way to kind of reclaim your attention from the scattered attention economy that we live in today. And just the practice of simply putting your phone in a different room and sitting down and watching a full Tarkovsky film. It really is, it's really worth it. You get a sort of re-entrenchment into the present moment. And I don't, I don't have as much problems as maybe I would think I do with the patience needed in these films because they're so beautiful. They're so gorgeous. They're so reflective that even in these long, overwrought shots that last, you know, 10 times longer than they maybe need to, quote unquote, you're still engaged and it's sort of hypnotic. And I,

I even, I was looking at some analysis of Tarkovsky in his films. And I think Tarkovsky himself talks somewhere, probably in his book, about, you know, if you draw a shot long enough, at first it makes people feel like, oh, there's no reason for this shot to be that long. But then it keeps going and then you use something new emerges after a period of time where there's something hypnotic about it, something pulsing about it, something reflective about it. It gives you time as well, speaking of a hyperattention economy, to kind of reflect on what's happening. on how you feel about what's happening. And in modern movies, especially in a commercialized quote unquote successful movies, you don't really get that element. So yeah, it's a beautiful film. Everything Tarkovsky does is about how you feel watching it. It's not about, and there's a quote I'll get to later. It's not about thoughts or propagating certain ideas or an

ideology. It's about a felt experience. From his point of view, I think he's trying to put his feelings into the medium of film and from the viewer's point of view as well is of kind of sitting with that so yeah those are my initial thoughts yeah i have i have to agree um the super long intros is kind of a trademark of of all those films i've seen so far the dreary music um the use of sepia black and white um for viewers yeah like short tension spans is something that I wrote down, like, I personally, I'm like, okay, let's get to it. I was listening to one of the interviews because I bought the DVD because I watched it so many times I can't afford to keep on renting it from the video store. So I bought it. And I was listening to some of the

extra interviews. And when Tarkowski first presented the film to Moss Films, they're like, oh, the intro is a little long. And he's like, so his response was to make the intro a long longer. And he's like, to the effect of like, if people don't like this film, then they can, they have plenty of time to go leave, you know? Like, um, I really like that. And I, I like that, I like that we're exploring this because growing up as a millennial, like, I have nothing, had nothing but short attention span type stuff. Um, and so, uh, yeah, the, once again, It's like a journey of humankind, mankind, whatever. I, it's, every time I've watched it, it has made me feel a different way about a different part of how I view life and the meaning of life and my purpose of life and my, you know, how I contribute to this world.

A lot of feelings. Yeah, I think that that word you mentioned that made me that I felt when I was watching, you said the word like a journey through this movie. I think all of his movies are this really incredible journey. Like, you know, as I saw quickly, I'll kind of add my thoughts is also kind of just giving listeners just a sense who haven't seen this movie. Kind of just a very brief snapshot of the plot and kind of what you're talking about is the very first opening shot is you're basically inside of, you have, first you have a bar scene and then you get into the stalker's house and you have these long tracking shots slowly zooming in that just. at first, in a regular movie, you would just show you that, and then it would show you the next thing. And this, you're thinking about everything he's doing. Why did he make this decision? Because I don't think he made any decision without, you know, very careful thought. And I think

that the movie is a very simplistic plot from a, you know, just talking about it. We have a man who's known as the stalker, and he leads to additional men, a professor and a writer into a strange area called the zone, which is sort of cut off from the rest of the city militarized. And their goal is to get to a place in the zone called the room, which can give you anything your heart desires. And the entire film is their journey, again, this journey to get to that place and kind of what they decide once they arrive there, we'll kind of save some of that till the end. But I think he, Tarkovsky, builds the the exposition at the beginning is just so slow, but I'm watching the bar scene.

I'm thinking, you know, what does this have to do with the film? Why are they showing you this bar scene? And you actually start the film with the bar scene and one of the very final scenes in the film is in the bar. Actually, the final scene is in the bar. So that journey is there. So I'm wondering how you felt, but I guess that early exposition and learning about the stalker, you see his wife and his daughter.

and his wife is angry that he's going back into the zone with additional people. And I'm wondering what you make of that and how you, you know, you see the wife and see the stalker and kind of get a sense of their lives. You know, you see they're not very wealthy. They're in fairly dilapidated apartment. And you kind of get a sense of that he has to do this. This is kind of his only way to make money and kind of live. And I don't really know if that's a question. but it actually starts off with text saying oh there was this meteorite that fell

and they sent in the military and they never came back and so they sectioned off this area so it kind of sort of helps kind of set it up in that way but still at the same time like everything like the stalker it's just kind of implied more of like who he is you just kind of like learn pretty early on to just accept that he is in this position. And as a result, all stalkers have children that have disability. So then, you know, and they get into that early on. The long pan shot across the bed with like the table next to the bed, you know, the apple, the needle, the syringe and the little tin and stuff like that. So you kind of like get that, I guess, introduction into their world.

And with the use of the sepia tone, like the black and white sepia tone, it makes everything look a lot dirtier, like really grimy, really dirty, and wet. Like, everything is wet. So you don't really know what kind of world you're getting into. Are we getting into this, like, post-apocalyptic world? Are we getting into, you know, it's even hard to tell, like, exactly what time it's filmed. Is it felt like, does it take place in the time that it was filmed? Or is this like in the future? Because the clothes are all kind of burlap, you know, that could be any time. I mean,

but I was going to say, but I think, yeah, that's kind of, I think everything, like all Tarkovsky's films, it's like, nothing is like definitively told like how things are. It's very much implied through mood and body language and, you know, there's no dialogue and it's just beautifully sets up this world. In the very intro, there's no dialogue. It beautifully sets up this world of like, I don't know, where you're beginning your journey. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that stuck out to me is the despair inherent in those in those opening scenes, the despair in his wife when he leaves and she literally falls to the ground, crumbled over in despair, crying, weeping, you know, gnashing of teeth, if you

will. And that's a level of despair that I think we can all relate to. I don't know. I've had moments where literally I'm in such levels of despair that there's fall to the ground and roll around. So it's starting it off with despair. And I think despair and decay are elements and themes that are woven into the aesthetics of this film. Another thing that I thought about originally is, you know, I really do see Tarkovsky as in this line of these great Russian artists. And Dostoevsky and Tolstoy jumped to mind as to, even before I started reading about their connections, I was like, oh, I can see him sort of in this tradition. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, both Christians, as is Tarkovsky, both wrestling with deep

existential themes, as is Tarkovsky. And then upon further research, I learned that he actually read or he almost adopted or was thinking about adapting. Dostoevsky is the idiot and Tolstoy's the death of Ivan Iliich into film. And he never got around to that. He chose this book by another author instead. But it's one of those things where I'm like, damn, you know, Tarkovsky died at like 54, 55 years old. And if he could have taken a Dostoevsky or a Tolstoy novel and turned it into a film, would have been absolutely beautiful. It sucks that we didn't quite get that but you can see their influences and in everything he does and um furthermore you know the the sepia tone when you when you start the film is very interesting there's a couple uh connections i wanted to make

one is a connection from a film before um stalker which is the wizard of oz which i just i just recently rewatched my whole family my wife and my son had never actually seen it um and i found it was very interesting fun fact i've been asking people like what year do you think the visitor of Oz was made in. Do either of you have a guess or do you know if you had a guess? Like what year do you think it came out? 1931. Yeah, okay. Most people choose way later, but 1939 is when the film came out. And it just, it just blows me away with the level of like color, richness and the generational appeal of that film still all these decades later coming up almost on a century later. Fascinating. But that sepia and then the transition to color when we move into the zone, I think is interesting. interesting. Not quite sure what to make of it. But another connection I made is you can, I don't know if you're familiar with the films of Lars von Trir, but I can see a huge influence that Tarkovsky directly has on Lars von Trier, particularly in two films that I really like from Von Trier, Melancholia and the Antichrist. If you remember in the Antichrist, the opening scene where the husband and wife are making love and neglecting the child and the child jumps out the window and it's all in black and white and it's all in slow motion. And it is. fucking long. It's like a 15, 20 minute opening scene with like classical music. You know, 2001 of Space Odyssey also has that really long opening scene with with music behind it. But in Melancholia by Von Trier as well, there's that depiction of depression where,

