Nostalghia (1983)

Another day, another new Tarkovsky. I'm actually pretty sad that my Tarkovsky pile is thinning, but I know that as magical the first viewing is, his films are so incredible that repeat viewings are just as good, if not even better. You inhabit this world that's so surreal and at the same time so vivid, you ponder its mysteries and succumb to its beauty.

What first struck me about Nostalghia is how personal it is, for Tarkovsky. Obviously, all of his films are intensely personal, as all good art should be, but while Tarkovsky's films are usually abstract, Nostalghia is very literal in this respect. It obviously deals with the nostalgia that he felt for his home country while living abroad due to censorship. In the same way that he used the character of Andrei Rublev as a conduit to show the relationship between the artist and his work, he uses the lead character in Nostalghia to show his longing for his own country.

I love Tarkovsky's use of the natural elements in his films. There's always water, most present here and in most of Solaris. Wind plays a large part in setting the mood of Tarkovsky's films, as it's hard to imagine his films without such beautiful shots of Russian farmland swaying in the breeze. Fire is there, like the houses burning in Sacrifice and Mirror, the hand in front of the fire in Mirror and here, the everpresent lighters, sparking up cigarettes. Earth is a toughie, somewhat, but in Tarkovsky's films, it's literally so abundant, you get so used to it that you forget it's there. The Earth itself is Tarkovsky's focus, the world, nature, life, all of it. It's this reason that Tarkovsky's films have a very natural and timeless quality. It's because they plumb the depths of the soul, of human existence, they will continue to ask the questions that will always be ready to be explored, regardless of time and place.

"When film is not a document, it is a dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally." - Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern

This quote sums it up just about perfectly for me. Tarkovsky is merely an observer in these fantastic visions, simply capturing them on film as documenting a human being's subconscious. He doesn't judge, nor does he try to conform to what people expect to see, in terms of images and events. He's one of the true masters of cinema, and I really don't know what else to say.