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NOSfA/GlIIA (1983)

SYNOPSIS

The protagonist, Andrei Gorchakov, a Russian poet, is trav-elling in Italy collecting material on the Russian serf com-poser Pavel Shosnovski, He plans to write an opera librettoon the life of the composer, sent by his proprietor to studymusic in Italy. Driven by the Russian longing for home, thecomposer decided to return to serfdom, but hangs himselfupon his return. Andrei travels with his Italian interpreter,a sensual and beautiful young woman called Eugenia. Itsoon becomes evident that -G-orchakov himself is strugglingwith his longing for home, his loss of purpose and identity.They visit a small church to see a painting by Picro dellaFranccsca, but Andrei refuses to enter. He rejects Eugenia'ssexual advances, and his whole behaviour signals a loss orcontact with the world. Andrei keeps dreaming of his homein Russia. In the small town or Bagno Vignoni they meetan eccentric hermit, the former mathematician Domenico,who lives in a deserted and crumbling building. In his at-tempt to protect his Family from the evil world, Domenicohad kept his wile and two children locked up in a house forseven years. Since their liberation by the police, Domenico

CRElJITS

PrOdUCI;rJJ1: Opera Film (Rome), for RAI TV Rete 2 in asso-ciation with Sovinfilm (USSR). Executive Producer: RcuzoRossellini, Manolo Bolognini. Producer: Francesco Casati.Production Executive: Lorenzo Ostuni (RAI). ProductionSupervisor: Filippo Campus, Valentino Signorctti. Produc-tion Administrator: Ncsrorc Baratella. Assistant Director:Norman Mozzato, Larissa Tarkovskaya. Screenplay: AndreiTarkovsky, Tenino Guerra. Photography: Giuseppe Lanci,Eastman Color. Camera Operator: Giuseppe De Biasi. Edi-tor: Erminia Marani, Amedee Salfa, Assistant Editor: Ro-berto Puglisi. Art Director: Andrea Crisanti. Set Dresser:Mauro Passi, Special Effects: Paolo Ricci. Music: extractsfrom Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven, Debussy. Musical Consult-0111: Gino Pcguri. Costumes: Lina Ncrf Taviani, Annamode68. Makeup Supervisor- Giulio Mastrantonio. Sound Rc-

has been drifting towards a paranoia. He is utterly obscsscuwith the demoralization of the world, which, he believes, isdriving humanity to its destruction. Andrei makes the ru-mark that the madman Domenico is closer to the truth thanothers. As Andrei drifts away from normal human relation-ships, he becomes attached to Domenico and visits his de-caying abode. Domenico delivers a sermon of desperationin Rome, standing on the equestrian statue of Marcus Au~relius: 'What kind of a world is this,' he cries, '11' a madmanhas to tell you to be ashamed of yourselves?' At the endof his apocalyptic message, he douses himself with gasolineand sets himself alight, dying by this self-immolation. In or-der to Fulfil Domenico's obsessive desire, Andrei attemptsto walk across St Catherine's thermal pool with a lightedcandle. This would, according to Domenico's belief, savehumanity. After several attempts Andrei succeeds, but hedies of a heart attack at the same moment. The film endswith a collage of Andrei sitting in front or his Russian homelocated within the ruins of an Italian cathedral,

cording: Rel110 Ugolinelli. Sound Mixer: Dattilo Moroni.Sound Rerecording: Filippo Otroni, Ivana Fidelc. Sound II-fects: Massimo Anzetloui, Luciano Anzclloui. Leading ac-tors: Oleg Yaukovsky (Andrci Gorchokovi. Erland Joseph-son (Domenico), Domiziana Giordano (8!fgcllia), Pau-iz!aTerrene (Gorchokov's \II{/e), Laure De Marchi (HI()/1l({n withImpel), Delia Boccardo (Domenico's wife'), M ilona Vukoti(Town worken, Alberto Canepa (Peasant), Raffaele DiMario, Rate Furlan, Livio Galassi, Picro Vida, Elena Ma-goai.

Running time: 126 minutes.

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Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting ill time Rc-Hections on the cinema. The Bodley Head,.London 1986, p. 110.Nostalghia, Tarkovsky's first film madeabroad, was completed in 1983. His lastfilm The Sacrifice, was shot in Sweden andcompleted in .May 1986, before his deathfrom cancer later the same year at the ageof 54.The idea or making a film in Italy ap-parently derives From Tarkovsky's longfriendship with Toniuo Guerra, Antonio-ni's collaborator in scriptwritiug all hisfilms since L'avvcntura, except Prefazioneand The Passel/gel: Antonioni, who at-tended the 1975 Moscow Film Festivaland saw The Mirror, encouraged 'Tarko-vsky. The two directors met several timeswhile Tarkovsky was making preparatoryresearch for Nostalgltia in Italy. Before be-ginning to work on Nostalghla; Tarkovskyvisited Italy several times, and he was veryfond of the country, like so many Russianartists and writers before him.Tarkovsky defined 'nostalgia' as 'a com-plex sentiment, one that mixes the lowfor your homeland and the melancholythat arises from being far away.' Vida T.Johnson, Graham Petrie, Andrei Tarkov-sky: A Visual Fugue, Indiana UniversityPress, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1994,p. 159.Tarkovsky 1986, pp. 182 3.Tarkovsky 1986, p. 193.

THE POETICS OF IMAGE

~.. Andrei Tarkovsky: Nostalghio

'In a word, the image is not a certain meaning, expressed by the director, butan entire world reflected as in a drop of water.'

Andrei Tarkovsky '

Andrei Tarkovsky's films contain some or the most moving and poetic images ofspace and light ever created in any form of art. They touch upon the existentialbasis of architecture, which is saturated by memories and experiences lost inchildhood. The images in his last four films The Mirror (/975), Stalker (1979),Nostalghia? (1981), and The Sacrifice (1986) exhibit an inherent poetics of space

a poetry that docs not require architectural construction or utilitarian func-tion. Through images of space, matter, light and time they evoke an experienceof pure existence, the metaphysical poetry of being. Tarkovsky's images appearfresh and innocent, as if they had never been exposed to the human eye before.

n~IE mJSSIAN NOS IALGIA'

Tarkovsky emphasizes the importance of personal experiences in art: 'In thecourse of my work I have noticed, time and again, that if the external emotion-al structure or a film is based on the author's memory, when impressions of hispersonal life have been transmuted into screen images, then the film will havethe power, to move those who see it." Nostalghia exemplifies this transform-ation or personal experience into a touching cinematic experience. The direc-tor has identified himself with the protagonist to the extent of giving him hisown name or Andrei; in The Mirror, his most autobiographical film, the boywho portrays Tarkovsky as a youth, also hears his name.

Tarkovsky's films are deeply rooted in the Russian emotional soil. They seekuniversal expression of the human condition through specifically Russian sen-timents and images: 'In all my pictures the theme of roots was always of greatimportance: links with family house, childhood, country. Earth. I always feltit important to establish that J myself belong to a particular tradition, culture,circle of people or ideas."

The main character in the film, the Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov, travelsto Haly to gather material on the Russian serf composer Pavel Shosnovsk i (ali-as Maximilian Beryozovsky). Andrei plans to write an opera libretto on thelife or the composer. In the late lxth century, his proprietor, who had notedthe musical talent of his serf, had sent Shosnovsk i to study music in Italy. Shos-uovsk i st udied composition as a student ofGiambatista Artini at the Conserva-tory of Bologna, and stayed nine years in Italy achieving some fame as a com-

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poser. Driven by the Russian longing for home, however, he decided to returnto serfdom in his own country, but hanged himself shortly after his return.

