Life as a Dream: Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky

By Muhammad Ali Hashmi

The film opens with a single long take of a family and their dog descending a misty hill and halting in a lugubrious freeze frame. In the next scene—also a single long take—  we see a car  moving in the bleak Tuscan landscape. It disappears from the frame only to reappear again. Time passes slowly in "Nostalghia". 

Set in Italy, "Nostalghia" narrates the story of a Russian poet, Andrei Gorchakov, traveling through Italy— accompanied by an Italian translator Eugenia, with whom he seems to have an ambivalent relationship— researching the life of an 18th century Russian composer. In the desolate gloomy parts of Italy, Gorchakov seems plagued by a nostalgia for Russia, and his yearning for his wife and children. 

Traveling with Eugenia, Gorchakov arrives at St. Catherine's pool in a Tuscan hillside village where he meets a local madman Domenico, obsessed with the impossible idea of carrying a lighted candle across the pool to save the world. 

In the midst of metaphysical symbols, hallucinations, memories, and eventful episodes, we slowly see Gorchakov identifying more and more with Domenico.

In the climactic end of the film, Domenico leaves for Rome where he climbs an equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius and burns himself to death. He does so against the backdrop of Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy" after sermonizing to callous onlookers on the decadence of mankind and the need for universal brotherhood.  

Meanwhile, Gorchakov successfully crosses St Catherine’s pool and dies after crossing it. 

The final scene zooms back from a still shot of Gorchakov and his dog sitting by the pool. We see his Russian country house behind him first and then we see the monumental ruins of an Italian cathedral nestling the Russian landscape completing the elysian synthesis of the rural and the empyreal. 

Through recurring images of dilapidated abandoned buildings and dreary landscapes—juxtaposed with a rich palette of sound, ranging from the music of dripping water to Beethoven’s ninth symphony— Andrei Tarkovsky, the director of the movie, creates a dream out of impenetrable material of reality. Each shot could be treated as a painting. Each subject in the frame could be seen as a portrait.

As a cultural metaphor, Russia, in "Nostalghia", stands for the eternal feminine, the great womb of Being, and the Christian spiritual world, while Italy represents the decadence and the transience of the modern world. 

As a political discourse, "Nostalghia" echoes a call for a supranational Europe, and perhaps a supranational world.

While cinema has expanded dramatically and has evidenced rich and diverse themes, "Nostalghia" remains a work of high art and profound themes in the canon of world cinema.