you know, the, the protagonist is sort of slogging through reality and everything is way slowed down and the color is bright. And I just, I just found it. Those are two of my already existing favorite films. And to see that connection from Tarkovsky clear. influencing Lars von Trir, I think, I think was interesting. But more than anything, there's a quote from Tarkovsky that I think helps sort of situate us to this entire film. He says, quote, and it really shows what he's trying to accomplish with his art. He says, quote, the allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plow and

harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good, end quote. Now, that's interesting in its own right. It gives you an orientation to what Tarkovsky's trying to do with his art and his films. But it's also interestingly, and maybe we'll get into this a little bit later, a rejection of socialist realism, right? It's a rejection of this idea that, which is inherent in socialist realism, that art should be in favor of propagating the struggle of the proletariat, you know, the ideology of the proletariat and its world historical mission. to transcend class society. And so Tarkovsky is exactly against that. And just as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were sort of bristling against the societies of their time, Tarkovsky for better or

worse, I mean, we're lefties, we're socialist, we're communist, we're communists. We understand that the Soviet Union was by no means perfect, but was also represented an advancement in some sense for humankind, even though in by the late 70s and 80s, there is this malaise that takes over, There's this revisionism, etc. But Tarkovsky's not a communist. He's not really interested in politics like that. And he does stand out as against his own society in some interesting ways. And I think we'll get into that later when we talk about capitalism and communism because I don't think that he's pro capitalist either. I think the core themes of his art, I think, are in direct contradistinction to the materialism of both capitalism and Soviet socialism. So those are those are things to think about. But my final statement here is that. that I think ultimately, and you guys can disagree with me or let me know your opinions as well, but that this is a film about hope, about faith in something greater than ourselves, aspects of existence that are prior to or beyond the scope of mere rationality, much like was explored in Solaris.

And so he's really pointing out, I think, this imbalance in society between the material development and our lack of development with regards to our psychology and our spirituality. Yeah, there's lots of things in there. In my separate personal notes, I had noted the explosion from like the black and white to color, like in Wizard of Oz. I don't know if that had at all any inspiration on this kind of thing. But I think, well, I mean, I find I was posted somewhere online that the scene on the little train as they're slowly moving into the zone is one of the greatest scenes I think I've ever seen in film. I mean, just. just the contemplation on each of their faces, the crazy, weird sounds that are starting to develop, and then you have the blast of color as they enter the zone. And I think, you know, and we can certainly talk about a little bit about how they get there,

but I think most of kind of the plot and the details and the things that are worth getting into, I think, are once they arrive in the zone, then kind of what that leads to. And I wanted to also mention, since you mentioned Amanda, that it's the opening about kind of like why this don't exist. This book is, this movie is based on the roadside picnic. And in the book is far

more pushed that it's this alien, you know, something extraterrestrial than it is in the movie. It's kind of implied a little bit in the movie. You'd like, don't know what it is. Whereas in the book, it's much more explicit. But I think each of the characters, I think maybe we should, a good place to go. And maybe wise Harkowski chose these. And I think a lot of what you said, Brett also brings in his religious aspect, you know, comparison to some of those authors you mentioned. I think a lot of the film is this, his religious beliefs kind of going against that capitalist side. And maybe that's where some of that contradiction comes. But we have the three people, the stalker, a writer, and the professor. Each of them have their own reasons. The two men have

different reasons to enter. And I'm wondering if you saw any comparison to Solaris and how you kind of have like science versus, you know, thought. You know, we had the, the psychologist and the scientist in Solaris. And in this, you have kind of the professor and science, who's a physicist, and then you have the writer who's doing things for art. And it's almost like he is building these, you know, competing kind of worldviews and ideas and not just the characters, but in the movie itself. Yeah. So one thing I wanted to say is about the, the sci-fi elements and the adaptation of the book first is that I think Tarkovsky explicitly wanted to strip the film of the more overt, you know, essentials of the sci-fi genre. So why things are

implied, the book is much more getting into the physics of these weird death traps and getting into the fact that aliens, you know, undoubtedly were the cause of this. But that's all stripped away. It is sort of implied. But we actually don't see anything supernatural. We, at least that I can think of. Everything that is supernatural just implied, like you're sort of expecting something to happen. I guess when the writer is walking towards the room directly the first time, there is this sort of voice that says turn back. And then, you know, even the scientist says that was your voice to the writer. So we're even unclear about where that voice came from. But that wasn't the only thing that was even mildly supernatural. So it's very interesting that

Tarkovsky wants to strip all that away, even though that's sort of the genre he's operating him. But I think more broadly with regards to the scientist and the writer and the Solaris and And this is a pattern that recurs in Tarkovsky is this, well, I think that the stalker itself is warning against, as somebody put it, a society that progresses materially, but disconnects spiritually, a society that seeks to conquer the infinite with the finite. And so I think through that lens, we can understand this recurrent disdain in his films for science and intellectuals and modernity and all of their nihilistic hubris. they're always so sure of themselves and this is what tarkovsky is really taking aim at at least in solaris and stalker i haven't seen all of his films but that pattern is very much present in both of them and i think more than outright rejecting modernity or rejecting science or rationality as if those things are completely worthless i think what he's really pointing out is this extreme imbalance where some elements of the material the science the intellectual world has progressed much more much faster than this other aspect of human nature, and that imbalance creates this hubris and creates disaster. And so over and over again, he uses scientists and intellectuals and shows how they are limited, how they in some sense, you know, science is our new religion. You know, modernity and intellectualism is the way that we

relate to the world, not through faith. And, you know, that's fine in its own right if it takes a place in an ecosystem of approaches to life. But when that's the only approach to life, we sort of set ourselves up for doom because of this imbalance. And I think, you know, regardless of what we think about is politics or regardless of what we think about religion, whether Christianity is correct or not. And I think there's lots of themes of religion throughout this entire film, of course, I think he is right in the fundamental sense that, you know, whether in Soviet socialism or Western capitalism or any modern instance, even fascism, which is very modern in its own way, is this imbalance where we're, we're, we're

constantly building up these capacities to probe deeper into the cosmos, to develop technologies that are godlike. And yet we are still mentally, psychologically, and spiritually, very small. And that imbalance creates this problem where we're not really equipped psychologically and spiritually to deal responsibly with the technologies that we've been able to create. And that leads to our doom. That in and of itself is dystopian. That is. and of itself alienating, and that's, I think, woven throughout these films and especially the stalker. Yeah. And the alienation comes from choosing a path of, like, definitively, this is how it is, you know, like, I think that the characters, as they go through their journey, you know,

they come in as these, like, very stereotypical archetypes. We've got the scientists, we have the artists. We have the kind of, the stalker is kind of more of like the, like, spiritual guide. you know, he, he reflects more what we would assume Tarkovsky would be, but I think Tarkovsky's in all of these characters that, you know, kind of skipping ahead a little bit, but at the end of the film, I get the impression that, like, we don't know definitively, you know, anything, you know, and I think that's why there is religion, why there's so many different religions, there's different ideologies, you know, like, because there is no there is no one answer to anything like science even science you know as as refined as it can be it's still everything is still an experiment everything is still you know up for debate and up for change and you know throwing out research and um i see a lot of charkowski and himself from reading his book where he's talking about he kind of sort of feels this feels like he has like a sort of like imposter syndrome

where he has like one of his regrets is like you know so much time but between film and this is kind of like not really connecting to the we don't know shit part but it's more of like the human experience of it

and how he how he is reflected in those characters where like the writer you know how he's like you know his desire he thinks his desire is to like the what was there something that he wanted like more inspiration for his books and he wanted to like you know all this wealth and recognition stuff like that um

but the zone and the room makes you realize that you don't actually know shit and you don't know what you actually want um and it's terrifying because your deepest desire is probably not in your subconscious. The idea that you were talking about, Brad, with technology and not kind of this imbalance in society and not knowing what to do, it reminded me of, I think you just released it, maybe last week on AI and kind of this technology coming. And it kind of, as you were saying, I'm thinking about, like, we don't know what's coming.

