Entering the Parth according to Tarkovski

In Stalker I wanted to say that what is important is not what one accomplished after all but that one entered the path to accomplish it in the first place. Why doesn't it matter where he arrived? Because the path is infinite. And the journey has no end. Because of that it is of absolutely no consequence whether you are standing near the beginning or near the end already — before you there is a journey that will never end. And if you didn't enter the path — the most important thing is to enter it. Here lies the problem. That's why for me what's important is not so much the path but the moment at which a man enters it, enters any path.

In Stalker, for example, the Stalker himself is perhaps not so important to me, much more important is the Writer who went to the Zone as a cynic, just a pragmatist, and returned as a man who speaks of human dignity, who realised he was not a good man. For the first time he even faces this question, is man good or bad? And if he has already thought of it — he thus enters the path... And when the Stalker says that all his efforts were wasted, that nobody understood anything, that nobody needed him — he is mistaken because the Writer understood everything. And because of that the Stalker himself is not even so important.