Perfect in Weakness: Faith in Tarkovsky's Stalker (Reel Spirituality Monograph)

Three men go on a risky journey through a forbidden Zone in search of fulfillment. They fail. They come home. The end. The plot of Tarkovskys Stalker is a joke. Taking its title from 2 Corinthians Perfect in Weakness explores Stalker as a ludic parable. And the subject of this parable is faith. Faith as folly faith as a dangerous last-ditch attempt to attain the unattainable. To fail to fail again and to carry on regardless. Stalker is about crossing borders boundaries conventions. To transgress to disrupt to deconstruct is the dark impulse behind Tarkovskys personal vision. It is also the illicit revolutionary message at the heart of the gospel: tear down this temple and have faith. Like one of Deleuzes rhizomes or David Tracys fragments Perfect in Weakness aims to throw out thoughts ideas and connections in unexpected (even unintended) directions drawing new and unlikely texts into the field of film theology--Patristic thought Christian Neoplatonism and Renaissance literature. Perfect in Weakness suggests we see cinema itself as the ultimate apocalyptic art form--letting light into the darkness and then throwing it on a screen.