We don't know how we're going to use this technology, whether it will be good or bad. And I think that's kind of amazingly, in this film, Darkovsky's kind of putting that into the physicists, the professor's, you know, kind of mindset. He's looking for answers, but can you actually get them and can you actually use them for the advancement of society? And then, Amanda, you're talking about the writer and what he wants to do. And it seems like his goal is to be remembered. He talks about how he's kind of this tortured artist and his life and using this thing, the things that happened in his life to, use as inspiration. And then he wants to go to the zone into the room to be able to create art that people remember him in the future. He wants people to remember his books in a hundred years from now. And each of them have kind of their own separate kind of journey through what they want to achieve from the zone. And I think not knowing whether it's supernatural, I think, is

kind of a good thing. It's better kind of left it imply. You don't really know what's going on. It's very unknown. But I think as soon as you get into the zone and they're kind of slowly walking around, you have lots again, tons of exposition shots. One of the other great shots in this movie as you see them starting on their journey walking down the hill and they go into sort of a camera shot through a tank car of some sort. And the shots going through and each of them slowly walks into frame. And you think that the stalker is the camera. At least as you're watching it for the first time, that's how I felt. And then he walks into the shot.

And I don't know, something about that, that shot kind of just, it jarred me even more than the color of it. And it kind of made that spiritual or unknown element of the zone, even more apparent. Like something is watching over them, something that they can't explain. And maybe that's what they're trying to achieve, trying to find something in each of themselves that they couldn't get to before. And part of what they, the stalker talks about the room was it allows, it allows you to think about things that you're unable to talk about,

deep-seated feelings and beliefs that you can ever actually express. And I think all of them are trying to find some way to express the things that are inside of them. And I don't know, but I don't know if the shot, maybe I'm reaching as far as kind of how the camera is sort of watching over them. Then they have a shot of them in a field and they're just kind of walking around. and for a good whole minute, maybe longer. And then there are just other additional shots

where it's kind of like you're peering in on this journey that they're having. And I don't know. Just as far as film as the cinematography goes, I mean, it's just, it's phenomenal. Yeah, and to add to that, there's these, and I think Kubrick does this as well, the frames within frames,

the shooting of scenes where they're outlined by other things, like through the burnt out car, you see a frame when when he's standing on the threshold that the writer standing on the threshold of that tunnel leading into the room you're in a frame when they're standing outside the room itself refusing to go in and the camera zooms back it's a frame within a frame i think that's a beautiful sort of cinematic approach that both him and kubrick have but you know where him and kubrick diverges thematically because i think i think stanley kubrick is this sort of atheistic you know scientifically minded modern intellectual type. And in his films like 2001 of Space Odyssey, it's about the past, the present and the future of humanity. It's about what we could become, et cetera. And with Tarkovsky, there's always this sense of wanting to go back or that we've sort of lost something meaningful. And so I think thematically, him and Kubrick are completely in contradiction, but cinematographically, if that's a word, they're very much aligned. They make beautiful

films. So I like that part of it. Another thing I wanted to say about this, whole film well first i just wanted to mention evan you mentioned our recent episode ghosts in the machines on artificial intelligence consciousness and capitalism that alison and i just did and it's very funny because i hadn't watched this film yet when we recorded that episode but immediately i started to see how it resonated and in that episode alison and i talk about the neoliberal subjectivities of silicon valley engineers and scientists and the hubris that they have where they think that they're literally creating god and more than and that they can maybe even escape death and more than that, they think that they themselves are worthy of being able to create God and being

able to escape death. And that sort of hubris, that sort of cultish, religious search within science, I think is something that Tarkovsky would immediately recognize and have disdain for. One quote that I always have when we talk about these sorts of topics is the famous quote from Nietzsche that I want to read in full because Tarkovsky was aware of Nica. In Tarkovsky's other film The Sacrifice, it really centers in part around the theme of eternal recurrence, which is a sort of thought experiment that comes out of Nietzsche's work. And so I think it's very fair to say that Tarkovsky is engaging with Nietzsche. And Nietzsche, one of his famous quotes is, in full, quote, God is dead. God remains dead.

And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe this blood off? of us what water is there for us to clean ourselves what festivals of atonement what sacred game shall we have to invent is not the greatness of this deed too great for us must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it and you know nietzsche is prophetically in the 1800s predicting this era in the wake of the death of god meaning the loss of religion um throughout the world

this this problem of nihilism that will emerge this problem of imbalance this sort of being untethered from the things that grounded us, gave us social roles, gave us morality, gave us belief in something beyond ourselves. When that all goes away, what is left? And I think the existential angst of modernity, the neuroticism, the consumption, all these forms of sort of nihilism that we have in our society, I think we're predicted by Nietzsche. And I think what Tarkovsky is wrestling with is precisely this, you know, in the wake of the death of God, the sort of psychological and spiritual struggles. And I don't think it's about, you know, Tarkovsky's not telling us whether God exists or not. That's too crude. That's too hamfisted. He's saying, what are the psychological and social and spiritual ramifications of the death of God? How do we deal with it? And it's precisely in the hubris of the scientist and the writer and the intellectual of modernity that you see this attempt to make ourselves gods. The hubris in Silicon Valley engineers and technocrats, you know, that, you know, race. Kurzweil, the lead of Google, whatever the fuck, the futurist, the famous futurist, was asked,

you know, do you believe in God? Does God exist? And he said, not yet. The implication being that Silicon Valley was going to create artificial intelligence that would take the place of God. And that anybody with a beating heart, that should immediately repulse. And you should put your fists up and be ready to fight because, no, you're not going to create God. And more than that, you're not worthy to create God. None of us are. So I really, I really think that it helps to understand Tarkovsky's entire sort of art and especially in this film by thinking about wrestling with the implications of the death of God and the imbalance that that creates. This actually reminds me of a quote from the movie that I think maybe fits into this.

There are a bunch of different ones between the writer, but sometimes I felt like the writer said some of the more prophetic lines or had some of the really important dialogue. and this relates to kind of the AI and this whole construction that we're building. And I think, well, let me step one step back, one step back. I think that the stalker is kind of meant to be this. He admits in the movie that he's not there for his own desires. He's there to help people reach their own aim, come to a belief system. So I think Tarkoski would view the stalker as this person who's trying to prevent these, you know,

this future that we don't want. We want people to go back to this belief in God, perhaps. I mean, we can tell me if you think that's correct. But the quote that I was going to refer to, the writer says, at any rate, all your technology, all those blasts, furtices, wheels, and such like hustle and bustles so that people can work less, consume more. They're all crutches, artificial limbs.

Mankind exists in order to create works of art. At least that's unselfish compared with all other human activities. Great illusions, images of absolute. truth. Are you listen to me, Professor? And he's, this is kind of when they're both kind of taking rests throughout this talk. And I found that line and that whole bit, maybe even fitting into what you're talking about, the opening bread of the, how we would see the films, uh, banging together of capitalist society and a social society and maybe what Tarkovsky wants to see. Or maybe this is a contradiction, you know, because he's talking about the idea to consume more. The,

the professor wants to create technology to make people's lives better, but does it make it better? So I don't know what you thought about that. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, from our perspective, communism and capitalism, of course, have this big political sort of contradiction and these different visions for the future. But I think ultimately the materialism, the scientism, the atheism, the secularism of modern society is obviously, you know, it penetrates both systems and so you know both have their different ideologies their different visions of the future but they're both sort of you know rooted in industrial development they're both sort of scientifically oriented and so even though they have these different ideological approaches

to the world and these visions for what the world can be they're both locked in modernity and they reflect the core values of modernity and so you know where tarkovsky just sort of zooming out tarkovsky's operating within the soviet film industry where you have bureaucrats who act as certain sorts of sensors with regards to the sort of material that you can wrestle with. And this is an, you know, explicitly atheist society in which there is lots of suspicion around religion. And so, you know, Tarkovsky has to sort of navigate those sensors and is really upset and fed up with having to deal with that. But, you know, coming over to the American West, Kubrick had a very similar problem. But instead of sort of bureaucratic

sensors, it was the commercialization and the need for prophetization that, you know, turned off some people and investors for his films and he he sort of had to work around their need for profit and making big spectacle etc and so you see both of these artists you know um in their own societies struggling against this thing that is trying to um limit their their artistic expression and then having to find creative workarounds with regards to that so i think the problem of modernity and what tarkovsky is is critiquing i think goes deeper than you know this system versus this system. It's all these systems that are existent in modernity as reflections of this underlying imbalance and this underlying sort of, you know, the new faith. Now, when I say

