Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, Stalker, casts a shadow over the present, which is what most pieces of science fiction do. The reason why the film is still so resonating to this day is because it depicts how deeply troubled people are by events that are yet to occur. In the matter of Stalker, the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 was what had not yet occurred. After the accident, however, the nomenclature of Tarkovsky became suitable in describing the aftermath because the real world eerily captured what was portrayed in the film. The reality that was now being faced included an exclusion zone in Chernobyl with infiltrators who coincidentally referred to themselves as “stalkers.” *The similarities between the Chernobyl nuclear accident and Tarkovsky’s
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One parallel is that the appearance of the Zone is suggested to be caused by a breakdown of a fourth bunker, while in reality the fourth reactor in Chernobyl exploded and resulted in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Another parallel is when the Stalker mentions that “the flowers are blooming again, but they don’t smell for some reason” (Tarkovsky). This is because whatever that had happened in the Zone blocked the nose’s ability to smell which is exactly what happened to the victims of the Chernobyl accident according to a cameraman in Svetlana Alexievich’s novel, Voices from Chernobyl: “I don’t smell anything. The garden is blooming, but there’s no smell! I learned later on that sometimes the body reacts to high doses of radiation by blocking the function of certain organs” (Alexievich 107). Tarkovsky’s stylistic choices also contribute to the parallels. In the film, the inside of the Zone is in color and the rest of the world surrounding it is in dismal sepia. Tarkovsky does this to depict a grim future where people are as worn down as the decaying city that they live in, a stark contrast to the Zone which is green and abundant with vegetation. In the matter of Chernobyl, however, it is the opposite according to a photographer that Alexievich interviewed. The photographer states that he didn’t take colorful photographs of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone because “Chernobyl literally means black event. There are no other colors there” (Alexievich
One parallel is that the appearance of the Zone is suggested to be caused by a breakdown of a fourth bunker, while in reality the fourth reactor in Chernobyl exploded and resulted in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Another parallel is when the Stalker mentions that “the flowers are blooming again, but they don’t smell for some reason” (Tarkovsky). This is because whatever that had happened in the Zone blocked the nose’s ability to smell which is exactly what happened to the victims of the Chernobyl accident according to a cameraman in Svetlana Alexievich’s novel, Voices from Chernobyl: “I don’t smell anything. The garden is blooming, but there’s no smell! I learned later on that sometimes the body reacts to high doses of radiation by blocking the function of certain organs” (Alexievich 107). Tarkovsky’s stylistic choices also contribute to the parallels. In the film, the inside of the Zone is in color and the rest of the world surrounding it is in dismal sepia. Tarkovsky does this to depict a grim future where people are as worn down as the decaying city that they live in, a stark contrast to the Zone which is green and abundant with vegetation. In the matter of Chernobyl, however, it is the opposite according to a photographer that Alexievich interviewed. The photographer states that he didn’t take colorful photographs of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone because “Chernobyl literally means black event. There are no other colors there” (Alexievich