Andrei travels with his Italian inrcrprcrcr Eugenia, a sanguinely carnalyoul~g W~)nHll> It becomes evident that Andrei himself is struggling with hisIO~lgll1g for l11s, home in Russia, and his faltering sense of identity. His alien-auon and contused state of mind arc made clear at the very beginning of thefilm. He has driven '.through half or Italy' with Eugenia to visit a small villagechurch ~lt Montcrchi that had been important for the subject or his study be-c:llIsc. ol the famous Madonna del t'arm (Madonna of Childbirth) by Picro dellal-runccaca. but he docs not even want to enter the church.

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director pushes the viewer off the path of conventional reading and placid ac-ceptance of meaning into a state of intense curiosity and yearning. The marryimages presented in Nostalghia arc emotional settings and miniatures, riddles,

that vainly seck a rational explanation.Tarkovsky states explicitly that there arc no symbols or metaphors in his

(JIm::;; water is simply water, and rain 18 intended to convey the experience of

rain:

...Whenever 1 declare that there arc no symbols or metaphors in my films.those presentexpress incredulity. They persist in asking again and again,lor instance, what rain signifies in my films; why docs it figure in filmafter film; and why the repeated images of wind, fire, water'? ...Of courserain can just be seen as bad weather, whereas I usc it to create a particu-lar aesthetic setting ill which to steep the action of the 111m. But that isnot at all the same thing as bringing nature into my films as a symbol of

something else."

Tarkovsky's images derive from the logic of poetic thought. He considers po-etry as the uuc language of film: 'There is only one way of thinking in cinema:poetically,' he writes." He clarifies his view in another context: 'When 1 speakof poetry 1 am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world,a particular way of relating to reality.'ls Tarkovsky's films have an extraordi-nary emotional impact precisely because they carry a pure cinematic expres-sion that cannot be transferred to any other medium. 'Poetry is untranslatable,as is all art,' Andrei tells Eugenia in Nostalghia. She reads an Italian transla-tion of a poem of Arseny Tarkovsky, the director's poet father (1907 -1989), butAndrei asks her to throw the book away. A bit later, Andrei himself throws thebook into the corner of his hotel 1'0011'1, and in the scene of the flooded church,he actually burns the translation, We usually associate specific human valueswith books; books are documents of the human striving for knowledge andtruth. Consequently burning a book is an act of violence and evokes a sensa-tion of tragedy. Burning a book written by one's father appears particularly

disturbing.As the conventional lise or symbols fixes and focuses the viewer's/reader's

understanding to a distinct set of connotations and meanings, Tarkovsky's im-ages keep opening and branching out to an cxpanding field of associationsand possible meanings. Tarkovsky creates interacting clusters of poetic imageswhich constitute an invisible rhizome of feeling and association.

IfvlACL5 or: MIIU~OHS99 Andr-ei in Domenico's house in front of an

eroded mirror100 Andrei's image in the mirror of a cupboard

changes into the image of Domenico.101 Domenico's assistant mimics the madman's

death.

16 Tarkovsk.y 1986, pp. 212 213.17 Tarkovsky 1986, p. ISO,18 Tarkovsky 1986, p. 21.

Tarkovsk.y 1986, p. 95.

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DISCONTINUOUS NARRATIVE: DOUBLING AND RESTRAINT

Transitions between reality, recollection and dream are intertwined in a fugue-like manner, one image bcginning before the previous one has ended, elementsof later images being introduced or hinted at in earlier sequences, and soundprogressing in counterpoint with the visual image. Events and images are Freedof autonomous association from the causality of Iincar narrative logic. A 11 logi-cal categories are violated; dream sequences usually appear in black and white,(or more precisely, in a sepia color which suggests a process of fading away intime and an association with earth), but some of thc dream/memory sequencesalso appear in full colour. Lnsome sequences thc level olillumination suddenlychanges without any apparent reason, as if the intensity of the dream wouldfluctuate. Continuous counterpoint and cross-reference fuse the separate eli-mcnsions of space and lime into a singular existential experience. For instance,Andrei's patch of white hair is echoed in the failing white feathers and thewhite cloth trampled in the mud, but it also deforms the symmetry of his faceand creates a sense of mysterious aura, like the white patch in the short cut hairof Stalker, as though the protagonist had been specially marked at birth byhis creator. The dramatic sequence on the Piazza del Campidoglio is a strangecombination of realistic tragedy and street pantoniine,

The 111m contains a number of sign illcant psychological doubles or identifica-tions; Gorchukov/Domcnico, Gorchakov/Shosnovsk i, Tarkovsky/Gorchakov,Gorchakov's wife/Eugenia, Arseny Tarkovsky/Andrei Tarkovsky, Domenico'sdog/Andrei's dog. The theme of duality is also echoed in Andrei's frustratedsuspension between Russia and Italy, and a number of images of mirrors. BothAndrei and Domenico gaze several times at their images in mirrors. In the sur-real scene on a narrow side street, Andrei walks past pieces or paper and clothscattered around in the street, and returns back to look at his reflection inthe mirror of a wardrobe, As his hand touches the door knob, his image sud-denly changes into Domenico's. During this scene he is actually reciting thetragic story of Domenico's imprisoned family. A strange mirror image is ere-ated in the scene of Domenico's self-immolation when his assistant mimics the

tortured movements of the burning man.The imagery of Nostatghta combines abundance with restraint. Tarkovsky

writes emphatically about the importance of restraint in artistic expression. Hequotes Paul Valery: 'Perfection is achieved only by avoiding everything thatmight make for conscious exaggeration.' 1'JThis strategy of restraint is explicitlystated in Nostalghia. '1 know the great classic romances, no kisses, nothing atall, pure. That is why they arc great ... feelings thai are unspoken are unforget-table,' says the drunken Andrei to Angela, a young girl in the Hooded ruinedchurch, thus revealing the director's artistic strategy,

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As it develops, the cinema will, I think, move further away not only fromliterature but also from other adjacent art forms, and thus become moreand more autonomous .. ' though cinema still retains some principlesproper to other art forms, on which directors often base themselves whenmaking a Iilm... One result [of this] is that cinema then loses somethingof its capacity for incarnating reality directly and by its own means, asopposed to transmuting life with the help of literature, painting or the-atcr. This can be seen for instance in the influence brought to bear oncinema by the visual arts when attempts arc made to transfer this or thatcanvas to the screen .. , Trying to adapt the features of' other art forms tothe screen will always deprive the film of what is distinctively cinematic."

Tarkovsky's images frequently evoke recollections of paintings, particularlyof those from the early Renaissance. 'It is a miraculous painting,' exclaimsEugenia in the foggy landscape in one of the opening scenes of Nosmlghiu, re-ferring to Picro's Madonna. '[arkovsky's frequent use of symmetrical framingis similar to Renaissance perspective representalions, His manner of placing afigure against the background of a doorway, an arched opening or a circularmirror, reminds one ofthe way Fra Angelico, Bellini, Botticelli and other quat-trccento painters placed their main figure against the background or all apse ora fictitious backdrop. Perpendicular camera positions, the llattening impact 0('a telephoto lens, and the immobility of the figures or their slowed-down move-ments, also reinforce the painterly effect ofTarkovsky's cinematic images. Thushis scenes often have the character of Sacra Conversazionc paintings, Classicalpaintings also appear under strange circumstances in his films. For example, adetail of St. John the Baptist from the Ghent altarpiece, The Adoration of theLamb, by the van Eyck brothers appears submerged in water in the pool of the

'Zone in Stalker.Regardless of his apparent nffinity with painting and his constant references

to literature, Tarkovsky emphasizes the difference between various art forms:

Although Tarkovsky did not attempt to imitate or recreate paintings in hisfilms, he utilized similar pictorial means of rendering space in order to achievehis intended emotional impact We know that Tarkovsky studied painting Iorthree years in his youth, and his first film to achieve worldwide attention was011 the fifteenth century icon painter Andrei Rublcv, His writings refer fre-quently to a wealth or painters, among them Pietcr Brueghel the Elder, Car-paccio, Cezanne, Dali, V,Hl Gogh, Goya, [i'J Greco,Picasso, Raphael, Giotto

and Leonardo,

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PAINllNCS INIARKOVSKY'S FILMS

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Tarkovsky 1986, p. 22.