like the science is the religion of our day, that's not to demean science. Science is crucial. I love science. Science is a beautiful tool in the human toolbox. But there is a sense in which it, by its very nature, is always an open-ended process. It's not a conclusion. It's not a set of facts and realities and when you start treating science as the ends and the means and you start having as much faith in atheism and the you know a cold dead cosmos not created by anyone and anything and we're all left to our own devices you have as much faith in that idea as you know religious people a thousand years ago had in their belief in god um i think that also that that continues to present the problem tarkovsky's operating within the secular

modernity and so he's critiquing it but a lot of the problems that we see it is in balance, the immaturity of humanity is also very present in like medieval Christian societies, right, where their barbarism and the cruelty of humankind was just funneled through the prism of their religious beliefs, as it is now funneled through the prism of liberal beliefs, scientific beliefs, right? When the U.S. goes and topples a country, it doesn't say we're taking its resources or we're making it kowtow to our geopolitical interest. It says we're operating in the name of freedom and democracy. We're basically operating in the name of all humanity. And that in and of itself is a

sort of religious, you know, divinely ordained sort of mentality that you think that you are actually representing the highest and most true elements within the human condition. And that leads to massive cruelty. You know, the cruelty never leaves, whether the justification is we're spreading democracy and freedom or the justification is we're spreading the word of God. Right. The cruelty is still there. It's still very human. And just the layer surfacing values that we attach to it and the rhetoric that we that we dress it up in, it shifts and it changes. But that fundamental problem remains. So again, you broke up when you were asking that question. So I kind of had to infer what you were asking me, but I hope I at least touched on an aspect of what you were saying.

No, no. I think you got what I was saying. And I'll, you can say something there, if you want. Yeah, you know, honestly, I didn't really think much. about how, you know, the two conflicting kind of systems that these artists are dealing with. Of course, I am more biased towards a socialist system, but, you know, I could see, like, the limitations, especially, you know, this time in the Soviet Union was super revisionist, neoliberal, militarized. I mean, this is time of Bresniff still. And, yeah, I never really thought it like oh like one one system could also be you know just as difficult to navigate as capitalist system in different ways obviously um but i don't really have much much else to say

about that i just thinking um i've just been thinking a lot about the environment in which this film is takes place the zone itself and i'm sure we'll get into this and um all of about that and that that environment, I think, kind of like reflects a lot of, I guess, the mood that Tchaikovsky is trying to promote. I don't really have the words exactly, but yeah. Well, this is actually a funny thing that he did while he was filming. There are actually a lot of random kind of facts about the filming that are interesting, maybe not as relevant to the movie itself. But the idea that you're kind of in nature and you can kind of, by being in nature, you can kind of become one within yourself. You can go on this spiritual journey. But there's one shot where

they show a feel with flowers. And apparently he wasn't happy with there being flowers. And he had people go out and individually pick some of them out so that it wasn't as many in the field. And he had these very specific things that he wanted to have done throughout the filming. That's also crazy. And just for anyone who doesn't know, they actually filmed almost the whole movie. And then they had to film it all again because the film they created. on was lost, whether it was sabotized. Some people say, but the movie that came out the second time is a completely different movie. So the fact that he made the same movie twice is also just hard to comprehend. And the stalker became a different person in the second movie,

more of this, you know, kind of self-reflective nature. But I like the environment of the zone as this kind of kind of the post-apocalyptic like coming back to life in some way because you have all those you know

the burnt down cars and all of these things then you're also given this idea of what will come next after you know everything decays I think that was the word

you used Brett earlier like this is maybe the opposite of the decay we see at the beginning of the film in the stalker's home and everything beautiful picturesque scenes, although you do have some of these grimy parts in the sewer and some

of the other areas later. But I think as they're getting there, their entire environment is this beautiful place and how could they not find themselves and learn what they desire truly before they get to the room where it can supposedly give them this desire. So that's not really a question there, but I guess how you would think of the environment. And there's also been people who have said that there's feelings of like a nuclear disaster. You know, this is obviously before Chernobyl. I think it's seven years before Chernobyl. But he, I think there's definitely illusions of what would happen in a, is this the result of, you know, some kind of waste. That's why his, his daughter is, you know, has disabilities and other people do.

as well. Is it because of aliens or is it the cause actually mankind and the things that we do? You know, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, a way to, uh, get around what the actual, uh, who the actual monster is. And that's, you know, mankind's desire for, for profit. Yeah. The, the, the film is, uh, filmed in, uh, outside, like, a abandoned hydro plant.

So I think there was like a minor meltdown, like, in reality. And when the film came out, there was, uh, was a small incident in Chernobyl in 1979. Wait, 79? Yes, 1979. It was called a three-mile incident. And it wasn't, nothing compared to the big meltdown in, what was that, 1986 during Gorbachev.

But there, so the environment actually is polluted. And there is speculation that that's how Tchaikovsky got lung cancer. And a lot of the crew did get cancer. His wife, I think, I'm assuming his wife is the wife in the movie. I didn't actually look up to see who she is. She got cancer. And I think that's a big, like, they're speculated that that's how Tchaikovsky got cancer was from filming there. Because, you know, they filmed twice.

And they filmed, not only did they film, have to film it over again, they had half of the budget. so the production company didn't just write it off they're like let's try it again but with only half of the money so that's where a lot of that um attention to detail he had because he's like really like working against the elements you know he didn't have the amount of tanks that he wanted he didn't have the environment that he could afford so they really had to improvise quite a bit but it is said that Tchaikovsky was pretty he handled it pretty well he seemed like he was pretty easy to work with considering um the shit but uh that environment was literally like knowing that watching that and seeing like the fog you would think oh that's beautiful but that's

like probably literally poisonous hair that they are sucking in and um it kind of goes to show like the the the you know a film like that that would not be an okay environment to be filming today you know so it kind of uh makes you think about like um just like a lot of early cinematography a lot of like um you know uh safety precautions not being taken worker exploitation um you know and like the lengths and with people um will go to to make their art um even if it's fucking kills them so yeah i mean i think in in um every tarkovsky film the the number one word that comes to my mind is ambiguity you know what we're all taking stabs like so many people before us and after us will at trying to pin down the meaning but part of its it's artistic power

is precisely that it is so ambiguous and that nothing is given to you as a clear and concise answer even though the whole time you're watching there's this part of your brain that is like okay the the the reveal is just around the corner like something's going to make sense here that they're going to point this out, you know, something's going to be exculpated and it never quite gets there, which, you know, some people might find that frustrating. I find it exhilarating. I think that's what real art should sort of be. There's a sense in which art is like a two-way experience. The artist presents you with something and then you react and engage with that thing. And, you know, me and you or me and Amanda and Evan engaging with the same painting or the same

film, we're going to have slightly different emotions. We're going to have slightly different connections and associations in our head and that's what good art i think does um to evan's point about about nature i'm not quite sure what to make of it other than you know with with solaris there was also this deep fixation on nature right the opening shots of these reeds underwater um you know this constant sort of sort of focusing on the the beauty of nature and from tarkovsky's sort of theistic point of view of course all of nature is god's creation so there's something sacred about it and going into it, and it is a sort of spiritual journey in and of itself, right? Those two things go together so well.

You want to get out of the concrete jungle and into nature if you're interested in spiritual development or diving deep within yourself. So there's that. The Chernobyl thing is interesting. I think a little bit of it, I'm kind of skeptical of thinking too much in those terms just because it did happen later. And because it's such a big event, we look back in hindsight and sort of, you know, it's sort of prophetic.

