Andrei / Oleg Yankovsky / - Russian writer who came to Italy in search of material about the Russian composer of the XVIII century, a book about which he writes; very longing for his homeland and family
Eugenia / Domitian Giordano / - Andrey's translator, is interested in Russian art, apparently has some strange views on the Russian writer
Domenico (Erland Josefson) – crazy, famous for keeping his family locked up for seven years, saving her from the end of the world; now obsessed with the idea of saving the whole world
Oh, great and terrible, and also obscure Tarkovsky. That is what he seemed to me now in this work — little understood. This is the case when nothing was really clear, but in some places very interesting. I'm a little bit of a crook.
A film about the longing of a Russian man for his homeland, for his family. Why Andrew could not just go home, I honestly did not understand. I’ll be honest with you until the end, I didn’t understand much. This is a classic parable film, for which Tarkovsky is famous. With a lot of references, incredibly beautiful shots and an abundance of deep meanings that everyone finds for himself.
I didn't find it. To be honest, I was often distracted, because what was happening, the feelings of the hero – I read later that he in many ways personifies Tarkovsky himself, who left the country forever, being dissatisfied with the authorities – I was not close. I didn't get into them. Not the very nostalgia that gave the film the title, not the ideas about saving the soul and humanity, not quite for me a strange heroine-translator and her desire for ordinary female happiness.
I'm sure the film is loved by many, or will become so if others watch it. I got it at the wrong time, I guess. However, it is likely that in a few years I will review it again, and then I will understand and feel, but not now, not now.
Once again, I will note the camera work, although it is clear that all the footage was directed by the director. Many locations closely resembled the world Tarkovsky showed in Stalker. Many people wanted to stop and watch. And a lot of so-called protracted shots, in particular, the last one is very beautiful, very long and at the same time it is clear that this is not just a picture put on pause. It was also clear that many scenes were shot in one endless frame, and, seeing their complexity, it is very difficult to imagine how much time and effort was spent in order to finally make a successful version.
I can’t say I didn’t like the movie. What I liked, I can’t say either. It was incomprehensible to me, I repeat. I think he just turned up at the wrong time, and his personal time is sure to come.
Despite some expressive symbols (the final carrying of the candle through the water, completing the overall plan, visually uniting Russian and European cultures, Domenico's fiery speech) years later, "Nostalgia" is more disappointing than encouraging. This, of course, is my private opinion, but it seems that this picture of Tarkovsky lacks the conceptual nerve that distinguishes all the past ribbons of the master. Overcoming longing for their homeland through the understanding that Russian culture is included in European culture, the general sense of unity of their Christian roots look more speculative ideas than artistically confirmed facts. Even in terms of expressiveness of acting, Domitian Giordano, widely unknown in cinematic circles, leaves far behind not only Jozefson, but also Yankovsky himself (this is not “Kreutzer Sonata”, it is very difficult to reveal himself in the narrow role of Gorchakov Yankovsky).
As always, Tarkovsky relies on visuality to a much greater extent than on human psychology or realism: the script, co-written with Guerra, seems to absorb all the poetics of “uncommunicableness” that the great Italian formed for many years with Antonioni. However, before us is not “Rublev” and not “Stalker”, the elements of cinematic aesthetics are divided here and do not form the signature harmony of Tarkovsky’s style: here the director is on a foreign land, he has nothing to eat from, except for Christian symbolism, which is on the other side of the “iron curtain” in the same desolation as on this side. It is apocalyptic poetics that dominates Nostalgia: the last times will come when the shrines will be unclaimed and will remain in desolation, and state atheism in this sense is not the cause of this forgetting of the shrines.
Marcel Proust once wrote an essay with the screaming title “In Memory of the Killed Churches,” which could serve as the title for Tarkovsky’s last three films. Over time, evolving from “Ivanov of childhood” to “Nostalgia”, Tarkovsky’s style became drier and declarative, increasingly gravitating to parable imagery. However, unlike the masterpiece of Stalker, the artistic originality of Nostalgia is not so obvious: yes, now, having left for Europe, the director makes a bitter film about the loss of its Christian roots, about the fact that Christianity has become the lot of lone madmen like Domenico, broadcasting about the imminent end of the world. With the Sacrifice, Nostalgia is united by an unconventionally revealed theme of insanity: culture itself, says Tarkovsky, has gone mad only pretending to be normal, and lone madmen – prophets, with their acutely understood spirituality, are actually normal, because they live the life of the soul, not the body, while Western civilization “swimmed with the body.”
Literally, in the first scene of Nostalgia (in the church), a parallel is drawn with the main idea of Stalker: the temple here is directly named the place where wishes are fulfilled. However, Tarkovsky is forced to conduct his conversation about God and faith in disguise, hiding from Soviet censorship (after all, this film, unlike popular opinion, was not yet created in exile, but in co-productions of Italy and the USSR). In Nostalgia, everything is somehow too named and obvious – this is the problem of any parable, however, in Stalker, the outstanding acting works of Solonitsyn and Kaidanovsky gave the abstract plot scope and truthfulness, filling it with life specifics. In “Nostalgia” this is not: Jankovsky is forced most of the screen time to be silent and smoke, even his eyes, plastic and facial expressions do not express a tenth of what he will do years later in “Kreutzer Sonata” Schweitzer.
Of course, after the first viewing, Nostalgia can inspire critical praises, but after a consistent revision of all the previous five Tarkovsky feature films, it is rather bewildered by its apparent simplicity, beyond which other, implied meanings do not appear. Let’s say tougher: watching “Nostalgia”, there is nothing to think about, everything here is thought out for us, shown and named. The final panorama seems to be just an autoquote of the completion of Solaris: just as the Earth looked part of an unknown, mysterious cosmos, here Russian culture seems to be part of European culture. In a new way understood by the director, the biblical story of Abraham in Sacrifice, the honest word seems to me a deeper conceptual statement than what is expressed in Nostalgia, but we will talk about this later.
I haven’t seen all of Tarkovsky’s films, but only while watching 'Nostalgia'. I finally realized that his films are come to life paintings, paintings of the Renaissance master, restored and animated by our contemporary. I know it’s corny, and I’m sure someone has already written about it, but I’m not afraid of platitudes, because our whole world is made up of platitudes.
Jankowski’s face, split in half as a result of the director’s skillful play with light and shadow, resembles the best works of Rembrandt, an unsurpassed master of Renaissance painting. The emaciated face of an ascetic, miraculously preserved to our days. Thus, the master showed us the ambivalence of the hero, the struggle of contradictions tearing him apart, his light and dark side.
Unusual, attractive, and sometimes repulsive, the beauty of Domitiana Giordano (Eugenia). Her hair is the color of ripe copper, her icon-painted face, her sensuality, deliberate corporeality, shown in contrast to the corporeal poverty of Yankovsky. Again, the masterful use of light and shadow. Under certain lighting, she is simply irresistible, and looks like a goddess. The change of location, the light is directed from a different angle, and we see an ordinary, unremarkable woman. A woman who wants what billions of women around the world want. To love and be loved. But, fate sent her a hero, in which nothing of this earthly is no longer. In one scene, Jankowski, speaking to Domenico, responds in absentia to the words Eugenia said to him. She pathetically exclaims in the spirit that ' you don't love me, you don't need it either' and exposes the divine roundness of the breast. Jankowski says he wants medieval love, sublime, without carnal pleasures, and even without kisses. Eugenia does not understand such feelings, and her head is thrown into the pool of a new love, and from the angry expression of her new chosen one’s face, we see that here too she will fail. According to Tarkovsky, love is an unattainable happiness for people living in the era of the NTR.
Have you noticed exactly where Domenico delivers his fiery speech to indifferent contemporaries? He stands on the statue of Marcus Aurelius. On the back of Marcus Aurelius' horse. Domenico says that people should wake up and bring their lives into harmony with nature. About the same wrote in his letters ' To himself ' Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher, who believed that happiness consists in reaching agreement with the universal mind. And for this, you need to bring your mind in harmony with nature. The further fate of Domenico is quite consistent with the stoic concept. It also contains the secret of the passage of Yankovsky with a candle. This explains the parallel display of the lighter in Domenico’s hand and in Jankowski’s. To bring the light of life through the storm of everyday adversity, that is what his hero wants. However, other interpretations are possible.
Domenico's speech is a voice crying in the desert (again banality). Listeners look like extras in a bad theater: alienated, indifferent, busy with their petty deeds. No one heard or responded.
I'll put my 5 cents in the review. The impression of the picture is the same as from a trip on a trolley bus. You sit, you look out the window, you go out, they ask you, "Well, did you like the trip?" You can’t say “no” because there was nothing wrong, and “yes” because there was nothing special either. I imagine a conversation between two directors Tarkovsky (T) and Guerrero (G), who are thinking about how to impress the viewer and prove that the emigration of T was good for him. In the beginning, the elements of Italian construction, unusual for the Soviet eye, especially in remote times, were shown, they think to insert such a thing. It is necessary to focus on the Soviet viewer by anyone who will still watch T in Europe, except as a heel, other friends and acquaintances. Q: Do you have thermal pools? T: "We don't have thermal pools." And now, on his last breath, the hero wanders around the pool, staggering, barely dragging his feet in his shoes on the water, in the last impulse to save the world in this way - wears a candle back and forth. Oh joy, the light did not go out, and even managed to attach a garment on the wall “to shine always, to shine everywhere” before falling. I was not the only one surprised by the naivety of the hero's faith in such an easy salvation, other people wandered in the pool - coins were collected. Worse, they showed the whole screen the surprised face of a strange woman.
