Nostalgia

What a strange film, utterly lacking in narrative, self-indulgent, in a sense tedious, but I sat transfixed for two hours. Someone once described cinema as 'painting with light' and there isn't a single shot in this movie you wouldn't have been proud to photograph. It's utterly beautiful. You don't engage with it as you would with a regular movie, you just sit back and let the images wash over you, frankly I could have watched with the sound off and the subtitles off. I'm lying about the sound. Tarkovsky is a genius for dripping water. The switch between film stock is incredible, the sepia is some of the most breath-taking cinematography I have ever seen. This is pure art house cinema in all its gorgeous, pretentious grandeur.

The nostalgia, in the film's title, isn't just the physical longing for something in the past, it's the spiritual longing that so many people strive for. This shouldn't surprise an student of Tarkovsky's work since no director, possibly with the exception of Ingmar Bergman, analyzed spirituality as Tarkovsky did.

NOSTALGHIA follows the trekking of a Russian traveling through Italy along with his beautiful interpreter. His purpose for being there does not come to the viewer easily. Most of the scenes in the movie are filled with a lot of silence, and even the action that does take place, is minimal. Eventually, we come to understand that he is there to find some cultural reinforcement for his Russian background. As the film progresses, we seem to take on the role of the main character in the story, as an observer to events. Throughout his travels he becomes a witness to religious processions, theological discussions, and the rituals of a God-fearing lunatic. The lunatic, played masterfully by Erland Josephson, is looked down upon by a lot of local citizens. Apparently, in the past, he locked his family in his house for a long time, anticipating the end of the World. The movie documents his effect on the Russian traveler, and the traveler's longing to recapture his spirituality.

A lot has been said of the ten-minute unbroken sequence where the lead protagonist attempts to carry a lighted candle from one end of a pool to the other. Some see it as utterly boring. Personally, I was fascinated. In it, we see how the protagonist finally attempts to do something in order to recapture his spirituality. For the entire length of the movie he has been an observer, now he is an active participant. To be fair, his action does take the form of a ritual, not the building of a church, or water immersion, but then again, so much of spirituality is ritual. Tarkovsky correctly identifies how it's the continuity that helps us get through life, knowing that some things will never change our strong religious convictions. That's when the protagonist finally comes to realize that action must take place. It's no coincidence that this scene takes place after a demonstration given by the Erland Josephson character. It's an amazing scene. In it he gives an intelligent speech about the desolation of art. It also imparts an important question to the viewer about those who truly make a difference in the world: the observers, or the "insane", who try to take positive action on the behalf of others.

No praise of any Tarkovsky film is complete without talking about the technical angle of his work. In NOSTALGHIA Tarkovsky is proven again to be a master of beauty, carving out beautiful images into the Italian landscape. Even the indoor scenes are beautiful. NOSTALGIA is further evidence of Tarkovsky's desire to elevate film as an art. He paints well...

Previous critical comments about Nostalgia include 'the nearest to poetry that cinema can ever aspire'. There is nothing more one can add, this comment sums it up totally. I would say that this film is different every time I watch it, it's more than poetry, it's hypnotic to the state of Tarkovsky casting a spell on the viewer.

Apparently even Tarkovsky described this film as 'tedious', so you can imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end. But for some reason I don't find it so, although there is the occasional longuer. It's one of the great films of cinema, although certainly rather odd. Once again it has an impossibly glamourous Russian wandering about looking moody, engrossed in the big issues. In fact, the female lead falls for him and is exasperated by his absurd interest in a local derelict. She flashes a tit in erotic frustration which is unusual for Tarkovsky, he seems unwilling to really engage in issues of sexuality, preferring them to be chaste in an almost victorian manner. Certainly there was some accusations of a reactionary attitude to women, for at the start of the film a priest tells the guide that she should sacrifice herself for the sake of raising children. She is made to look rather absurd in the film, but in truth, so do the male characters. Perhaps it was due to cultural traditions in Tarkovsky's background rather than deliberate misogyny.

The Italians didn't take to this film as it did not film Italy in a vibrant manner, preferring to evocate the alienation and melancholia of it's Russian lead. Tarkovsky's brilliance as a director is well illustrated in the film where the Russian and the old man talk in a room. The camera seems to turn a full 360 degrees although you don't notice it. The way his characters and objects seem to float in and out of frame is amazing. It's strange, but nature seems to perform for Tarkovsky. Even the animals seem willing to be directed, a dog staring straight into the camera with an almost unearthly and uncanny presence and stillness. The scene where the Russian lies on his hotel bed and his nostalgia conjurs up his dog in a dream like but also tangibly real manner is powerful and haunting.

