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A woman civil engineer wrote from Leningrad: 'I saw your film,
Mirror. I sat through to the end, despite the fact that after the first half
hour I developed a severe headache as a result of my genuine efforts
to analyse it, or just to have some idea of what was going on, of some
connection between the characters and events and memories. . . .
We poor cinema-goers see films that are good, bad, very bad,
ordinary or highly original. But any of these one can understand,
and be delighted or bored as the case may be; but this one?! . . .' An
equipment engineer from Kalinin was also terribly indignant: 'Half
an hour ago I came out of Mirror. Well!! . . . Comrade director!
Have you seen it? I think there's something unhealthy about it. . .
wish you every success in your work, but we don't need films like
that.' And another engineer, this time from Sverdlovsk, was unable
to contain his deep antipathy: 'How vulgar, what trash! Ugh, how
revolting! Anyhow, I think your film's a blank shot. It certainly didn't
reach the audience, which is all that matters . . . ' This man even
feels that the cinema administration should be called to account:
'One can only be astonished that those responsible for the
distribution of films here in the USSR should allow such blunders.'
In fairness to the cinema administration, I have to say that 'such
blunders' were permitted very seldom—on average once every five
years; and when I received letters like that I used to be thrown into
despair: yes, indeed, who was I working for, and why?
I would be given some glimmer of hope by another kind of
cinema-goer, full of puzzlement, but also expressing the genuine
wish to understand what the writer had seen. For instance: 'I'm sure
I'm not the first or the last to turn to you in bewilderment and ask
you to help them make sense of Mirror. The episodes in themselves
are really good, but how can one find what holds them together?' A
woman wrote from Leningrad: 'The film is so unlike anything I've
ever seen that I don't know how to go about it, how to appreciate
either the form or the content. Can you explain? It's not that I lack
understanding of cinema generally . . . I saw your earlier films,
Ivan's Childhood and Audrey Rublyov. They were clear enough.
But this is not. . . . Before the film is shown the audience should
be given some sort of introduction. After seeing it one is left feeling
cross with oneself for being so helpless and obtuse. With respect,
Andrey, if you are not able to answer my letter in full, could you at
least let me know where I could read something about the film? . . .'
Unfortunately I had nothing to advise such correspondents; no
articles came out about Mirror, unless one counts the public
condemnation of my film as inadmissibly 'elitist', made by my
colleagues at a meeting of the State Institute of Cinematography and
the Union of Cinematographists, and published in the journal, Art
of Cinema.

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Art does not think logically, or formulate a logic of behaviour; it
expresses its own postulate of faith. If in science it is possible to
substantiate the truth of one's case and prove it logically to one's
opponents, in art it is impossible to convince anyone that you are
right if the created images have left him cold, if they have failed to
win him with a newly discovered truth about the world and about
man, if in fact, face to face with the work, he was simply bored.
If we take Lev Tolstoy as an example—especially those works
where he was particularly resolute in his search for a precise,
well-ordered expression of his ideas and moral inspiration—we see
how, every time, the artistic image he has created as it were pushes
aside its own ideological frontiers, refuses to fit into the framework
imposed on it by its author, it argues with them, and sometimes, in
a poetic sense, even contradicts its own logical system. And the
masterpiece goes on living by its own laws, and has a tremendous
aesthetic and emotional impact even when we don't agree with the
author's fundamental tenet. It very often happens that a great work is
born of the artist's efforts to overcome his weak points; not that these
are eliminated, but the work comes into existence despite them.
The artist reveals his world to us, and forces us either to believe in
it or to reject it as something irrelevant and unconvincing. In
creating an image he subordinates his own thought, which becomes
insignificant in the face of that emotionally perceived image of the
world that has appeared to him like a revelation. For thought is brief,
whereas the image is absolute. In the case of someone who is
spiritually receptive, it is therefore possible to talk of an analogy
between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely
religious experience. Art acts above all on the soul, shaping its
spiritual structure.
A poet has the imagination and psychology of a child, for his
impressions of the world are immediate, however profound his ideas
about the world may be.