and then we apply a lot of those realities to what he might have been saying. And I'm not sure that all matches up. It is fascinating that seven years later there is this zone. And with our knowledge of radiation and entering these radiated zones as being inherently dangerous and governments shutting them down and not allowing people through, there's so many parallels there. As an aside, there's this crazy, I think he's Russian or Ukrainian YouTuber who goes into the Chernobyl site and swims in the water and does insane shit. I don't know. If you're if you're interested in taking a little rabbit hole, go check out like Ukrainian YouTubers who dive in the waters of Chernobyl. It's fucking insane. But anyway, there's one quote from somebody I was reading an essay I was reading about this. And I think it kind of touches on some of the stuff we're talking about. I'll read the quote here. It says, quote, Tarkovsky's camera pans over liquid pools or rivers inhabited by roving fish or plant life. Underneath the water, we catch glimpses of a disappeared civilization, including. including orthodox religious icons, a machine gun, cans, syringes. The elements have devoured culture after it has incinerated itself. The daily objects of our existence will become artifacts

after the cataclysm in the same fashion that today we examine the basic home items of the ancient Romans or Egyptians. We can only hope that such artifacts will even be left if our doom will indeed come from the technology we stock so much faith into. And so I think that that is always an overarching thing that Tarkovsky is pointing at like this imbalance will result in our doom like we are creating our own suffering we are creating a cataclysm of some sort however that takes maybe it does take the form of nuclear war and radiation maybe it takes the form of you know AI that gets out of control maybe it's just our devastation of the ecosystems in the form of climate change and mass extinction events our hubris our technology our psychological and spiritual immaturity once again show in the world that we create some ways fascinating and beautiful. How is it that these apes that evolved on this spinning rock are able to, you know, create the quantum computer and able to probe into the origins of the cosmos itself? On one hand, it's fascinating and beautiful in a testament to the depths of our knowledge and the beauty of our minds. But on the other hand, there's all these other things that we wrought, the inequality, the environmental devastation, the complete immaturity that we have as a species, you know, the fact that we're constantly at war with one another. This is the dual aspect. of human nature and one side is pulling down the other there's this beauty that we create there's also this incredible chaos that we create precisely through our hubris um the one thing i wanted to say and i think this is one of your questions i don't want to get ahead of it but we might as well dive

into it is is what the zone represents and i think the zone in the room represent two different things um we can start with the with the zone and i would love to get your guys's thoughts on this as well um but you know the zone for me sort of represents mankind's pathetic attempt to control and direct a power that it isn't properly equipped to actually harness, much like the rapidly developing technology of our time, like artificial intelligence. You know, there's a sense in which the zone represents this thing that humans don't understand that we're sort of scared of, that the authorities locked down and prevent anybody from going to. There's this thought that the stalker can lead people in and that we can actually kind of get something out of it.

There's a sense that we might be able to control this thing that we don't understand. and that is so far beyond our capacities. And so I think that attempt to control, to dominate, to impose our will on things is precisely what creates so much chaos, so much unnecessary suffering, what causes ecological destruction, our attempt to control and dominate nature rather than live in harmony with it. And so in some, and I'm sure there's many other interpretations of the zone, but that's one that jumped out to me as particularly appealing and I think, I think more or less correct. I feel like the stalker as a guide. He's not only a guide to the room, but he is a guide to, I guess, like, learning how to respect the zone. He really works around like with the strings and the nuts. I don't know.

I don't get it. He just throws them. It's from the, in the book, it's because they were testing gravity. That's why they use it. Oh, okay. See, I knew they read the book. Um, and so I think, I think the zone, you know, is, I think the zone is more important than the room, really. Um, the stalker seems to, you know, some people will say he's, this is kind of like a Christian allegory, you know, he's like the, the kind of like Christlike figure leading, leading these lost men, you know, um, but, you know, you could, just like the zone, you could take anything from it, you know, it's not definitively one thing. or another, I think that the soccer is kind of trying to, whether he realizes or not, is trying

to teach these men, these men of modernity to respect nature, I guess, or just the zone itself. Because he himself, I don't really think he really fully understands the zone. He understands his last experiences. He knows that each experience is going to be different. I mean, he said, you know old old dangers you know or old new dangers arise each time you can't you never go in and come back the same way it's never the same and he's asking himself like what is the zone like when no one's here it completely changes when someone is here um so the zone the zone is what you would you make of it just like the room but um i feel like the room is just so insignificant compared to the zone because how many people actually did make it to the room you know we hear about

porcupine and his brother just only a few people and not many people make it that far they either die or they turn away you know um so the zone the zone is the room I don't know um and the stalker I think the stocker is still trying to figure out what and who he is um Just like the men. And there's also, you know, the three men, and I don't know, I don't know very much about religion. I personally never really grew up with religion. I, like, went to church because of we were poor and they gave us free food. That's pretty much it.

And I can't help but see, like, these three wise men almost, like, but not wise. I don't know. Maybe they think they're wise and their own way. yeah the non-wise men yeah um you know going into it like they all have kind of their own level of arrogance and that zone just humbles the fuck out of all of them um in a way and they still come out you know with a deeper respect for whatever it is they need to have a deeper respect for you know um yeah the zone is what you make of it and i think that that's like kind of the metaphor for life it is like your experience in life.

The zone kind of is a more concentrated experience, I guess, a more focal concentrated journey of life and, I don't know, getting it together. One of the things that I, but you said, Brett, that kind of plays into how I perceive the zone. I think both of these, like, are completely valid ways to look at it. I think, as you're saying, Amanda, like, you could ask 10 people and you probably could get 10 different responses and depends upon how you, went in seeing the movie. I think that's how he likes to have his movies. It's

everyone will have this different feeling. But I almost saw it as a kind of a reminder of the failures of like a human society. And I think it fits in with the part you were talking about Brett with the things hidden underneath the water you saw different objects and different things that have left behind. It's almost like we're rebuilding on top of this

lost civilization that was a failure and now we're going to try again. And these people are going in there to try and see the physicist is going in there to learn things about the universe that can help us move forward. The writer is trying to create art so that people will be inspired to create their own art. And the stalker is there to maybe regain a hope and belief in God in some way. So each of them have kind of their own reasons for going into the zone. But that's kind of how I perceived it. That it also is this thing that they don't know how to control, but then also it's the looking back on the absolute failure of society and a

completely unrelated, partly related. There's a book called Annihilation is also a movie called Annihilation, and it's loosely influenced by this movie where a lot of the aspect of the book and movie are based on a zone that just kind of popped up out of nowhere and they don't know what to do with it and they send scientists in. I think it's very, I mean, I guess it's one of those things. You now read the book and see the movie and now you're putting meeting into a movie that came out, you know, 40 years before. But I think it makes you fit into that aspect of no one really knows what it is. And they're all trying to gather their own meaning because they don't have any maybe within themselves. They want to find meeting to improve their lives

too. Yes, there's, you know, with the room and what it means and stuff, you know, I said earlier that some of the core themes of this film are despair and decay. And another one would, of course, I think, be desire. And desire is interesting psychologically and desire is very interesting spiritually. You know, what is like, even in Buddhism, right, this idea that life is suffering and that, you know, desire and the constant desiring of things, aversion and attachment, you know, bad things happen, I desire for those things not to happen. Good things happen. I desire to have more of those good things. That desire itself is this sort of engine of suffering. But more than that, and to complicate it, and to complicate it,

that picture even more is that we don't know our own desires that there's a sense in which we don't know ourselves and perhaps that is part and parcel of our collective and individual immaturity as a species because the room as they say in the film pretty explicitly the room reveals the desire that you that has made you suffer most so there's this connection between desire and suffering which is deeply spiritual and religious but also it reveals your most secret desire your true nature. And so there's this fear that, you know, humans don't know their true nature. And you might think you know, I want to go in there to get the Nobel Prize, or I want to go in there to make really beautiful art. But what it does is it doesn't really care what you think you want. It shows you

what you actually want. And the story of porcupine is this idea that his brother died in this journey. And so he wanted his brother back. And so he went into the room, crawled into the room on his hands and knees, as they say, to ask for his brother back, right? His deepest wish. wish his brother died he wants to get it back and what he got was money so the room revealed to him is actually you care more about money about wealth comfort than you do about your own brother even though ostensibly you're coming in here explicitly asking for your brother back you get money and that's why he killed himself because he's he's such a lowly creature that he desires money deep down in his heart of hearts more than he desire his own brother to be back and so they say

you know after a week of getting his riches he kills himself and i think that's why um so i think that's interesting and it also maybe speaks to why the scientist and the writer don't want to go in there's this sense that now that they're on the threshold they're not quite sure who they are and the writer even talks earlier about this contradiction between you know this part of me like this higher conscious parts wants the whole world to become vegetarian but this deeper part of me just wants the steak and i think that's getting at this deeper desire like i can say i want the whole world in this case you know this is just an example to be vegetarian because of animal cruelty etc but when i go in that room i'm going to get a big ass steak

