TFF 2012 GUEST DIRECTOR ON TARKOVSKY CLASSIC: THE GEOFF DYER INTERVIEW

British-born Geoff Dyer (pictured, below) was offered the role of Guest Director of the 2012 Telluride Film Festival following the publication of his book ‘Zona’, a brilliant exploration of Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic 1979 film Stalker and its impact on the author’s life. “Zona is one of the best books ever written on a single film,” said Tom Luddy, co‐founder and co‐director of TFF. During his visit to the Sydney Writer’s Festival earlier this year, Dyer sat with SCREEN-SPACE to discuss his obsession with the great Russian work and its place in film history:  

 

When, where and, perhaps most importantly, who were you when Stalker first impacted you?

I saw it when I was in my early 20’s, so about 30 years ago, when it was first released in the west in 1981. In my time in university I had seen a lot of the canonical works of film history, so I was very up to speed with things. I guess, most important of all, I was used to this idea that really great works of art often had a little quality of boredom attached to them. I got very used to things moving very slowly. I found it a bit frustrating to watch and I went away from it, not knowing it was one of those life-changing experiences, but the film never quite left me. I’ve found that that is not an uncommon experience with Stalker. Goodness knows I’ve done other things in the last thirty years but one of the things I’ve continued to do is see the film over and over again.

Another Tarkovsky work, Solaris, holds a similar fascination for me. I must be frank and state I found Stalker (pictured, right) a challenging film to get through.

It is so interesting that you should say that because I’ve always felt the way about Solaris that you feel about Stalker! There are amazing bits in it, but I’m in that minority of Tarkovsky admirers who finds Solaris a bit of a bore. I think the Steven Soderbergh remake, with Natascha McElhone and George Clooney, is pretty good.

Admittedly, I was fortunate to have seen Solaris on the bigscreen and have only ever seen Stalker on television.

I think there is something really special about seeing the film, and seeing any serious film, in the cinema. It demands such an absolute, complete immersion in it so that you can totally transact with it and seeing it in the cinema makes that easier. But also there is something about the quality of the images and seeing them projected in a cinema. I don’t mean to be rude about your television but I think any television struggles to convey Stalker. The first time that it was shown on British television in, I guess the 1980’s, Channel 4, a very serious channel, transmitted the whole film in black-&-white. This meant that one of the great moments in cinema, when they get to The Zone and the film switches in that amazing, beautiful way from black-&-white to colour...well, the Channel 4 broadcast never let the characters and viewers get to The Zone. They were stuck in this monochrome world for the duration.

I came across this wonderful quote of yours, in which you state, “If you give yourself over to Tarkovsky-time, the helter skelter mayhem of the Bourne Ultimatum will seem more tedious than L’Avventura.”

Time is sped up so much so that we have all become habituated to films and TV shows that are cut very quickly. Stalker is a long film with only 142 shots in it, thereabouts; just these really long takes. Now, I don’t like boring films, but generally speaking the last 20 minutes of these Hollywood blockbuster when things just start blowing up and any psychological element of the film is just abandoned is incredibly boring. Tarkovsky said something very instructive and that was, “When you expand a take in a film, people’s first reaction is boredom, but expand it further and the scene takes on a quality of attention, then expand it even further and you can deliver (your audience) into a trance-like state.” (American composer) John Cage said something similar. And think about those long tracks by (Australian jazz band) The Necks or about classical Indian music, pieces of a fantastically expanded duration. Once you get over that friction of wanting time to move, then you do this beautiful thing where you move into a kind of timeless zone. To loop this point back to the film, once they get to The Zone there is no time there; it is very difficult to tell how long they have spent there.

Do readers run the risk of missing out on their own ‘Tarkovsky awakening’? Of experiencing Stalker only through your book rather on their own, via their own perceptions?

In my books, I’ve tended not to give an objective account of what I’ve written about because I don’t feel that when I decide to write a book I haven’t sworn an oath, I’m not a witness at a trial. I’m just giving my very prejudiced, very partial, highly contingent version of things. One of the weird things is that, by being as faithful as I am to that principle, maybe in the course of the book I’ll end up articulating certain feelings about the film which are shared by people who have seen it in very different circumstances and who bring to it a very different set of cultural expectations.

The New York Times said that, “Just as Stalker is about the artist himself so too is Zona.” Is it too grand a notion to suggest that Zona is Stalker remade in your image, through the prism of your existence?

(Laughs) Yeah, I guess, maybe. There is a paradox at work because I am always trying to make the writing of a book come close to sharing some of the qualities of the film. How does that work in this instance? Well, one of the qualities of The Zone is that, allegedly, it has these magical properties and is always reconfiguring itself to the beliefs and expectations that people bring to it. So I quite like the idea that Stalker maybe doesn’t exist in some absolute way but that is itself reconfiguring to where or when or who you are in your life when you see it. Zona is very much my experience of it, my version of it.

Finish this sentence. Stalker is what it is to me because...

Oh, because I can’t imagine what my life would be without my having seen it.

And, out of curiosity, what’s your second favourite film?

Well, in all seriousness I would probably say another Tarkovsky film, Mirror. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, probably Where Eagles Dare (pictured, right). Some people don’t believe Where Eagles Dare to be the work of genius that I believe it to be (Laughs).