For those who do not understand the symbolism of shoes, the same scene of walking in shoes in the water is shown half an hour earlier. It is too late to change shoes, besides, when the shoes served properly for 10 years, the calluses were not rubbed and sat perfectly on the leg. But since you have decided to change, you need to spoil your shoes to convince yourself that you still need to change your shoes, otherwise there will be nothing to wear at all. From what I liked: I finally found out where the catchphrase about the bore came from. And the last scene is a piece of a village among the Italian ruins - "a girl may leave the village, but the village will never leave the girl."
“No one knows what madness is. They get in the way, they're uncomfortable. We don't want to understand them. They're terribly lonely. But I'm sure the fools are closer to the truth.
1. General view and history of creation.
The first feature film of the director, shot outside the USSR. After the documentary, a long work on the script begins with Tonino Guerra. The script was subsequently adjusted many times over time, including during filming. The very idea of a new film arose in 1979, but Tarkovsky was not satisfied with the lack of a constructive idea, it is impossible to shoot just a Russian writer nostalgic for his homeland (another option is an architect), so it was necessary to come to something more. For some time there were financial disagreements with the producers, and so in 1980, with the calculated budget of the new film, the amount was 1.9 billion liras, but no one was going to provide such an amount, and moreover, the budget was proposed to be cut more than twice, but fortunately everything was resolved by compromise. Unlike the USSR, in the West there are other problems with cinema, namely the risk of failure in the box office and not to cover the costs. Compared to the Soviet Rublev, which was allocated 1 million rubles (an incredible amount for those years), the Soviet leadership was more concerned with censorship and admission ideologically than success at the box office – in Italy, exactly the opposite, or so.
2. Character image and understanding of nostalgia.
As with the previous two films, Nostalgia has autobiographical moments from the life of the director - the character of a creative person in a foreign country, traveling with a translator, and trying to work, largely made with the feelings of the author. That's just the feeling, after which the film is named, should not be perceived one-sidedly or otherwise. Nostalgia, according to Tarkovsky, is not only the longing that arises when remembering the past, but also the longing for time that was was wasted, a moment of spiritual weakness that leaves only regret. To experience nostalgia, you can sit in your home with loved ones and in your country, as this is a familiar space, but the time is not returned. The key phrase of Gorchakov’s character “unspoken feelings are never forgotten” reveals the whole point. Such weakness occurs in the life of a director, when he faces a choice between leaving his country, his home, parting with a part of the family on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is worth continuing to work, engage in creativity, devote himself completely to his work.
3. The Path of the Creator and the Cultural Divide.
After the main character meets Domenico, the two feel connected to each other by knowing they are moving in the same direction. From the episode of the dialogue between Gorchakov and the translator in the hotel, we can derive the author’s position that true art is not translated, each art works in many ways within its territory. In my opinion, this judgment applies mainly to literature, because indeed, even if you close your eyes to untranslatable poems, it is easy to understand that the same prose will be impossible to translate into another language. Yes, the plot will be translated, maybe all the plans will be understood, but it is impossible to translate the very atmosphere, the so-called “soul” of the work, because it is associated with a certain culture in which it was nurtured and embodied. After meeting the "mad man," he begins what he came for - to devote himself to his work. Instead of endlessly searching for something native in a foreign country, Gorchakov finally understands that his decision to leave his family for work must be justified by effort, and therefore a valuable act must be done - the contribution of his efforts to change the world, whatever it costs him, that is, to sacrifice himself for others. Actually, the passage with a candle in the empty pool is a symbol of the difficult path of a responsible and creative person, carrying his cross through strength and pain, to exhaustion. The main purpose of this procession is to contribute not only to art, but also to human minds, the hope that the efforts were not in vain, the attempt to change the world for the better, which will live even after the death of the author. With this act, the director, with the help of the hero Gorchakov, justifies himself, his spiritual weakness. Sacrifice your well-being for the sake of working in movies.
4. Healthy indifference.
The decision between saving the family and saving everyone was also reflected in the character of Domenico, whose name, by the way, is translated from Latin as “God.” The role of the character is very important, because through his mouth the main idea of the picture is voiced. First during the rain at home, and then in the monologue episode on the statue. He utters the idea of social fragmentation as the cause of disasters in the world, and offers his solution in the form of a return to the place where people went the wrong way, chose another putta of being. We must stretch our soul in all directions, as if it were a canvas stretched to infinity. If you want life not to end, we must join hands. We must mix with each other: the so-called healthy and the so-called sick. Hey, you guys! What does your health mean? The eyes of all mankind are fixed on the whirlpool into which we are all about to be dragged. Who needs freedom if you don’t have the courage to look into our eyes, eat, drink and sleep with us? Only the so-called healthy people brought the world to the brink of catastrophe. The healthy people in Nostalgia are depicted as resting in a warm pool carefree friends, the interpreter Eugenia, or most of the people in the square watching Domenico. There is nothing unnatural about them, they, like everyone else, are concerned about their fate, and from the rest are protected by an intangible barrier of indifference and indifference. While someone is sacrificing himself for humanity, healthy, normal people watch this process as if it were something strange and unnatural that they, normal people, are not capable of and do not see the point in it. In the era of individualism, people do not want to perform feats, deeds for the sake of someone, for the sake of something common, for the sake of the whole world, for example, as artists and creators do. Tarkovsky, through Domenico’s speech, invites people to return to the place where they took the wrong path leading to the whirlpool. Change the life paradigm, change the attitude to the “other”, “alien”, destroy state borders so that people can consider everyone “theirs”, and most importantly morally rise, “stretch their soul” and get rid of the walls of indifference.
5. Summing up.
“Nostalgia” is a wonderful film about the crushing feeling and world indifference, as well as a quite sincere and personal story of the director about a life act committed in the name of cinema.
Nostalgia is the first film Tarkovsky, which he shot abroad, and how ironically reveals the theme of nostalgia and homesickness. Honestly, the film is heavy: it is leisurely, gray and undynamic. Previously, I thought it was Tarkovsky’s weakest film, but as a fan of his work, I decided to watch it in the original with subtitles. I liked the movie a lot more when I watched it again.
As always, you notice things you don’t notice the first time you see them. The film begins and ends with a barely audible folk song “Kumushki”, which immediately plunges into mild sadness, and the same nostalgia for the Russian spirit, villages and fields. There are a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas in the film, such as that poetry cannot be translated and that we live in a crazy world where a madman really knows how to live.
How they like to jokingly say that Tarkovsky again took his beloved, and this is true. Andrey Gorchakov, indeed, is a reflection of the director who came to Italy just for work, but he will never be able to return to Russia. And the moment when the hero refused to see the fresco, which he had long dreamed of seeing, but eventually abandoned it, also takes place in the biography of Tarkovsky. We can note the excellent acting Oleg Yankovsky. His ever thoughtful and sad look conveys the psychological state of the hero, and the moment where Gorchakov tells an anecdote about the saved, deservedly became a cult and quoted. And the painfully long, but fascinating image of the walking protagonist with a candle will be remembered for life.
In addition to the idea of nostalgia and significance for a person of his native country, it reveals the theme of friendship and at the same time the disunity of humanity and the uselessness of state borders. Domenico, played by Erland Josefson, is a figurative (if not direct) reflection of the main character, who is another fool responsible for the fate of the whole world. Despite the fact that the hero is crazy, you listen to his words and even agree on many things.
As a result, we can say that “Nostalgia” is still, for me, not the best picture of Tarkovsky, but this is a powerful philosophical film, which will not turn into an empty word. As in all films by Andrei Arsenyevich, everyone will interpret the meaning here in their own way. But you need to be ready for this film, because it is a bright representative of the “late period” of Tarkovsky’s work. The views of Italy here are not so inspiring, but the local entourage attracts, it emphasizes that there are no more beautiful views of his native country for a person. The film reveals complex and ambiguous themes: what is faith and what is madness; what a person needs and what does not; to love only his country, or to love the whole world. The film, although a bit boring in the main, but in its own mesmerizing. And the final frame of the film is the apotheosis of surrealism, linking the past and the present, making it harmony and perhaps Nirvana for the protagonist.
Hard work in terms of perception. The picture, which allows you to feel through the portrait of Oleg Yankovsky, the director himself, look back and understand what went wrong with Tarkovsky after moving to Italy. Nostalgia is a Soviet-Italian work that shows the difference in the worldview of the two peoples, traditions, attitudes to religion and art. The story of a writer who explores Italy in search of a Soviet musician. Perhaps this is a purely personal view of the director's life.
The film is rich in conversation and magnificent philosophical sayings. Actions in the film occur slowly, as if time slows down when watching the director's work. Tarkovsky's handwriting can be traced in every tape. Filming nature, playing with color and black and white film and close-ups seem to be ordinary things, but with zoom concealing art. Yankovsky, together with the translator, conducts his investigation. But the detective here does not smell, only comparisons, nostalgia and longing, which in the final takes a beautiful creature.