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In Stalker only the basic situation could strictly be called fantastic.
It was convenient because it helped to delineate the central moral
conflict of the film more starkly. But in terms of what actually
happens to the characters, there is no element of fantasy. The film
was intended to make the audience feel that it was all happening here
and now, that the Zone is there beside us.
People have often asked me what the Zone is, and what it
symbolises, and have put forward wild conjectures on the subject.
I'm reduced to a state of fury and despair by such questions. The
Zone doesn't symbolise anything, any more than anything else does
in my films: the zone is a zone, it's life, and as he makes his way
across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether
he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his
capacity to distinguish between what matters and what is merely
passing.
I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially
human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often
a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is
too busy chasing after phantoms. In the end everything can be
reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count
upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow
within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the
meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my
films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that
beauty is summoning him.

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Art affirms all that is best in man—hope, faith, love, beauty,
prayer . . . What he dreams of and what he hopes for . . . When
someone who doesn't know how to swim is thrown into the water,
instinct tells his body what movements will save him. The artist, too,
is driven by a kind of instinct, and his work furthers man's search
for what is eternal, transcendent, divine—often in spite of the
sinfulness of the poet himself.
What is art? Is it good or evil? From God or from the devil? From
man's strength or from his weakness? Could it be an image of social
harmony? Might that be its function? Like a declaration of love: the
consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An
unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of
life—love and sacrifice.
Why, as we look back, do we see the path of human history
punctuated by cataclysms and disasters? What really happened to
those civilisations? Why did they run out of breath, lack the will to
live, lose their moral strength? Surely one cannot believe that it all
happened simply from material shortages? Such a suggestion seems
to me grotesque. Moreover I am convinced that we now find
ourselves on the point of destroying another civilisation entirely as a
result of failing to take account of the spiritual side of the historical
process. We don't want to admit to ourselves that many of the
misfortunes besetting humanity are the result of our having become
unforgivably, culpably, hopelessly materialistic. Seeing ourselves
as the protagonists of science, and in order to make our scientific
objectivity the more convincing, we have split the one, indivisible
human process down the middle, thereby revealing a solitary, but
clearly visible, spring, which we declare to be the prime cause of
everything, and use it not only to explain the mistakes of the past
but also to draw up our blueprint for the future. Or perhaps the fall
of those civilisations means that history is waiting patiently for man
to make the right choice, after which history will no longer be
driven into an impasse and forced to delete from its scrolls one
unsuccessful attempt after another in the hope that the next one
may work. There is something in the widely held view that no
lessons are learnt from history and that mankind takes no notice of
what history has done. Certainly each successive catastrophe is
evidence that the civilisation in question was misconceived; and
when man is forced to start all over again, it can only be because up
till then he has had as his aim something other than spiritual
perfection.

In a sense art is an image of the completed process, of the
culmination; an imitation of the possession of absolute truth (albeit
only in the form of an image) obviating the long—perhaps, indeed,
endless—path of history.

There are moments when one longs to rest, to hand it all over, to
give it up, along with oneself, to some total world-view—like the
Veda, for instance. The East was closer to the truth than the West;
but Western civilisation devoured the East with its materialist
demands on life.

Compare Eastern and Western music. The West is forever
shouting, 'This is me! Look at me! Listen to me suffering, loving!
How unhappy I am! How happy! I! Mine! Me!' In the Eastern
tradition they never utter a word about themselves. The person is
totally absorbed into God, Nature, Time; finding himself in
everything; discovering everything in himself. Think of Taoist
music. . . . China six hundred years before Christ . . . But in that
case, why did such a superb idea not triumph, why did it collapse?
Why did the civilisation that grew up on such a foundation not
come down to us in the form of a historic process brought to its
consummation? Did they come into conflict with the materialistic
world that surrounded them? Just as the personality comes into
conflict with society, that civilisation clashed with another. Perhaps
it perished not only for that reason, but also because of its
confrontation with the materialist world of 'progress' and technology.
But that civilisation was the final point of true knowledge, salt
of the salt of the earth. And according to the logic of Eastern
thought, conflict of any kind is essentially sinful.
We all live in the world as we imagine it, as we create it. And so,
instead of enjoying its benefits, we are the victims of its defects.
Finally, I would enjoin the reader—confiding in him utterly—to
believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of
self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all
human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and
selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that
we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?