“It is within you. It governs you. Yet you are ignorant of it.”

The outside world is presented to us in monochromatic sepia in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The paint in the Stalker’s apartment in this world — which he shares with his wife and their daughter, Monkey, who cannot walk unassisted, nor speak — is defaced with bubbles and cracks. We see an overhead shot of a half-chewed apple, pills, syringes, and a glass of water on a bedside table before we meet the Stalker and his family in the film’s opening scene. We hear the sound of a train passing by; items shake in the apartment from its rumbling. Ripples form in the water and the glass shakes so hard that it moves from a corner of the table to its center. These details — and the near emptiness of the home — indicate that the Stalker lives in extreme poverty.

Other settings in the outside world appear to be similarly dismal. The dive bar that the Stalker meets his clients in is grungy. The dilapidated buildings and flooded streets of the industrial region outside of the Zone resemble those of an active urban battlefield. Anyone who ventures into that region risks being shot by a squadron of military police.

The sepia tones make these somber settings look exceptionally unattractive. The coloration of these scenes — paired with the mise-en-scène — presents the outside world of Stalker as a dirty and depressing place. The world in sepia feels hopeless.

It’s no wonder that the Stalker continually desires to leave it, even if only to confront the unknown.

By contrast, scenes set within the mysterious Zone are presented to us in full color. The grass is green, the earth is brown, the embers of a fire burn red. Water is its natural color instead of a murky, brown reflection. The Zone may be a deserted and apocalyptic place in its own right, but its coloration is less disorienting and drab than that of scenes set in the outside world. The availability of a full color palette makes this setting — with all of its mysteries — feel so much more full of possibilities.

The three main characters — Stalker, Writer, and Professor — talk about their impending trip into the Zone extensively in the outside world in the film’s opening scenes. Tarkovsky, per usual, makes us wait before bringing us to this setting, however. He takes his time building anticipation and tension; the characters do not get into the Zone until nearly 40 minutes into the film.

When the Stalker meets the Writer and Professor in the grungy bar, Tarkovsky places his camera in a wide shot and lets the three men talk about their hopes and desires over drinks. He doesn’t cut away to coverage; instead, the camera slowly dollies toward them over the course of several minutes, while we remain a passive observer to the conversation.

Much of Stalker — in all of its settings — takes place in lengthy, observant wide shots like this. This formal decision serves a dual purpose: first, it makes us feel as though we’re really there, without any formal artifice between us and the characters; second, without visual distraction, we’re forced to focus closely on the dialogue and contemplate what the characters are saying.

Over time, this formal restraint — and the slow pace that it establishes — builds dramatic tension, too. By the time the Stalker, Writer, and Professor commandeer a trolley to escape the outside world, we’re as ready as they are to see the Zone. But Tarkovsky doesn’t relent. A tense, nearly four-minute sequence transitions the main characters — Stalker, Writer, and Professor — from the outside world into the Zone (and, therefore, from the sepia world into color).

“Won’t they come after us?” the Writer asks from his seat in the trolley. “No, they’re scared to death of it,” the Stalker replies. “Of what?” he inquires. This question is greeted with silence from his companions, and Tarkovsky does not give us the satisfaction of a direct answer — or allow us to see the Zone in question for several more minutes. Intrigue builds.

Pulsing, repetitive electronic music mimicking the sounds of a train car plays on the soundtrack as Tarkovsky lingers on shots of the back of each character’s head for extended periods of time while the scenery rapidly passes beyond them, out of focus. With all of this build-up, by the time the camera dollies into the first shot of the full-color Zone, we feel as nervous and intrigued as they do about what exists inside of this mysterious place.

Rushing the story into the Zone would have created a more exciting film. This approach, however, makes Stalker much more contemplative, suspenseful, and unsettling.

In the opening scene of Stalker, we learned that the military sent troops into the Zone as soon as it first mysteriously appeared… and that they never returned. Once inside the Zone, the main characters discover abandoned tanks and artillery guns in a field, all of which are overgrown with vegetation as if they haven’t moved in decades. Mysterious bunkers, flooded caverns, and terrifying tunnels are scattered throughout the land. Fog shrouds distant settings in mystery.