107

105

I061.l1c final image of Nos/o!ghio. Andrei's rZU$-sl~iln house within the cathedral ruin.

107 Caspar David Friedrich, {{uins ofrhe flbbeyo( Udeno, 182.1. A house within the ruin ofan abbey Nationalgallerie, Berlin.

IIUIlIJINC WI If liN A I\UIIIJINC

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106

102 F:.ugcnia in,Andrei's bathroom, framed by i\circular n1lrTOI~

103 Duccio eli Buonmscgna. Ap(lcoroncc o{Christ(0 the Ap~~stlcs or the Church Door: t-tacstaAltar ~)f ,Siena Duomo (1.108--11).

104 [-,.ugcnld In the Church of the Mo(/o{ln(J ofChildbirth.

105 Fra Angelico, The PrcscnloUon in the Temple(after 1430). Musco del G('51), Cortona.

IMACES 01 CI ASSICAL PAIN IINCSIN NOS IAL(;/ IIA

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Tarkovsky's space is usually rendered as a frontal perspective with a single van-ishing point. This archaism of spatial representation helps to flatten the sceneinto a two-dimensional image, a painting, The use of one-point perspective alsoresults in a suppression of dynamic effect, and a stylized and meditative atmos-phcre; visual reality is emancipated from the realistic progression of the narra-tive. Instead of the dynamic perspective of the modern Western convention of

COMPgESSED SPACE

He seems to have been under the spell of Leonardo cia Vinci, in particular.Tarkovsky admires 'the artist's amazing capacity to examine the object fromoutside, standing back, looking from above the world a characteristic of art-ists like Bach and Tolstoy.'21 Leonardo's portrait of A Young vVoman with aJuniper Twig appears in The Mirror, and in one essay Tarkovsky analyzes thestrange duality of the figure the simultaneous attractiveness and repulsive-ness of the woman." Later in the same film, Alcksei, who portrays Tnrkovskyhimself as a boy, studies a book of Leonardo's drawings; his father reads Le-onardo's instructions for painting a battle scene documented in the Ashburn-hcim manuscript. Piero della Francesca is also Important for Tarkovsk y: Pie-ro's painting Madonna del Parte (Madonna or Childbirth) has a centra! role inNostalghia;l:\ in addition to appearing as the painting in the tiny village churchof Santa Maria della Momcntana, the painting is referred to by Andrei, whodescribes his wife as 'Picro's Madonna, but all in black'; and also Eugeniacould be a woman from one of Piero's paintings. But she could equally well beone of the red-hal red beauties of Botticell i's paintings,

As a further example of 'Iarkovsky's affinity for paintings, Durer's FourHorsemen ofthe Apocalypse appcar in Ivan's Childhood, and several of Hrucgbel'spaintings arc shown in Solaris. A scene in The Mirror on a snowy hill, inwhich Alcksei takes a bird in his hand, resembles the scene of Brucghel's .lan-nary (Hunters in the Snow] so vividly that it can hardly be accidental. Theclosing scene of Nnstulghia, in which Gorchakov's home in Russia is shownwithin the ruin of an Italian cathedral, bears a close similarity to Caspar DavidFriedrich's painting Ruins f?/Ihe Abbey at Eldena. The slow horizontal panningthrough the upper part of the immobile body of Gorchnkov. lying on his backon a stone wall in the flooded ruin, makes the viewer recall Bans Holbein'shorizontally stretched painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb.

In all of 'Iurkovsk y's filrus, the camera frequently frames natura marie com-positions formed by a group of objects. The sense of absolute silence and cxis-tcntial solitude in these 'I'a rkovsk yan cinematic still-fifes is reminiscent of theatmosphere of Giorgio Morandi's metaphysical paintings,

,IS UI CI ASSICAI I'AIN liNe,',()\ IAI (,/ IIA

Picro della f-rancesca. ModollllO del Pmto(Madonna of Childbirth) c. 1-160, t-tontcrchi(Arczzo). Cappella del Cirnctcrio.Hans Holbein The Younger; /he Body of theOcod Christ in the "[()tn/) (1')21 or 1522).OffenLlichc Kunstsammlung. Kunstmuscum,Basel.Hodzontal IXIIl of Andrei lying on a stonewall in the flooded church.

Tarkovsky 1986, p. 108.Tarkovsky 1986, p. 108.In addition to the fact that Picro dellaFranccsca was Tarkovsky's favourite paint-or, the fate and motifs of the painting arcconnected with Tarkovskyau themes. InIacr, the painting is all example of how iIJ-separably the director fuses different mo-tifs and images into each other.Madonna de! Pana (Virgin or Childbirth)is the frescoed altarpiece or a little churchcalled Santa Maria della Momcntana, orSanta Maria della Selva, ncar the walledhill town of Moutcrchi. In 1785 the sirewas taken as a cemetery and two-thirds ofthe nave of this simple rornancsquc struc-lure was demolished and the presbyterywith Piero's fresco was converted into achapel. The fresco has been badly dam-aged. For instance, a paved floor in thelower part of the painting can only beidentified reflected on the underside of thethree holes, and the Virgin has lost herveil. The cult of Mary as patroness ofwomen in childbirth is explained by boththe popular and theological beliefthat. shefelt no pain during bel' miraculous preg-nancy. The belief of Mary's painless preg-nancy and delivery made her a protectressfor simple medieval women at a time whenchildbirth was often dangerous or fatal.The two angels arc mirror images, paint-ed using the two sides or a single cartoon.Pierc painted a number of Madonnas, in-eluding the Madonna della Misericordia(c. 1454), The Annunciation (c. 145458),and The Madonna di Siniguglia.See, Ronald Lightbown, Piera della Fran-ccse(l, Abbeville Press, New York. 1992.

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Tarkovsky's slow and prolonged camera shots move either parallel to the pic-ture plane or along the perpendicular depth direction. In consequence, thecamera never rushes into the depicted space, and the viewer remains at the edge

SPACE AND MOVEMENI

spatial representation, space is composed of planes parallel to the screen in thesame way as the axonometric technique of Japanese ulayo-e.

