Page - 39 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

aligns the mysterious power of the Room with the interiority of desire: this is not a space where one can perform one’s desires and articulate them as if simply “making a wish”; rather, this is a space which draws out honest, essential, and supressed de- sire from the depths of the human subconscious. And so the Room inspires pilgrims, those who would venture into the Zone, bypassing the dangerous military guarded perimeter and risking the paranormal “traps” within, in order to pursue the fulfil- ment of their wishes and the hope of satiating their desire. In this way the Room comes to signify both the end and the source of desire, for the very myth of a place which fulfils desire will engender desire in those who hear of it. The Zone and the Room become soteriological motifs. Tarkovsky’s characters travel there motivated by a yearning for healing, a hope for salvation – whatever each of them believes that entails. (See fig. 1.) There is the Writer, whose creativity is occluded and who has come to the Zone in search of inspiration. There is also the Professor, who is reticent at first about his reasons for entering the Zone, but in time reveals the true nature of his quest: to destroy the Room and save the world from the chaos it could precipitate. Both of their motivations are salvific in shape or design. Then there is the eponymous Stalker, one of the pseudo-alien individuals Fig. 1: Film still “Entering the zone”, Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979), 00:49:06. 38 | James Lorenz www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 37–52