The light and sometimes monotonous narrative reflects the life of Italians, casts a glance at their impression of the Russian writer and gives a magnificent exposition, which can no longer be confused with anything in terms of frame composition, natural conventions and long episodes. A magnificent discussion about Russian culture is accompanied by the opinion of an Italian woman who reads the poems of Arseny Tarkovsky! Oh, what a twist!
The slow script brings the hero to a strange man who may well shed light on the search. But the secondary hero opens his own story, which carries you away with his head. The religious basis brings out such an intriguing turn that the viewer postpones the main purpose of visiting Italy (in conjunction with the characters of the picture) and becomes a victim of curiosity. Religious and prophetic statements have a certain effect on the hero of Yankovsky, which gives us a great awkwardness and gives us a choice. Nostalgia comes with a new force, now we should talk about Russia not in the future, but in the past. This is the turning point when the awareness of the homeland reaches its highest point.
The film is rich in philosophical concepts and understanding of life, a change of values, which is not only in a new communication, but also in a new country. Oleg Yankovsky’s magnificent monologue cuts to the depths of his soul and shows that “saving the drowning hands of the drowning ones themselves.” The finale of the picture seems to collect all the slowness of the narrative and gives out beautiful, unexpected turns with the prophet-Italian and watch the willpower of Oleg. The passage with a candle is magnificently filmed, live, without cutting down on unsuccessful takes (or was it conceived by Tarkovsky?) is a beautiful canvas that collected all the subtleties of the author and metaphorical concepts mixed with the reality of fate.
To make a piece of Russia in Italy – the effect of surprise provided. A similar reception was at Solaris. The revelation we deserve is magnificent.
If I did not get sick, I would think that the temperature rises because of watching a movie.
I will try to be brief, although it will not be difficult, because there is not much to write about.
The main character comes to Italy to study the biography of a certain Sosnovsky. However, the film does not show anything like studying, the main character of the whole film just loitering back and forth. The whole film is stuffed with “magnificent” scenes of the protagonist’s travels, one by one there are almost meaningless scenes. The dreams of the hero are worthy of a separate assessment, standing there and silent people who do nothing (with some exceptions), prove to us the uninterestingness of the plot of the film. The scenes in Gorchakov’s room, in the sewers, the show of the channel and much more are just brutal killers of the viewer’s time. It is not clear what the nostalgia of the hero is, except for one fragment in the film, where he talks about the impossibility of seeing the village anymore, but the prerequisites for this impossibility are unclear. The motive of the main character’s acquaintance with the new young man Eugenia is unclear, it seems that she is shown only for the sake of showing something (like many scenes in the film). Domenico’s monologue is an equally empty part of the film, except for one thesis about the need for unity of people, but again the premises of this thesis are incomprehensible. Moreover, being a victim of society, an outcast, the motives of his statements about people are incomprehensible, because in theory he should not like them, but the author has not shown us the reasons why this does not happen. A fragment of the hero’s bathing in the sewer, and later with a candle – “genius”, there is simply no comment.
Despite the wretchedness of the film, there are still interesting thoughts that carry meaning. The scene in the monastery at the beginning of the film, where the priest talks about the influence of the truth of faith, the image of the translator Gorchakov, which is a kind of prediction of the future, showing the image of a cocky, rude woman, is also worthy of attention discourse about crazy people and their role in society, some other thoughts.
Bottom line: the whole movie the hero either walks pointlessly, changing one boring location to another, or listens to the tantrums of his translator. Occasionally, the film expresses interesting and true thoughts that prompt the viewer to think, but these statements, unfortunately, are drowned in a hotbed of boring and meaningless scenes that are only suitable for stimulating the release of melatonin in the brain or for the vocation of Morpheus.
It is funny that the director, I will not be afraid of this word, famous throughout the movie party for its slowness and slowness, the slowest and most “inactive” film was the least known. “Nostalgia” is one of Tarkovsky’s last paintings and evokes a rhyming atmosphere of the end, decline and collapse of “real” life. Where do you usually find a cure for such terrible diseases? Apparently in the past. So the main character in Italy misses Mother Russia, digs into the lives of its representatives as lost as he is, explores the remains of the former civilization and tries to build a new one.
Probably, for me this film will be one of the best films of Tarkovsky, as it lives incredible sincerity and is accompanied by extraordinary sadness. The atmosphere of otherworldliness and unreality of the surrounding world is so strongly reminiscent of routine sadness about the house, the usual course of things and the destructive force of change. Terrifying with its coolness, the camera smoothly flows around the flooded ruins, dilapidated houses and forgotten feelings of time - I want to cry, but I would find tears. But just as fire confronts water, so willpower can find light and land in a storm raging at night. . .
Wisely understand Russia, but it is better not to do it.
The idea is clear, implemented perfectly, I am tired of the topic. In general, Tarkovsky is usually easier for me than for those around me, I understand him better, because I feel a kind of boring community with him. In any case, I almost always know what he wanted to say. In this case, it is more difficult.
Normally, I perceive all these sounds hanging in the air, visions of the past, future, present, what did not come true and what will never be. The terrible silence, when five minutes are filmed only the rain outside the open window, all this is understandable, although I sincerely sympathize with people who are not moderately active, for whom Tarkovsky turns into torture.
Patriotism, as it is there, you want to call it in relation to “Nostalgia” the Russian spirit, longing for the homeland, melancholy. I don’t know anything, I didn’t have any nostalgia for a year, even if I was on the other side of the Mediterranean, I used to do something like this.
Watching a film requires a titanic effort and although the aftertaste remains beautiful and bitter, the mind prevents it from being perceived. Again, this notorious code of the nation flirting with people. He is subconscious, so wait for you to be deceived.
All this is presented in Nostalgia in the style of “I was so waiting for you, Vova” with the help of a licentious girl of capitalism, it is successfully sold in all foreign films by Tarkovsky. Dirty abroad, mired in civilization.
And we see a foggy morning, a gray morning. A Russian woman with loose hair and bulging eyes, aunts in scarves, a selmag did not show. There is nothing human in Italy either. Garbage streets, water, and marble columns. This is what you see for yourself.
We have a cow in the field. For some reason, although Tuzik would look more organic here, the dog probably escaped before filming. We've got braids all around us. And silence.
Andrey, oh our Andrew in Italian, Andriusha six-barreled. It’s so spiritual to walk up to your waist in the water, look and freeze something. Lieutenant, you want to be a swan? We use foreign studios for the sole purpose of showing a naked woman in 1983 and showing that we do not need her. Censorship and family. Our family is censorship.
I fell ill as a child, vodka in Moscow and a volume of the poet, not Virgil and not Dante. And so I know that something from the Silver Age. There is no need to translate from Italian, Spanish is enough.
Lines, oh my lines, I address you like a normal Russian. I write to you, my lines, in pure Italian. Pope, Armani and Valentino.
All of the above properly reflects the spirit of “Nostalgia”, a conversation with oneself, which often happens in the film, with an unfamiliar girl who still does not understand anything.
A great movie, perhaps, but the greatness is very small. The topic of “Stalker” cannot be reached either by heart or by teeth. I bet 4 that an unprecedented case in relations with Tarkovsky's films.
“Nostalgia” is the first of Tarkovsky’s foreign films, which has a slightly alien and at the same time closer relation to his work. Of all the activities of the diamond domestic directing, this tape is the simplest and most susceptible. It is about the soul of man and about the soul of man, only accessible and direct images. There will be no excruciating poetry, for which the godfather of the Russian author is extolled in every critical essay or in any film studies class. We feel it and see it.
The film has many advantages to consider it the best in Tarkovsky’s filmography. Plenty of citations. Amazing camera work with a wandering camera in horizontal projection. Infinite symmetry. A scene, especially the final one, which is unlikely to be forgotten. Oleg Yankovsky’s game is certainly the best in his career. The Italian language, as the most important change of feelings, is the work of Tarkovsky in other components much more expressive and emotional than in the crystal lattice of Soviet dialects.
The main part of the film is in its title. The plot has only contours - a writer traveling around Italy for a biography of a Russian musician, a woman who met him on the way, a local madman who was once treated in a hospital with his own philosophy of the world and his borders woven independently. And the starter is the personification of the hero with his literary purpose, with the patient who met, turning into nostalgia for the past.
A visual film and a film for mediative reflection. Scrolling footage, for the viewer already personifying himself with the hero of Tarkovsky. Without attachments of hidden meanings, as the viewer understands nostalgia for himself. The author himself is certainly nostalgic for the past, not for the actual place, but for the past tense. By the time the reference point was incorrectly given. In time, in which the whole element of the foundation was once missed, it is now missing and does not allow to see life fully and directly. Nostalgia is within this sensitivity, and the viewer is offered the option to see how the human soul runs from place to place experiencing suffering about the unfaithful.
Perhaps the passage with a candle is what must be done so that later the soul was calm.
28.1.2019
Well, yeah!
It is read in an unexpected slap on a hemispherical element from the arsenal of female seduction. And no embarrassment. Really? (Shocked grandpa and grandson don’t count in the mise-en-scene projection.) At the same time, there is no idea that the “Great Master” watched this, like, improvised by the actor, frank cinematic non-comilfo, distracted, for example, by the smell of authentic lasagna suddenly invaded the filming patch of the hotel hall, mixed with the smell of sulfur and a bicycle rotting at the bottom of the pool. This is on purpose! Intentionally. Organically... I.
