John Higgins struggles to find much of Tarkovsky’s earlier brilliance in one of his latter day films.
You sometimes get a sense with some filmmakers that they are on borrowed time, despite all their talent and skill, when they are at a certain point in life. Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate film, Nostalgia, presents itself three decades after as no more than a curiosity shop of ideas, visuals and perceptions. Although it is touted as the first film Tarkovsky shot outside of his native Soviet Union, the political climate, coupled with Tarkovsky’s evident disillusionment with his home country, make this rather odd to view, not to mention a pretty uneventful experience at the best of times.
Although it does lend itself stylistically and visually to earlier works, particularly Mirror, it remains a very cold-hearted and plodding piece of work that neither expands or satisfies the knowledge pertaining to a director of Tarkovsky’s talent.
The plot, such as it is, chronicles the journey to Italy of a Russian writer, Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky), who is researching the background of 18th-century Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky, who lived there and committed suicide after his return to Russia, accompanied by an interpreter, Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), who is smitten with him. He meets a man called Domenico, who has desires to save the world through his obsession with a mineral pool that he desires to experience by walking across…..
I wish there was more to this story, which could have expanded into a more interesting film than the one on show here. Unlike Solaris, there isn’t any steadfast idea or concept that holds the overall structure of this film together and at times you drift off into a dream-like state in similar fashion to Andrei, who clearly doesn’t seem to be that intent on doing much research as per his objective at the start of the film.
If you are somebody out to get a sense of the overall canvas of what Tarkovsky was capable of, then please do seek out Nostalgia, but by definition, the film simply seems to be going over old images and styles in early works. As his penultimate offering, this is not something that will linger in the mind as much as other works like Ivan’s Childhood.
Nostalgia will be released on Blu-ray in the UK on September 19th.
