ovde - vera znanje mir

intense spiritual struggle. And while the nature of this struggle is uniquely personal for each of
them, the basic objective is the same: to keep the flame of the human spirit within them alive. The
character of the Stalker, in particular, is the most fascinating example of the human being
struggling to find the right path by using his intuition (that is, by listening to his "inner voice"). And
since most people are used to following only their worldly desires in carving out their path in life
(paying little or no attention to this "inner voice"), Stalker's behavior produces a reaction of
bewilderment - not only in his companions in the film, but also in the majority of the viewers.
Instead of rushing through the "Zone" (representing life), grabbing and tasting and plundering
everything in his path, he proceeds with caution, as though listening WITHIN himself, watching for
signs to indicate the next move to him, careful not to disturb anything around him. What is it that he
is listening to, waiting for, hoping to comprehend? It is the language of the "Zone", which is the
language of life itself - the language, in which the Creator speaks to us through life. This is,
perhaps, the most unique quality of Tarkovsky's cinema (which also accounts for his unique
cinematic style of incredibly long takes and slowly-pulsating rhythm): he is observing the very
language of life, as though hoping in this way to "hear" the language of God.
And there are other unique qualities, which make Tarkovsky stand out not only as a director, but as
a human being: his insistence that conscience is "the most important thing" and his attempt to
make other filmmakers aware of "the fact that the most convincing of the arts demands a special
responsibilty on the part of those who work in it: the methods by which cinema affects audiences
can be used far more easily and rapidly for their moral decomposition, for the destruction of their
spiritual defenses, than the means of the old, more traditional art forms." (from "Sculpting in
Time".) Unfortunately, his words fell upon deaf ears. But he continued to emphasize the need to
take personal responsibility for our destiny and not blame others or society for it. He wrote:
"It is so much easier to slip down than it is to rise one iota above your own narrow, opportunist
motives. A true spiritual birth is extraordinarily hard to achieve."
". . . nobody wants, or can bring himself, to look soberly into himself and accept that he is
accountable for his own life and his own soul."
"The connection between man's behaviour and his destiny has been destroyed; and this tragic
breach is the cause of his sense of instability in the modern world. . . . [man] has arrived at the false
and deadly assumption that he has no part to play in shaping his own fate."
"I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of
personal responsibility."
There seems to be little reason to attempt an analysis of Tarkovsky's films, since no one can do it
better than he himself has already done in his book "Sculpting in Time". And, anyhow, since his
films strive to reach out to the spirit within us and convey to us a spiritual experience, each one of
us will take away from them something uniquely personal. But in each case, it will be something
which will move us on a deep spiritual level - much deeper than emotion! This level of experiencing
is akin to a state of NOSTALGHIA. Here the word "nostalghia", which one of Tarkovsky's films
bears as its title, is to be understood not in the English sense of "nostalgia", but in the sense it has
in the Russian language: a state of unquenchable longing for one's homeland. And since the
homeland of the spirit lies far above this earth, "nostalghia" of the spirit for the Light is that
inexplicable longing we feel when nothing on earth seems to satisfy us, nothing seems to come up
to that ideal of harmony and beauty, which we carry deep inside us as a vague memory from our
distant homeland. Far from being an imaginary place dreamt up by poets, it is a place as real as the
earth - and it is precisely the reality of that memory, which the poets in all branches of the arts
throughout all the ages have tried to convey to us. Tarkovsky himself stated that he was not
satisfied with the screenplay for his film Nostalghia until he succeeded in expanding the more
narrow concept of Russian "nostalghia" (the longing to return to Russia) into a more profound
"global yearning for the wholeness of existence," so that the film "came together at last into a kind
of metaphysical whole."
A great illustration of this state of nostalghia of the spirit for things not of this earth is the poem by
Tarkovsky's father (Arseniy Tarkovsky), which he put into his film Stalker:
Now summer has passed,
As if it had never been.