Stalker

Stalker is the most philosophically profound science fiction film ever made — a meditation on faith, desire, and the terrifying question of what you would do if you could have anything you truly wanted. Andrei Tarkovsky adapts the Strugatsky brothers' 'Roadside Picnic' into something that barely resembles its source material. Three men — the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor — journey into the Zone, an area of altered reality where the laws of physics have broken down, to reach the Room, a place that grants your deepest desire.

The Zone is one of the great locations in cinema. It is not spectacular — it is abandoned, overgrown, beautiful in its desolation. Water drips through ruins. Vegetation reclaims industry. Tarkovsky's camera moves with hypnotic patience through landscapes that feel both real and dreamlike. The film was shot on location at an abandoned power station in Estonia, and the water and chemical pollution on the set may have contributed to the cancers that killed Tarkovsky and several crew members.

The Room is never entered. The Stalker leads his companions to the threshold and they stop. The Writer fears that his deepest desire might be something shameful. The Professor wants to destroy the Room rather than risk its misuse. The film argues that we do not want our deepest wishes granted because we do not know — or cannot face — what those wishes really are. Stalker is not entertainment. It is a spiritual experience.