Tarkovsky diffuses and obscures the edges or forms, figures and spaces intomist, water, rain. darkness, or merely an equality of colour and tonal value, inorder to abstract the image and weaken the illusion of reality. The diffusionor figures and objects into a mist is also characteristic of the films of AkiraKurosawa, especially Throne q/ Blood (1957) and Michelangelo Antonioni, asRet! Desert (1964). The naturalistic quality of colour is neutralized as well:'You have to try to neutralize colour, to modify its impact on the audience,' hewrites." In the opcning scenes of Nostulghie, and the numerous shots aroundthe health pool at Hagno Vignoni, the landscape is diffused into a silvery mistreminiscent of paintings by Camille Corot, in order to reduce realism anddepth, and emphasize pictorial flatness. This device activates the process ofunconscious peripheral vision and leads the viewer into a hypnotic state, inmuch the same way as the foggy mountain scene in a Chinese painting or theraked sand in a Japanese Zen garden produce an evocative llow of scaleless im-ages projected by the unconscious. These self-generated images internalize vi~sion and induce a state of meditation. Figures in Tarkovsky's landscapes arcfrequently immobile and turned towards the camera ill the manner of it still-life, further strengthening the painterly effect of the image; this deliberate ar-tillciality resembles the motionless compositions of human figures in AlainRcsuaia's Last YeaI' in Marienbad (1961) or in Michelangelo Antonioni's filmslike Red Desert. Tarkovsk y's compressed space also bears a strong resemblancewith the representational canon of icon painting. People arc fused with theirarchitectural settings in the same way as icon figures are made equivalent to

buildings, miniat urized to the size of a coffin.Tarkovsky's deliberate suppression of the actor's expression. as well as his

usual practice or not giving the actors clear instructions or knowledge or theprogression or the narrative, tends to turn human characters into objects, mereclements in the visual eomposition." 'The actor is part of the composition, likea trec, like water,' he writes." Curiously, Antonioni uses the very same meta-phor: 'Many times the suggestions given to an actor - how to make a gesture,speak a line _arc intuitive and arc of the same nature as those which make me

include or omit a tn:;;y.'27

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Tarkovsky 1986, p. 138.Tarkovsk y did not want his actors to betoo expressive or too clear. He wanted thecharacter 10 remain unclear in order tomake the audience imagine thc characterthemselves. Tarkovsk y also used distantshots through telephoto (ens for close-upsin order to maintain a psychological dis-tance from the actor/character.Erland .loscphsson in a conversation withthe author, September 18, 1994 on Lim-nos.

26 Johnsaon, Petrie 1994, p. 45.27 'I want them passive [0 have acting

come not from reason, but from instinct.An actor's brain is not his most useful in-strument, and although he is an clementof a shot, he is not always the most im-portant clement. Many times, etc.' AngelaDaile Vacchc, Cinema and ['ainling, Uni-versity ofTexas Press, Austin, 1996, p. JR.

Camille Corot. Souvenir orMorlefbn/oinc,1861. Museum of the Louvre, Paris.Fao-chi (1611 c.1717), Thr' Wotcr{i:lfI onMount Lu. Collection of the late KanichiSuruirnoro. Oiso (japan).Andrei and Eugenia approach the church att-tontcrchi through mist.Mist around St. Catherine's pool.

113 Hirosige, Akos(Jko; Scene ot Uri Inn, 18~)Os.114 Ryoan-ji dry ~;

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1;:-1

r-rovu-urcr 01 l!IE CAHfHA

rile experientialmovement of Andrei's andEugenia's Cdr in the opening sequence.Pie! t-tondrian. l.o7cngc Cornposillon withFour Lines oncl Crey. 1926. The Museum 01Modern Art. New York,rile experiential movement of Andrei's taxi

around St. Catherine's pool. and Andrei'swalk accross the pool with a lit candle inthe final sequence of the film. (Drawing JP).

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MOVLMLN I IN NOS/AI GII/A

house and family in Russia: asequence.

Michelangelo Antonioni, HeelDesert (1964),People watching Domenico's self-imrnol.ilion.

of the painterly image. The orthogonality or imagery suggests the existence ofan invisible proscenium arch and consequently creates an air offilmed theatre.

In the opening scene of Nostalghio a CHI' drives to the left across the framein a tlJggy landscape. While the engine sound remains audible, the car makesa loop outside the screen and returns from the left back to the front part ofthe frame, The movement effectively charts the space beyond the screen, inthe same way that the edges of Mondrian's rectangles in his diagonal paint-ings continue past the frame and activate the viewer's awareness of the spacebeyond.

In the first scene at St. Catherine's pool, the camera moves parallel to theedge of the pool, and only an occasional vertical black bar of a stone pillar,moving across the screen, traces the existence of the arcade where the camera islocated. Towards the end of the film, the movement of Gorchakov's taxi aroundthe pool and behind a stone wall which blocks the car from the view of the cam-era, carves the square shape of the pool into the space of the viewer's mind, Thecamera moves slowly parallel to the front edge or the pool to face the taxi just intime as it re-emerges from behind the wall at the opposite end of the pool, Thecamera makes the viewer literally sec the course of the car when it is not physi-cally seen,

'rile prolonged scene in which Andrei attempts to leave his hotel in Rometo return back to Russia, when Eugenia unexpectedly calls from her lover'sresidence to tell him that Domenico is making his mad speeches, is anotherimpressive study of tracing architectural space through slowed motion. Thecamera is placed in a narrow corridor along which it moves imperceptiblybackwards in front of Andrei who walks absentmindedly towards the camera.Tile slowed sequence relates three courtyard spaces to one another along thisdepth direction; a sudden flush or side light On Gorcha kov's J~lCC and the burstof street noises inform the viewer that the poet has come to the street from thecourtyard spaces of the urban block. The camera carves space directly into themind of the viewer.

FILMS IN FILM

In Nost alghia there arc recollections or other film makers: people standingfrontally, as objects in the landscape, remind the viewer of Alain Rcsnais orMichelangelo Antonioui, while the scene with bathers in the steaming pool hasa Itcllini-like atmosphere. The collection of Objects, particularly the image ofa broken doll in Domenico's house, evokes Vigo's L'Atalunrc. 'The frequent ap-pearance of mirrors and the exchanged images of Gorchakov and Domenicoin a mirror call forth certain images of Jean Cocteau. Not surprisingly Tarkov-

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sky reports in his diaries of having seen Cocteau's The Testament of Orpheuson television during the preparatory phase of Nostalghia. Snow falling slowlyover the closing scene reflects Tarkovsky's admiration of Ingmar Bergman. Hewrites about the disturbing scene in Bergman's The Virgin Spring in whichsnowflakes begin to fall on the face of the dying rape victim. The pain afterthe Tat-tar massacre in Andrei Rublev is relieved by snow falling slowly on thefaces of the survivors in the ruined church. In the final scene of Stalker, plant

. spores (dandelion fluff] float horizontally across the screen creating a distan-dug filter between the image and the viewer. The snowflakes at the end of Nos-tolghio fuse the southern and northern clements of the collage into a single co-hercnt image.

THE POETICS OE SPACE AND LIGHT

Windows and doors play an essential rolcin Tarkovsky's films; they arc forlooking out of or in to, and openings for light to enter, as much as [or people topass through. When Andrei first enters his hotel room, the spatial configurationof the setting is breathtakingly expressed as an abstract counterpoint of spaces,alrcrnating in dark ness and lightness. As the writer enters the room, light seepsinto the darkness through the edges of closed shutters; he opens the shutters toreveal a tiny courtyard, and daylight floods into the room; he closes the shuttersand switches on a ceiling light, which docs not function properly; he quicklyturns off the flickering light and switches on the yellow light of a table lamp onthe other side of the bed; through the open door he enters the bathroom, whichreflects a blue natural light; he turns on the electric light of the bathroom andthe small space is suddenly flooded with bright white light.

Tarkovsky's transcendental chamber music for light and space creates a se-quence of astonishing metaphysical beauty and power. These are images ofspace and light so magical and radiant with poetic essence as to compare withthe innocently holy paintings by Fru Angelico or the mysterious light works bythe contemporary artist James Turrell. Tarkovsky's narrow slits of light alsobring in mind the usc or light in Tadao Ando's minimalist architecture.

1"1 IE MEMOIW OF MATTER

In ~Vater and Dreanrs.> Gaston Bachelard distinguishes between two kinds ofimagination material and formal. The imagery in Tarkovsky's films clearlybelongs to the category of material imagination; his expression is based on im-ages and dreams of matter.

