Nostalgia - 1983

Andrei Tarkovsky doesn't do fast paced, or clearly understandable plots or story. Instead his films are meditations, poetic both narrative and in his visually arresting images. Time seems to be a preoccupation in all of his films, and in Nostalgia it is ever present, from the slow, drawn out pace, to the memories of protagonist Gorchakov, a Russian poet travelling through Italy researching the life of a composer (Sosnovsky). Whilst there Gorchakov befriends a local madman in a Tuscan village - who similarly feels a sense of displacement and longing for the past. The madmen tells Gorchakov that he wishes to walk across a sulphurous pool with a lit candle and if he achieves it he will save the world.

As with other Tarkovsky films there is a strong sense of the passage of time, and regular motifs of water and fire as well as memories permeate Tarkovsky's images - enhancing the feeling of poeticism which seems to be a stylistic preoccupation for the Russian filmmaker. By the films conclusion, a repeat of the opening sequence but shot from a different perspective reveals and seems to tie together a lot of the themes the film and Tarkovsky are pre-occupied

The film is also interesting as it is the first film made outside of Russia, and is cowritten by Tonino Guerra who was a lifelong contributor of Michelangelo Antonioni. It was shot by Guiseppe Lanci and stars Oleg Yankovsky, Erland Josephson, Domiziana Giordano