Kino Lorber: Nostalghia (1983) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Kino Lorber

Following his 1979 Soviet science-fiction fairytale fable Stalker for Mosfilm, Andrei Tarkovsky took a trip to Italy where he met up with his Italian screenwriter friend Tonino Guerra to begin work on a film they called Voyage to Italy, chronicling the Russian director’s time spent away from home making a movie in a language outside of his own.  However, given there was already a Roberto Rossellini film from 1954 dubbed Journey to Italy, the film was then retitled Nostalghia while a documentary film of preproduction on the film called Voyage in Time was also made within the same year. 
 
To be Andrei Tarkovsky’s very first film made outside of the Soviet Union, the film was originally a joint co-production between Mosfilm and Gaumont before the Russian film company withdrew support and Tarkvosky revised the script to dial down Russian scenes and characters.  Posited somewhere between the existential yearnings of Mirror and the post-nuclear images of buildings full of water and vegetation, squalor and German Shepherds glimpsed in Stalker, the Russian master’s first film outside of his country of origin comes to 4K UHD disc through Kino Lorber and also includes the aforementioned Tarkovsky documentary Voyage in Time.  Like the film’s hero himself, Andrei Tarkovsky found himself at crossroads between life in Russia and Italy.

 
Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky from Mirror and Mute Witness) travels to Italy to begin work on researching the life of 18^th century composer Pavel Sosnovsky who briefly lived in Italy before committing suicide upon his return to Russia.  Carrying in tow his interpreter Eugenia (Domiziani Giordano), the two travel to the Tuscan countryside to gaze upon frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca.  However, Andrei gets cold feet and doesn’t enter the building, returning to his hotel where he begins to yearn for return to his Motherland.  What follows, in the time-honored tradition of Andrei Tarkovsky, is a surreal psychological spiritual journey inward evoking the director’s past offerings through Mosfilm that is somewhat prophetic in forecasting the director’s own post-Stalker decline in health.

 
Originally written for Anatoly Solonitsyn the intellectual in Stalker who died of cancer a year before the cameras rolled and the role was rewritten for Oleg Yankovsky, Nostalghia ruminates on dream states and logic with the director’s use of flashbacks, black-and-white against color, extended sequences of slow zooms onto water or panning across decrepitude overrun by nature while channeling the director’s own real-world displacement after leaving the Soviet Union.  Shot by Devil in the Flesh cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci distantly and gracefully with slow snail-paced tracking shots and zooms, Nostalghia becomes a staggering, visually arresting piece you find yourself surrendering to its hypnotic power.  Lacking an original score, the film prominently features music by Beethoven including the Ninth Symphony Fourth Movement again after Stalker as well as the music of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem and a variety of Russian folk songs.

 
Comprised of a small cast (only six actors), the film is largely anchored by Oleg Yankovsky who understands full-well the terrain Tarkovsky is immersing him in.  With his sullen worn eyes and pensive gaze, Yankovsky becomes something of a cipher for the late Anatoly Solonitsyn.  Sauntering through open barren landscapes, squalid decaying buildings and bodies of water, Yankovsky all but submits himself to Tarkovsky’s demands and captures the director’s own melancholic sense of being a fish out of water beautifully.  Mostly though the film itself is the main character with methodical pacing, precise camerawork and editing with many of the trademark leitmotifs on full display including but not limited to filming the back of a character’s head as they turn to look behind them.

 
While leaving critics flummoxed and playing to little box office returns, the film nevertheless won both the Ecumenical Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize for Best Director at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.  Considered among the least seen or discussed Tarkovsky offerings to date with most critics writing the thing off as empty, the film’s reputation like Tarkovsky’s others only grew with time and thanks to the new 4K UHD restoration, the legendary director makes his 4K disc debut with perhaps the most misunderstood of his works.  Coming on disc with the Voyage in Time documentary in the extras, the release brings viewers closer to his art and his creative process than ever before!  Now Criterion just needs to start doing UHDs of the rest of his oeuvre.  Though my personal preference for Tarkovsky’s post-Soviet period still lies with The Sacrifice, this is an indelible and important release cinephiles should be rejoicing over!

--Andrew Kotwicki