Page - 49 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

What, though, does the film’s Christological imagery actually accomplish? And what does the Christological analogy of the Stalker add to the film? These questions can be answered by returning to the role of soteriology, for Tarkovsky intends to align the Stalker’s struggle, his passion, with the striving for spiritual healing that Tarkovsky considers a main concern of the film.21 However, he also images the Trin- ity in the three travellers in order to emphasise the salvific significance of the su- preme form of interpersonal relation – love. As he wrote while reflecting on Stalk- er, “In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person’s life.”22 This is the key to Tarkovsky’s soteriology and the reason for his extensive use of Christological (and indeed Trinitarian) imagery, for love extends between persons and the apotheosis of love is the Trinity. Hart has described the so- teriological significance of the Trinity similarly: “Trinitarian doctrine […] is first and foremost a ‘phenomenology of salvation’, a theoretical articulation of the Church’s 21 See again the quotation from Sculpting in Time in the introduction above. 22 Tarkovsky 1986, 200. Fig. 5: Film still “The stalker’s passion”, Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979), 01:19:58. 48 | James Lorenz www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 37–52