♪♪♪
Robert: 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.
Mitch: "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.
[Speaking Russian]
- 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."
Mitch: 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.
Sean: 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.
Robert: Of course Tarkovsky did encourage these
sorts of wild interpretations,
whether it be ecological disaster,
or as a prediction of Chernobyl.
Roger: 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.
Sean: 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."
Roger: I don't think those people
that were working on "Stalker"
realized the danger that they might be in.
[Speaks Italian]
Robert: 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.
[Speaking Russian]
Robert: 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.
Mitch: 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.
Sean: 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.
[Crowd shouts and cheers]
- "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.
Robert: 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.
Arvo: 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.
[reads] "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,
[Land Rover rumbles]
now the soldiers notice,
[Siren wails]
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."
Arvo: 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.
Jay: They weren't checking the rushes.
- Really?
Well, that's-- [Laughs]
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.
Roger: 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.
Sean: Finally they were able to watch the rushes,
and somebody described it as um,
looking at though it had been shot through an aquarium.
- It was all dark and green.
- But how does that make sense,
when any cinematographer in the world
would shoot some tests with the film stock.
Also, because there's one shot from the original version
which is of this kind of rolling pollution on a lake,
that is in the final film.
It was certainly not dark and green.
So they used that shot,
but they're saying that shot was all right,
but the rest of the footage wasn't?
So it doesn't make sense.
- So opinions differ on what the precise problem was.
Tarkovsky professed himself completely dissatisfied
with the-simply the quality of the image.
But he refused to continue working
with what had been shot.
- Hey, I wouldn't put that past a director
who realized that,
wouldn't it be nice to shoot it again?
Maybe it was the way the lab printed it.
Did anybody check the negative?
Now, the negative was burned, right, later.
So it doesn't exist anyway.
So now the myth can grow even more, you know?
[Laughs]
The myth is so like The Room in the film isn't it,
you know, it just kind of expands and takes on
its own sort of dimensions.
- Andrei decided that
Georgy Rerberg is to be blamed.
Robert: Other participants have suggested that
Tarkovsky was using a small problem
that perhaps was surmountable
in order to get rid of a cinematographer
he had become dissatisfied with for one reason or another.
- They spent already approximately 65%
of the whole budget of the movie,
and result was very close to zero.
It was a scandal.
On 23rd of July,
they stopped the production totally.
After that, Andrei got heart attack.
Jay: Yeah, that's fine.
- He was put to hospital for four weeks,
and no visitors allowed.
So only thing he could do,
think again why the Hell
the production went so badly.
And I would say...
that director Andrei Tarkovsky was not ready
to make the film on 1977.
Andrei Tarkovsky had no clarity
what he wants the movie to be.
Even such a genius like Andrei was,
he's human. He's not sure.
He's afraid.
He has big doubts.
After heart attack,
he was like a different man.
There was a clarity in the mind of Tarkovsky.
He reconsidered the full structure and script,
and the image of "Stalker."
Now director Tarkovsky knew
exactly what he is doing.
Robert: Tarkovsky had to go back on location,
and shoot the entire film again,
on half the money.
With a new cinematographer,
with a mostly new crew, but with the same cast.
This time, they were checking the rushes.
♪♪♪
- Apart from the earthquake,
the lab ruining the footage,
Tarkovsky having a heart attack,
another problem that beset the production was sickness.
Sean: Tarkovsky himself died of cancer
in 1986 at the age of 54.
This was only seven years after completing "Stalker."
One of the rivers they were shooting on
to the east of Tallinn,
had various industrial waste flowing into it,
and a number of crew members developed rashes,
and fell sick during production.
Roger: Is that a myth or not,
that these number of people died
because they spent those many, many weeks
kind of lying in the pollution
of these old Soviet factories?
I don't know.
Jay: Would you lie in pollution
to work with Tarkovsky? - [Laughs]
Uh, I probably would have done back then, yes.
I probably would've done.
I mean, I do think the man was a genius.
Maybe if I'd known it was pollution,
and I was gonna die 30 years later, no.
But in the moment,
and being asked to shoot a shot up to my--
up to my waist in this pollution,
I might well have done it. I don't know.
Sean: Another one of the strange prophetic aspects
of "Stalker" is that during the dream sequence,
when the Stalker's wife is reciting
from the Book of Revelation, you're going over a gun,
and some medical equipment,
and the van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece,
you also see a calendar,
a page torn off from the calendar.
And it says December the 28th,
and it's under the water, floating like a leaf.
December the 28th, 1986,
was Tarkovsky's last day alive.
Andres: Most of the people who are interested
are-are true afficionados of you know,
the-the culture of film,
and I guess it's a kind of a secretive cult,
[Laughs] if you could call it that.
Yeah, cult of Tarkovsky, or the cult of "Stalker."
Arvo: People from very different places
are coming and ask me to take them into Zone.
During these years I guided to The Zone,
I'm sure more than a hundred people.
Now we really get stalking.
That's it.
Andres: So, I was interested
in kind of stories of misfits,
and other kinds of stalkers
wandering around you know, nowadays.
