quickly.”
O-chan sort of —to use his pet expression—lent a thoughtful ear to what I said, and then he made this comment: “It seems to me Tarkovsky portrayed a village that had instantly perished when a huge meteor or something fell on it. You could even see it as a village like Chernobyl after a nuclear reactor accident. Of course, with all its radioactivity, you'd be in a sorry plight if somebody took you there now, but I liked the way the guide led his clients, how he zigzagged forward, while hurling into the fields ahead those nuts with the ribbons tied to them. It brought back fond memories of the exploration game we played in Kita-Karuizawa when we were kids, when we followed our own rules, never doubting them, always believing them to be serious promises. Come to think of it, I've gotten old. …
“And I also liked the scene where the guide, who is physically and mentally much stronger than the professor and writer he escorts to the Zone, becomes the most exhausted, and a number of times he falls flat on the bare ground and lies there gasping in agony. It reminded me of the orienteering meets I took part in when I was in high school. While running around, I'd slip on some grass and fall, and as though it'd been my good fortune to be there, I'd lie there and exaggerate my fatigue, while clinging, as it were, to the bare ground. I'd be doing this for myself, while nobody was watching, and I would feel I was gelling a better grasp of how the earth and I related to each other, and even of my own material body.
“I can't comment on the movie with the kind of formula where one says, ‘On the whole, isn't Tarkovsky trying to say something like this?’ This, however, is sort of what I thought. The ‘end of the world’ will come. It won't come today or tomorrow.Most likely, it won't come in our time. But it will come creeping along, slowly, as if it didn't want to. And we'll go on living, as if we didn't want to, because all we can do is wait in fearful uncertainly. Now if things were really like this, wouldn't it be natural for us to want to snatch a preview of this ‘end of the world’ that's so slow in coining? This, after all, is sort of what I think the job of an artist is.”
Though I thought that my younger brother was truly smarter than me, I sometimes found myself listening only vacantly, for one of the earlier scenes, the one showing the guide's wife in agony, kept running through my mind. The scene had stunned me, for although the guide's wife appeared to be a married woman suffering pangs of lust, as in those “adult movies” you inadvertently see previewed in theaters, she was actually suffering from matters of the soul. After all, when the prideful O-chan slips and falls on the grass in his orienteering meets, it's not just physical fatigue that causes him to hug the bare ground, is it?
The guide's wife is a beautiful woman who conceals a dark passion within. Her whole figure, too, is beautiful when, for instance, she endures her suffering by falling and writhing on the floor, as if she were having a fit. Allow O-chan to analyze my unwitting association of this woman with an “adult movie” actress, and he would probably say it's because she possesses a breathtaking carnal beauty. Though I couldn't imagine myself ever having such a beautiful body, I was, in fact, filled more with respect, for her than with envy. Moreover, the words this beautiful woman spoke so despairingly to her husband, who had but to herd his charges to a dangerous Zone, captivated me. “Our marriage was a mistake.” she says, “and that's why an ‘accursed child’ was born to us.”
The guide, who has managed to return from the Zone safely, and is exhausted, is also in despair, for he has learned that hisclients hadn't wished for their souls' happiness, which was to be given them in the Room in the center of the Zone. All in all, he's a serious man—serious to the point of being almost pitiful—who believes the
O-chan sort of —to use his pet expression—lent a thoughtful ear to what I said, and then he made this comment: “It seems to me Tarkovsky portrayed a village that had instantly perished when a huge meteor or something fell on it. You could even see it as a village like Chernobyl after a nuclear reactor accident. Of course, with all its radioactivity, you'd be in a sorry plight if somebody took you there now, but I liked the way the guide led his clients, how he zigzagged forward, while hurling into the fields ahead those nuts with the ribbons tied to them. It brought back fond memories of the exploration game we played in Kita-Karuizawa when we were kids, when we followed our own rules, never doubting them, always believing them to be serious promises. Come to think of it, I've gotten old. …
“And I also liked the scene where the guide, who is physically and mentally much stronger than the professor and writer he escorts to the Zone, becomes the most exhausted, and a number of times he falls flat on the bare ground and lies there gasping in agony. It reminded me of the orienteering meets I took part in when I was in high school. While running around, I'd slip on some grass and fall, and as though it'd been my good fortune to be there, I'd lie there and exaggerate my fatigue, while clinging, as it were, to the bare ground. I'd be doing this for myself, while nobody was watching, and I would feel I was gelling a better grasp of how the earth and I related to each other, and even of my own material body.
“I can't comment on the movie with the kind of formula where one says, ‘On the whole, isn't Tarkovsky trying to say something like this?’ This, however, is sort of what I thought. The ‘end of the world’ will come. It won't come today or tomorrow.Most likely, it won't come in our time. But it will come creeping along, slowly, as if it didn't want to. And we'll go on living, as if we didn't want to, because all we can do is wait in fearful uncertainly. Now if things were really like this, wouldn't it be natural for us to want to snatch a preview of this ‘end of the world’ that's so slow in coining? This, after all, is sort of what I think the job of an artist is.”
Though I thought that my younger brother was truly smarter than me, I sometimes found myself listening only vacantly, for one of the earlier scenes, the one showing the guide's wife in agony, kept running through my mind. The scene had stunned me, for although the guide's wife appeared to be a married woman suffering pangs of lust, as in those “adult movies” you inadvertently see previewed in theaters, she was actually suffering from matters of the soul. After all, when the prideful O-chan slips and falls on the grass in his orienteering meets, it's not just physical fatigue that causes him to hug the bare ground, is it?
The guide's wife is a beautiful woman who conceals a dark passion within. Her whole figure, too, is beautiful when, for instance, she endures her suffering by falling and writhing on the floor, as if she were having a fit. Allow O-chan to analyze my unwitting association of this woman with an “adult movie” actress, and he would probably say it's because she possesses a breathtaking carnal beauty. Though I couldn't imagine myself ever having such a beautiful body, I was, in fact, filled more with respect, for her than with envy. Moreover, the words this beautiful woman spoke so despairingly to her husband, who had but to herd his charges to a dangerous Zone, captivated me. “Our marriage was a mistake.” she says, “and that's why an ‘accursed child’ was born to us.”
The guide, who has managed to return from the Zone safely, and is exhausted, is also in despair, for he has learned that hisclients hadn't wished for their souls' happiness, which was to be given them in the Room in the center of the Zone. All in all, he's a serious man—serious to the point of being almost pitiful—who believes the
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