The Zone is continuously changing, like some vast organism, with its own consciousness - at one point it speaks to Writer after he brokle one of the Stalker's guidelines: "Never travel stright to your destination - it's far more dangerous." This is the film's premise: when entering the Zone, the room is visible about 2-300 yards away, but the two disks are filled with their tortuous journey through the Zone's weird foliage as they detour and take the long route round. I'm sure that this has some connection with Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in its story spun out of nothing, with the characters making their own fable through their own hopes and fears - the ending particularly shows this; when the characters deliberate on whether they actually want to enter the room, having heard the cautionary tale of "Porcupine". Porcupine was the Stalker's mentor, until he took his brother to the room. He became a victim of the "meat mincer" (one of the Zone's hazards) and so Porcupine went into the room himself to save his brother. He came out of the Zone immensely wealthy and hanged himself a week later. We are told that that's because his innermost desire was still money - even after he begged in the room for his brother's safety, in his heart of hearts, he wanted to be rich. Unable to live with himself, he took his own life.

When I was first shown "Stalker" by my father, I had just been the what I considered the "victim" of a screening of "Andrei Rublev", after the buying of two of "Artificial Eye"'s DVDs. That was until the rest of my family had left the room, and the final few scenes came on. I went back and was mesmerised by the "Bell" scene and the final 20 minutes of icon footage.

Once you've seen it, you can see it again with a completely fresh approach. However, it only appeals to a certain type of person - definitely not those who require the presence of Arnie or Bruce Willis to make a film good!

Alexandr Kaidanovsky is magnificent in his title role as the insecure-except-in-the-zone Stalker, who lives to make others happy. He gives the great performance of a man who knows what he wants, but when pressed can't express it. the film is an epic moral and philosophical journey also, as the Stalker's two companions ("Writer" and "Professor") argue about the meanings of their professions, and Writer expresses his doubts and attempts to justify his shortcomings - which are obviously intended to apply to humanity's greater obsession with choice and personal distinction as well.

The sound is also very well put together (I listen mainly to the mono version - when put through surround sound speakers it gets mixed so it comes from all of them anyway, so there is no reduction in enjoyment. Although the quality is a little iffy in places, due to the transfer techniques used by RUSCICO (the Russian Cinema Council) and the age of the original material, this doesn't detract from the film in any way, in fact it adds to the atmosphere of the Zone, as the occasional slight analogue fuzz gives character to a soundtrack like no clean digital remastering can.
I have given a "weak" rating to special effects as there aren't any to speak of. The film is aboutthe people and where they're going, it doesn't have to rely on big bangs and whizzes. Besides, the computer generated era was yet to arrive in 1979, so no PC wizadry here!

The "Artificial Eye" version I have is split over two discs, and the splitting of the parts is one disc each (Stalker was originally produced in two parts) which would be fine except the copyright notices also come up on the second disc, and then you have to select "play" from the menu, so it doesn't flow as seamlessly from one part to another as I would have liked, which can spoil the moment a little.