Thursday, November 05, 2015

Meta-Miracle

I saw a 35mm print of Tarkovsky's Stalker a few weeks ago, deep in the mazy bowels of the Barbican Centre. Based on the novella Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Strugasky, its narrative follows a stalker who guides two clients through the forbidden Zone, an area imprinted by some unspecified event, to a room that is said to grant the true desires of those who enter it. Not their spoken, conscious wishes or ambitions, but something much more dangerous: their heart's desire. It's a slow-paced meditative film that leaves the interpretation of much of its dreamlike story and images to the viewer, and like a dream its atmosphere clings to you for some while afterwards. Whenever I think of the wretched Stalker, who keeps returning to the Zone even though it has made a ruin of his life, I'm reminded of a couple of lines from T.H. White's The Once and Future King (also, amongst other things, the story of a quest): 'The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. And ever, says Mallory, Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.'

2 Comments:

Anonymous William Donelson said...

Mallory is wonderful. Have you seen the wood carvings in the Queen's Robing Room at the Palace of Westminster? Many years ago my company did a virtual tour of the palace, including thousands of pictures and narrations, and seventy-five 360° panoramas. Part of this project is online now, here.

http://www.taj-mahal.net

The first of the wood carvings in that room is here:
http://www.explore-parliament.net/nssMovies/03/0355/0355_.htm

February 26, 2016 10:19 pm  
Anonymous William Donelson said...

* sorry
http://www.explore-parliament.net

is the site home for the Palace of Westminster virtual tour, not Taj Mahal.

February 26, 2016 10:21 pm  

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