(with all due respect to the genius of the untimely departed Anatoly Solonitsin, the permanent favorite of Andrei Tarkovsky)
... it was the genius of Oleg Yankovsky who was able to so accurately convey the depth of mental turmoil of a man fading away in the arms of black melancholy; a man who flashes suddenly, sparks of caustic sarcasm and delightful self-irony. What, unfortunately, could not be recognized by Eugenia, concerned with the search for personal happiness, whose real reason for refusing to bend her pride in her knees under the holy vaults was not high heels, but lack of faith. And the sacramental “You want to be happy, but there are more important things...” recoiled from the red beast with a tight pea and flew into the Gothic opening, leaving only a seal of capricious disagreement on the beautiful face. Misunderstanding. Including how it can be to healthy (may not be quite healthy, but the signs of masculinity are still present)... "Russian writer"... and nothing!! How come? The famous “Austrian” promised the whole of humanity, which means it also works!
But empty! To explain to the offended girl the dual nature of the original motive force and the fact that another mechanism has already been launched in the subject of her seduction.
Alas! Thanatos, not a boy at all, but an old man with an extinct torch and shrunken wings... one way or another breaks a fatal breach in the personal fortifications erected by the rebellious Eros. The time comes, and the ancient grandfather, simply, once or twice breaks the immune defenses built on the “vaccination program” of Dr. Sigmund-our-Freud against suicidal thoughts, leaving behind only a battlefield dotted with the corpses of smoking sperm (sorry) tozoids and crumpled “valentines”. And as it is written in one “non-telephone handbook” of life: “Mortal” instincts tend to rest and attract the individual.
Is there a sense and strength to resist this? . .
And around only mold and decay, like a non-random visualization of the internal extinction of Andrei, who, one hand grasping the left hypochondrium, the other tries to extract another nicotine charge from the dark abyss of his pocket, to then drive him into this hypochondrium. He smokes a cigarette and throws it away. As if the reason for this is just the thought: “I haven’t done anything else!” Something very important! You can’t bring down the curtain so quickly. I haven't drunk to the bottom of my oppressive nostalgia! . . "
Nostalgia for the invariably elusive meaning of being in a hostile and alien society
Nostalgia for the one that “among the worlds in the twinkling of the stars”, granting the only immortal permanence in a world full of doubts and questions.
Nostalgia for ... ... life.
The candle reached the edge of the stone ledge. The candle didn't go out. But life ended... The curtain fell ...
Nostalgia preceded the film Sacrifice. According to the plot and the messages broadcast in these films, you can trace the feelings Tarkovsky felt away from home, family, homeland. And these are not foreign incomprehensible emotions at all - they are familiar to every person who has at least once left their native places. It is known that Andrei Arsenyevich in his work raised issues of faith, realization, relationships, search for oneself. Each of his films – as a reasoning or research, in each complex circumstances superimposed on a problem. The author tries to solve it at least within the plot. Therefore, the viewer always finds in Tarkovsky’s films a familiar image, a familiar situation or reason for reflection.
The first question is why do women pray more often? Slipperily, in dialogue... in the end it turns out that a man almost needs faith. The main character goes to a suburban church. There she can not comprehend the essence of the sacrament, she can not even kneel. In the middle of the film, when the attempt is repeated, the girl simply falls. In the church, the priest’s answer to her question about the difference between men and women regarding faith is very simple. Everyone has their own role, and the woman has it so much that you have to endure and keep quiet. Therefore, women turn to God more often. You can agree or on the contrary, you can simply ignore this idea, but you can not deny its relevance. And now 10 minutes have passed, and you are already sitting and thinking: How do I feel about this?
At first, he agrees: men do not need God. The very fact of belief is not required. Then, in the course of the film, you find a refutation. Not to say that the story is really evolving. The church for the heroine looked like a small cozy dark and quiet place with a low ceiling. When the main character appeared in the scenery of the destroyed temple, it had no roof, almost no walls, and trees grew literally from the floor. There were no people in this temple. But are they needed? You don’t even realize that the screen is a place of faith. It seems as if this is just an illusion, or the ruins of an old mansion, or even just the appearance of something lost.
The next branch is nostalgia. Tarkovsky made the film in Italy, where he had to stay. But the theme of longing for loved ones was not caused by repatriation. In 1982, a contract was signed with the Italians, then there was the fiftieth anniversary, shooting ... In 1983, Nostalgia received three awards at once. After the end of the trip, Andrei Arsenyevich and his family wanted to stay in Italy for another three years. This request was refused by the Chairman of the State Film Committee of the USSR, considering it completely unacceptable. Tarkovsky could not return, because of the twenty-odd years of work in Goskino, he was actually unemployed. On this basis, the creator also had a strong misunderstanding with his father. In one of the letters to him, Andrei Arsenyevich calls “Nostalgia” highly patriotic, and many of his father’s thoughts were expressed in the tape.
We'll get back to her. The main character's name is like the director, Andrew. And there is a point where he addresses a friend a letter (or part of his book) describing his condition in it. This letter is signed in the name of a peasant – a composer who escaped from serfdom, bored, but avoids returning. It is clear that for the sake of freedom, Tarkovsky himself did not want to return. And in this case, the image of the writer living in Italy, as well as the image of the serf he is talking about, is a projection. Andrei is bored, it is difficult for him, he wants to return, he is stagnant - but he cannot. He is sick, melancholic, he is not interested in anything, and remoteness from his native land brings pain. This hopelessness is familiar to other heroes, in a different form.
These are fundamentally important victims of men who could not protect and keep the family, who could not (for the sake of life) remain close to their relatives, did not reach the “burden” of responsibility. In the film, this idea is embodied in two images. The first is Andrei, a writer who has a family at home. The second is a new friend of Andrei, who lost his family. It turns out that one man was forced to leave his family, and the other tried so hard to protect loved ones that he lost them once and for all. They are both longing and looking for an opportunity to atone for guilt.
We are not told directly how difficult it is to choose between freedom and family. This choice simply does not exist for the majority. And yet, in the process of viewing, the viewer has this feeling - hopelessness from the lack of choice, the inability to change anything, the accomplished fear of a missed moment.
Indeed, what can an adequate person choose: to remain in a foreign camp or to return and be shot or exiled? Andrew is working on a book, squeezes it out of himself, and this is not an inspiration. He is always in himself, and his surroundings can only guess what the problem is. His new friend is tormented differently - like a man eager to save his family and humanity - and obviously failed to cope with this task. He is considered insane, he lives asceticly, and still believes, hopes that not all is lost. As a result, both come to God in thoughts, in impulses, in fear that they will not have time to correct anything.
The theme of faith and the atonement of sin through sacrifice arises several times. But it's hard to talk about it without spoilers. However, the idea that at least something can be changed, corrected through a big deed, is shared by each of the two “lost” men in the film Nostalgia. And both make a sacrifice, trying to justify themselves, either before God, or before family, or before themselves.
The question of misunderstanding between different nations arises as another additional burden for a person who finds no place in a foreign country. The question of untranslatable art (poetry, for example). The two have a dialogue; the lady is unhappy that the man “does not make contact”, and he does not want to – he cannot. No matter how hard he tries, his thoughts are far away, and he only thinks about one thing. The question is, what does it take to understand?
- Destroy boundaries.
Again a question of exiles and repatriates. He's got a longing for his homeland. The main character lived two years in Italy, but very often in the film spoke in Russian. So Tarkovsky – in a few years of life in Italy, he learned only a few words.
There is no result, because the question “to stay or leave?” is not answered. For many, it remains important, given the open borders. And no one in his mind and health can make a choice until he is forced to.
That's the movie. Of course, no one will say anything from the screen.
Like any Andrey Tarkovsky film, the film has many ideas about love, faith, hope, but the main thing in this film is suffering. The suffering suffered by man is far from home.
Like any film, Nostalgia is a deeply personal film dedicated to Tarkovsky’s mother. It is full of symbolism, interesting solutions, as always excellent shooting.
While watching, I found myself waiting for the end of the film, but towards the end I became more and more imbued with the film itself, more and more aware of it.
Compared to the Mirror and even the Sacrifice, the film is much easier to perceive, the plot itself is quite clear, visual messages are much more interesting, as a brilliant final scene that can be understood in different ways. I understood it so that initially, he was walking through a temple that represented his inner world, his soul, his temple, which was empty. But after he realized what was dear to him, confirming this with a passage from the candles, he returned, and the soul ceased to be empty, filled with beloved from childhood edges.
9.5 out of 10
With this film I finish my improvised marathon on the work of Andrei Arsenyevich, thus summing up. Each of the films has a lot in common (ideas, themes of love and faith), but each of them is unique in its own way. And after watching all of Tarkovsky’s films, I can say that I loved many of his films, his work, partly himself, because his work, the fruits of his soul, its torments. Every film has a piece of Tarkovsky, and his films are masterpieces, literally and formally.
And most importantly, what I understood about the paintings of the great director, it must first be felt, but only in the next to understand.
It is unlikely that I will review these paintings, especially in the near future, but I will definitely experience nostalgia for them.
Write from place to place – the film is talentless. I watched this movie for two whole weeks because it’s impossible to last more than 10-15 minutes. Also, here the truth is straight - many smear and praise the film, although they themselves did not understand a damn thing about it.
