Roadside Ponderings

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) is often hailed as a moving and frightening film, a thinking man's sci-fi to rival 2001. The comparisons with Kubrick's film are more deserved here than those often attributed to Tarkovsky's other venture into science fiction, Solyaris (1972), which I have always considered an interesting but ultimately self-parodying film (laborious shots combined with a pseudo-philosophical script), but again somewhat unusual. Whereas Space Odyssey certainly shares a technical competency and spirtual evolution angle with Stalker, that's where the similarities end. Kubrick's film is cold and impassive, even in moments of glory, underlining the director's understanding of tone and mood. Stalker, at its most pessimistic, is rich in human mystery and pondering on the theme of transcendence.

Watching Tarkovsky's Stalker uncovers the potential of cinema as a medium. We are never sure whether we are watching an artist or a magician; the truth is, the director is both, often simultaneously. Immediately we are struck by the aesthetics: the lighting is perfection, the control and patience of the shots chosen unmatched; furthermore, Tarkovsky is one of the cinema's great portraiters as well as a commendable landscape photographer. I fell in love with Alexander Kaidanovsky's head about twenty minutes in and the sympathy I felt for his character never left me.

Truthfully there are literally tens of shots in the film that suggest the director's genius, some of them, true to form, lasting for minutes on end. Our early shepherding into and out of the doorway into the bedroom, the continuous take on Monkey's progress down a slope as it is slowly revealed she is being carried rather than walking, the iconoclastic drift over images of the gods of our modern collective consciousness. (Jesus in prayer, money, a gun.) Perhaps the best example of the artist/magician duality is the final scene that at least deserves to be famous, in which Monkey moves a glass across a table with her mind. Or does she? Is she merely observing it's being progressed by the vibrations of a passing train? Our willingness to believe the unbelieveable, though, is a testament not to Tarkovsky's skill with a camera, but his understanding of psychology.

This scene follows what has been as much a psychoanalytical journey as a theological one. It is impossible not to pick up on the clumsy Id, Ego and Superego dynamic provided by the three (male) leads, but the Wittgensteinian undertones are far more subtle. The Zone, where our three heroes journey, is a metaphor for the functional world, a world of prepositions and language traps, where markers must be lain down to navigate in chaos. Just as we require illogical spatial recognitions to stay sane - Home, School, Work, Local Shop, Abroad, etc. - so does Stalker throw nuts to mark their progress before they've made it. Space is relative in this linguistic realm, and Stalker, who tries to impose his own rules on it, must thus lose the most at the pilgrimage's conclusion, in which it is revealed the Holy Grail of the story is a somewhere between a placebo and a subconscious manipulation of the universe (one theory posits that Monkey is born out of Porcupine's wish for his brother's return and is hence a reincarnation via subatomic reasoning). What is interesting is that it is Professor, ostensibly the broken, castrated Superego, who attempts to destroy Room in the Zone, where wishes are meant to be granted. His rejection of the oxymoronic scientific supernatural represents the ultimate failure of the Symbolic Circuit in Leary's model, and perhaps the culmination of a cinematic thesis extension of Lacan's Symbolic order.

More mythological is the introduction of a black dog that follows the trio. Undoubtedly Anubis, it consumes whilst Stalker talks of hearts, attaches itself to Stalker in his own words, and whines at Monkey's Osiric annointment by Beethoven. In other scenes it lingers, a curious reminder that in the Zone, just as in life, death (and judgement?) is around every corner. Whilst not quite Tarkovsky's masterpiece (that is undoubtedly Zerkalo (1975)), Stalker is a fascinating film whichever way you look at it and a worthy addition to his oeuvre.

The Root of All Evil?

The most prominent critics of religion currently active roll off the tongue: Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, etc. I myself am often a critic of religion, but whenever I watch, listen to or read the works of one of these men, I never find myself in full agreement. Don't get me wrong, I respect some of them greatly. Hitchens I find an infinitely entertaining journalist and speaker. Professor Dawkins was kind enough to sign my copy of The Selfish Gene. But for me, religion's biggest crime today is the promotion of ignorance, not the causing of conflict, whereas the common assertion seems to be that everything from the Inquisition to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Irish Troubles is in some way its fault.

The common response: what about Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? These arguments are, of course, deficient. At least on the surface. Totalitarian systems, and these included, so often exploit religious iconography and convention that to call any of these 20th century examples atheist would be absurd even before we look at the connections between Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church, between Nazi-brand fascism and Catholicism. However, they were not theocracies, either: this I am sure we can agree on. But where do the similarities come from?

Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey is a fascinating experience as it charters man's regression through progression. We discover tools, yes, and use them to murder in order to master the world. In space we are infants once more, needing to be potty trained and taught how to eat and walk again. Finally, our tools rebel, and our next stage of evolution is into a state of innocence from rationality: we return to the Garden of Eden. Whilst nobody would pretend this is a realistic portrayal of man's evolution, it is at least a symbolically sound one. What's worth noticing in this instance is not the fact the Monolith inspired the apes to use tools, but that the film post-Monolith deliberately sets up a far clearer tribal divide between the species. The fight over the watering hole becomes more obviously a battle, with well-defined armies driven by testosterone and territorial awareness.

This pattern is recurrent throughout nature. Compare the ant colony or the wolf pack with a group of sports fans. They have no real discernible difference with fans of another sports club, yet meetings often erupt into disputes and even violence. I have often found myself making derogatory comments towards fans of Newcastle or Spurs, but what really separates us in general? Upbringing and location, and no more.

This should instantly remind you of nationalism and, of course, religion. Why? Because they are essentially the same thing. The belief that one thing is inherently superior to another because of personal affinity or kinship. The killing of something by a member of its own species may seem negative and deficient in an evolutionary sense, but this is simply a fire man had to stoke in order to master the world. Through loving one thing he neglects another, and through conflict he thrives. So many medical, technological and cultural advances could not have taken place where it not for this vestigial territorialism or tsambouka, of which nationalism, family, regional identity and religion all result.It is no wonder nobody can make up their minds whether the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a religious, cultural or territorial one: they are all essentially the same thing. We are misunderstanding when we hope for an IRA gunman to read Jesus' messages of peace. Do we really believe he will shoot someone for not accepting the succession of bishops, or acknowledging the divinity of the host? No. The words "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Unionist" or "Loyalist" or "middle-class" or "Arab" or "kike" or "nigger" or "fag" simply mean "you're on the other team." They are the Other in the Lacanian sense.

This isn't a religious trait. Nor is it merely a human one. It is rather an animalistic attribute. Religion is simply one of the many excuses for this sort of behaviour. The irony is that in setting themselves up as separate (Dennett and Dawkins are patrons/founders of the Brights movement, an attempt to assign a positive moniker to atheism in the way that "gay" was to homosexuality) intellectually and philosophically, these "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" are behaving in the same way. No, they aren't, as is often claimed by asinine critics, priests or prophets, but they are very proud of what sets them apart: McDonald's theology. As much as I like Dawkins and Hitchens, they more and more seem to fit G.K. Chesterton's description of "the village atheists shouting at the village idiots."