28 Gaston Bachclard, Water and Dreams: AllEssay all the Imagination of Matter, ThePegasus Foundation, Dallas, Texas, 1983.

Iarkovskv's chamber music of space andin his hotel morn

84),

Bachclard J983, p. 3.Bachclard 1983, p. 46.Earth is often used as a symbol for theChurch, which feeds man with spiritualfaith and offers him shelter.Quoted in Robert Hughes, The Shock: 0/the New Art and the Centurv 0/ Change.Thames and Hudson, London" 1980, p.225,

The four pre-Socratic clements: fire, air, water and earth, and their variousmixtures and dissolutions (smoke, vapour, clay, mud, slime, dust) playa centralrole in Tarkovsky's imagination of matter. Baehelard believes that 'it is possibleto establish in the realm or the imagination, a tall' of the [our elements whichclassifies various kinds of material imagination by their connections with fire,air, water, earth.'?' Tarkovsky's films, surely, arc studies in the poetics of mat-ter, or a 'poetic chemistry'," the deeply archaic images concealed in matter. Airis invisible to the eye, but Tarkovsky makes air visible by means of water, fog

and mist. Fog also reveals the movement of air.The surreal image of a miniature landscape of earth," mud and water on

the floor of Domenico's house, which gradually fuses with the real landscapeoutside as Andrei enters the hermit's ruined domicile, is an evocative exampleof' Tarkovsky's earth imagery. The scene with Andrei knee-deep in the floodedchurch combines earth and water into an enigmatic image: has the church sunkinto the earth below the water level, or is this an image of a deluge whichhas already elevated water to half the height of doorways? Is it earth or waterthat is causing the trouble? Significantly, standing on the floor of the floodedchurch, Andrei tells a talc of a creature that lived in slime and did not want to

be rescued from his slimy realm.Spaces in Nostalghia nrc scenes of time and erosion, and a skin oftraces and

scars covers the surfaces. The eroding surfaces feed dreams in the same waythat an inkblot figure in the personality test, devised by the Swiss psychiatristHermann Rorschach, invites figural interpretation. Leonardo already observedthe stimulating impact of eroding surfaces on the imagination. Following anancient Chinese instruction, he advised artists to stare at a crumbling wall to

gain inspiration'.

Whcn you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones,if you have to devise some scene you may discover a resemblance to vari-ous landscapes 'H or, again, you may see battles and figures in action, orstrange faces and costumes, or an endless variety of objects, which youcould reduce to complete and well-drawn forms. And these appear 011such wal1s promiscuously, like the sound of belts in whose jangle you may

find any name or word you choose to imagine."

Tarkcvsky's images of matter concretize, slow down and halt time. Processes orerosion measure progression of time. Ruins arc buildings which have lost theirfunction and have turned into instruments for measuring time. Ruins have aspecial hold on our emotions because they challenge us to imagine their for-gotten faith. We are moved by them more readily than by new structures, be-cause ruins have been stripped of their mask of utility and rationalmcaning.

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The ruin has ceased to play the role of a building; it represents a skeleton ofmemory, a sheer melancholic presence. 'Iarkovskv's eroded, punctured, leak-ing and flooded buildings recall Gordon Marta-Clark's dramatic revelations, inwhich his deliberately dissected buildings expose the tragic sentiments hiddenbehind the utilitarian face of architecture. Jean-Paul Sartrc writes touchinglyabout this emotional power of erosion and defeat:

When the instruments arc broken and unusable, when plans arc blastedand effort is useless, the world appears with a childlike and terrible fresh-ness without supports, without paths, It has a maximum reality because... defeat restores to things their individual reality... The defeat itselfturns into salvation. For example, poetic language rises out of the ruinsof prose."

Tarkovsky himself quotes a literary image from Marcel Proust 'raising thevast edifice of memories' which he regards as the calling of film." The asso-ciation of buildings and memory is strong. Recall, Ior example, the mnemonicmethod of Greek orators who imagined themselves placing the individualthemes of their speech within a building and, while delivering them, movedabo Lit the building, picking up the themes, one after another, from their tempo-rary storage places. It is clear that architecture and cities provide the most im-portant stage of collective memory. '...The house is one of the greatest powersof integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind: as Bache-lard writes." In a similar fashion, experiencing a Tarkovsky film is an act ofactive remembering, of discovering the immense edifice of both collective andpersonal memories. These memories arc frequently concealed and petrified inthe images of architecture.

WAlm AND TIM!'

Water appears in every conceivable form in Nostalghia; a distant lake, a healthpool, puddles, the Hooded church, water on floors and rain coming in throughceilings, washbasins, dripping water, etc. Various sounds of water also charac-terize the soundscapc. In addition to serving as a surreal clement of distanc-ing and estrangement, water has a wealth of conventional symbolic meanings."Water is simultaneously the image of both life and death," it is a feminine, ma-ternal clement, which can, in its most forceful forms, also obtain male charac-tctisticsv Morc importantly, water is the most potent image of the imagination.

Bachclard, who devoted the latter half of his life to a penetrating phenom-enological analysis of the clements and imagination, wrote separate books on

33 Sartrc 1978, p. 3034 Tarkovsky 1983, p. 59.35 Gaston Bachclard, The Poetics of Space,

Beacon Press, Boston, 1964,p. 6.36 Water is a symbol or cleansing and puri-

Fying; it is used in the sacrament of bap-tism symbolizing the washing away of sinand rising to the newness of life. Wateralso denotes innocence, as in Pilate's actof washing his hands. Water mixed withwine in the Eucharist denotes Christ's hu-manity.

37 'For certain dreamers, water is the uni-verse of death ... Watercommunicates withall the powers of night and death, i.c., wateris a melancholizing element for certainsouls, water is the matter of despair:Bacllelard, 1983, pp. 90 and 92.

I C IUI\lOI IIZOSION

rniniatlwized landscape in Domenico's

)ornc,,;oo's house.in the flooded church.

Rorschach figure.

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IMACI S 01 Mil K

133 Milk is spilled in the street a~; Domenico'swife kisses the earth after the liberation orthe bmily.

134 Wol~?,an.l; Laib, Milkstonc, 19/8/79. lnstallalion at the Venice Bicrmale. 1982.

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three of the clements earth, water and air and two books on fire." His viewsthrow light on the experiential dimensions of Tarkovsky's scenes. Bachclardspeaks of ca poetics of water' and 'water poets.':!') 'Perhaps more than any otherclement,' he writes, 'water is a complete poetic reality.':" He goes on to state:'One cannot dream profoundly with objects. To dream profoundly, one mustdream with substances. A poet who begins with a min-or must end with thewater ofofountain if he wants to present a complete poetic experience?"

Tarkovsky also uses images of milk in his films; in Nostulghia a turned overbottle is seen spilling milk onto the ground in the incident where the police lib-crate Domenico's wife and two children from their seven year imprisonment.Milk has, of course, its significance through its essence as the first life-main-taining substance, and its radiant white purity and nutritious density, These es-sences of milk arc reflected in Wolfgang Laib's art works of milk poured onwhite marble slabs to create deeply evocative reflective surfaces. Significantly,the poetic imagery of milk fuses with the imagery of water, both arc maternalclements: '.. all water is a kind of mille More precisely, every joyful drink ismother's mille, Milk is ." the first substantive known to the mouth,' writes

Bachclard."Most importantly, water is the natural clement directly associated with time.