Of course, a film of this level should carry an idea, it should not be simple. But the author is so bent that it is not at all clear what this tape is about. Not a word is said about Gorchakov, about Sosnovsky too, and the Glavger does nothing but wander the streets and try to philosophize. Why is he trying? Because I couldn’t make a single thought or conclusion all the time. Moreover, the description of the film does not correspond to what is happening on the screen. All you see is people idle and trying to imitate brain activity. The most appropriate character in the film is the Italian Yugenia. The only "living" character. By the way, and the only adequate character, for the simple reason that not smart, and behaves like a living person. All the others are dead and slain, trying to pass off their own worthlessness as a “Russian soul.” The eye in the film is simply nothing to catch on: there is no music, the ringleader is a dummy, there is no storyline.
It’s about philosophy, but there’s no philosophy either. There are torn scraps of phrases, the lean face of the Glavhero, who mows under the “Russian antelehent”. True, one thought is still conveyed – this “intellectual” does nothing, does not want to do anything, preferring to hover in the empirees and cherish his invented “anguish”. This is the tragedy of the Russian intelligentsia, about which Chekhov wrote – people who do not want to work and engage in any meaningful activity. Because it is more difficult than staggering around abroad, smoking, pretending to be a “misunderstood genius” and thinking high. Such intellectuals do not produce any product, do not give rise to thoughts, in terms of art they are also sterile. In general, I am ashamed of Tarkovsky, who took the applause of the West at face value. That's a dollar.
Ask him why he was given a palm tree. It's just for opposition. Simply because in the Union, Tarkovsky would definitely not be given any prizes. If there were no censorship, the film would most likely go unnoticed. About the same thing happened to Solzhenitsyn – while he was scolded in the Soviet Union – he was printed in the West and there was a hype as soon as the Iron Curtain fell – he sharply became useless and sales of his books abroad fell sharply. The only thing about the movie is that it’s over. And it ended with a Beethoven symphony that I adore.
Monsieur Tarkovsky, with all due respect, made an absolutely incompetent film, which is of no interest to anyone except aesthetic eunuchs in the West and many fans of saying that, they say, “we can watch such films too.” This is one of the weakest and most empty films in my memory. A false simulacrum of cinema, which should be quickly forgotten as a shameful page in our history.
Andrei Tarkovsky shot his sixth film unexpectedly for the Soviet audience in Italy, and as if that was not enough – in Italian. His career (to say "career" would be materialistic blasphemy) has only 7 feature films. Among them, 2 were filmed in foreign languages. It is mentioned not for nothing, but because of a direct connection with the content of Nostalgia: there is a certain conceptuality in this, because the film speaks primarily about the disunity of people; and Tarkovsky, being Russian, shot 2 of his 7 films in languages foreign to him.
Tarkovsky’s favorite actor, Anatoly Solonitsyn, who often starred in him: in the title role in Andrey Rublev (1966), as Dr. Sartorius in Solaris (1972), in a specially written for him episodic role in Mirror (1974), as a Writer in Stalker (1979) based on the novel by the Strugatsky brothers, died in 1982 - the year of filming Nostalgia (1983) - from lung cancer. We will never know who the director originally intended for the main role in Nostalgia, but Oleg Yankovsky, who once collaborated with Tarkovsky (the role of the father of the main character in The Mirror), performed it.
In a gloomy, depressive, shrouded in thick fog and human alienation (clearly slips the motif of the work of the great Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the most adored Tarkovsky directors, which is not surprising - in addition to Tarkovsky himself, Tonino Guerro is the screenwriter of many films of it) Italy comes Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky), engaged in writing the biography of the serf musician Pavel Sosnovsky, who escaped from Russia to Italy to get rid of shackles; the writer tries to understand the reasons for his return very quickly 2 centuries.
The ways and thoughts of people throughout the ages do not undergo changes, merge together; some seem to pick up the fate of others, their existential problems that haunted them until death. The borders on the map and in people’s heads broke people’s lives both in the 18th century, when the serf musician Pavel Sosnovsky left Russia, and then, realizing all that awaits him on his return, he could not help but return, and in the 20th: when the Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov walks on the barely noticeable trail of the same Pavel Sosnovsky, who turned out to be much closer to him than he could think. This topic is also revealed in the dialogue that takes place almost at the beginning of the film, between Gorchakov and the translator, Eugenia (Domitiana Giordano), whom he hired because of his poor knowledge of Italian. The volume of poems translated from Russian into Italian by Arseny Tarkovsky (Father of Andrei Tarkovsky) is the cause of momentary aggression; and the conclusion is disappointing: art, at least poetry, cannot be translated, so people who speak different languages do not fully understand each other’s mental characteristics. Nothing can be done about it.
Eugenia herself is a type of woman entangled in life: she resists the hypocrisy of people who behave seemingly intelligently, and in the soul think the most unfavorable scabies (remembering her story about an intellectual who only pretended to be them, trying at the first opportunity to lock her in an apartment with quite certain - this is not mentioned in the film, only a slight hint is made, but, I think, this is quite obvious - goals). And the hero of Yankovsky, whose heavy melancholy is caused by nostalgia, takes for the same lousy intelligentsia.
Dreams flashbacks, as always in Tarkovsky, full of tragedy and hope at the same time. They are equally beautiful in all his films: in the debut feature film Ivan’s Childhood, in his most exhibitionistic film The Mirror, in Nostalgia. Here in them the meaning is the same as always: the young protagonist of the debut film, Ivan, could feel his childhood, which he was deprived of the war, the presence of his mother, also taken away from him by the war, only in dreams. The subconscious desires of the hero Yankovsky are similar (with the difference that he wants to be in another place and not in another time): his body is in one place – in Italy, and his soul in another – in Russia, where his native home, a loving family and a devoted German shepherd await him.
Recalling the words of Andrey Arsenyevich, uttered by him in one of the interviews, the summary of which can be reduced to the following: “If I notice that the artistic solution of a scene has a suspicious similarity with the artistic solution of a scene from a film by Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, Rossellini, Kurosawa, Odzu, I try to change it so as not to repeat myself” – it is impossible not to pay attention to the similarity of the last two films of the director with the work of Ingmar Bergman: starting with the participation in “Nostalgia” by actor Erlandson, who finishes the work in the film (especially with the cameraman). And his last film - "The Sacrifice" (1986) - Tarkovsky even shot in Sweden - in Bergman's homeland; all with the same Erland Jozefson, but already in the title role; and the operator was Sven Nyukvist - a permanent operator of the same Bergman. Too many coincidences, isn't it? By the way, Tarkovsky invited to star in Solaris (1972) as Hari, brilliantly performed as a result Natalia Bondarchuk, Bibi Andersson, who collaborated with Bergman, probably only less often than his muse Liv Ullman. All this, of course, in no way deprives Andrei Arsenyevich of his individuality; just watching how one great cinematographer subconsciously reached for another throughout his creative path is really fascinating.
10 out of 10
One of the last works of the outstanding, even perhaps legendary Andrey Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Each picture of this talented director, if not a masterpiece of the whole world cinema, then, at least, a very strong film immersed in the mouth of universal and social problems. And "Nostalgia" is no exception.
The main character of the film is writer Andrei Gorchakov, who came to Italy to write a biography of a serf musician who lived there in exile. Far from his native land, Andrei feels longing for his country, his relatives. In Italy, he feels alienated and alone. Even yesterday, the frescoes of Italian artists, which seemed beautiful, are no longer of interest to the writer. Philosophers and poets of the Italian Renaissance do not rank with such outstanding people as Pushkin or Tolstoy, and architecture only whips up despondency. At night, he dreams of his wife, and in his thoughts he imagines domestic landscapes.
Once in Italy, Andrei realizes that everything that he felt, being isolated from his homeland, a serf musician, he feels himself.
While his friend Yuzhenia can not understand his Russian friend, the writer does not leave the longing and despondency, he suffers from mental illness, as if “nostalgia” for his homeland. However, the longing for the native land, like the water in the film, everything decreases and decreases, and soon, after a certain time and convinced of simple human truths that people and their problems are the same everywhere, Andrey realizes that the house is where we will create it, which is very accurately and hints at the final frame of the picture.
I must say that “Nostalgia” by Andrei Tarkovsky, this is the case when the title of the picture sets only one topic for reflection out of the thousand raised in it by the director.
In each frame of his work, the genius of symbolism puts a certain meaning, whether it is a dog, symbolizing the hope of the hero to do something to achieve harmony in this world. Or a crowd of people in front of the podium, resembling mannequins rather than living people, and contemplating the death of not only one “mad man”, who, like Savonarola, broadcasts about the vices of modern society, but also the whole world.
The main plot of the film becomes for the director only an occasion to once again think about the meaning of human existence and other countless philosophical problems such as love, despair, faith. Tarkovsky, as in all his other films, deftly plays with various analogies and symbols, but his characters are real people. They have a past, they are immersed in real life, we can imagine their future. Surely each of us saw in one of these characters his acquaintances or even himself.
Speaking about the excellent directing of the work, it is worth noting the entire cast of the project, starting from the camera work of Giuseppe Lanchy and ending with the outstanding role of Oleg Yankovsky , who so well got used to the role of Andrei Gorchakov. In many ways, all this, of course, is the merit of the director himself, who competently explained what he wants from his people, but their contribution to this picture cannot be underestimated.
