Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker: "One of our Professors is missing!"

Stalker comes back out the entrance towards the camera. Once again he is looking down again but this time he holds a nut out and drops it. After a few seconds we hear it splash into some water below. Although we don't see it. He then has Writer shimmy over to the left and tells him to go up these stairs. This whole sequence is going to make you nuts (pun intended) because the different directions they're going in and their movements along different paths just makes no sense spatially. But we do know that the Zone is constantly changing which can account for things that don't seem right. Stalker turns around and asks Professor where he is even though Professor is right there looking at Stalker.  When Stalker starts moving we can see Professor move up behind him. Even though Stalker told Writer to go up the ladder, Stalker goes down the ladder as he approaches it. Stalker is still being very careful as he moves but this time when he looks down the camera cuts away to a shot of a river. This could be what Stalker sees but we can't see where Stalker is in relationship to the river. We are never shown how things are visually connected in this film but once again the sound can give you many clues. Before the shot of the river cuts away we can hear footsteps and movement from the next shot. And once again Stalker and Writer are standing together even though Writer went up and Stalker went down. Now watch. As Writer begins to move to the right we hear water dripping and the sound of someone walking through water but we can't be sure where it's coming from. Writer then walks by the area where he and the Professor were lying down a little while ago. There is the white bag and there is the nut hanging! And now we pan by several  hanging lights that go by making a weird metallic sound and now we see water falling but can still hear distinct water drips. As the camera continues to pan we come right up to Writer who seems very confused and as we still pan to the right Writer bumps into stalker. After a little jovial water discussion and some  more weird sounds, Writer realizes Professor is missing. Stalker wants to know how that could be since Professor was right behind Writer the whole time. But we know that  Stalker was behind Writer the whole time. Stalker says Professor must have gone back for his knapsack and there is nothing they can do. Professor will never make it back.

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