Page - 46 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

sound of a train clanking against its tracks in his ring composition. Despite the ab- sence of an actual train, the sound underscores the opening scene of the film in the Stalker’s house; it then recurs after the climactic struggle on the threshold of the Room and again, a final time, in the last scene of the film, the inscrutable finale of the Stalker’s daughter and the suggestion of her telekinetic powers. In the first and last instances, the sound is accompanied by the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth. The train signifies journey, and such a particular use of sound is a fitting reminder of this central motif, as well as its soteriological connotations with transformation. Christological Imagery The otherworldly setting of Stalker, its futuristic circumstance, situates the film far from any systematised theology or ecclesial context. Yet the film is suffused with Christological imagery. Such imagery is a familiar and essential part of Tarkovsky’s cinematic style, for his Orthodox faith is manifest throughout his cinematic corpus. In Andrei Rublev the story’s Christological imagery is situated within an explicit ec- clesial locus; in Solaris the overt resurrection scene adds an element of theodrama Fig. 3: Film still “The trolley”, Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979), 00:35:06. The End of Desire? | 45www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 37–52