Nostalgia is not just a film with a deep meaning, it is a whole pantry of answers to life questions, from which each viewer will pull only what he considers necessary. This, perhaps, was the goal of the director of the picture, who made his film, for each person taken separately, unique.
Well, the film is terribly simple, filled with impossibly deep meaning. Combining the genius of Tarkovsky and Yankovsky.
As in all his films, Tarkovsky filled Nostalgia with simple, but so philosophical dialogues that watching it, it is impossible not to think about your place in the world.
Our Jean-Luc Godard.
Genius scenes. It's all thought out. Starting with a magnificent production: minimalism in detail, ending with a book on the table. Speaking about the staging of scenes, it should be noted that Tarkovsky is characteristic of such, using a minimum of space, he creates scenes that are deposited in memory forever.
Oleg Yankovsky, the actor Russia deserves. It's a facial expression, detached. His characteristic look is not directly in the eyes of his partner, but slightly higher, as if he sees a halo invisible to the rest of her head. A look that cannot but fascinate. Definitely, this actor was created for roles of this kind. A little in himself, a little lonely, a little detached from the rest of the world.
It will be well deserved here to celebrate the operator’s work. I'd say perfect. In the best traditions of France. Minimalism. The angles are so perfectly selected that no words are needed in each scene to understand what the director wanted to convey.
The film deserves worldwide recognition.
A film that sets standards for all cinema, not only Soviet and Russian.
Tarkovsky is an undeniably amazing director who set the standards not only for Soviet cinema, but for the entire world film production. His status as an indisputable master, he carried through his life, preserving it on his deathbed, which he attained at an extremely young age for the creator: 54 years. With the film Nostalgia, his penultimate creation, Andrey Arsenyevich only confirmed what I recently said about him, namely his international influence on the creation of films, because here the film appears before the audience, which was created jointly by the countries of Italy and the Soviet Union.
This 1983 film is a free reflection on the subject of inner reflection on one’s own loneliness away from home. This is a sentimental drama, which tells about the mental illness of a person, the healing of which is like water, whose theme so often raises in the timekeeping of the picture - the further, the less it is, since the spiritual source is increasingly exhausted and exhausted, like the rains that stop going, and the puddles dry, as if being cleaned dehydrated mineral deposits of moisture - flows out of a person who is unable to stop this flow, because it is banally unable to return home. Where he is dear and where he is welcome. Why? Because being in a foreign country, he was not physically transformed, but he was absolutely changed morally: the realization of the fact that everywhere people are the same in essence, that there is no place for “mad social outcasts” who are equally disliked by society anywhere in the world, even far from their land, where they were previously beset by this “stigma”. The desire to stick together with the soul to him the only one understandable struggles with the desire to see his native land, to see his relatives who are in the environment where he, the main character Andrei in the brilliant performance of Oleg Yankovsky, is not able to live. A picture that talks about such a banal existentialism of such existence, and at the same time shows it as a truly multi-level conflict with oneself, a heavy, slow decomposition of the soul in terms of a nonlinear, long-playing, complex process, not just a moron, but the Apocalypse of the human soul.
By means of interaction with the viewer through the extraordinary camera work of Giuseppe Lanci, Tarkovsky leads a personal dialogue with the viewer, discussing with each in his own way the themes of necessity and the eternal torment of love, the themes of madness or true normality, the themes of the abstractness of sciences and the sincerity of human feelings, moral norms and emotions. The world around us is what a person sees, why he is formed thanks to human consciousness, that is, the consciousness of a being, which is in its norm something anti-systemic, why explaining this light through matrices, calculations and laws is stupid when it comes to human, individual understanding of order, purity, freedom and so on. That is why, I repeat, the audience is personal: each person finds something for himself, something for himself, something that he will like, but at the same time something that he clearly does not like.
Using Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony N9 as the main musical motifs, Tarkovsky seems to be teetering on the brink of decline and apogee, thereby demonstrating either extreme lows or moments of uncompromising elevation, which are especially sensitive due to the brilliant, classical musical accompaniment. The feelings of the characters and the feelings of the audience at one moment merge into one continuous host, which is why it is impossible to take your eyes off the screen: the viewer rejoices, cries, experiences, reflects together with the heroes who, watching Armageddon of the external world somewhere on the sidelines of awareness, understand that this all-consuming flame unfolded its destructive action only in themselves, affecting the world just by the fact that they still exist in it.
Forging out of many moments some suitable meanings, or absorbing the whole film as a dogma, “reshaping” your own worldview, or simply remaining incomprehensible from the picture, why and indignant, watching this tape, a person will definitely not be able to say that he was completely without any impression.
A multifaceted, difficult to view because of the many metaphors and allusions of the movie, which has not only a significant layer of semantic issues and their discussion, but also magnificent views of man, nature, works of art created by people, which ultimately provides the viewer with a picture that can surprise and excite not only in terms of internal reflection, food for which Nostalgia gives, but also in terms of joy to visual content. A beautiful film that should be watched by a film lover, a lover of this art, a person who appreciates and understands the fact that through his paintings the author is trying not only to entertain, interest or change the viewer: first of all, the author presents his vision of a particular topic, trying to communicate something from himself to the person sitting behind the screen.
I go all the way, but I go all the way, I go,
I'm sitting on the stairs in the front, warming up.
I'm going crazy like a dud...
mother
He flies over the pavement, beckons with his hand.
And flew away.
Arseny Tarkovsky.
I love Andrei Tarkovsky very much. All his films are great, you can’t create a gradation. But I can tell you that some people are a little more loved than others. Nostalgia is one of those that is a little more. Because her longing is perceived closer and more personally.
For example, I am one of those who, leaving their homeland even for a short time, begins to feel a clear desire to return, because the homeland is not just a coat of arms, borders and power, it is first of all a native land, memories associated with it, people close to you. Warm tenderness to the familiar streets, the sound of Russian speech, trees and the sky, which is at home of a completely different color and depth than somewhere in someone else’s “there”. And let this feeling correspond to the story told by the nostalgic Andrei Gorchakov, the hero of the genius Oleg Yankovsky:
“One man rescues another from a huge deep puddle. Saving at the risk of his own life. And they both lie at the edge of this puddle, breathing heavily: tired. Finally, the rescued man asks: What are you? - Like what? I saved you! - Fool! I live there! ... I live there... I was offended.
Or similar to the feelings of the composer Sosnovsky, who has a real prototype, for a book about which Andrei Gorchakov came to collect materials; who emigrated abroad, but chose the return and share of a serf than freedom in a foreign country that strangles him. Although he returned, he again became a serf, drank and died at the age of 32.
From the first shots we are enveloped in Italy, full of fog, rain and sadness. Over the old baths, a haze creeps; the hotel room is huge, cold and uncomfortable; and the sights do not cause delight, because Gorchakov, languishing with strange anguish, “has fed up with all your beauties.”
The luxurious red-haired Eugenia (Domitian Giordano) accompanying him on the trip cannot understand him, and cannot – just as seeing kneeling women praying in the temple for the appearance of a child, she does not feel faith, and therefore cannot understand them either.
In general, the image of Eugene, undoubtedly a very beautiful woman, is contrasted with Gorchakov’s bright memories of his own wife. A temperamental Italian woman is drawn to a mysterious Russian writer, but he does not think to succumb to the temptation, as if not not noticing it.
" All those famous classic love stories. No kisses, nothing, nothing at all. Pure love. Unexpressed. That's why this love is great. Unexpressed feelings are never forgotten.
But “Nostalgia” is not just a film about homesickness. Tarkovsky, like all his creations, endowed it with many meanings and lines. Nostalgia is also a yearning for a person.
Andrey’s chance encounter with Domenico, whom everyone thinks is crazy because he hasn’t let his family out of the house for several years to protect them from the end of the world, becomes a turning point for both. A Russian writer immediately feels a spiritual kinship with an Italian madman, feels that he understands him, understands his unexpressed pain.
“No one knows what madness is. They get in the way, they're uncomfortable. We don't want to understand them. They're terribly lonely. But I'm sure the fools are closer to the truth.
Domenico is stingy with words and explanations, but his dwelling is dilapidated, rain drips from numerous holes, and 1 + 1 = 1 is large on the wall. Domenico also yearns, longs for a person, for himself lost, for the inability to hear each other, for alienation and coldness. There will never be a correct answer in his equation: the incredibly powerful scene of preaching and self-immolation in the square proves this. An indifferent crowd of listeners, frozen in the likeness of statues, and the deafening, wild cry of the dying for them and for them.
“What kind of world is this if a madman shouts to you that you should be ashamed of yourself?”
Gorchakov is another “suffering for others.” Not coincidentally, in one of his dreams, he passes through an empty street and sees in the mirror not his reflection, but the reflection of Domenico. He is infected with the idea of Domenico that it is necessary to pass with a burning candle through empty baths, that it will help, save people, and he goes, lonely, protecting a fragile fire, with increasing pain in the chest, starting again and again, until the candle finally brought to the opposite wall becomes the cause for the inevitable.
I am a candle, I burned at a feast.
Collect my wax in the morning,
And this page will tell you,
How to cry and what to be proud of,
How fun is the last third?