Because deep down, some animalistic part of me is this selfish thing that wants, once, once. And so there's part of that their concern is not going in there precisely for that reason. But I also read in that same essay that I read a piece from earlier about the rivers and the flowing water over the images, the detritus of human culture. There's another beautiful quote or another little point they say that when they're talking about the room, they say, quote, this is where the room becomes an extension of our yearning for the beyond for extreme. possibilities in a world of commerce and war and for that there's there's um this whole thing is about hope is about faith and that hope and faith is never really validated the room is never proven to be a a wish maker we're really left unsure that again with ambiguity does this thing even work are these is this stalker guy just totally fucking diluted and he just wants hope and he

just you know once the meaning that he gets in his life is by leading these people towards hope especially leading these secular intellectual people in a world where we're trying to figure everything out and there is no such thing as faith anymore that they have faith that this room is going to reveal something to them and that search for faith that journey toward faith for something more than the world offers i think is is how the stalker himself gets his value and his meaning in life because he doesn't have much else in life to really find meaning and he's this sort of this failed person and um maybe we can talk about that a little bit with regards to self-respect and how we get our self-worth in these societies, you know, the

intellectual, the scientist, the achiever gets a sense of self-worth. But, you know, for the millions of people who don't achieve in that way, how do they garner it? So that's, that's something interesting. But setting that aside, I just wanted to read this poem that is, that is spoken in the film by the stalker when they're approaching the room. And I think it speaks to desire. I think it speaks to something very deep in the human condition he says quote now he's reciting this poem now the summer has passed it might never have been it is warm in the sun but it isn't enough all that might have occurred like a five-fingered leaf fluttered into my hands but it isn't enough neither evil nor good has yet vanished in vain it all burned and was light but it isn't enough life has been as a shield

and has offered protection i have been most fortunate but it isn't enough the leaves were not burned, the bowels were not broken, the day clear as glass, but it isn't enough. And that, I think, is speaking to this deep part of our human condition where we desire, desire, desire, but we actually are never fulfilled. And the first noble truth within Buddhism is that life is suffering, life is duca, more clearly translated, not as suffering necessarily, but as dissatisfactoriness. And you notice how we're always dissatisfied that even when we get what we think we want we find a way to make that sufferable we find a way to make that less than what we wanted and i think we often see this with rich people with celebrities that kind of go crazy because in a society that tells you wealth

and fame and status are the things that will make you happy that will give you self worth that will give you meaning and purpose in life and you get all the money and all the fame and all the status and you're still left with this desire for something else something intangible something you can't even quite articulate to yourself. And that constant sense of never quite arriving, of never quite being fulfilled, even when we get the things we ostensibly think we want, I think is something very, very deep in the human condition. That's what the Buddha was talking about 2,500 years ago. And I think Tarkovsky is still interested in that because that is a focal point around which spiritual suffering and spiritual journeys sort of hinge. And so I found that quote, I think, really, really beautiful and desire as a whole to be a theme in this in this film and i'm just going to mention the one of the quotes from tarkowski's book um is directly related to what you said uh this is also kind of there's a bunch of them kind of talking about what he saw as the themes or the reasons for stalker and he's but one of them was he says what then is the main theme that i had to sound through stalker in the

most general terms it is the theme of human dignity and how a man suffers if he has no self-respect I think that really is an encapsulation of kind of what you just outlawed, Brett, is these desires that we don't know we have. And one of the other things I was going to mention when you're talking about the desire is some of these desires that are within us, like the desire for money and fame, are things that are created by our society. We don't inherently need to have wealth and all of these things. Our existence tells us we need to accumulate and we have to have lots of fancy items and, you know, do all these things. And I think that's something that both the writer and the professor, when they reach the threshold of the room, and I think a lot of that scene is really fascinating. We can talk more about it.

But they both are very afraid of what will happen to them. I think the porcupine story also gives them pause, you know, even if that's true or not, the stalker might just tell them this story. Who knows? It's some rumors that go around. There's all these, you don't really know. Are there other stalkers? Are there other people who's gone in?

But they fear so much what will come out of that. The writer is worried that if he has unlimited ideas for writing, he won't actually be able to write anymore because what makes him be able to write is the torture. And so you can't have art without that torture. And so if it's gone, then he's stripped of who he is. It's pointless. And then the professor, I'm a little bit more unsure of what his reasoning was, I know he kind of explains it, but it's not completely clear.

I think he fears that this will, maybe it will counteract what we know about physics and science and that will disprove it in some sense. And that would be against, you know, his own scientific beliefs that it would then make what he's done for his life's work, you know, not worth having done them. So those are kind of my kind of thoughts about those things. And I guess we can also talk about the room too and kind of the scene where they're, I think is one of the more, there's lots of powerful scenes in this, but when they're kind of fighting with each other and they're finally at the threshold of the room

and just the journey underneath the ground through the pipe tunnel is also just a magnificent scene. I said last episode and this time constantly just incredible acting and facial expressions and all of the aspects. Then you have that famous kind of scene. I think it's on the DVD or Blu-ray with sort of like the room with kind of mounds of dirt. And you get to see that scene play out. Yeah. Really quick, I just wanted to say before, sorry, before we move into that, Amanda,

I just wanted to just make one more point really quick. It's precisely the sort of ego that wants more and more and more. It's the ego that is never satisfied. And it's the ego that dominates modernity. It's like the ego at the collective scale is really sort of the, the locus of our chaos, of our, of our inability to grow, of our immaturity. And that this satisfaction I was talking about, that that realization that nothing actually quite satisfies you is the impetus to spiritual growth. It's the emphasis to taking the spiritual journey.

Because at first, our immature adolescent sort of stage of development, we just want to satisfy all these desires. And, you know, if you're able to, whatever your desires are, sex, money, you know, being loved, being adored, fame, whatever it may be, if you can get that thing over and over again, you've realized very quickly that that actually doesn't satisfy you. And when you come to that threshold of realizing that the thing you thought that was going to make you have meaning and purpose and fulfill you and finally make you happy, when that doesn't do it, you turn to spirituality, you turn to faith, you turn to something bigger than yourself, you look for deliverance because this, this thing that you had thought was the path to getting what

you wanted is just, it's empty at the end of the day. You know, and I think casual, like, one thing that jumps out like you could have a million examples but like casual sex an adolescent teenage boy right they thinks in his head like you know oh man if i could just have as much sex as possible like i'd be cool people would like me like just that that ability to just you know have casual sex over and over again and if you ever actually live that life you find out very quickly how deadening it is how fucking completely empty it is to have these hedonic desires met and you know i want to drink alcohol or I just want to get fucked up or I just want to have sex or whatever it is, that hedonic treadmill of the more you get, the more empty that actually is. And that when you've exhausted that journey

is when you find out that you'll never be satisfied in that way. And that's when you look for something deeper. And when you go underground in the film, when you go into the tunnels, when you go deep under the earth, the subterranean level of the mind, perhaps, is when you start getting at these deeper truths. And so I think even in Solaris, there was a little bit of that. But I think the subterranean aspect of this film, I think, is speaking to, like, perhaps maybe even the subconscious of trying to go down there, but not really knowing what's down there. And so it can kind of be a visual representation of our subconscious. The closer you get to the room, you have to go down, down, down, down. So I don't know. Food for thought, but. Were you going to say something before,

Amanda? No. Okay. Well, I'm going to, I'm also going to read another. quote from Tarkovsky's book where he talks about the decision that the two men decide to not go into the room and you know we can maybe if that will spur any more things about this whole area but he says as the two men reached their objective they have been through a great deal thought about themselves reassessed themselves and they haven't the courage to step across the threshold into the room which they have risked their lives to reach they have become conscious that at the tragic deepest level of awareness they are imperfect. They had summoned the strength to look into themselves and had been horrified.

But in the end, they lacked the spiritual courage to believe in themselves. I think it's, well, I'll let, I'll open it up. Because I think that is a little bit of what we're saying is that they fear what was going to happen. You know, what will it lead to? But is it this, is it that they're, you know, cowards, that they don't have the belief in God? because he says the spiritual courage

to believe in themselves. Do you do take that as they don't have enough religious, they don't have the belief that it will actually come true. It doesn't have to necessarily be God, I guess you could say? They don't have the belief in something. I think, like, Brett, I think you said, like, it's

kind of like there's a fear of what we actually desire. And, you know, in the film, you know, what was actually desired was like fame, well, more like money, I guess, with porcupine. but like what if you desire something like the destruction of the entire world what if that's actually what you desire you know and that's kind of terrifying because you can't control that that's

your deep deepness you know just like the tunnel it's the deepness you can't control what's happening in that tunnel i have to say that that tunnel scene was so like long and just stressful very stressful. Just like the scene, oh my gosh, I was going, I made this parallel, like the scene in Solaris when they're in the car, you know, and they're going through that tunnel, tunnels with all like, you know, the extreme sounds. And I remember watching Solaris, like, kind of looking at the characters that are sitting in the car, you know, you're freaking out and you look and they seem to be fine.

