Page - 42 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

potential of science fiction is its capacity to transform the way the viewer thinks about familiar themes and paradigms. Where other works of fiction bring cultural and political contexts to bear on the themes they explore, works of science fiction can eschew this contextual baggage to some extent, opening up new corridors of thought to the viewer. In other words, science fiction can function like a philosoph- ical thought experiment; it can (partially) dissolve the viewer’s contextual partisan- ship for certain ideas and transform the way she thinks about familiar concepts. This is an essential feature of Stalker, especially through its presentation of theological concerns. Tarkovsky’s Trinitarian and Christological imagery, for instance, takes on novel meaning given the science fiction setting. Iconic images of Christ and various Trinitarian motifs, which recur throughout Tarkovsky’s films, are refreshed in Stalk- er (1979) since they are not accompanied by a visible ecclesial presence, as they are in Андрей Рублёв (Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1969), for example. Tarkovsky’s minimalist approach is also evident in his rendering of time. In form and chronological structure, Stalker is deliberately simplified. Gone are the convo- luted anachronisms for which Tarkovsky is celebrated, while his usual narrative pref- erence for flashback is curtailed. In this regard, it could not be more different from his previous film, the semi-autobiographical Зеркало (Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1975). The effect is felt most palpably through a simplicity of storytelling. The Writer, the Professor and the Stalker’s journey through the Zone unfolds as if in real time. The passing of time is not rendered through any form of abstraction, but is marked by concrete signs, such as the events of the plot or the characters’ debates and the evolution of their feelings towards one another. A quotation from Tark- ovsky illustrates this well: In Stalker I wanted there to be no time lapse between the shots. I wanted time and its passing to be revealed, to have their existence, within each frame; for the articulations between the shots to be the continuation of the action and nothing more, to involve no dislocation of time. […] I wanted it to be as if the whole film had been made in a single shot. Such a simple and ascetic approach seems to me to be rich in possibilities […] I wanted the whole composition to be simple and muted.6 This is the context of genre, form and style within which Tarkovsky engages the themes of desire and soteriology, a context which will determine the director’s con- struction and use of various motifs. The supernatural power of the Room, for exam- ple, allows him to deal directly with desire in a way that is not possible outside science 6 Tarkovsky 1986, 193–194. The End of Desire? | 41www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 37–52