Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room

By Geoff Dyer

PANTHEON BOOKS

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi film, Stalker, left such an impression on Geoff Dyer that he felt obliged to pay it homage decades later. The film—not a prerequisite for the book—follows three men through a postindustrial paradise toward a room where one's ultimate wish is granted. Even if Stalker bored many observers ("Tarkovsky is the cinema's great poet of stillness"), Dyer's musings on everything from on-set disasters to his desire to join a threesome make for a rich and wacky sojourn. At its heart, Zona is about how art changes perceptions: "If I had not seen Stalker in my early twenties, my responsiveness to the world would have been radically diminished."

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

• "This Means War": A Lazy, (Vaguely) Pro-Patriot Act Bore
• Book Review: "The United States of Fear"

Maddie Oatman

Research Editor

Maddie Oatman is the research editor at Mother Jones. For more of her stories, click here. To follow her on Twitter, click here. RSS | Twitter