So we're like, okay, everything's fine. It's like when you're in a plane, you know, like there's a little bit of turbulence. And you're like, no one's freaking out. Okay, I shouldn't freak out. And so that's kind of what taking that into the tunnel. And I think that that's like Tchaikovsky's like his, his MO, you know, like that like really high anxiety kind of tunnel-like journey into the next phase of the movie. But the deep, back to the deep desire thing, I couldn't help out reflect and like think. about like what what is my deepest desire i it's a little terrifying because it might not might not be

something soft you know it might not be oh i want money you know um but i i don't know and this movie really made me kind of think about that and also shy away from thinking about it too much you know um because what what what is our you know individual deep desire from you know I shallow I could be like oh I want to be I want to leave an impression I want to you know learn history and teach history and you know lead the next generation towards revolution but like is that actually my deepest desire you know and that's uh I don't know it's terrifying I and I think that I yeah and I feel that with the men you know they're at the threshold of the door the the writer almost falls in you know and they bring them back and I felt I could feel that in my body in that in that scene and um you know you can't help but put yourself in like their positions and if I were if I were the writer if I were the professor I'd be like you know actually I think I'm good uh I don't need to know or to get my deepest desire because I don't even know if like their fears necessarily to end up

like porcupine but to end up with what they actually want you know and and to actually know and that goes into the theme of like that we don't know shit and and it's okay that we don't know shit we don't know definitively no shit um and my own life experience you know i never had religion but i did have a lot of paranormal stuff growing up and so i was like i nothing is definitively uh one way or another and so yeah it's hard not to see yourself in those characters and especially in that that moment and my gosh and like just the vastness of the room, like, in my mind the whole time, I'm just waiting to get into this tiny room, you know, like my bedroom, the size of my bedroom with a tiny doorway, maybe a complicated,

you know, threshold to get past or an actual door and there's no actual door. So, yeah, and then the scene, pulling away with the water coming down and, you know, and we have that view again that we had earlier in the movie when they was going into that abandoned car you know like the grass movement like throughout the whole film you realize that there is actually someone or something watching them yeah i think you really put you really put your finger on it when you said you yourself you're kind of you were kind of jumping in the role of the writer professor like amanda is in that room she's like you know here's my ostensible conscious goal is like you know history teaching leading the next you know the next generation towards building a better

world and absolutely those are all wonderful goals to have but there's that you just mentioned it that fear like i don't really know if i stepped in i'm not quite sure what would come out and that's you said you know you said we don't know shit and i think in the face of the fact that we don't know shit that should imbue us with humility and it's precisely the lack of humility the the belief that humans have that we do know shit we know a lot of shit maybe we know so much that we can become our own gods or we can create our own gods that hubris is precisely our downfall It's not the not knowing shit that's the problem. It's the thinking you know shit when you don't. And, you know, if we really don't know shit to the point where we don't even really know our own innermost desires, we don't know anything. We should at the very least be incredibly humble in the face of the cosmos and in the face of existence in the face of our human civilizations. And, you know, the fact that they don't know themselves and so they are scared is that, you know, that spiritual courage comes from like fully knowing yourself on some level or having the, you know, Kierkegaardian leap of faith to embrace something bigger than yourself despite the fact that

you don't know, right? Like in some ways, submitting yourself to religious belief, subordinating yourself to something higher is a sort of surrender. It's a sort of admission that you don't know yourself, a sort of admission that your will is puny and that, you know, you are not really in control of anything, something bigger than you is, whether that's God or whatever thing you put in the place of God. And so there's a, there's a humility in religious faith that is missing in modernity. And it's precisely, you know, what we need most. I think Tarkovsky is sort of saying that that's sort of, that, that sort of humility that comes from surrendering, that that humility that comes from knowing that you don't know yourself and that you have so much more to

learn. And that's precisely what we're lacking. So that spiritual courage can come in the fourth form of submission to a greater power than yourself. And the most quintessential version of that is believing in a God or believing in a higher divine order. One thing that made, I think that you're both saying that made me think of this is early on when they arrive in the zone, they can see the room. Like, they're only a few hundred yards away. And at one point, the writer walks close to it, and you mentioned earlier, but he hears a voice from somewhere, the person watching them over, one of the stalker, the professor.

We don't know. Is it a voice in his head? And he comes back. But they're so close to where they have to go, but they have to go on this ridiculous the circuitous route underneath and around and all, you know, a point where there's a scene that's also very interesting where the professor is like lost, but then somehow they all get back to where they were again, like he's somehow gone in front of them, but did they just go the wrong way? Like, it's never really explained. And you don't, you don't really need to know.

I guess it's kind of the mystic quality of this. But I guess the thing that I was thinking of is that the thing they desire and the place they can get it is seem so close to where they are, and yet it is impossibly far. There's obstacles along the way. I think you could say that's the same idea of trying to find meaning in your life, in yourself, understanding what those desires are. None of those things are easy. You can't just hop across the grass and hop into the room and you're there. I think that was very, to me, very intentional that you have to go on this like journey of self-discovery. And I think the thing that I saw as all of them is this journey they've all gone on.

And they all seem to also change their attitudes from the beginning and kind of how they feel about themselves, how they feel about their professions, which I think is what ultimately leads to their desire to not go in, to not to see what their desire is because they've, they feel like not even having gone in, they've already changed in some way. The journey has changed them, I guess. Yeah. It kind of seems like Tchaikoski was like, all right, actors, wonder about this field and we'll put a camera, you know. Like there's no, I mean, like, he implies or it said, you know, the stalker says that there's no direct route, you know, to it. Um, but that's, yeah, that's like kind of like that, that feeling of being lost along the way, I guess. Um, and, you know, in life, you know, we, we can see like what it is like, okay, what, what will make my life materially, spiritually, whatever better. Okay, it's this thing. oftentimes people can some you know will obtain it or something close to it and then they realize oh it comes at the sacrifice to something else you know like oh if i had financial

stability but it comes at the sacrifice of working 60 hours a week never seen your dog never being able to like actually have the time to have a family if that was something you know like oh if i'm financially stable i can have a family you know and you know and so uh that's that's that's the modern life, I guess, you'd say. And seeing it so plainly, like, if it was only this, but it's at the sacrifice of a lot of other things. Or it's, you know, that is like the sacrifice is like that journey of like, you know, if I can get financial stability, it comes to expensive working 60 hours,

am I willing to sacrifice everything else to get this, you know? And like bouncing off that, Amanda, is, you know, this idea that we hold up kind of exactly what you're saying, that we all hold up this thing. And it always shifts. It always changes that if I get this, then I'll be happy. You know? And like with Gen Z right now, one of the problems that they're facing is like family formation, right? They're very lonely. These fucking apps are so terrible with connecting people who actually could form something. And so you see this desire amongst Gen Z, alienated Gen Z about like, I really want a family. You know, this thing that previous generations just totally took for granted and even rebelled against in the 60s is now something that is so far out of my reach that I want it. Okay, well, then you get a family. What happens then? Kind of what you were saying. A whole new slate of problems open up. You know, raising children is incredibly hard.

