Read the full article on Firstpost, here: https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/forty-years-on-tarkovskys-stalker-remains-a-great-example-of-movie-poetry-easier-to-experience-than-explain-6973641.html
In 1972, the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky published a Russian sci-fi novel titled Roadside Picnic, which centres on an extraterrestrial event called Visitation. This event results in “Zones”, mysterious (possibly supernatural) areas that have been cordoned off by the respective Governments. Instead of a single exposition dump, the properties and qualities of the Zone are parcelled out through lines like this one (from the translation by Antonina W Bouis): “I don’t like those trucks! They’ve been exposed to the elements for thirty years and they’re just like new… That’s the Zone for you!” Here’s another passage: “We were in the Zone! I felt a chill. Each time I feel that chill. And I never know if that’s the Zone greeting me or my stalker’s nerves acting up. Each time I think that when I get back I’ll ask if others have the same feeling or not, and each time I forget.”
That’s the novel’s protagonist speaking: a “stalker” who sneaks into the Zone and steals artefacts to sell in the black market or else takes others inside, like a freakish tourist guide. His nickname became the title of a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, released on 25 May, 1979. (The Strugatsky brothers wrote the screenplay, loosely based on their book.) The premise sounds like a sci-fi adventure: “If you come back [from the Zone] with swag, it’s a miracle. If you come back alive, it’s a success. If the patrol bullets miss you, it’s a stroke of luck. And as for anything else, that’s fate.” The “plot” revolves around Stalker leading two men (named Writer and Professor, after their professions) into the Zone, which begins to sound like a malevolent living being. Stalker says, “The Zone demands respect, otherwise it’ll punish you.” It sounds like the setting for an Indiana Jones adventure.
Continued at the link above.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
vinjk
July 11, 2019
The one time I tried to watch a Tarkovsky movie I zoned out.
In Malayalam “tharkam” means argument…among cinema lovers in my college “Tarkovsky” was an argumentative person
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MANK
July 12, 2019
Yeah right. It took a while and many sessions for me to finish watching this . I don’t think I would have sat through it all in a theater. I really couldn’t understand the plot or a lot of the philosophy, But it still has a hypnotic quality, that makes every frame of the film unforgettable. It’s a film that you feel rather than see, like Apocalypse now released around the same time, though that was a much more accessible film.
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Ravi K
July 12, 2019
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing “Stalker” and “Andrei Rublev” in the theater. “Stalker” must have been a big influence on Alex Garland’s “Annihilation.”
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Gotham
July 13, 2019
It was meditation on life, death and everything in-between.
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