As Mark Le Fanu outlines in his insert essay, the filmвЂ™s production belies significant, considerable struggle on behalf of the cast and crew which isnвЂ™t evident in the filmвЂ™s spooling pools of philosophical significance. Stalker is an experience, to say the least, a sometimes-glacial knot of tangled inferences, religious metaphors, and political conditioning framed in a post-apocalyptic universe. Like most of TarkovskyвЂ™s filmography, mere summarization hardly defines the experience of engaging with his cinema. Leaving behind his troubled wife and daughter, this Stalker is keen on instilling his apathetic, cynical clients with the sense of hope engendered by The Zone, a sort of last stand for those who find they having nothing left to live for. Stalkers, (glorified guides equipped for the exploration of the dangerous, complex terrain) have the required skills for penetrating The Zone in hopes to lead its desperate customers to The Room, an inner sanctum which not all explorers are allowed into. Loosely based on the StrugatskyвЂ™s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, a Stalker (Aleksandr Kaidanovskty) is hired to guide two men, a depressed writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and a professor (Nikolai Grinko) hoping to penetrate вЂњThe Zone.вЂќ The enigmatic, foreboding wasteland is said to house secrets meant for those seeking enlightenment and/or the fulfillment of their deepest desires. A metaphorical fable on religion (to summarize superficially), a titular guide takes a writer and a professor through a post apocalyptic wilderness left behind by aliens (known only as The Zone), in which exists The Room, a destination which, once reached, will yield its transgressors unto their innermost desires. But perhaps nothing matches the density of Andrei TarkovskyвЂ™s inimitable Stalker, the Russian legendвЂ™s fifth of seven films, and his final feature made within the confines of the Soviet machine. JodorowskyвЂ™s The Holy Mountain (1973) and HerzogвЂ™s Fitzcarraldo come to mind as films conjuring something undefinable in their aura and visual textures. Often, these films have their own particular cult followings, legions born out of the urban legends usually surrounding such cinemaвЂ™s strenuous (perhaps necessary) production process. And others succeed in reinventing a new, perceptive cinematic language through their own idiosyncratic process. Mystical, existential journeys appear in cinematic form every so often, sometimes challenging our understandings of the world around us as well as the social constructs we use to define ourselves, beliefs, and traditions.

Stalker ray of hope