Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia (1983) is not available easily with good English subtitles, or I don’t know the interstices of deep cinema internet well enough. I watched it in two stints - last night and this morning - on the Internet Archive website. The subtitles were not complete, but I kept going. I understood the plot from the IMDB description. But that’s not what I want to narrate here.
Tarkovsky primarily uses two elements to make exceptional cinema here - colour (and its lack/deficit) and fire (light from flame illuminates most of the film, which doesn’t seem to be relying on any external lighting). The black and white parts of the film merge slowly and imperceptibly into the coloureed parts of the film. Fire forms the basis of the light/shadow palette, and slivers of light mark faces and expressions with a heightened intensity that a flat light would not enable. This play with flame reminds me of Benegal’s Trikal (1985) and the two films were released within two years of each other.
The coloured parts of the film are marked in pale pink, brown-grey of stone, and moss green. The abundance of stone in the atmosphere of churches with spires and high domes and pillars, marks the film’s coldness and silence, strategically enhanced by dead greys and greens and the odd sound of water dripping. I think dialogue is almost irrelevant to this visual extravaganza. The camera moves slowly, and zooms in and out with arrogant movements. Time is measured in ways that break the binary of continuity and rupture. In the end, a madman immolates himself, raising the fire analytic to a loud crescendo.
I might watch it again with proper subtitles. But I think I will watch it several times over in mute mode, savouring this visual revolution.