‘The Stalker’

Set in a bleak industrial city in Estonia, this 1979 film has as its title character (Alexander Kaidanovsky, pictured) an intense man whose mission in life is to conduct people into the Zone, a heavily guarded, forbidden area that 20 years earlier had been struck by a meteorite or possibly a UFO. The region attracts visitors because in it is a room in which one’s wishes may be granted. The Stalker becomes a figure of mysticism as he conducts two visiting intellectuals who debate the nature, functions and limitations of art and science (TMC Wednesday at 11:15 a.m.)