I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve fallen asleep on several occasions whilst watching Stalker. But my mistake was to treat Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic as a film that you just put on for the heck of it. In fact, you must prepare yourself for its glacial pace, obtuse dialog, and elliptical storytelling about three men who journey into a mysterious Zone said to contain a room that will grant people their deepest wish.

But if you take the time to prepare, then Stalker reveals itself to be a haunting and atmospheric film about human hubris in the face of the unknowable that’s further enhanced by Alexander Knyazhinsky’s lush cinematography and Eduard Artemyev’s otherworldly score.

The difficulties surrounding the film’s production are the stuff of legend. Tarkovsky was forced to reshoot a year’s worth of work after the film was improperly developed, and the noted perfectionist ultimately shot Stalker three times with different crew members. Even worse, Tarkovsky and several others, including his wife and assistant director Larisa Tarkovskaya, likely died as a result of being exposed to toxic chemicals while filming Stalker in the Estonian countryside. These events certainly add a haunting undercurrent to a film that’s already plenty haunting in its own right.