Just out of the Labyrinth we can be happy. But only who is happy can find the Labyrinth's exit.
Stalker is a movie by Andrej Tarkovsky based on the novel Roadside Picnic, written by the brothers Arkadiy and Boris Strugackiy. As it often happens the two works have very little in common. In this case, just the background and the stalker figure, a person who hunts stealthily.
The background is a planet Earth visited by some aliens, who came, stayed shortly, and left. Without paying attention to the humankind and littering the land, as we do so often when we stop for a picnic along the road.
The stalkers, poachers and smugglers at the same time, get into these littered areas, where access is forbidden and your life is at risk at any step, looking for alien artefacts to sell at the black market, defying the army and the mortal traps spread everywhere along the path. A path coiling on itself, like the path of a Labyrinth, till its end, where the most valuable treasure is, the Golden Sphere. Which is capable, according to who almost got to it, to grant any wish to who gets it first.
While the movie is mainly introspective and in slow motion, the novel leaves room for action and the pursuing of the treasure at the centre of the Labyrinth. But one more trap blocks the access to the Golden Sphere, the Grinder, which can't be avoided. There's only a system to pass beyond it, and that's to keep it busy with a victim.
The novel's main character fetches a youngster with him, the son of a colleague, and once on sight of the Golden Sphere let him go first. Then, while the Grinder shreds the body of his young journey fellow, he slips through and gets to the treasure, forgetting all his desires, only able to think over and over again "Happiness! Happiness for all!"
The same is to get out of the Labyrinth, there's the need of a sacrificial victim to busy the Grinder. But while we slip through the exit we don't think about other people's happiness. We just think about our own happiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment