"who I am?
It should be said that this is a problem that was not really paid attention to until the emergence of narratology. When a reader is attracted by the content of the story, it is difficult for him/her to notice the self-reading gesture. This is not only a question accepted by readers, but a cognitive change of the readers themselves from "what to read" to "how to read" or exactly how "I" read and "where am I in reading" .
Various experimental novels of modernism have provided the possibility for this change of reading methods, and the more prominent manifestation should be the so-called "meta-fiction", that is, novels about novels. By breaking out of the narrative context and directly discussing their writing, the writer undermines the reader's expectations of the "authenticity" of the story. This approach brings a fresh experience to the reader, as well as a reflection on the nature of "literature". But if we compare it with Tarkovsky's lens language, we seem to have to admit that language ultimately limits the writer's expression, not because language is subject to the linear logic of time, but because the novel is a kind of "past" Expression, when a line of text is written, it has become "past". Therefore, to a certain extent, the reader cannot be present, and "presence" can only be a construction that has undergone rereading. The cinema lens gives this kind of "presence" viewing a possibility.
After watching Stalker, I understood Tarkovsky's dissatisfaction with commercial films. Because the problem with commercial films is that they still represent the "content", the story that happened, the beautiful scenery, the characters in action, but they ignore the possible characteristics of the shot itself. What is presented is important, but how to present is a crucial issue. Of course, due to the commercial and practical nature of the film industry, since the birth of this medium, technical issues have been discussed. The problem is that this advancement of technology is not based on the exploration of the medium itself, but on the needs of the audience's taste. From this, for the film, the most basic problem becomes how to tell a good story, but just as the story is not equal to literature, the story and the film should not be equal to the artistic attribute. The fundamental question of cinema as an art is: what is its essence? What makes the film "magic" different from novels, plays, poetry and other artistic genres?
Tarkovsky's films allow the audience to experience this distinctive "magic" and begin to reflect on the nature of modern cinema, in a way that is revolutionary even now. Of course, it's impossible to know all of his techniques at once. Regarding "Stalker", I just want to make a superficial exploration of its "perspective". (Shallow because, I'm not even sure if I should choose the concept of "perspective", because it doesn't encompass what Tarkovsky is presenting.)
One question that kept bugging me while watching Stalker was "Who am I?" Am I a viewer? Or an invisible participant? The obsession culminated when the stalker's wife spoke to the camera. Before that, the characters' gaze from time to time had drawn the audience into the movie, but when the audience doubted whether there was a "third party" outside the screen, that "gazing" disappeared again. The aimless gaze turns the reader into a "ghost" who is both present and absent (Andre really is a genius). Of course, in addition to this ghostly gaze, the fixed-point turning of the lens also breaks the isolation between the audience and the movie screen. This turning is integrated into the movement trajectory of human eyes, thus overlapping with the audience's perspective. It makes the audience neither completely outside the film nor participate in the film, but exists in the film as a third party outside the camera.
Theater can break down the fourth wall, but film cannot put the audience on the screen, so Tarkovsky uses this way to put the audience into a kind of between "being" and "absence". The subtle state enables the audience to notice their own existence while watching, thus realizing a two-way viewing.
But just when I thought this delicate state would continue until the end of the movie, the words of the Stalker's wife left me utterly bewildered. It should be noted that the space she is in at this time is of a closed nature. The living room itself is a very private space, and her husband has just fallen asleep. All these signs indicate that there is no third party objectively possible. So when she starts a conversation facing the camera, the audience points to "us" off-camera. This takes the audience out of that delicate state of presence and absence into a real presence, but the question that comes with it is, who is "I"?
The wife's words are not self-talking, but the second-person interlocutor "you" clearly appears, so it cannot be regarded as a psychological monologue, but more like a dialogue. Such a form in which the person speaks directly to the audience can certainly be found in modernist dramas, but the difference between the stage and the movie screen is that the stage is open. When she says "you", she is actually facing "you". You"; but the film is closed, the screen is all, when the screen is aimed at the characters, the audience's eyes can only focus on the characters, thus forming a personal communication field. Therefore, "I" is no longer one of "us", but becomes the only "I", thus forming a more intimate dialogue relationship with the characters in the film.
Having a film character speak directly to the audience may sound like a modernist technique that is not very new, after all, novels and plays have done it, but it is a very "dangerous" method to put it in a movie. Because the gaze from the characters breaks the aesthetic distance between the film and the audience, and this gaze is magnified by the characteristics of the medium itself. So it looks particularly "dazzling". So Andre was careful not to point the object of his words to the audience, but to the woman's heart, thus preserving the audience's "outsider" identity, of course, the "outsider" in the film.
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