Cursed Films

If I'm asked which TARKOVSKY film

I regard most highly,

I will usually answer the one that I've seen most recently

or the one that I'm watching right now.

Sometimes I go back and watch "Ivan's Childhood,"

his very first film, 1962.

With "Andrei Rublev,"

"Solaris,"

"Mirror,"

"Stalker," those films are indisputable.

"Stalker" is a haunting Soviet-era

science fiction movie

in which stalkers are figures who, for a price,

will escort people into this very dangerous area

called "The Zone."

This zone is considered to be the site,

possibly, of a UFO landing.

- Or some sort of extraterrestrial event.

And it has been cordoned off by the military,

because inside of The Zone,

there exists a place called "The Room."

And The Room is a place where you will be granted

your deepest, most cherished desires.

- Tarkovsky's got a particular way of making films.

I mean, "Stalker," it created a kind of mystery

and a suspense without any action.

He can hold a shot

so that you start thinking,

what's happening now?

But then the shot becomes something else.

The shot sort of evolves,

just because of the time you're actually observing it.

Denis Villeneuve has a similar sensibility.

Like Carl Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc,"

Tarkovsky's camera is really just concentrating

on the faces of the three principal actors,

Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, who plays the stalker,

Nikolay GRINKO, who plays the scientist,

and Anatoliy Solonitsyn, who plays the writer.

Stalker" does have this reputation

being a prophetic film.

It clearly wasn't Tarkovsky's intention to make a film

about nuclear power or ecological disaster,

but that's kind of there in the film.

Of course TARKOVSKY did encourage these

sorts of wild interpretations,

whether it be ecological disaster,

or as a prediction of Chernobyl.

The myth that surrounds the movie

becomes almost part of the movie

in some really strange way.

The film is about belief,

and there's been more myth built up about the film

than actually is in the actual story.

It really was, you know, one of cinema's

most difficult shoots.

Problems with the lab ruining the stock,

people being fired, the earthquakes.

Since the film has been completed,

a number of stories have grown up around "Stalker"

to suggest that a lot of the crew

actually became seriously ill

during the shooting of "Stalker."

I don't think those people

that were working on "Stalker"

realized the danger that they might be in.

Several people that I've met

experienced a central event in their lives

while working on "Stalker."

When I moved to Chicago,

I started going up to a used bookstore

that had old Soviet books that I was interested in,

and I got talking to the proprietor,

Grigory Verkhovsky.

And only after some time did I learn

that he had actually worked on "Stalker,"

and had all these photographs,

had all these stories to tell.

Over the years, I think "Stalker" has become

the central film in Tarkovsky's oeuvre for many,

the film that had the greatest mystique about it.

One of the things that heightens the mystery,

and the extraordinary qualities of the movie

is that it was made in the Soviet era,

in a society that at that time

was officially atheistic,

was ardently materialistic,

and here is a film

with extraordinary metaphysical themes.

TARKOVSKY came across "Stalker" in 1973,

when he first read the novel, "Roadside Picnic,"

by the STRUGATSKY brothers.

It was Tarkovsky's second foray into science fiction.

He'd made "Solaris,"

based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem in 1972.

And science fiction was seen by the Soviet authorities

as a safe genre.

- "Stalker" was beset with problems from the get-go.

The film was due to start shooting

towards the end of 1976

in the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan,

in an area called Isfara.

The first of the film's problems

happened at this point,

there was an earthquake in that area,

rendering all of the locations they'd selected

completely unusable.

- So TARKOVSKY got his location scouts to start looking around

in other parts of the Soviet Union,

and they eventually settled on Estonia.

When I was a student in Moscow Film School in 1974,

I was terribly lucky,

because I met my favorite filmmaker Andrei TARKOVSKY.

When they came to prepare the production

of the "Stalker" in Tallinn,

I asked permission from TARKOVSKY

to come to shooting ground of "Stalker."

And actually I helped him also

to find some locations.

You see these letters.

"U.N." United Nations.

They were painted for "Stalker" film.

And right here was entrance

into The Zone.

Get closer.

"These letters were painted on the chimney in 1978,

while shooting Andrei Tarkovsky's cult movie,

"Stalker."

In the scene with the busy United Nations soldiers

at the gate of the mysterious Zone,

the letters can barely be seen through the smoke and steam.

The plaque was opened on May 7th, 2008,

to commemorate the 30th anniversary of this...

very good film."

Let's play the scene from the "Stalker."

I am on Land Rover,

and the train,

with the two wagons, passed.

So now I... oh! Go.

On the tracks,

now the soldiers notice,

and there was the projector, very heavy,

like fog and mist.

Land Rover turns around the corner,

and disappears.

On the shooting ground,

it was strictly not allowed anybody to take photographs.

So I hid in the bushes during the rehearsals,

and my first shots were made through the branches.

I printed the images,

and showed to Andrei.

He was surprised, and said, "yeah!"

For example, I shot in Mosfilm Studios,

daydreaming TARKOVSKY.

And here, my favorite cinematographer this time,

Georgy Rerberg, also on the "Stalker."

I felt like it was second time going to film school.

I saw how these masters are doing everything

by their hands.

It was... muah!

Wonderful.

Andrei was very passionate about cinematic image,

and mise en scène.

But in this case, first time,

he was arranging all the moments of camera,

and cinematographer has nothing to do.

- TARKOVSKY is, if you like, the quintessential auteur.

He liked to quote Tolstoy:

"Never trouble others with what you can do yourself."

The problem with that was it made TARKOVSKY

look a bit like an egomaniac.

Andrei is behind the camera.

Actors are working before the camera.

But cinematographer standing aside,

and scratching his head.

Nothing to do.

So Rerberg started drinking,

fucking around with the young ladies,

and um,

it made Andrei TARKOVSKY mad.

The relations grew worse.

- On top of that, TARKOVSKY apparently had a feeling

that there was something wrong with the stock.

And he kept asking the lab to "please check."

They were shooting already six weeks,

not seeing any rushes.

- For some reason, and I don't have a good answer why,

um, they did not check the rushes.

They weren't checking the rushes.

Really?

Well, that's...

That seems pretty crazy, doesn't it?

- TARKOVSKY was using a new batch of Kodak

that had been given to him by a producer in West Berlin.

The first time they shot "Stalker" it was on 5247,

which at the time was a new Kodak stock.

They did the whole shooting

and then returned to Moscow to check the rushes.

Finally they were able to watch the rushes,

and somebody described it as um,