It's financially taxing. It's emotionally taxing. Having a partner that you have to make happy and satisfy romantically, sexually, spiritually, to build a life together. There's a whole bunch of problems with that. Okay, well, then you do get a family. and then you now are like you're seeing all those problems you're like fuck wouldn't it be so nice to be totally free wouldn't it be so nice not to have to be subordinated to you know watching these kids every single day etc so like the human being is never happy no matter what you get your mind is a misery machine and evolutionarily it makes sense we're not meant we're not meant to just rest on our laurels you know we're not meant to just sit back and take a deep breath and say everything's fine now we'd be immediately eaten by a jaguar if we did that so there there has to be this dissatisfaction constantly pushing us forward constantly making us search and search and search but that search is exhausting and that's the existential modern condition and we don't even have

the anchor of god and eternity in heaven to look forward to when we die anymore because modernity we don't believe those things for the most part and so we're really left to our own devices and that's fucking horrifying and it's it's absolutely brutal but yeah people do it all the time they hold up a little image in their head if i get this then i'll be happy and then they get it and they realize no not even close and uh that's sort of that the hamster in the wheel thing and when you leave that wheel when you realize that truth and you jump off the wheel i think that's when the spiritual journey begins and i think that's what tarkovsky is really interested in and uh really quickly this this theme of human dignity um i think evan you said this quote about how man suffers

is if he has no self-respect there's one way of interpreting this film where the stalker is delusional right that there is that the zone is whatever a catastrophe zone you know the government doesn't want people to go in there because they're unsure of what it is but these things could be rumors this porcupine story could be rumors we have lots of things like that in in life and all throughout history you know the fountain of youth or el dorado cities made of gold these sort of heavens on earth these utopias that we might be able to reach the hope that we can find something you know even better and there's a there's there's one world in which the stalker's delusional that this is all bullshit and the stalker himself given the bleakness of his life the only way he can find

meaning is to be this guide, this person that helps people find hope and faith, and he has this whole thing in his head, which is why in the beginning, his wife is like, please don't do this. Like, you're risking prison, you know, you're risking death. You know, you're going to leave me and monkey, which is the name of the child. You're going to leave us alone. Like, please stop doing this. I guess it was implied he already went to prison for a stint for getting caught doing this. You get shot at trying to go through the barbed wire. So it's a really risky fucking thing. But why does he do it? Because it's the only thing in his bleak, bleak life that gives him a sense of purpose and meaning. And even if it is all bullshit, he still needs it.

And that's kind of, I think, explanatory of the despair at the end of the film when he's laying on the bed and despairing about how these people have no faith. They don't have any hope because that pulls the rug out from underneath what he does. And so I think there's a really interesting interpretation of this film where the stalker is totally delusional and there's no supernatural nothing. And it's just a sort of a meaning project for the stalker and the bleakness of his actual life. That's a, that's like the, a very interesting interpretation.

I don't think it's, it's really like very far-fetched when you look at it that way. You could see it very much as the movie is, it's called stalker. It's about his journey, not about the other people in this at all. It's what he's going through.

And you alluded to the end of the movie as they finally, you know, they leave the zone. You don't get quite as much vision or view of, or, you know, scenes of them leaving. They get back, you know, all in one piece. and they, you know, you have a couple scenes also that maybe it's worth talking about some of the end part. You already talked about the scene where he's lying on his bed in despair.

But you also have a moment where he's walking with his wife, you know, through the town, it seems like. And you actually get like a power plant in the background, which also plays into the whole idea of this industrialized world that we've created or maybe what impact that has on humankind. and maybe before we get to the very last, you know, 30 seconds of the movie, how you would say it ended for them because the stalker is in despair now. He's, it didn't help him in any way. But I think it actually did help the writer and the professor. I think they have reached some level of understanding about themselves moving forward, whereas I don't think the stalker has.

I don't know. I mean, it does seem like he's in despair, but I think he got his answer, you know, where he he he like most of us we we uh hinge our value on what we produce um whether with with other people or in the material sense but you know even though he is in despair i think it kind of i kind of get the impression that he's like okay i mean like these this is i don't know if he's going to do it anymore you know like he he's not getting the outcome that he desires from it i think he resents these people in a way and feels hopeless and you know at the same time that's how you should be going into the room with completely hopeless um but i don't yeah i don't know and uh it was it was a

i don't know i feel like the stalker i think he's done because the way that his wife is reacting to him as well it was opposed to the beginning where she was like really resentful and just in agony, you know, as, as Bray was pointing out earlier in the beginning, like, she seemed to have, like, a set of, like, relief, you know, like, they're walking away from the bar together as a family unit, you know, with monkey on his shoulders, like, like, a lot of, like, love and, and comfort and just kind of finality to, at least in that scene. And then him kind of just having his awakening of it like these people have no space you know they I think he's I think he's done I think that's like he got his answer there even though he didn't know he desired that answer

that's that's an interesting take yeah one thing that I was thinking about when you when you were talking is I'm kind of going back to the scientists a little bit is you know his ostensible reason for wanting to go in initially is like to get the Nobel Prize but when you see them they're approaching the threshold of the room he gets that call like from his boss or something and his boss is talking to him and um it comes out that his boss slept with his wife 20 years ago and that he's still angry about it and but he's under his boss so there's like this power there's like this powerlessness that he has and his desire for the nobel prize is a sort of sublimated desire to get revenge at his boss or to feel less powerless that he wants to put

himself above his boss not only is his boss but he had sex with his wife and that's like a deeply humiliating thing for you know somebody to go through in a monogamous relationship um and so like his powerlessness comes out in this want to have the Nobel Prize thinking if I had the Nobel Prize I'm more than my boss I've gotten myself above my boss in the ultimate way but deeper than that he just wants to not feel powerless in the face of his own life and that's precisely the part of him that he doesn't quite and understand and doesn't quite grapple with and it also comes out in the form of him wanting to bomb the room, this sort of scientific idea that this is too dangerous, that most people shouldn't be able to have this. And if we take seriously this powerlessness that is

plaguing the writer too, right? This powerlessness to be creative and this desire for immortality through his art. But specifically the scientist, the bomb is like, fuck it. Let me bomb it up. And that, blow it up. In that way, I can regain some of this power. But again, that's never conscious. That's his subconscious. You know, consciously, he's like, well, I want the Nobel Peace Prize, and I want to blow this up because it's not safe for other people. But deeper down, you can just see that there's this part of him that just feels utterly powerless that he is not addressing. And, you know, going into the room, I think, is extra scary precisely because we know he doesn't

know himself, really. And these things that he ostensibly wants are stand-ins for a deeper desire that he doesn't quite understand. How that shakes out with the stalker, I'm really not quite sure. There's a sense in which, you know, being home with the family or at least maybe the return from the journey and the comfort. of coming home to your wife and children and your home, no matter how bleak that home is, after being on a journey, is in and of itself a sort of relief and a sort of thing worth wanting.

But it's really ambiguous. And the very last scene just makes all of this even more ambiguous, because the only actually supernatural thing that seems to occur is that final scene. Well, before I, before I tell us, mentioned that, one thing I was thinking about is the stalker. I think I noted this in my, as I was watching it, to me it seems like the stalker, they mentioned he's in prison. But to him, reality outside of the zone is his prison. And the zone is where he can actually be free. And so if people don't want to go there anymore and to have this awakening,

he can't be free either. He's stuck in this prison of his, you know, he might love his wife and his child, but he's still in this kind of metaphorical prison. So that was one thing I thought of. And then the last thing you're talking about, Brad, is in the bar you see his the stalker's child

having the ability to move things with her mind it's a girl right I thought so like she's able to move things has telekinetic abilities and then it's just

it cuts and are you telling us that the entire movie was a bunch of crap and we just wasted two hours and 40 minutes or are you just

fuck I don't know I think he's just fucking with us we don't know shit that's why we thought we knew some shit But does he know his child has this ability? Like is the other thing? Like there's all, you could go down the whole rabbit hole of questions about it.

But it, I think that is true. I think it really does tell you that at the end of the day, you don't understand the zone. You don't understand life. You don't understand the room. All these things are like we're all trying to reach that point of understanding. And can we get there in our finite life? I don't know.

I agree. It throws everything up into. question everything that you thought you knew about the film goes sort of out of the window and then ultimately it is this miraculous endpoint nothing else in the film was miraculous it was all about the sort of hubris and non-humility of humans and our minds and all this and our beliefs about ourselves and at the end there's this moment of of a miracle so maybe tarkovsky is just putting in the fact that there is again so much we don't know that there is this miraculous element within reality that you know he is a he is a christian he does believe in god he believes in a

higher order. He believes that there is such a thing as divine intervention. But then if it's an alien thing, we don't really know. Maybe it's a power that they derived from the alien. Maybe the stalker himself went into the room at some point to deal with his sickly child. And maybe a desire came out of that. It's all incredibly ambiguous. And I just have no way to make heads or tales of it. I'll just have to wait for stalker, too. You could talk about this film for another hour and a half and have a completely different conversation, but I know, Brett, I think everyone knows where they can find your content on Rev Left.

And, yeah, but thank you both again for your time and research and interest in doing this and diving into Tarkovsky. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it again. There's many more films for us to explore together. Yeah. I've heard good things about Mirror.

I mean, there's a lot of, there's so many here we could do. But yeah, everyone listening, it's been listening to Left at the with Brett and Amanda, and we'll catch you next time.