A room filled wall-to-wall with miniature mounds of sand pushes characters’ wits to their limits. The “Room” itself, their ultimate destination, taunts — and haunts — them.

The Stalker speaks in no unclear terms about how dangerous this place is. “The Zone is a very complex maze of traps,” he says. “The Zone demands respect, otherwise it will punish you.”

Long scenes with barely any shot coverage, abstract dialogue, philosophical musings, slow pacing, and nearly forty minutes of sepia-tinted imagery demand patience from viewers. But if patience is granted by the audience, Stalker rewards. The tension built through the formal choices of the opening scenes generates enough intrigue to carry us through the entire film.

For the most part, the coloration rules established in the first few sequences — sepia for the outside world, color for the Zone — are strictly adhered to throughout Stalker (unlike the coloration “rules” in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, which are frequently, intentionally broken).

One exception to the rule exists in each space.

Halfway through the film, the characters begin to question themselves and their motivations. Tired from their journey through the Zone, they lie next to a river to sleep. A big, black dog runs through the water and cuddles up next to the Stalker; ethereal music then accompanies a slow, crawling close-up shot above the sepia-tinted river as the Stalker dreams. The dream is presented in the coloration in which the Stalker experiences his normal world: sepia. This dream sequence gives us a moment to process all of the philosophical musings that came before it and prepare ourselves for the intense journey ahead.

Outside of the Zone, all scenes are tinted sepia except for two shots, which both appear in the final 15 minutes of the film. In the first shot, Tarkovsky follows Monkey in a profile close-up, then pulls the camera back to reveal that she is riding on the shoulders of her father, the Stalker — with her mother and the dog from the Zone in tow — across a dismal, industrial beach near the bar.

The second full-color shot in the outside world is the film’s brilliantly unnerving, captivating, mind-bending final scene.

In the dream sequence within the Zone, the Stalker allows the outside world — and all of its anxieties — to take hold of his mind while he sleeps. His confidence momentarily lapses, and he thinks as he would outside of the Zone.

By the logic of Stalker‘s coloration rules (including the logic of the dream exception), the full-color shots at the end of the film indicate that the Zone has infiltrated the outside world. Tarkovsky doesn’t need to over-explain what’s happening in these scenes; formal choices do that for him — along with a clue planted in the Stalker’s dialogue several scenes before:

“They return from the Room. I guide them back, and we never meet again. Desires don’t come true immediately, you know.”

Stalker is a methodical, yet elusive, film. Tarkovsky, even more so here than in any of his earlier films, seems to be more interested in ideas than answers. The film’s richness comes to us in contemplation, not in understanding. The dialogue is dense, weighty, and meandering; the Writer and Professor often riff on abstract concepts and philosophical tangents. We are meant to sit with them and ponder their words while they do. We are provided with pieces of background information about each of them, but are forced to fill in the gaps with our own imaginations.

In spite of its narrative ambiguity, Tarkovsky’s Stalker is not without guideposts. The most overt clue that helps us formulate theories about what the film is actually about is the abstract naming of the main characters: Stalker, Writer, and Professor.

All three enter the Zone to find meaning in their lives and discover a Room that will make their deepest desire a reality. That they are named after their professions makes them seem more like symbols than individuals.

The characters of the Writer and Professor are easy to symbolically interpret — Creativity and Critical Thinking, respectively. The man who leads them blindly into the unknown — the Stalker — could be justifiably interpreted as Faith.

In the end, their instincts — the Professor’s, to want to destroy the Room; the Writer’s, to despair; and the Stalker’s, to refuse entry on the basis of only being allowed to lead others to their destinies — offer keys, too, for us to unlock what the Zone itself might represent.

Symbols, color, time, mood, and musings.

Tarkovsky lingers on a shot of the three men sitting just outside of the Room for a long time to let us put the pieces together and arrive at our own conclusions.