Tarkovsky’s Stalker is loosely based on or inspired by Roadside Picnic depending who you ask. Modern word would be reimaging of Roadside Picnic. Stalker’s screenplay is written by same people who wrote Roadside Picnic. Roadside Picnic’s Zone was created by visiting aliens who left their trash for Stalkers to find. It wasn’t important what created Stalker’s Zone. It had Room which should make people’s wishes true. In both Zone was dangerous forbitten place which changed people who went there. Stalkers knew how to move there avoiding traps.
In Stalker Zone is backdrop to have beautiful cinematography and philosophical discussions. Bit like in Tarkovsky’s Solaris. Unlike Solaris, Stalker doesn’t follow Roadside Picnic’s story. Stalker tells about one trip to Zone with experienced Stalker. I haven’t written anything about Stalker so few word of it before I go into Roadside Picnic. Stalker is the another of Tarkovsky’s two science fiction movies. It took second try and over two decades before I managed to finish it. It is slow Soviet art movie. You have to have right mindset to watch it. If Zone looks dangerous abandoned place it is because some of the movie was shot actually hazardous places. Crew paid for it with their health. Life and health weren’t that important in Soviet Union.
Roadside Picnic follows one Stalker for years as he lives next to Zone and go there to get alien artifacts. It tells more about how aliens’ visit and artifacts they left change areas around where they visited. First he doesn’t want to leave because living next to zone and visiting there is so exiting even with what it costs him. Then he sees place becoming place where dreamers see their dreams or themselves die. When he has had enough of Zone he can’t leave anymore. Stalker’s life is being in danger in Zone and being fugitive outside Zone always in danger of getting caught by officials. There is no hope of better and world turns weirder around them.
Like in Solaris humans have contact with something which is so alien they don’t understand. There is no great victory or even any resolution at the end. Main characters understand something about their place at the world and that is it. I binged Solaris and Roadside Picnic at faster phase than I intended. Both had slight Lovecraftian feel in sense humans are not the rulers of the world because there are beings bigger and more advanced than us. Solaris had more of that feel because it had scientists trying to make sense of something they can’t understand. Roadside Picnic’s protagonist is more thug than scientist. Neither had sense of horror. People just tried to understand aliens.