Stalker

Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (1979, 163 min.). Ranked with Solaris as the top of director Tarkovsky's engagement with the fantastical, Stalker is arguably his most accessible film. This philosophical fable follows only the roughest outlines of a novel by Soviet sci-fi writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and employs Tarkovsky's theories of cinema as "sculpting in time." A mysterious post-apocalyptic Zone (created on location at a deserted Estonian power plant) is said to contain a room that grants wishes; the Stalker will take you there for a fee, past military checkpoints and more obscure dangers. The influence of this terse, laconic film is still felt in such psychological sci-fi thrillers as 28 Days Later. MFA members, seniors, and students $8; general