Tarkovsky's next to last movie, Nostalghia, made in Italy around 1983, is out on FoxLorber's dvd. At first, I found it difficult to get drawn in to the movement of the movie, which was vague and difficult to follow; but I definitely loved the camera work with Tarkovsky's brilliant lens evoking and re-inventing painterly and masterly scenes. The signature artwork in this work is that of della Francesca's Madonna of Childbirth, in the beautiful, interior church and candle scene that opens the film somewhat claustrophobically... and I found myself thinking that T moved into the arena of magical realism when a young woman is praying before the Madonna whose womb opens to let out swallows... surprising, miraculous, and visually stunning as it sets up the major theme of maternity and that Freudian desire to return home, back to the womb, to our ultimate and inevitable death from the heartbreak of separation. The question is, what does the return-to-the-womb journey do to a human life? Can a human transmute a life and a psyche from a turn towards death and the profound, still darkness of the tomb, transmute it into a sacred, life-filling experience? This film forms the crucible of such a process, where the entire world of earth, air, fire, and water take their forms and play on the viewer's sensibilities as the characters move in and out of various wombs.

Ostensibly, the central character Andrei Gorchakov has traveled to Italy to research the life of Sosnovsky, an 18th century Russian poet who had found a life there, setting up a parallel between the longdead poet longing for home and the live one searching for life and truth in that same Italy. Now, this Andrei Gorchakov has a young, beautiful, research assistant and translator with him, Eugenia, but finds himself drawn more into the life of a local madman named Domenico (played brilliantly by Erland Josephson) who kept his wife and children locked up in a house for seven years until the police finally came and freed them; who likes to ride a stationary bike by the doorway of his house; whose favorite music is Beethoven's Ode to Joy; and who might have information on Sosnovsky. In fact, Eugenia, the translator, is so put off by her unrequited erstwhile lover's "loyalty" to the research and to his family back in Russia, that she leaves in a pique. That part of the story just didn't quite ring very plausible to me, but the visuals of her were worthy of renaissance art, as were all the visuals.

Finally, during the last quarter of the movie, I was able to figure some of it out and the plot turned more interesting and absorbing, making me sit on edge wondering what the "mad" Domenico would do next, or whether Gorchakov would actually get shot those times he was in the shallow bath ruins. The last scene where he attempts to walk the entire length of the bath with a lit candle, finally keeping it lit the third time and then sighing as if his heart finally gave out, was incredible and made me think of everyone's journey of life, with each person as a kind of candle with a flame to keep lit.

The church, cathedral, and sculpture scenes were absolutely magnificent; and I was very impressed with the way Tarkovsky subtly moved indoors to outdoors and vice-versa, and I took a major theme to be that nature, if seen and viewed properly, is a kind of outdoor cathedral... and womb. Indeed, childbirth, the images of madonna and child, and the fact that the film was dedicated to T's mother simply added both a nurturing and dolorous atmosphere to the film, while the poet/biographer Gorchakov walks through so many womblike rooms. I presume that the ultimate womb is death, which brings joy to Domenico who dies in self-immolation atop a statue of a warrior saint on a horse and whose favorite music is Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which sounds at the moment of his death as he falls in the street in flames. T also uses water and fire most effectively, to add that extra alchemical touch, along with the hint of the holy spirit that signifies in all of his films. As another bonus, T puts the natural scene of Andrei G's Russian home, with AG and the Alsatian dog sitting in front of the pond with the open cathedral arches shining in its surface, and then pans the camera back to show this lovely scene inside a vast open cathedral. Wow. Sometimes words cannot describe the genius of Tarkovsky, but it's lovely to try.

Lalalala lalalala lalalala lalala,

Sue