- Now, get in.
- You can still visit these landscapes,
and feel that you are inside The Zone.
- Now, we are on the location
one of the first scenes.
Alfa Romeo, three meters.
And the car moved this way.
This is real place where it happened.
That's it.
[Laughs] Good!
That's it.
- You are standing on it?
[Both laugh]
Anders: Most of the filming was done in the center of Tallinn.
- Welcome to Stalker Street!
Stalker Kaik.
- Look at these walls. Come on here.
- And you can still find um,
some of the locations
fairly well preserved.
- [Makes motor sound] Coming.
- You can actually sort of find yourself in...
um, well, The Zone.
- Something-- Now I try to get.
Is it now?
[Engine rumbles]
"AT," Andrei Tarkovsky.
Do you remember?
[Laughs]
We are in the beginning of Zone.
If you remember,
all these war machines were over there.
And in the film,
no living human creature except Stalker
never goes there.
♪♪♪
Dan Rather: Good evening, this is the CBS Evening News.
Dan Rather reporting.
Every indication is that it was a serious accident.
The tightly controlled Soviet government press
calls it a nuclear power plant reactor accident north of Kyiv.
The Soviets only hinted at possible casualties.
They say flat out a reactor was damaged.
Narrator: Human error stretches the limits of technology again
when the cooling system in the Number 4 Power Reactor
at Chernobyl fails,
heating the fuel rods to over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit,
and causing a massive meltdown. [Siren blares]
The buildup of gases in the reactor
blows the roof off the building,
beginning the rapid spread of huge clouds
of deadly radiation into the atmosphere.
♪♪♪
- One of the rumors surrounding "Stalker"
is that it predicted,
or prophesied in some way,
the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
There are uncanny parallels with Tarkovsky's film.
Robert: The professor brings this small bomb into The Zone
with the idea of destroying it.
- The professor in the film
gets the bomb out of fourth bunker.
- People have pointed out that at Chernobyl,
it was the fourth reactor that exploded.
So they're saying, well, here's Tarkovsky
almost pre-empting the actual number of the reactor.
Robert: But in a way it's the radiation
in the film that is really the atomic element there,
and that has caused people to relate the film to Chernobyl,
which happened a few years later.
Sean: When the reactor melted down in 1986,
the town of Pripyat was sealed off,
and they created a zone
very much like the zone in "Stalker."
- I don't know who found this word,
"stalker," "stalking,"
but now it's extremely popular.
So-called stalkers are making money
bringing people to zone of Chernobyl.
And uh,
believe that they will not get radiation.
[Static crackles]
They believe.
[Chuckles] It's strange.
♪♪♪
Oksana: My name is Oksana.
I'm working as a tour guide for two years.
Before, officially, it was a kind of um,
studying trips.
We were like teachers.
This building is the Hotel Polica,
and this one is right behind it.
It was the city council.
We teach you about radiation.
We teach you about the history of the place.
But now, officially,
due to the government of Ukraine, it became a tourism.
[Woman laughs]
- In the early beginning,
there were a lot of people
who were just passionate because of the film.
And later, of course,
they started to use the words from the film,
the phrases from the film.
- I am absolutely sure
everybody who goes to the zone there,
they have seen film "Stalker" at least five times.
[Laughs]
Some of them know it from the heart, you know?
[Laughs]
♪♪♪
[Beeping]
- So now we are close to the heart of The Zone.
The Magic Chamber is over there.
Make up your wishes. [Laughs]
♪♪♪
All of the rooms of this power plant
were recreated in Mosfilm Studios.
What is exactly the same
are these concrete covered by moss.
It was for me like a pilgrimage.
Because I knew the people, I knew Andrei.
And many of them already passed away.
I had very close feeling,
like, years later I went to Jerusalem,
and visited places where...
Jesus Christ was...
born, buried.
Yeah, pilgrimage.
You see these two windows.
Behind those windows,
this Magic Chamber
where your human dreams or wishes
will be fulfilled.
This was there.
Jay: If you could enter the room,
what would you wish for?
- I was 29 years old,
uh, just graduated film school.
I-I didn't enter the room.
But if I would,
my wish maybe could be that someday,
I would like to do really good films
like Andrei Tarkovsky,
on the same level.
Andres: Everybody can make up their own minds
about what The Zone is.
I think this uncertainty is what captures
people's imagination.
It's a bit like a Japanese garden or something.
You see the stones around you,
and it's some kind of a healing experience.
It's-it's a good place to go to, yeah.
Jay: Do you think there's a magic to the real locations
as there was in The Zone in the film?
- [Sighs]
I believe there is something, yeah.
One young lady asked me,
Arvo, please bring me to The Zone,
and show me where the Stalker was laying down.
Her twin sister died three weeks ago.
I left her there for 20 minutes.
And when we meet after that,
she was totally changed.
She was calm and balanced.
I don't know what happened,
but it is a fact that she was changed.
That what I saw with my own eyes.
I have no explanation.
♪♪♪