stalker sequel

[wytchcroft]

Reading Tarkovsky’s diaries once again, it’s interesting to me to read that at one stage he considered a sequel to Stalker. The proposed continuation would see the Stalker turning into a messianic figure, forcibly dragging people to the wishing room. Can, Tarkovsky wonders, people be thus bullied into happiness?

The stalker would become a ‘votary’ and ‘fascist’ (Tarkovsky’s labels).

Of course, this idea was not pursued – perhaps Andrey realised that such contradictions are already implied within the thematic narrative of Stalker. Best to leave the resonance and the questioning to the audience…

Such a concept, especially the religious dimension show the great difference between Tarkovsky and the Strugatsky brothers, of whom he notes, amusingly, that one is very clever and the other very… hardworking. Before quickly catching himself, ‘Well, things are not as simple as that’. Both men he describes as likeable and their relations seem to have been good.

As for Tarkovsky himself, as for his diaries, I remember why I have not read them in so long; the man and his own story seem encompassed by the Zone. A man should live in isolation, he notes, close to animals and nature. And yet, such is not the case for him. He is close only to the telephone. Isolated by distance he frequently misses his loved ones intensely.

The diaries as a whole, as a piece, as a story – revolve around waiting for that dreadful phone to ring; to give the green light to a project, to vindicate his work, to allow him freedom, travel – or to summon him at once before the Committee, the critical Party of whom he has such regular nightmares. Communication so often breaks down, attempts to organise filming and its logistics, or even simply a stay with Bergman, that the phone (or the letter) becomes entirely untrustworthy and unreal.
The emphasis that the diaries place on this cannot be accidental – the phone (in all its forms) becomes the God that Tarkovsky wrestles with and defines himself against – never quite answering that most Bergmanian of questions; what is worse, God’s silence or the terrifying realisation of His voice?