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Geoff Dyer presents an illustrated conversation about his new book Zona, on Andrei Tarkovksy’s legendary film Stalker. Dyer, described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘possibly the best living writer in Britain’, takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Magnificently unpredictable and hilarious (and, surely, one of the most unusual books ever written about cinema), Zona takes the reader on an enthralling, thought-provoking journey.
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His first book, Ways of Telling: the Work of John Berger, was published in 1986. His first novel was The Colour of Memory (1989), set in Brixton, south London, in the 1980s. His non-fiction includes a book about jazz, But Beautiful (1991), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Missing of the Somme (1994), which was adapted for BBC Radio 3; and a collection of essays, Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures, 1984-99. His latest works are Jeff in Venice, Death in Varansi, winner of the 2009 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; and Working the Room (2010). A new book, Zona, about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, is published in Spring 2012. www.geoffdyer.com
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February 27th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
When Geoff Dyer asked how many of the audience had seen Stalker, he was impressed by the large number of people who raised their hands. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them. Although I am aware of the weighty reputation of director Andrei Tarkovsky (and have seen Solaris), I was at the event mainly because Dyer has a remarkable talent for making any subject both interesting and entertaining.
Today was no exception. In an enjoyable session, Dyer and chair Andrew Kelly chatted amiably about the movie and the making of it, and discussed both the character and the career of the director. We also saw a couple of extended clips from the film itself.
Not having seen Stalker, I feel unqualified to comment about it in any depth. However, Dyer did make a couple of observations that I feel more comfortable tackling.
One was the claim that Tarkovsky “thrived on the restrictions of the East” and that Stalker “couldn’t have been made in the West due to the censorship of the market”. He seemed to go on to imply that a perceived fall in the quality of the director’s work could be linked to his move to the West.
Although it is not unimaginable that Tarkovsky did indeed miss the tension and frisson that came from working in the Soviet Union, I could only raise a sceptical eyebrow at these remarks. I am hardly capitalism’s biggest fan, but the “censorship of the market” seems to have had little detrimental impact on over 60 years of independent and challenging Western cinema. Granted, such works have always been a niche concern, but the has been a constant demand for them nonetheless – and where there is a demand the market will usually happily supply the goods. Even if at times the market has been reluctant to invest , over the years thousands of film-makers have managed to find sufficient sponsorship and/or subsidies to create an endless stream of left-field classics.
Perhaps, as Dyer also seemed to hint, Tarkovsky simply lost his mojo.
Dyer also conceded that the huge impact that Stalker has had on his life may well be a function of seeing it at a relatively young age when he was open to being influenced in a way that lessens as one gets older.
This may well be the case. Earlier we had been shown a clip where the the film changes from black and white to colour, and some characters end up in a desolate backwoods landscape of rusting cars and tilting telegraph poles.
As Dyer waxed lyrical (and at some length) about the cosmic and almost spiritual significance of this sequence, even allowing for the fact that I was seeing it totally out of context I could not help feeling that I must be missing something.
However, following Dyer’s observations about when he had seen the film, I realised that I probably wasn’t missing too much. Although I have little doubt that Stalker is an important work it seems unlikely, at my age, that seeing it now would transport me to the heavenly plane it has clearly taken Dyer.