'1 simply think that water is the image of time', and 'Water equals time andprovides beauty with its double,':" writes Joseph Brodsky in his book on Ven-ice, Watermark. In another context he gives yet another formulation: 'Water". is a condensed form of ti111e.'44 This remark by Tarkovsky's fellow country-man and colleague of his poet father,makes his usc of water imagery as anequivalent of time and a temporal conditioner very dear indeed, Given his ex-trcmc interest in the mental significance of the element of time, this subcon-scious identification of water and time as poetic imageries must be of centralimportance. The slow movement of water, ripples on the surface of water, andthe hypnot izing repetitiousness of water drops, constitute a time measuring de-vicc. Watcr concretizes and slows down time as it entices the viewer into innerdream and reverie. In running water, time runs; in still water, time constitutes

a measureless continuum.

IMAGES OF WArER AND FII,E

In his films Tarkovsky frequently uses the two images that have the highestcharge on our imagination Hre45 and water- Elamcs have a dramatic role inNostalghia and appear in various forms, from a single candle to a burningbook, and finally, a man set on Ore. A scene in which a llock or birds miracu-lously bursts into flight from the belly of the Madonna (~l Childbirth is also re-

38 The Psychoanalvsis ofFireti.e Psychoana-lyse LIu Feu, 1938); IValer and Dreams: AnEssay 011 the Imagination of Matter (L'Eauct les reves: Essa i sur I'imagtnation de lamatiere, 1942); Air and Dreams: All Essay0/1 tlu: Imagination o] Movement (L'Airct los songes, cssai sur l'imagination dumouvemcnt, 1943); Earth al/(I Reveries orWill (La Terre et los reveries de la volontc,1948), and; The Flame of a Candle (LaIlammc d'unc chandelle, 19(1).'1 felt justified in speaking of a Jaw ofthe four material imaginations, a law thatnecessarily attributes to the creative Im-agination one of the four clements: fire,earth, air, or water. Several clements, ofcourse, can intervene to constitute a par-ticular image, There arc composite imag-es, but the life of images has a more de-manding purity of filiations. The momentthat images form a series, they designatea primary matter, a basic clement Evenmore than its anatomy, the physiology ofthe imagination obeys the law of the fourclements ,. I am justified in characteriz-ing the four clements as the hormones ofthe imagination,'Gaston Bachclard, Air and Dreams: .Anessay On the Imagination o/Movcl11enf,fhe Dallas Institute, Dallas, Texas, 1988,pp. 7 and 11.

39 Bachelard 1983, p. 5.40 Bachclard 1983, p. 15,41 Bachclard 1983, p. 22.42 Bachclard 1983, p. Il7,43 Joseph Brodsky, WaleI'll/ark, Penguin

Books, London, 1992, pp. 43 and 134.44 Solomon Volkov, ('OIlJ'crSMiOflS with

Joseph Brodsky, The Free Press, NewYork, 1998, p. 191.

45 In Christian symbolism, lire and namesare symbolic of martyrdom and religiousardour. Flames also signify the tormentsof Hell. Fire is generally considered as amate clement in opposition to the femaleclement of water.

Bachelard 1983, p. 98.Bachclard 1983, p. 97.Octavio Paz, Suuri Last (The large glass),Kutisto, Hamccnlinna, 1991, and MarcelDUc/WfHp Appearance .')'tl'ipped Bare, tr.R.Phillips and IJ. Gardner, Seaver Books,New York 1971Baehelard'1983,p. 97.A duplicate of the sculpture, made in fiber-glass, was constructed for the film becausethe actual statue had been badly damagedby a terrorist bomb and was being rc-paired at the time Nostalghin was filmed.Mitchell, p. 9,The equestrian statue of Marcus Aureliuswas presumably executed in 173 AD. It isassumed that originally a fallen barbar-ian must have lain under the raised hoofof the horse. The emperor's right handis stretched out in a gesture of imperialpower. The statue was transferred to theCapitolium in 153B after Michelangelohad designed the square.'Iarkovsky initially searched for a smallsquare with an equestrian statue, hutcould not find one. As he chose the Capi-toliunt in Rome, Joscphsson remarkedthai the monumentality and grandeur ofMichelangelo's square will make Domeni-co appear foolish. 'Yes, it will make Do-menico appear foolish,' Tarkovsky re-plied. In their conversations, Josephssonspoke Swedish, Tarkovsky H.. ussian, bUIthey fully understood each other. ErlandJosephsson in a conversation with the HU~thor, September 18, 1994 on Limnos.

51 Paz, p. IS5.

IMAGFS OF FH{I

135 lhc sea of candles in the church of theMoc!onno del t'ano.

136 Domenico's self-Immolation.13! Andrei carries the candle across 51. Cather

inc's pool.138 Andrei reaches his destination.

latcd to the image of a name. The altar itself in this scene is flooded with can-dles as an introduction to the Purgatory at the end of the film.

The dramatic poetic tension between the contradictory images of fire andwater in Nostalghta is explained by Bacbclard's observation: 'Iu the realm ofmatter, no two can be found which arc more opposed than water and fire.Water andIlrc give what is perhaps the only really substantial contradiction.':"Balzac's cryptic remark 'Water is a burned body' and Noval is's sentence 'Wateris a dampened tlamc,':" further explain the mental power and strange unity ofTarkovsky's composite imageries of water and name,

In his fascinating book on Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass tThe BrideStripped Bore by Her Bachelors, Even), Octavio Paz also discusses the imageriesof water and fire." He refers to the common ritual of throwing torches or can-dles into rivers or takes, and the Catholic ritual of blessing the baptismal fontby dropping a burning candle into the water. Paz also recalls that the nco-Platonists associated fire and water. The perfect visual and mental congruenceof the scenes at Sf. Catherine's thermal bath in Nostalghia and the images ofnames is explained by Bachelard's observation: "I'hcnuaf water .. is imaginedfirst of all as the immediate composition of water and fire.':"

Domenico delivers a sermon of desperation to the citizens of Rome, stand-ing on the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius 50 : 'What kind of a world isthis,' he cries, 'if a madman has to tell you to be ashamed of yourselves'!' Atthe end of his apocalyptic message, he douses himself with gasoline and setshimself on fire, dying by this self-immolation, The savior scene has a stunningmythical power. Paz's observation that 'the mixture of water and fire is explos-ive'51 gives a hint at the psychological logic of Domenico's violent end. His sui-cide by fire arouses recollections of the wall of lire in Dante's Purgatory, a sym-bolic baptism through which all who seek salvation must pass, In his desperatedeed, the former mathematics teacher and private philosopher also re-enactsthe fate of the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedoclcs, who threw himself intothe Hames of Mount Etna. But he also repeats the fate of sixteenth and sev-enteenth century Russian religious dissidents who often burned themselves todeath.

Domenico represents the image of a holy madman a well-known figure inorthodox religious tradition in Russia and, consequently, a popular motif inH..ussian art and literature. In the sixteenth century, holy madmen a figureexemplified by the character of Prince Myshki in Dostoyevsky's The Idioteven had an influence on the tsar. Stalker, the guide in Stalker and Alexanderin The Sacrifice also have the characteristics of the holy 1'001, which is also oneof the characters in Andrei Rnblcv.

After Domenico's death, Andrei fulfils the madman's wish to carry a burn-ing candle across St. Catherine's pool, now emptied of water Cor the purpose of

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cleaning. The sequence of his successive attempts and failures is almost pain-ful in its prolonged duration.? Andrei's pain turns into the real anguish ofthe viewer caused by the exaggerated prolongation of the scene. Andrei makesthree attempts to cross the pool because the flame is blown out by wind the firsttwo times. As soon as he painfully reaches the opposite side of the pool withthe barely burning candle, he collapses from a heart attack. In earlier scenes

he has been shown taking pills from his pocket, thereby suggesting heart prob-lems. While persuading Andrei to return back to Bagno Vignoni to fuJI-iII Do-menico's wish, Eugenia asks him about his heart condition.

