Nostalgia

There are very few people worthy of the accolade of "Genius" but the late Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky was definitely one of them. In his film-making career he is responsible for some of the most beautiful images ever to be put on a cinema screen.

"Nostalghia" deals with a Russian poet who is in Italy to research the life of a Russian composer, who died there. Accompanied only by his female, Italian, interpretor, who is attracted to him, the poet feels strong feelings of home-sickness for Russia and he strongly misses his wife and child who stayed behind.

This was Tarkovsky's first film made outside the Soviet Union (and his first in a language other than Russian), but it is still very obviously a Tarkovsky film, complete with many haunting images of water and fire. in fact, instead of the beautiful, sun-drenched Italy we are used to seeing on film, here the country is grey, wet and shrouded in mist. As usual in Tarkovsky's films there are many changes between colour footage and black-and-white (or sepia). Here, the poet's memories of Russia are presented in monochrome.

As with all Tarkovsky films, "Nostalghia" demands a great deal from the viewer. It is very slow moving and requires a great deal of patience and concentration. Also, be warned that Tarkovsky did not see cinema as "entertainment" but as an art form. I would advise anyone to make the effort and stick with it, though. It is a great work of art.

It's sometimes true that the most demanding movies can yield the most lasting rewards, and the penultimate film by the late Andrei Tarkovsky certainly puts the theory to the test. This was the first feature he directed outside the Soviet Union, and its protagonist is (like Tarkovsky himself was) a Russian artist exiled in Italy. But don't expect anything remotely plot-driven; like other Tarkovsky films it's a dense, challenging exploration of faith, madness and memory: beautiful, enigmatic, intellectual, and extremely slow moving. Many of the sequences are a labor to sit through, but the final shot, in which the director transplants a Russian cottage (complete with landscape) inside the massive walls of an ruined Gothic cathedral, is by itself compelling enough to erase the aftertaste of even the most tedious passages.

It is beautifully photographed, and further established Tarkovsky as a genius with natural landscapes and settings. Aside from Orson Welles, Tarkovsky must be the king of atmosphere.

Atmosphere alone does not make a great movie. This movie is unbearably pretentious and slow beyond words. In comparison to Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman is an MTV director.

By this stage in his life, Tarkovsky was an acknowledged genius, and apparently nobody on this team ever dared to question his artistic decisions. He simply has no clue of when his point has been made and it's time to move on.

Is he a fine poet? Yes, as great as his father in many ways. I also think he has a marvelous photographer's eye for images. But he really had a complete disdain for communication with the audience, and that aloofness makes this film so hard to watch. Of course, the fact that much of the movie exists in dim remembrances and dreams makes it even less accessible. I don't even know if this film had a script. Some of the actor's dialogue, especially Giordano's, seems unrelated to the scenes they are performing. The actors performed admirably.

I watched it a second time with my fast-forward, and it was much better. He has a way of holding the camera on a still or barely-panning image for many, many seconds - with no sound either, except for his overused running or dripping water cliche. If you fast-forward all of those to the next scene, the movie flows much better.

I consider this movie a disappointment. I always thought Tarkovsky would make a great movie when given Western budgets and technology, but he pretty much just remade his earlier movies on better film stock.

He has a beautiful vision. I wish he had become a photographer instead of a filmmaker.

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.

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.