Reclaiming Wonder: A Hauntological Analysis of Stalker

The 1970s was a turbulent time for the Soviet Union. The economic prosperity promised by the October Revolution had not materialized, and people were questioning is there was any point to all the suffering of the first half of the twentieth century. These existential anxieties are what filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky addresses in his 1979 film Stalker. Analyzing the film’s composition and symbolism through the lens of Derrida’s theory of hauntology, along with the history of Russia, reveals that Stalker is one of the most subversive statements on faith to be made by a culture that actively wanted to end faith