Nostalghia

Deeply personal, beautifully realised, and symbolically obscure, Andrei Tarkovsky's first film directed outside of his home country stands as a testament to his own conflicting thoughts regarding Russia as he considered a self-proclaimed exile. A deeply personal film, Nostalghia greatly mirrored Andrei Tarkovsky's own life for a time and demonstrated what it is like to be intensely aware of being an outsider. Andrei Gorchakov is a Russian poet, travelling through Italy, researching the life of 18th Century Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky. Homesickness and despair frustrate him until he meets Domenico, who had once imprisoned his entire family to save them from the evils of the outside world. Through conversations with Domenico along with his research subject, Gorchakov is visited by memories of Russia and of his wife and children that rekindles a melancholy longing in him for the land he calls home. And when he is set a challenging task - of walking a flickering candle from one end of a spa pool to the other - he resigns himself to performing this existential mission to find the spiritual enlightenment in his life that has so far eluded him. Filled with mysterious and extraordinary imagery, all of which coalesce into a miraculous whole in the film's astonishing final shot, Tarkovsky's first film is perhaps the nearest claim to the poetic to which cinema can ever aspire.