Nostalghia

I like to say of Tarkovsky that his films are so slow that you go past boredom into something else entirely. I only mean this half jokingly. Tarkovsky himself said that he tried to find "time within time," or, as I read that statement, eternity. Searching for eternity in an art form as temporal as film is setting a near impossible task for a director, but if Tarkovsky fails (which I suppose he does, but then do we ever find eternity in any form?) his films are artifacts of such sustained beauty that it hardly matters. That this beauty, so often presented in takes so long they resemble still photographs or paintings, is ultimately fleeting makes it that much more precious because it represents a heroic striving.

The final scene of Nostalghia depicts a man attempting to carry a lit candle across an empty pool. Twice he fails, and the candle goes out. When he finally reaches the other end of the pool with the flame still alive, he collapses with exhaustion. As in almost every single Tarkovksy film, he leaves us with an image (always an image! He is the consumate filmmaker) of eternity. And like every other Tarkovsky film, it is devastating.