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

Presumably this movie is set in the USSR, the main actors/characters are Stalker the guide who leads the two men, the professor and the writer, the first one is always skeptical in the confront of the guide and the second is the right opposite.art One"Zona" is a personal essay about a movie entitled "Stalker" and directed by Andrei Tarkosky in the 1979.The movie is based on a novel denominated "Roadside Picnic" it depicts an expedition driven by the stalker and his goal is to bring his two clients to a site known as "The Zone" here the physical laws are absent it is also a place where anything and nothing can happen, it may contains magical properties, like a particular room where your "deepest wish" may or may not be granted.If you are a cinephile you will appreciate his writing, you will be able to listen to the movement of the camera, if not the first part is soporific.This imply that you will walk through the entire movie appreciating also his digressions.In my opinion the most interesting passage when he describe the "zona":"The zone is a place of uncompromised and unblemished value. It is one of the few territories left - possibly the only one - where the rights to Top Gear have not been sold: a place of refuge and sanctuary" (Zona, Loc 390-95, for kindlers)I think that there are countless ways of seeing and reading a book and in particular we must avoid the cliché, if not our culture traditions and knowledge will be flattened by the "fast time".Part TwoThe zona in a unique and abstract place where there is a room which is similar to our brain a place where you can go over the light speed, to be the most rich people of the world but there is the stalker i.e. our consciousness.If we want to obtain our inner most desires we must believe in something and then it will bring them into existence, a supernatural entity like God.I used this reasoning because I want to introduce the most powerful and philosophical phrase of this book, for instance:"Hope is the reward of faith. Only who believes truly hopes; and only he who truly hopes believes. We only believe what we hope, and we only hope what we believe" (Zona: A book about a film about a journey to a room- Geoff Dyer)CheersIP

Dyer claims that a work of art that changes your DNA can only be experienced at a young age, typically in your teens or twenties and can not happen later in life. That art for him is the 1979 cinematic sci-fi masterpiece Stalker, directed and written by the legendary Russian Tarkovsky.I wasn't particularly interested in reading about the movie Stalker since I hadn't seen it, but when I picked Zona up in the bookstore I could not put it down.The influence of this film on Dyer is evident as he passionately and carefully summarizes the story and its meaning. He has not only analyzed every reel of the film but the challenges, and there were many, in making the film.His love of this film is the basis for analogies and metaphors and associations with art and life. The film leads to Burning Man, Nabokov, Kafka, Antonioni, Fitzgerald, Nosferatu, Brother's Karamazov, Solaris, L'Avventura, The Italian Job, Henry James, Hopi Indians, Buster Keaton, Flaubert, Roland Barthes, Daniel Day Lewis and on and on.He suggests that this film with its slow pace has given him a deeper appreciation for art and allowing a story to unfold. This is not something available in movies today he laments. But he also did not love Stalker when he first saw it; in fact, he was a little bored, but "it was an experience I couldn't shake off."The title Zona refers to the mythical zone in the film where your innermost desires will be granted. Dyer's deepest desire appears to have been sleeping with two women at once. I mention this because it's revealing and humorous, but also reflects the wild honesty in his writing.If you haven't seen this film, I suggest you read this book before you do. If you have seen it, this book will change or reinforce your impression of a fascinating movie.There's a sense of going over the edge in Dyer's writing--that is often like reading a revealing memoir--he is so original that I can't think of another writer who can reach his state of unforgettable madness.For me Dyer lifts Tarkovsky up to the level of a Homer in the sense that Stalker encompasses history, myth and a fantastical journey that only art can communicate.

Perhaps I'm just not on the same wavelength as Mr Dyer. I had assumed that this would be an enjoyable critique of Tarkovsky's film, perhaps with some extra details thrown in to explain how his vision differed from that of the Strugatsky brothers, who wrote Roadside Picnic, upon which Stalker is based. What I didn't expect was a rambling diatribe about anything that seemed to spring to Mr Dyers' mind while he was writing. This is a useful critique of Stalker in the same manner that Burrough's 'cut-ups' style is akin to the Janet & John books.

A very judgemental, dare I say snobby book written by a film critic well past his best. I have had the pleasure of reading the whole book twice. Once as a stand alone and again watching the film.The smug, self-satisfied footnotes, that are a distraction and really annoying, fill the space. The crass contemporary comparisons, entering the Zone compared to the plight of economic migrants entering the United Kingdom are repugnant.If you a aTarkovsky freak like me, stay clear of this rambling nonsense.

The book arrived very quickly - within a few days and was in excellent condition. I buy many second hand books and really appreciate the fact that World of Book descriptions are never excessive but quietly accurate and can always be trusted.

Humour is not a quality that you associate with Tarkovsky's films, but this book is very funny. Like Berio, in the third movement of his Sinfonia, taking a ride on the third movement Mahler's Second symphony to produce his own (humorous) collage of quotations, Jeff Dyer writes out, almost shot by shot, Tarkovsky's film Stalker. (There is some scope for comparison between Mahler and Tarkovsky in their use of recognisable motifs which occur throughout their works.) However, writing about a film allows even more freedom than making another film might allow (the quotation above comes from Chris Marker, who made a documentary about the film maker, using quotations from Tarkovsky's oeuvre).In Dyer's case it allows him to reminisce about his first acquaintance with Stalker before the days of DVD, the weeks of waiting for a cinema to screen it, making a VHS copy of its broadcast, just in case there would never be another opportunity, at the same time as commanding us to watch it in projection, not on a small TV screen. He also goes into the appalling list of hazards and personal rivalries which Tarkovsky had to overcome in order to complete it. Multiple references to other Tarkovsky films enable him to eke out a reading of the film, which does not explain it, but sends you back to the film itself (to the VHS copy I made from the broadcast!), with a heightened awareness of its qualities.As with the best criticism, this relatively short book, for such a long film, takes us closer to the work, teasing out its characteristics and the underlying reasons behind its choices with humour and humility (why the jeep, rather than a Mini Cooper!). The most intensely personal part of the book relates to the significance of The Room for the author (or are we merely led to imagine that this persona is the author?), to his fear that it might reveal secret wishes which he has harboured since adolescence but has never had (nor probably ever will have) the opportunity to experience. It is thus a book about ageing, about how a film can change over time, about how it will be different for each new generation of passionate film goers who encounter it for the first time during their late adolescence (how long does that last?).Permit me to point out one tiny technical error, in case other photographers/film makers are also puzzled: the first part of the film, prior to entering the Zone, was shot on negative stock and printed onto colour in a gloomy sepia, not the other way around, as Dyer suggests. If you shoot in colour and print onto black and white stock you end up with black and white, sort of.

All Geoff Dyer's books are about Geoff Dyer. Or at least the persona he adopts therein. Nevertheless he quite clearly has thought about Stalker a good deal and if you too like the film then this is a terrific book. It will send you back to the film, to Tarkovsky and in my case to Soderbergh's stab at Solaris (pretty good I think). It's very funny in parts and he really does make you think about the nature of art. Right up there with Out of Sheer Rage