Directed by
Andrei Tarkovsky
Writing credits
Arkadiy Strugatskiy (novel "The Roadside Picnic")
Boris Strugatskiy (novel "The Roadside Picnic")
Arkadiy Strugatskiy
Boris Strugatskiy
The setting of the film is a tiny town on the outskirts of the Zone, a wilderness area which has been cordoned off by the government. The film's main character, the Stalker, works as a guide to bring people in and out of the Zone, to "the Room", which is said to grant the deepest, innermost wishes of anyone who steps inside. Residual effects of an undefined previous occurrence have transformed an otherwise mundane rural area scattered with ruined buildings into an area where the normal laws of physics no longer apply.
The film begins, in black and white, with the Stalker in his home with his wife and daughter. His wife emotionally urges him not to leave her again to go into the Zone because of the legal consequences, but he ignores her pleas. The Stalker goes to a bar, where he meets the Writer and the Professor, who will be his clients on his next trip into the Zone. The Writer and the Professor are never identified by name — the Stalker prefers to refer to them in this way. The three of them evade the military blockade that guards the Zone using an 88" Series II Land-Rover — attracting gunfire from the guards as they go — and then ride into the heart of the Zone on a railway handcar. The camera follows their passage from urban setting to rural, and from the darkness required for their infiltration of the Zone, to light. This is also the point in the movie where the film switches to color.
The Stalker tells his clients that they must do exactly as he says to survive the dangers that, while invisible, are all around them. Although the Stalker describes extreme danger at all times, no harm comes to any of the three men; there is a tension between disbelief of the need for his elaborate precautions and the possibility that they are necessary. The Stalker tests various routes by throwing metal nuts tied with strips of cloth ahead of him before walking into a new area. The Zone appears peaceful and harmless. The Writer is skeptical that there is any real danger, while the Professor generally follows the Stalker's advice.
Much of the film focuses on the trip through the apparently dangerous Zone and the philosophical discussions that the characters share about their reasons for wanting to visit the Room. The Writer appears concerned that he is losing his inspiration, while the Professor apparently hopes to win a Nobel prize. Meanwhile, the Stalker — who explains that he has never gone into the Room himself — quotes from the New Testament and bemoans the loss of faith in society. Throughout the film, the Stalker refers to a previous Stalker, named "Porcupine," who led his poet brother to his death in the Zone, visited the Room and gained a lot of money, and then hanged himself. The implication is that our "deepest, innermost desires" are opaque even to ourselves, and the overt desire to win the lottery was coupled with the covert and unexpressed - perhaps unconscious - desire for his brother's death, and when Porcupine realized this, he killed himself to expiate his guilt. When the Writer confronts the Stalker about his knowledge of the Zone and the Room, he says that it all comes from Porcupine.
The trio first walk through meadows and then enter a tunnel that the Stalker calls "the meat grinder." In one of the decayed buildings, a phone inexplicably begins to ring. The Writer answers and says to whoever is on the other end that "this is not the clinic," and hangs up. The Professor then uses the phone to call a colleague. In the resultant conversation he reveals some of his true motives for having come to the Room. He has brought a bomb with him and intends to destroy the Room out of fear that it could be used for personal gain by evil men. The three men fight verbally and physically; the Professor backs down from his plan to destroy the Room. Their journey ends when they finally arrive at the entrance to the Room. A long take leaves the men sitting outside the Room, who then never enter it.[2] Rain begins to fall from a dark sky where a ceiling once was, into the ruined building, and the rainstorm gradually fades away, all in one shot.
The next scene shows the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor back in the bar. The Stalker's wife and child arrive. A mysterious black dog that followed the three men through the Zone is now in the bar with them. His wife asks where he got it; the Stalker says that it got attached to him and he could not leave it in the Zone. As the Stalker leaves the bar with his family and the dog, we see that his child, nicknamed "Monkey" is crippled, and cannot walk unaided. (Earlier dialogue has suggested that the child is affected by some form of genetic mutation as a "child of the Zone.") Later, when the Stalker's wife says she would like to visit the Room, he seems to have doubts about the Zone; he tells her he fears her dreams will not be fulfilled. While breaking the fourth wall, the Stalker's wife then contemplates her relationship with the Stalker, only to conclude that she is better off with him. The film ends with Monkey alone in the kitchen. She recites a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev and then lays her head on the table and appears to psychokinetically push three drinking glasses across the table, one after the other, with the last one falling to the floor. After the third glass falls to the floor, a train passes by (as in the beginning of the film), causing the entire apartment to shake.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/
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