Luis Buñuel (Simon of the Desert), Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker, Solaris) and Alejandro Jodorowsy (The Holy Mountain).
According to Andrei Tarkovsky, “One of the saddest features of our time is, in my opinion, the fact that nowadays a regular person gets separated for good of all that makes reference to a reflection on the beautiful and the eternal. The modern culture of the masses -a prosthetic civilization-, thought for the ‘consumer’, mutilates the souls, closes more and more for man the way to the fundamental questions about his existence, to becoming aware of his own identity as a spiritual being. But the artist cannot, must not remain deaf to the call of truth, which is the only thing able to determine and discipline his creative will.”
In the writing process the repeated viewing of “Stalker”, by Andrei Tarkovsky, played an influential role. In a scene of the mentioned film a character mentions a story of a legendary stalker, who entered the chamber of wishes with the intent of finding a cure for his sick brother. When he came back home he realized he was immensely wealthy and his brother had just passed away, a fact that portrays that double nature of the human being that sometimes separates what we rationally believe to be right and what our heart wishes. The main characters in “The extent of heaven” face a paradox that, if not identical, is directly related. Their chamber of wishes is in this case the desert itself, where they mysteriously arrived, but where they are able to isolate and have the chance to reflect on themselves apart from the world and the worldly distractions.
Many plastic elements in our project are inspired in the iconography of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films, especially “The Holy Mountain” (one of the key surrealist films of 1970s cinema), and some of his short films.
The influence of Buñuel’s films in this project is explained in the next section.
