Stalker (1979) Andrei Tarkovsky

I finally checked this out, after years of wondering what it was. I chose not to learn anything about it and just watch. It's an amazingly slow, amazingly shot, lofty film about existentialism in the Soviet Union.

Synopsis: Three men, the Stalker, the Writer and the Professor go into "the zone", where an inhuman object crashed and started messing with the fabric of reality. Inside the zone is a room which will unleash your ultimate desires, and the threat of tricky reality traps along the way, along the lines of the "paradox" in Inception. Although it's closest relative I can think of would be Aronofsky's The Fountain, there is very little visually which suggests Stalker as a fantasy film.

IMDB lists that there were three cinematographers: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky, Geogi Rerberg and Leonid Kalashnikov, but it sounds like there was drama on the set and Rerberg's work wasn't in the final project. Kodak stock.

Desaturated color for most of the film and high contrast/sepia tone while the men are in the city, with a very expressionistic feel. There's a nice sudden "Ahhh!" moment when suddenly the landscape is bright, natural green. Nothing but textures, as each wide shot packs the screen with objects sprawled around the characters, jutting out at every angle. 

Although it's fairly avante garde in the storytelling, the film works for me and has influenced plenty of filmmakers in their surreal-philosophical art. Did I mention it was 3 hours long? Even if you want to put it on in the background at a party, it's an interesting visual piece at least.