Page - 40 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

who illegally smuggle outsiders into the Zone and guide them through its trials to the Room. Although committed never to enter the Room himself, the Stalker also undertakes a journey of self-healing, one bound up with his own crisis of faith and embodied in his hope to facilitate healing in those he guides. Such is the salvific framework that Tarkovsky constructs around the themes of desire, hope, and belief in Stalker. The film articulates a soteriology of the self, manifested around the three central characters’ personal crises. As Tarkovsky later wrote: It is always through spiritual crisis that healing occurs. A spiritual crisis is an at- tempt to find oneself, to acquire new faith. It is the apportioned lot of everyone whose objectives are on the spiritual plane. And how could it be otherwise when the soul yearns for harmony, and life is full of discordance. This dichotomy is the stimulus for movement, the source at once of our pain and of our hope: confir- mation of our spiritual depths and potential. This, too, is what Stalker is about.1 Methodologically, this article explores this soteriological movement through the key conceptual scheme at work in the film: the triad of desire, hope, and belief. This methodology stands as an alternative to a primarily theoretical approach. Rather than conducting this study through the lens of a specific soteriological theory or through the exercise of a particular critical or cinematic theory, I wish to interpret the soteriological significance of Stalker through the framework which the film itself makes available to the viewer: this triad of desire, hope, and belief. On a basic narrative and thematic level, it operates as follows: desire draws the characters to the Zone and leads them to the enigmatic climax on the threshold of the Room; hope appears in the context of a healing narrative, for the Stalker reveals that the Zone “lets those pass who have lost all hope”2 and he identifies the recovery of hope with the recovery from spiritual crisis; belief is central to the Stalker’s charac- ter, as he grapples with doubt and desperately tries to encourage and sustain the belief of his companions. When we analyse the film with a focus on this framework, several theological and soteriological concepts emerge. In particular, following a preliminary analysis of genre, form, and style, a second section explores the recur- ring motif of journey and the transgression of borders. A further section examines Tarkovsky’s prominent Christological imagery. This approach leads to a final section discussing the relationship of desire and love, in which Tarkovsky’s own writings are focal. 1 Tarkovsky 1986, 193. 2 Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979), 01:03:44. The End of Desire? | 39www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 37–52