From Adriana Serrato - From Stalker, by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979

Stalker is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian film director, in 1979 which is an adaptation of the novel Picnic by the Roadside by Boris Stragatsky and Arkady Strugatsky. Stalker is a film about three men who travel in a forbidden area known as the Zone. The film is considered a science fiction as it portrays the world were the logic of our reality does not apply, as in the Zone everything from objects to landscape seem to rearrange themselves as they please, there is no fluid comprehension or establishment of the environment. The three men are in the pursuit of a room that has the power to make wishes true. Andrei Tarkovsky successfully creates a very dark and almost ominous film, there is a feeling of solitude as the shots are set up in a manner where there is a lack of human activity. The following images are instances of the uncanny in the film. Every environment is minimally lit and the architecture seems old and abandoned. This idea of abandonment brings up the notion of the haunting, as the environment seems to be haunted by a past life or a greater power. The environment in which the scenes are shot seem to have had a utility and possibly activity in a previous life. In the first few instances of the film we enter a room by the window, a very slow pan into the room takes place. These slow camera moves add to that unease feeling the viewer may experience from the shots. The director also uses fog as well as industrial scenery as a tool to create a sense of loneliness and with the immense and infinite environment a sense of smallness.The shots of the film mimic a post-war scenery as if the environment had experience disastrous disfiguration. The film questions the reality, physicality and function of our life as well as the notion of religion and hope.