In Russian director Andrei Tarkovski’s Stalker, three men sneak into a restricted zone guarded by the military and sturdy metal fences. Inside this area, the men discover a realm different from the outside: a changing territory that unveils as they wander in. As they enter, the travelers find rusty carcasses of war tanks, bunkers flooded by water torrents, and bare-wall places where there are fragments of furniture, rubble, and objects. A few times, they cross a thick vegetation filling the ventilation ducts of the otherwise deserted structures. The material remains of human occupation can’t be located in time: they’re covered in moss, rust, dirt, or appear at the bottom of water ponds, lined with algae. The immersion in this “zone” reveals it to be different each time because it is, in a certain sense, alive: the layers of vegetation and ruin interweave in a series of shape-shifting labyrinths. These mazes constantly re-draw their structure, and can’t be crossed in a straight line. [...]
Zone
in ENCYCLOPEDIA