— Some bastard would criticize me; I get wounded. Another would laud me; I get wounded again.
Seriously though, how loud was that dog schlop-schlop-schlopping up the milk?
Like the room itself, our interpretations of this film are inevitably going to be motivated by what we bring to it. Watching Stalker is, in a sense, just like entering the Zone. The film, like the Zone, is a mysterious, elliptical, at times labyrinthine plane, riven with spatial and temporal distortions, riven through with these insoluble dilemmas, these aporias, and insofar as the room grants, and in doing so reveals, our innermost desires, I think Tarvkovsky's Stalter inevitably reveals something to each of us about ourselves.
— Luke Savage (Michael & Us)
Synopsis: Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.