Throughout this sec no, Tarkovsky makes the viewer experience time as adense and heavy material presence. He concretizes time into a painful dur-

ation in the same way that he materializes air through mist The extraordinarypower of the sequence. of transporting the feeble candle flame across the emp-tied pool is again understandable through the wealth or poetic meanings thatthe image of name suggests. 'or all images, images of flame .. bear the markof the poetic. Whoever dreams of a flame is a potential poet,'-,J writes GastonBacheJard. Tbe curious sense of empathy felt by the viewer in the scenes ofGorchakov with the candle becomes understandable through the associationof flame and life. As Bachelard notes, 'The flame is an image of life ... a livingsubstance, a poeticizing substance ... an image of life which consumes but sur-prisingly rejuvenates itself">' II is statement, 'Where a lamp once reigned, nowreigns memory,'>' serves to explain the strength with which Tarkovsky's sceneinvites personal memories. The viewer's experience of extreme solitude is ex-plained by Bachelard's observation: 'The flame of a candle is, for many dream-ers, an image ofsolitudc:

THE MIANINC OF OBJECTS AND DEIAIIS

In Tarkovskv's films, objects

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rejects a naturalistic duplication of the audible world in his films: 'If there isno selection [of sound] then the film is tantamount to being silent, since it hasno sound expression of its own.':" A subtle articulation of the sense of soundshapes the experience of space in his films just as much as vision does. The cav-ity of space is sculpted by a faint sound of a falling coin, a glass being movedcasually on the stone floor by Andrei's dream dog, or the sudden distant soundof a foghorn in the middle of a silent country scene subconsciously unnounc-ing the presence of a large body of water. The sound of Eugenia's hair dryerstrengthens the eroticism of her hair, but at the same time, its mechanical ag-gressiveness foreshadows her emotional outburst a lew minutes later. A distanttelephone ringing in the hotel scene hints at the reality outside the screenedimage. Tarkovsky's sounds activate the viewer's sense of space and scale. Theyalso help to create a phenomenal experience of silence. The total silence of thescene of the liberation of Domenico's family by the police creates a documen-tary authority, but also gives particular poignancy to the visual expression,and, finally, to the young boy's words, 'Papa, is this the end of the world,' curi-ously filmed in full colour.

Domenico's scenes are coloured by the barely audible, yet aggressive anddisquieting sound of a circular saw that shapes the space beyond the screenand makes the viewer unconsciously sense the blade cutting into the innocenceof wood, 'rile source or narrative logic of this sound is never revealed, yet itspoetic and dramatic logic is clear. The music that accompanies the image orDomenico on fire suddenly slows down as if the tape had jammed in the taperecorder: The effect both adds an extra clement of terror and brings a wel-come dimension of distance from the emotionally unbearable scene. The mu-sic behind this tragic scene is Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy',61 heard already in thesequence in Domenico's house, and again after Andrei has succeeded in com-pleting Domenico's mission at St. Catherine's pool. In Domenico's house, thearhythmie beating of rain creates an impressive sense of dense volume; a voidturns into a liquid, Sound is also used as an clement to mediate between realityand dream, In the scene of Andrei's Russian home seen in a foggy landscape,his dog runs silently towards a puddle in front of the image, and as it leapsinto the water, the sudden sound of splashing water is very dramatic, Andrei'sdog enters his hotel room in a dream sequence and pushes an invisible glass onthe floor underneath the bed; the sound of the glass rolling on the tiled surfacecrosses the boundary between dream and reality. Russian folk songs and thebarking of a dog signal Andrei's recollections of his horne in Russia, but everynow and then these sounds of dream arc extended over a visual image of hisItalian reality.

comb with a tangle of hair inside theBible in Andrei's hotel room.The still-fife ofthree bottles on the floor" ofDomenico's house,Giorgio r-lorandi. No/urn mcrta. 1958. Privatc collection. Bologna,

ARCIIiITC I UI{[ OF SOUND

As Andrei's dog runs into a puddle thesound of splashingwater is heard in theotherwise silent image.

Tarkovsky 1986, p. 159, 162.In addition to Beethoven's vth Symphony,the sound track of Nosmtghia containsfragments or Verdi, Wagner, Debussy,Russian folk music, and Chinese and Jap-anese music,

\l111i\IIC"IIII-IIII"

58 Tarkovsky 1986, p. 38-59 Catherine of Siena (c. 1347,1380). Cath~

crinc Benin was a Christian mystic andmember of the Dominican order. She be-gall to experience visions from the age ofseven, She was instrumental in bringingabout the return of the papacy from Avi-gnon to Rome. As patroness of the city ofSiena she features in Sicncse paintings.

layers meanings and recollections; the sign of a cross within a circle, paintedin red on the wall or the flooded church, the scene of Andrei's drunken mono-logue, is a symbol of Christ. but it is also the Egyptian hicroglyph nywt fortown, as well as the Roman sign for templurn, The hypnotizing architecturalminiature of bottles two green and one brown on the flooded floor ofDo-mcnico's room, over which rain water pours while lit by bright light, has thesilent monumentality and sacred radiance of a Morandi still-life. The minia-turized image is curiously contrasted by Domenico's simultaneous line: 'Oneneeds bigger ideas.'

Objects collected from the bottom of SI. Catherine's pool the fragment ofa doll, a white bicycle, a light bulb, bottles, rags refer to lost and forgottensecrets being recovered from the bottom of repressed memory. There is anclement of suspense and fear because one can never be certain what the re-pressed memory may reveal. 'Hideousness and beauty arc contained withineach other,'58 writes 'Tarkovsky. The vulgarity of these objects is in dramaticcontrast to the supposed healing function of the pool dedicated to a saint fromSiena." But collecting drowned objects from the pool also makes an associa-tion with the Venetian legend of the recovery of the Tnte Cross, dcpictcd mem-orably by Gentile Bellini.

The film contains other images that border on the surrealistic: the combwith a tangle of hair used as a book-mark between the pages of a worn-outBible in Gorchakov's hotel room; Andrei's pregnant wife apparently floatingabove the bed, But these images serve Tarkovsky's cinematic poetry and losetheir conventional surrealistic suggestion.

The quarrel between Gorchakov and Eugenia in the hotel lobby is height-ened by accidental interruptions by outsiders: an old man carrying a child, awoman with a dog, Chinese music being heard from the upper floor and thesound or distant bells, This effect bears a close similarity with that created bygreat painters who, in the depiction of a legend, included prosaic scenes of eve-ryday life. It is this fusion or meaningful and meaningless, significant and ac-cidental, sacred and profane that reinforces thc experience of truth in worksof art The interaction of deliberate design and purposeless chance keeps theviewer's entire emotional channel receptive,

TilE Ai,CHITECTLJI,E OF SOUND

Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory: qualities of spacearc measured equally by the eyes, cars, nose, tongue, skin and muscles. Everyplace or space has its characteristic sound of intimacy or monumentality, re-jection or invitation, hospitality or hostility. Tarkovsky makes it clear that he

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In architecture we arc rarely confronted with rooms through which rain poursor that arc flooded with water. In Tarkovsk y's 111ms, however, these images havea dramatic power. The impact is based on the fusion of the exclusive imageriesof building and water, protection and exposure, shape and shapelessness, defi-nite and infinite. Tarkovsky himself recalls Paul Valery's view that 'the real isexpressed most immanently through the absurd.':" and he also quotes Goethe:'The less accessible a work is to the intellect, the greater it is.'?"

