You can't talk about Zona , which I finished this morning, without talking about Stalker obviously. But I'm writing an account of reading a book which is an account of watching a film - how far back can you go in this kind of recursion. Well not very far, no-one is going to write an account of reading a blog about... etc. etc. It's great to find someone else who loves this film, who is happy with its impenetrability and odd beauty. I say odd beauty because Tarkovsky eschews dramatic images for lingering shots of puddles, bits of wasteland, syringes and rubble covering the floor, often under water. Even in the beginning of Solaris, the bit that sticks in my mind is the marshy, slightly muddy bank with the clear water flowing through the water weeds. I'm saying that purely from memory, even if it's wrong that's my image of Tarkovsky's visual sense. Always water in Tarkovsky, still, flowing, reflecting, rain.
In the end of the Stalker his wife lights a cigarette and speaks direct to the camera. She speaks of love and loyalty essentially, but the author of Zona hates the fact that she lights a cigarette, that there is a burnt out match there - hates the sight and smell of cigarette smoke. It touches on one of those things that can always happen, even with the books and films you love, there are parts, scenes, images that you just don't want, that trigger a visceral disgust that belongs to you, not the film. So I'm thinking, while the stalker lies on a small island of grass and rubble and lets the beetle crawl over his hand, how I would not like to be the actor having to let the beetle crawl over him, I'm not watching the film so much as imagining being the actor.
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