It's easy to give and die.
And under the shadow of a random shelter
To burn posthumously like a word.
And there, somewhere deep, in his memories, he sits on the grass next to a faithful dog, not far from a wooden rural house, in which his life and his family grow, and around pompous, vaulted stone arches grow, leaving the corner of nostalgia untouched, unforgotten and unchanged.
10 out of 10
Life is simple, you just need to go back to where you entered the wrong path.
Andrew left Moscow and his family. He travels to Italy and writes a book about the Russian composer Sosnovsky. The longing is so strong in Andrey that his coat always has house keys in his pocket and he imagines coming back and putting on a jacket that has been hanging in the closet for 3 years. Accompanying him, the Italian Yugenia does not understand the reason for his longing. And the closest person becomes mentally ill Dominic. Andrew does not think he is crazy, he believes that he has faith and that he is close to the truth.
The fates of Andrew and Dominic seem to overlap. Dominic locked up his family to avoid the end of the world. Andrei reproaches himself for leaving his children, for not seeing the sun for years - at the moment of this monologue, it is not even clear which of the heroes pronounces it.
This Tarkovsky film is also very intimate. It expresses his regret that he left Russia, regret about the break with his family, sadness about his childhood, understanding of the impossibility of returning (both to his childhood and homeland).
Tarkovsky sees a possible solution, which is oneness with other people (globally), the ability to see other people. The finale is heavy – Beethoven’s choral symphony never sounded (the unity of humanity did not happen), Andrei cannot return to the moment when he entered the wrong path.
9.5 out of 10
Awesome movie. Let me start with what many have said. 1+1=1. Yeah, that's right. Humanity is divided, people have become enemies to each other, and if not enemies, then not friends for sure. Everyone is the same person, with the same needs. But they're not. Everyone is left to himself, and there is no intimacy between people. If there is this intimacy, it is most likely faked, without sincere feelings.
Tarkovsky not only misses his homeland, he is nostalgic, he shows how far apart we are in pursuit of something ephemeral. The main character performed by the genius Oleg Yankovsky suffers. He suffers from the fact that he is forced to stay outside Russia, in this terrible hotel, with a terrible Eugenia, who does not understand him at all and whose thoughts are blinkered with vulgarity. He suffers from the fact that together with his homeland he lost himself. He does not want to call his wife, only remembers her in a dream. His fate is surprisingly intertwined with the history of the composer Sosnovsky, with the history of the mad Domenico and, of course, with the history of Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Domenico doesn’t seem crazy to Gorchakov like everyone else. He literally at first sight notices his brother in spirit. Domenico wants to save the world, wants to help people. That's what Gorchakov dreams of. 1+1 is not equal to 2, but more than one. People have to come together and start living differently. We need to erase the boundaries.
Domenico's final monologue is delightful. So does the ending. Dry pool, Gorchakov trying to walk with a candle. His heart is not clean enough, he is in the process of gaining the faith he has lost. Domenico and Gorchakov work together, united as a whole. They are people who suffer for other people. They are willing to suffer to the point of self-denial. They are ready for voluntary sacrifice. Only such people can change our world and their actions are a call to others. So that we think about our lives, about our actions, about what we do and what we are ready to do.
The film is very complex, philosophical, Christian. It touches on questions of faith, questions of morality, evil and good, feat. And all this against the background of insane longing for the Homeland. This movie changed me, certainly one of my favorite films, a great film masterpiece.
Separate words deserve operator work. Very long, long shots, a beautiful transmission of inner torments, experiences of the heroes. Already familiar for Tarkovsky scene with water, rain, spilled milk. This film should be watched, everyone will cause their thoughts, feelings and feelings. You can't say anything about "Nostalgia."
The penultimate film of the great Russian director
Each film by Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky is not only a beautiful film with a deep meaning and a second bottom, but also a very personal movie. Of course, his paintings can be viewed in isolation from the biography of the director himself and enjoy them, but knowing what happened to Andrei Arsenevich himself during the filming of a particular film, you are much more imbued with what the author shows. So, “Nostalgia” was filmed just at the time when Tarkovsky left the USSR and began to live in a foreign West. In the context of his personal experiences, “Nostalgia” is perceived somewhat differently, penetrating deeper and stronger into the soul of the viewer.
However, the most paradoxical thing is that the plot of his penultimate film was written before his emigration, but at the time when the question of Tarkovsky living abroad was already resolved. In fact, Andrei Arsenyevich anticipated his longing for his homeland, but he could not physically remain in the USSR.
The film tells the story of writer Andrei Gorchakov (played by the magnificent Oleg Yankovsky), who in search of traces of his ancestors goes abroad and finds himself in a situation where it is simply impossible to return home. He does not understand the people living in Italy, he does not accept their worldview, and he slowly begins to go mad with longing. He yearns for his homeland, for the people who surrounded him in childhood, for what is forever in the past.
In this story, each viewer will find something of their own. Discovering hidden messages and the secret meaning of what is happening is a separate, hardly comparable pleasure, and Tarkovsky is one of the few directors in general who gives us such an opportunity.
Separately, I want to celebrate the final scene of the film. It makes as strong an impression as it can impress cinema as an art. Even Andrei Arsenyevich himself, who has already established himself as a brilliant Mirror and Stalker, did not surprise us earlier as much as in the last moments of Nostalgia.
I personally consider Tarkovsky the best Russian director in history. Each of his films is a real masterpiece, a diamond from the world of cinema. His penultimate film, despite the fact that it was shot in completely different conditions, was no exception and again struck the audience to the core. Of course, not everyone is able to appreciate the work of Andrei Arsenyevich, but high art has never been mass, right?
9 out of 10
Birds evaporating their womb of the Virgin Madonna carry snow (which is water) on their feathers. Water: We are all from water, following Domenico, water is the basis of thought that reveals the truth, the basis of understanding life and memory.
The tension created by the presence next to him and her (I do not want to specify their figures by names, for the names in the oxygen of this film are sacred, they are pronounced too infrequently, they create in the mind of the viewer a palace of Language, shaking physiology and body and transforming the mythology of ethnic groups into linguistic filigran), makes it clear that the space between their beings is nostalgic. Between Andrew and Euzhia, only a candle is expedient, which He provides to Her once, thereby causing an outburst of female anger, Akhmatov’s fury-cry, resentment. The house, his image, covers Andrew with a fabric of love - he does not swipe it, suffocating, enjoying suffering.
Poetry is the embodiment of the language-divine, with the help of which Tarkovsky tries to protect heroes from the biological. The fire (of nature, of faith) cleanses.
For me, Tarkovsky’s paintings, as for many people, are always a mystery. To be honest, I still can’t figure out Solaris. Films are a wonderful director, a genius, whose paintings will forever remain diamonds of world cinema, it is always a kind of “web of thoughts”, a certain “endless tangled tangle”, the unravelling of which sometimes takes a lifetime.
“Nostalgia” is a tape that has become no less a mystery to me than “Solaris”. Honestly, the first time I watched, I didn’t really understand what I was talking about. However, later, when the film comes to about the middle of its time, the “web” for some time seems to unravel, but only to plunge the viewer again into an endless series of images, metaphors that, in fact, are very closely related – you just need to understand how.
Cinematography, as in all of Andrew’s films, is at its best. It seems that all these shots (sometimes very long, as the maestro loved) are real art photographs that would decorate the best exhibitions.
The picture perfectly conveys the atmosphere of longing, endless nostalgia for something. Whether at home or in childhood. What about love? One gets the feeling that the hero himself, who was wonderfully played by Yankovsky, is trying to understand what really disturbs his soul.
However, I don’t know why, but I can’t say that I liked this film more than the same “Stalker” (by the way, in places, or rather landscapes, this film reminded me of “Nostalgia”) or “Solaris”. Of course, the tape conveyed feelings, left mysteries for ten more, if not more. But anyway, the movie seemed a little boring to me. Maybe that was the director’s idea? Boredom very often breeds sadness.
“Nostalgia” is the penultimate feature film of the greatest master of Russian cinema Andrei Tarkovsky, filmed in 1983 and received the award for best directorship at the Cannes Festival of that year, the FIPRESSI award and the ecumenical jury. I must say, a real masterpiece, on the script of which Tarkovsky worked together with Tonino Guerra, an outstanding Italian writer, poet and screenwriter. Oleg Yankovsky got the main role, which later became one of the most significant in his life. Interestingly, before shooting the film to create a suitable image, the director took the actor to Italy and left alone for a few days in one of the hotels.
The film tells us much more than just the story of the Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov, who came to Italy with the red-haired translator Eugenia to study the biography of the 18th century Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky. It reveals much more to the viewer than the simple non-accident of the meeting of Andrei and the mad mathematics professor Domenico, in which he finds himself reflected, exactly as in the studied composer. This film in a nostalgic form, step by step, brings us a vision of mental fatigue, misunderstanding, madness, detachment from everyone, tells us about prayer and motherhood, about the interpenetration of cultures, about the fact that art is untranslatable, about faith and love, about unexpressed feelings. The film speaks about the desire for salvation, truth, freedom, unity, about choosing the right path of life and longing for home.
