Andrei Tarkovsky’s Masterpiece Stalker Gets Adapted into a Video Game — openculture.com

Of all the movies out there, Andrei Tarkovsky’s maddeningly oblique masterpiece Stalker (1979) doesn’t seem like a likely choice to be adapted into a video game. Yet it was. The movie, Tarkovsky’s last in the USSR, is dense and enigmatic with none of the narrative pay-offs that you see in most films. The story centers on a region called the Zone, which after some unnamed disaster, has the power to fulfill your greatest wish. Naturally, the area has been ringed off by the authorities with razor wire and armed guards. At the film’s opening, a guide, called a Stalker, takes two clients, a writer and a scientist, into the Zone. And yet after nearly three hours of meandering and philosophical monologues, none of the characters make a wish nor are any wishes granted. The end. But the reason the movie has such a fervent, cultish following is not for its dramatics. Instead, the film’s power is found in the cumulative effect of its hypnotically slow pacing, its spiritual longing and its gorgeous imagery. You can watch the film online here: Part 1 – Part 2. Find more Tarkovsky films here.

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