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.

This wonderball film is the only one of Tarkovsky's works that somehow made me feel cheated for something. The beginning was utterly mystical and strange and attracted me to the film, but halfway through I had a hard time keeping up.

Of course, there are scenes that were as stunning as anything Tarkovsky has done before, if not even more stunning. The church scene in the beginning of the movie is one. Then the bath place scene and the scene where the Russian talks with THE MAN in Josephson's interpretation. Yet by the end of it, I felt more sad, disturbed and hopeless than with any other of Tarkovsky's movies or any other movies in general. What is the message, the hidden message, behind this film? Why does THE MAN set fire to himself? And did the Russian really manage to "save the human kind"?

It all left me more depressed than I've ever been, only "Arlington Road" and "Donnie Darko" made me feel the same. And in the end, between the strange dream sequences, Josephson's metaphysic theories and Yankovsky's grim performance, I came out feeling like I was cheated for THE THING. That thing that was there in "Andrei Rublyov", "Solaris" and "Stalker".

Anyway, this is perhaps the most existentialistic of Tarkovsky's films, which should say something about it's nature and serve as a warning to those who intend to see it. It is a haunting, deeply personal and unreserved journey to redemption and knowing this was the director's last Soviet film, it adds a symbolical value to the film. Still, together with "Zerkalo", this is one of the few Tarkovsky's films which is impossible to enjoy as it is too dark and painful.9/10

Italy is a very attractive place for filmmakers, because of its art, architecture, the lighting, and also film history. Many filmmakers go to Italy and immerse themselves in the people and the culture, the light and the atmosphere. Tarkovsky goes to Italy and he makes it as dank, dark, and unpopulated as he makes Russia. And, while in Italy, he has a few things to say about Italians--to explain Russia.

"Then you can't understand Italy, because you're not Italian." A poet goes to Italy to research into the biography of a Russian composer who stayed there for two years, and his life parallels that of the composer. Just so, Tarkovsky's life parallels that of the main character, who is also called Andrei: left in Italy surrounded by so much "beauty it's sickening", he becomes haunted by flashbacks of his family in Russia. Trying unsuccessfully to communicate with his translator (get it?) and striking a metaphysical relationship with a local mystic, Andrei the character struggles with the typical Tarkovskian themes of faith, fire, personal loss, and water, among others.

Tarkovsky is up to some well-rehearsed tricks here. Long takes with an impossibly smooth floating camera dedicate the viewer's eyes to the imagery. The weather is under the same amount of control. A character enters a new space (here it's Italy; in Stalker it's the Zone; in Solyaris it's the space station; in Andrei Rublev it's the society outside the church), and only through intense emotional and philosophical struggle can he prepare himself to return to where he's come from. Thresholds stand tantalizingly around, but don't often get passed (Andrei can walk through a door that leads nowhere with no problem, but can only cross a pool with a candle with immense physical struggle). Spaces are separated by black and white and sepia tones. God is always there but never for you.

There's some new tricks, too. Tarkovsky plays with light a lot in this one, and frames that seem to sink into pure black suddenly illuminate hidden images and icons. A compelling sonic disturbance is created in flashbacks to Russia that sound like a table-saw grinding away at wood; "The Music" the mystic speaks of is warped and fragmented vinyl.

Nostalghia, I feel, is not the Tarkovsky movie you want to see first. First see Stalker, or Solyaris, or Mirror. Nostalghia removes the transition from Russia to Italy and so the feeling of transition and change is a lot more dependent on the symbolic and abstract sensibilities, and previous knowledge of Tarkovsky's imagery will help to interpret it. For fans of Tarkovsky, however, Nostalghia is a sweet and personal return into his dense and foggy mind (or house, as Chris Marker calls it), the world that only he was able to fully explore.

--PolarisDiB