The problem with this film is that the lead character was not really in exile and could go home anytime, unlike Tarkovsky himself, so why was he in so much pain? Is it mere homesickness as opposed to the real longing for one's homeland rightly belonging to the truly disenfranchised? But perhaps that is not the issue, more that when man finds himself and true wisdom, is it too late in the day for him to use what he has learned? The self sacrifice of the old man is a return to an old theme of Tarkovsky's that perhaps only shame can save mankind.

There are many eccentric aspects to this film, for instance the Russian wandering around up to his waist in water. Also there is a brief and bizarre shot of an angel stomping around outside a house. As it's Tarkovsky you don't burst out laughing. Perhaps he reaches the parts other directors cannot reach.

But there are also some vividly beautiful moments. The doves being released in the church, and the light filtering through a stream of water in a gutted house. Towards the end of his career, Tarkovsky began to question the rigid criteria he used in shooting a film in a way he felt won purity and aschewed the vulgar and trivial, but I think he got it right here. A marvelous film.

Nostalgia is essentially a dream play that opens with a hazy, monochromatic vision of tranquil reflection, which, not only establishes the core themes behind the film's title, but also, informs the key emotional sequences that are here revisited by the central character throughout. As a result of this, the film is as much about the feelings of loss and longing as it is about the lead character, the homesick Russian poet Andrei Gortchakov, who is exiled in Italy with his guide and translator Eugenia on a research mission into the life of a long-forgotten, 18th century composer. In the hands of any other filmmaker, this plot would give way to a series of grand adventures and curious revelations, but, as we've seen in other films, like the majestic Mirror and Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky is a filmmaker unconcerned with the external world of the film, who, instead, turns his attentions inward, to chronicle the internal angst and emotions at the heart of these tortured, complicated souls.

As is always the case with Tarkovsky's work, it could be argued that the film has further shades that somehow draw parallels with the filmmaker's own life and works; with the exiled main character here becoming the (cinematic) voice for Tarkovsky's own feelings of loss and nostalgia during the making of this film. Because of this, the cinematic depiction of the small Italian village where the film takes place is one of the gloomiest and most barren creations ever presented, especially in comparison to the kind of lush, summery vistas that we're used to seeing from this particular, geographic region. The locations used are desolate, dilapidated, over-run with moss and ivy, and swept in a constant haze of fine rain and morning fog, which allows the filmmaker to create a number of slow and haunting visual meditations that further the actual plot... but also help to visualise the inner-turmoil felt by Gortchakov at this difficult crossroad in his life. As is always the case with Tarkovsky, the visual design of the film is meticulously created and deeply hypnotic, with the production design creating an emotional labyrinth for the characters, which is then, rigorously explored by the camera.

The use of cinematography is always an important factor is Tarkovsky's work, because it is so vital in creating and (then distinguishing between) these varying layers of reality, fantasy, memory and premonition - with the filmmaker employing a variety of techniques, from cross cutting between sepia-tone and defused colour, and the juxtaposition between regular speed and slow motion. The use of those slow, mesmerising zooms (bringing to mind Kubrick's masterpiece Barry Lyndon) and those complicated tracking shots only add to the lingering tension and escalating melancholy that is perfectly established throughout the film's lethargic first act. The film is deliberately slow, like the majority of this filmmaker's work, with the camera moving at it's own pace in order to linger and meditate on certain images and moments. The editing too is deliberate in it's pace, with a number of scenes unfolding with a minimum of two to three cuts per scene (Tarkovsky always allowing the slow movement of the camera to do much of the work normally covered by the editing), which can, on occasion (particularly the first viewing), become quite tiresome. It does, nonetheless, ultimately tie in with the inner feelings and emotions so synonymous with the title and, is integral to the inner pain felt by our central characters.

Into the mix of things we also get a dose of the mystical, supplied here by the character of Domenico, another tortured soul who's back-story involves keeping his family hostage for a prolonged number of years under fear that the world would end. Domenico, like Gortchakov (and indeed, Tarkovsky), is another one of those haunted souls, inhabiting an earth they don't really understand, whilst questioning their place in the world and the world within the cosmos. Towards the end of the film, Domenico will rant atop a statue about all manner of deep theoretical issues, before Tarkovsky launches into two of the most astounding sequences he ever created. The first is a brutal and literally jaw-dropping act of emotional and physical catharsis (set to the strains of a distorted Beethoven), whilst the other is a long and slow meditation on fate (and probably the most iconic scene in this film), involving an empty pool, a lighted candle, and a weary, heartbroken Gortchakov.

Nostalgia is a deep and thoughtful film, best suited to those viewers who are interested in spending some time with a film that takes a great deal of time to fully reveal it's self. Like the majority of Tarkovsky's films, it is bleak, dreamlike and hypnotic, in the way in which the images just linger on the screen, waiting to be decoded. Some might be frustrated by the slow pace and the reliance on character over narrative, however, if you are an admirer of Tarkovsky's best films, like Andrei Rublev, Mirror and The Sacrifice, then you'll be sure to find something of interest here.