Nostalghia'e images of Domenico's rooms with rain pouring through theroof along with similar scenes in Stalker, arc among the most fascinating archi-tectural images ever created. Although they arc scenes of erosion, they radiatea spectacular beauty and purity of feeling. They possess an almost sacred orecclesiastical presence. These spaces cannot protect the human body, but theycan house its soul. The wealth or details, images, and associations, and the fu-sion of figure and ground, matter and light in these images bring to mind thecomplexity of space, ornantcnt, painted illusion and light in the interiors ofBavarian rococo churches.

Architecture today rarely seems to enter the realm of poetry or to awakenthe world of unconscious imagery. The sheer poetic radiance of Tarkovsky'sarchitectural images brings into relief the contemporary language of architec-ture, which is one-dimensional in terms of the scope of emotions evoked by itsimagery. Architecture tends to be engaged with visual effects, and it lacks thetragic, the melancholy, the nostalgic, as well as the ecstatic and transcendentaltones ofthe spectrum ofemotions. In consequence, our buildings tend to leaveus as outsiders and spectators without being able to pull us into full emotionalparticipation. Architecture must again question its instrumentality, functional-ity and existence on the level of materiality and practicality in order to touchthe deeper levels of consciousness, dream and feeling as revealed by AndreiTarkovsky's Nostatghia.

Tarkovsky did not wish to teach anyone anything. Referring to Socrates hewanted 'to awake something in a person who has something inside him to beawakened.'?" 'The higher material level the society has, the more effort it needsto devote towards a spiritual development,' he said 70. Tarkovsky oilers us aglimmer or hope; in his view, humanity still exists because it wishes to makeart, although no-one seems to need it any longer." In an interview in The [;COIl-omist magazine Tarkovsk y said: '1 have a feeling that Mankind has stopped

lAI,KOVSKY'S LESSON IN ARCHITECTURE

ideas, than were consciously put there by its author.'?" Here. Tarkovsky sharesMilan Kundcra's view that a great novel is always wiser than its writer.

01 MO 11111\1 10(1)

Domenico's dog reacts to his master's selfimmolation while by-slander's remain cornpletcly unmoved.Domenico's suicide on the statue of MiH'(uSAurelius on the Capitoline Square.

A flock of birds bursts into flight from thebelly of the statue of the Madonna of Childbirth, Piero's Madonna is SC(~n behind thealtar of candles.Andrei's pregnant wife in a ctrcam se-quence.

Tarkovsky 1986, p. ll S.Tarkovsky 1986, p. 152.Tarkcvsky 1986, p. 47.Mikacl Frtinti, 'Andrei Tarkovskynkiclcssa pun on juurct, suku ja koti,' Hct-singin Sanomat 9.12.1992, p. DIO. Based ona lecture of a Russian Tarkovsky scholarPaola Volkovu held in Helsinki.OIO("SSOIl, p. 150.Mikad r"dnti

62 In Christian symbolism, the dog denoteswatchfulness and fidelity. As a symbol offaithfulness in martiagc, the dog is oftenshown at the feet or in the lap of marriedwomen. The dog's fidelity is expressed inthe scene of Domenico's self-immolation.His dog expresses anguish whereas all hu-man observers arc enigmatically emotion-less and immobile. Tarkovsky's messageseems to be that animals will maintaintheir natural reactions even after human-ity has lost its reason, emotional responseand empathy. The dog is Domenico's finalcontact with the world; as he collapses inflames he calls his dog, 'Zoe!', through thepain of his burning body.

63 The entire film is shot on location aroundSiena in Tuscany, hut for this final scenea model of the Russian bouse in its Rus-sian landscape setting was built withinthe ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of SanGalgano in the vicinity of Siena.Tarkovsky and Tenino Gucrra unadc alengthy trip for location spotting throughItaly. The trip took them to numeroustourist sights, peasant villages and remoteareas, such as Leece and the trulli areaof southern Apulia. The area ncar Sienawas finally chosen because it resembledthe countryside outside Moscow. This re-semblance of landscape was important forthe purpose of fusing the actual Italianscenes coherently with the images of rc-collections and dreams of Russia.

64 Tarkovsky 1986, pp. 2lJ, 216.65 Tarkovsky 1986, p. 216.

A reference to home appears throughout the film in the dual image of Andrei'sand Domenico's dog." But it is significant that Tarkovsky uses an Alsatian, abreed combining the contradictory images of safety and threat (dog and wolf'),fidelity and savageness. In the final scene, Gorchakov is seen sitting immobilewith his dog in front of his house in Russia, which is, as the withdrawing cam-era eventually exposes, viewed within the ruins of an Italian cathcdral.v' As thefilm closes, rain and snow flakes start to fall across the image accompanied bya Russian folk song sung by an old woman; the film ends in Tarkovsky's dedi-cation of the film to his mother, which is entirely consistent with its numerousimages referring to maternity. Tarkovsky's mother died in October 1979 whilehe was in Italy doing preparatory work for Nostatgbio. Images or motherhoodactually seem to be more central to the film than images of nostalgia. The ref-erences of motherhood include: Picro's Madonna of Childbirth, the figure ofa pregnant mother carried by women in the church) Domenico's conversationwith the sacristan, symbolisms of water and milk, Andrei's pregnant wireand Andrci'slonging for Mother Russia. The procession of women make aprayer of motherhood in front of the Madonna del Parte 'Pitiful Mother, Mer-ciful Mother, Painful Mother, Tormented Mother, Merciful Mother, Com-passionate Mother, Anxious Mother, Blessed Mother, Loving Mother, BrightMother, Mortified Mother, Holy Mother, Painful Mother, Proud Mother, In-spired Mother, Bright Mother, Mother of all mothers, who knows the pain ofbeing a mother, Mother of all mothers who knows the joy of being a mother,Mother of all children who knows the joy of having a child, Mother of allchildren who knows the pain of not having a child, Mother who understandsall, help your daughter to become a mother.' Before Domenico ignites his pet-rol-doused body, he cries: 'Oh Mother! 'rile air is that light thing that movesaround your head and becomes clearer when you laugh.'

The final scene is a deliberate collage which, given the context or the filmand Tarkovsky'a general intention, strikes one as being somewhat too literaland fabricated. As Tarkovsky himself acknowledges: '1 would concede that thefinal shot of Nostalghia has an element of metaphor, when I bring the Russianhouse inside the Italian cathedral, It is a constructed image which smacks ofliterariness....AII the same, even if the scene lacks cinematic purity, I trust thatit is free of vulgar symbolism.'>' J1e goes on to explain the relation of theoreti-cal principles and creative work: 'Clearly I could be accused of being inconsist-ent. However, it is for the artist both to devise principles and to break them.artistic texture is always richer than anything that can be fitted into a thcoreti-cal schema.':" In another context, he elaborates: ' ... a film is bigger than it isat least, if it is a real film, And it always turns out to have more thought, more

THE FINAL SCENE: MOTHERHOOD

90

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I-USH) IMI\CIS

72 Olofsson. p. 158.73 Peter von Bagh, Udllliili SIIIl/"eI/lIl/U[ cloku-

vat, Otava. Helsinki, 1989, p. 611. (Trans-lation by Juhani Pallasmaa}The admiration was mutual. According tohis diary entries Tarkovsk y was hoping tomake a film together with Ingmar Berg-man. The two master directors could wellhave met during Tarkovsky's visits to Swe-den, but no such meeting ever took placebecause of their mutual shyness.

74 Ll Iobcrmun, promotional text. AndreiTarkovsk.y's Nostalgbia, laser disc. ')'heCriterion Collection, 11)91, The VoyagerCompany, Irvington, NY.

ISS Stanley Kubrick: {II(' S}lJIlill,q, 19HO.I);11111)'I-iding his three wheeler in the labyrinth ofthe hotel corridor'>.

IS3 Dorneruco's house