There's a poignant moment in an interview with the terminally ill production designer Rashit Satiullin, who, when asked about the Zone, recalls the time he spent living, working and talking with Tarkovsky: 'Here you live being your inmost self ... it's somwhere where you can talk with somebody, something unfathomable'. The interviewer asks him to clarify. Does he mean ...? 'Yes speaking with god. When Andrei was no more I was bereaved of a person with whom I could talk about the most important things. That room vanished'. 'So he was the Room to you?', asks the interviewer. 'Yes'.

Geoff Dyer, Zona