Nostalgia breathes images and hidden meanings. The complexity of all Tarkovsky’s films, that he saturates them with philosophy and his idea of life, subtly and elusively connects all the smallest details, creating a huge and beautiful web of thought, coloring it with appropriate colors and landscapes that always reflect and deeper reveal the state of the hero’s soul. The fascinating music of Beethoven, Verdi and Berezovsky complements the picture emotionally and evokes a proper response from the viewer as it opens up to the film. The Russian folk song at the beginning and end of the film creates a sense of looping. The sounds of music in Tarkovsky’s paintings are quite rare and from this increase the impressionability of those shots where there is a flow of visual images.
Beautiful camera work on the picture: constant twilight, mystical play of light and shadow, a lot of water, whether smoke or fog - all sustained in the spirit of nostalgia. If it were not for the color boundaries outlined by the master, and the slowness of actions, it would be impossible to distinguish sleep and memory from reality.
Each frame seems to freeze and take a photographic image, in other words, the film can be cut but a lot of ready-made pictures - another distinctive feature of the works of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Everything in the picture “speaks”, even silence has its own voice, telling the viewer about the serious psychological state of the main character. The role of the dialogue in the film does not exceed the role of the image, which also has its narrative function. We dive into the personal world of Gorchakov, watch and hear everything that happens as he feels.
Very meaningful and profound phrase Domenico says to Andrew in his house: “one drop, then another form one big drop, not two...” It is the whole meaning of his call for the unity of the people, the “so-called sick” and the “so-called healthy”; it is the meaning of Gorchakov’s words that it is necessary to destroy state borders in order for people to know each other. This amount permeates the entire film and is associated with the last lines of the sounding poem by Arseny Tarkovsky: “And under the shadow of a random shelter”.
It burns posthumously like a word.
Sosnovsky, with his fate so similar to that of Gorchakov, and Domenico with his truths are those “candles” that posthumously “light up” in Andrew, which make up this one big drop in him, a drop separated and yearning for its house. And “the shadow of a casual shelter” is the same Italy that became a prison for the Russian writer, but it was in it that he realized his right path and what his true face was, in which he peered throughout the film.
What is unclear, it would seem, is only the presence of Eugenia, who does not supplement the sum, but is opposed to it. The woman herself creates a contrast of images and states (live, talkative and emotional, while Andrew is withdrawn, restrained and silent), contrast of nations (Italy and Russia) and personifies the choice of an erroneous life path, which Domenico talks about in the square in Rome. Her whole trip does not lead to the expected results, she seeks happiness where it is not, and goes to Rome to a man who, in general, is also indifferent to her. Throughout the film, she is not given to understand the sadness and weight of those thoughts with which the writer torments.
It should be noted that during the creation of Nostalgia, Andrei Tarkovsky himself was in a state of “suffocatingly hopeless longing that fills the screen space of this film.” He dedicated it to the memory of his mother, whom he greatly missed in his last years. Stepping aside, you can also notice that all Tarkovsky’s films are permeated with his relationship with his family, his thoughts and feelings towards his relatives.
I wanted to tell you about the Russian form of nostalgia, the state of mind typical of our nation, which embraces us Russians when we are away from our homeland. In this I saw, if you will, my patriotic duty, as I myself feel and understand it. I wanted to talk about the fateful connection of Russians with their national roots, with their past and their culture, their land, friends and relatives, about the deep connection from which they cannot abandon all their lives – wherever their fate throws them.
“Nostalgia” can be considered a real property of domestic cinema, which will be taught for more than one generation. The picture can throw viewers to the incredible depth of their own experiences and help find answers to rather complex philosophical questions.
I became ill as a child
From hunger and fear.
Lip crust
I'll lick my lips, I'll remember.
Cool and salty taste.
And I go, and I go, and I go.
I sit on the stairs in the front, warm up,
I'm going crazy like a dud...
mother
He flies over the pavement, beckons with his hand -
And flew away. (Arseny Tarkovsky)
Andrei Arsenyevich and Tonino made a great movie, as befits great creators. The grandmaster’s audio-visual work on each scene took me so far away that after the film ended, I sat in a stupor for another ten minutes. As always after the Tarkovsky films. Somehow it is even petty to call his works films. It's more of a confession.
The saving bitterness of nostalgia here is elevated to the absolute. In a very real sense. The main character writer Andrey Gorchakov is looking for information about the musician Sosnovsky, the prototype of which is the Ukrainian composer M. S. Berezovsky, who drank and committed suicide at the age of 32. The usual Tarkovsky theme of finding harmony with oneself is presented here as a desire for unity of object and subject, for the image of a dog. All characters play the role of auxiliary in revealing the character of the main character, forced to suffer in the past, which is due to his human nature and the inability to get rid of the all-conquering ego. I will refrain from further intellectual speculation, who does not understand, will not understand everything early, and who understands and will form his opinion.
All we have in this life are memories. Their chaotic flow stretches from childhood, like a winding stream, which washes, sometimes not amenable to analysis, fragments of days gone by. Unexpressed feelings are never forgotten. Tarkovsky's films are about it. They turn the soul inside out and knock out all the dirt from there, like from a vacuum bag. Tarkovsky’s films are a cure, a bitter pill for sick people like you and me.
“Let hope be a deception, but it makes it possible to live and love the beautiful.” Without hope there is no man. (Andrey Tarkovsky)
Nostalgia is a yearning for the homeland or the past. But what kind of anguish does Gorchakov develop during the whole plot?
Having met Domenico, he delves deeper and deeper into his essence, into his idea of saving mankind from evil, into his belief in it; which catches up with him that unknown nostalgia for childhood. Having begun to analyze his vague attraction to this madman who has kept his family locked away from the world for seven years, he seems to be trying to find an excuse for his words and actions, saying that only madmen know the truth and that we, healthy people, should listen to them. The world of Domenico is the childhood of Gorchakov, from which he grew, having lost faith. Tarkovsky seems to draw parallels between these two heroes, who form a single whole. Domenico sees in Gorchakov a kind of catalyst for his idea, and Gorchakov in Domenico - finding himself, a way to return to his roots, where he believed. It doesn't matter what. What matters is the very feeling of faith. That is, only by connecting our very first, infantile sense of reality with the present, will we find our Self and learn to believe again. '1+1=1'; this inscription on the wall of the madman's house tells us that everything in this life is the sum of one sum. God. Which brings us back to the idea that Domenico and Gorchyakov are one creature. However, the heroine of the film is not attracted by the personality of a madman and there is no faith in her. Not to mention her pride, which prevented her from kneeling in the temple at the beginning of the film. But Tarkovsky has it for a reason. He only wanted to tell her about the absurdity of promoting what a person believes. In other words, God must be in the soul, not in the tongue. After all, writer Gorchakov is not trying to influence her, stop her. He just leaves his translator to himself.
The film ' Nostalgia' is not a film about homesickness or some individual moments of the past, but about longing for childhood. We all believe in a world without evil.
10 out of 10
The day before yesterday, I finally watched Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia. I watched it half-eyed once, and then for a year I didn't get my hands on it. And finally, the day before yesterday, I seriously watched it.
The plot of the film is as follows: a Soviet writer, together with an interpreter, travels to Northern Italy, collecting material about the composer Pavel Sosnovsky, who studied at the Bologna Conservatory, but when he returned to Russia he could not buy himself from the master and committed suicide. In the ruins of a sanatorium with a thermal spring, he meets Italian Professor Dominico, who seven years ago locked himself and his family in the walls of this sanatorium in anticipation of the end of the world. He believes that if you cross the pool with thermal water, holding a lit candle in your hands, it will save the world from the end of the world.
This is one of two films of the Western period of Andrei Tarkovsky. In 1980, Tarkovsky received an invitation to make a feature film in the West and went to Italy and together with Tonino Guerra wrote the script for this film.
This film very clearly shows the mental state of the artist (director). And first of all, it can be seen in the color scheme of the film - muffled tones go throughout the film. Of course, it is necessary to note separately the work of the cameraman Giuseppe Lanci, who was able to turn each frame into a small masterpiece, into a frozen picture of some great artist.
Another state of Tarkovsky is expressed in the figure of Andrei Sosnovsky, a serf composer about whom the main character collects material. This is expressed in one of his letters: 'Yesterday I had a dream about how I give a play in the estate of my master and I myself take part in it, I play one of the statues. I have to be still all the time, or my master will beat me up. I can't stand still, but I'm still standing. I woke up and realized it was true of my bitter life. I might not have returned to Russia, but only one thought kills me, that I will not see my native pine trees in the estate, so I will return and this is the truth of my bitter life.
That is, the director to some extent puts himself in Sosnovsky’s place, only this time in the role of a master – the Soviet government, but, despite this, Tarkovsky immensely loves Russia and he entirely belongs to it. Even though Tarkovsky remains in the West, it was a very difficult and difficult decision for him. So the main character of the film is actually the director himself, his thoughts and anguish, only conveyed by the actor. And for this special thanks to Oleg Yankovsky, who was able to convey everything exactly. “You all talk a lot about freedom, but if you are given this freedom you will not know what to do with it.”
And what is most striking about this film is its emptiness. Empty ruins of temples, empty streets of Rome. Even when the panorama of people on the steps is shown, they look like mannequins. That is, Tarkovsky himself is internally devastated that he will never see Russia again.
I’m not going to evaluate this film because it’s not standard, you have to see it yourself and find something in it, I just tried to interpret it in my own way.