Nostalgia

1983, Andrey Tarkovsky
Stylistically, there with all the usual long takes, dispersed lighting, and rarely anything but spectacular images. The black and white ones here seem to have a yellow tint, and we can start to understand Tarkovsky’s antagonism to colour (it does take something away (this film is mostly in colour)).
A couple of points; Tarkovsky, when he gets close, is getting closer and closer, pretty much just head shots here, and we have characters coming right up to a perhaps slightly stiller than usual camera. Also very noticeable is how perpendicular, how straight the lines are. Frames within frames, and the camera here moves or zooms, extra slowly, along these parallel or vertical lines.
Their are two themes to this work, and, noting that the images are really so simple, perhaps few more. The artistic soul trying to right the world, responisbiltiy and all that. The second is, of course, Nostalgia. This film reminded us, quite considerably, of Angelopoulos’ ‘Ulysses’ Gaze’.