A little more than halfway through Geoff Dyer's peculiar and winning "Zona'' comes an "Aha!'' moment for the reader, who might be forgiven for wondering what possessed Dyer to write an entire book about the 1979 Russian movie "Stalker'' - what, in fact, sparked his decades-long obsession with a relatively obscure film about three men on a perilous trip to a forbidden territory called the Zone, each of them seeking something different and not altogether clear.
Glacially paced, subtitled, and nearly three hours long, the movie is a rather grim, sepia-drenched affair by the late director Andrei Tarkovsky, "for whom,'' Pauline Kael once wrote, "the whole universe was depressive.''
"The first few times I saw 'Stalker,' '' explains Dyer, who was in his 20s then, "was during a phase in my life when I took LSD and magic mushrooms quite regularly.''
Well, OK, that doesn't actually answer the question about writing the book, or the one about the obsession - all it really does is hint at the roots of the initial infatuation - but it's a help. Anyway, "Zona,'' whose subtitle is "A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room,'' is only partly about the movie. Mainly it's a work of criticism and memoir about the intrinsically, undeniably personal experience of viewing cinema. As Dyer notes, his "book is an account of watchings, rememberings and forgettings; it is not the record of a dissection.'' He is interested in Tarkovsky's impact on filmmakers (e.g., Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders) and other artists (e.g., Cate Blanchett, Björk), yes, but his central fascination is the movie's impact on himself.
So the reader's journey through the book becomes a journey through the author's mind - rambles, brambles, and all. Dyer does love a good digression, and "Zona'' is larded with footnotes so copious and seemingly off-point that they amount, pleasingly, to a parallel text that accompanies his tracking of the three men - Stalker, Writer, and Professor - to and through the Zone. At the end of one chattily amusing footnote, about the resemblance of Dyer's wife to the actress Natascha McElhone in Steven Soderbergh's version of "Solaris,'' one shakes one's head to snap back to the primary text. There, it's surprising to find that we are once again focused on a scene involving a motorbike, in the early part of the movie that is still in monochrome.
Speaking of which: Dyer has done quite a lot of homework, minutely observing "Stalker'' and immersing himself in Tarkovsky's oeuvre of film and writings, and in books and movies about him. But he leaves strange bits of homework undone. The oddest of which involves his obstinate lack of curiosity about "The Wizard of Oz,'' a work he has never seen and - evidence of a contrarian streak - does not care to see. Like "The Wizard of Oz,'' "Stalker'' blossoms into color upon the travelers' arrival in the dreamed-of land; predictably, resemblances between the two films "have been widely remarked on,'' as Dyer allows in a frustratingly compact footnote.
One senses that Dyer - who has strict rules about what he will and won't watch, and where - has, over the decades, vigilantly safeguarded his nonetheless ever-changing experience of "Stalker,'' a movie that, by the way (spoiler alert!), he did not enjoy the first time around. Returning to it again and again at different phases in his life, it has become a reminder of who he was the last time, and the first time, and the times in between. It is for him, like so many cherished works of art are for so many of us, a mnemonic.
Laura Collins-Hughes can be reached at lcollins-hughes@globe.com.