Domiziana Giordano

Exiled from the USSR, consummate film poet Tarkovsky poured his stirrings of homesickness into this spectrally beautiful, metaphysical exploration of spiritual isolation and Russian identity. While researching the turbulent life of a 17th-century composer in the perpetually mist-shrouded Tuscan countryside, a soul-sick Russian poet (Yankvosky) forms an unusual kinship with an apocalypse-obsessed local madman (Josephson). Tarkovsky evokes the textures of dreams and memories through ravishing monochrome and sepia-toned reveries and flashbacks, while conjuring the hushed and haunted tone of a trance in this late-career masterwork.Read More »

Quote:
The opening scene is a single shot showing a family and their dog descending a hill, a large tree in the foreground, the distant countryside vanishing into the rolling fog. The camera pushes in imperceptibly, but continuously from the beginning. On the soundtrack, possibly diegetic, a sole woman sings. Meanwhile, the film credits scroll up over the scene. The family and dog, upon reaching the area in front of a hut, stop moving. Verdi’s Messa da Requiem fades in, overlapping for a brief moment with the woman singing. Once the foreground tree fully disappears, the scene freezes; the credits continue until the title appears, and the scene fades to black. The Requiem continues an audible transition to the second scene.Read More »