Nostalghia

and time. The film draws Tarkovsky's own real life experiences into this, when he was exploring art, culture and faith outside russia. We all see or feel nostalgia as a happy feeling, but Tarkovsky shows the real meaning of it. According to hin nostalgia is pain, distress which comes back to you to haunt you when you are lonely, it's a painful remembrance of lost relationships, lost world, time, people things you loved which you no longer have. The sense of nothingness and despair which pushes you to the edge. In a way naturally we are lonely souls, we are born alone, pray and desire alone, die alone, but according to Tarkovsky loneliness & feeling isolated is different from being lonely. Loneliness is when you feel nothing even in a room full of crowds, loneliness is a matter of existentialism. This journey in a sense becomes tarkovsky's discovery of origin for his loneliness and despair. Tarkovsky also talks about disparity and inequality of faith between men and women. In reality women are more devoted and faithful to god/beliefs but they are not treated as equals as men at the place of god (temple,church, mosque) how in many places women are not allowed to pray or seen as just machine of reproduction or seen as impure). It also shows that the sense of isolation exists in women regarding society, how they never feel included or at equal. The film also explores Tarkovsky's own phobia/fear about world coming to end, which we see in his other films too. That fear traps him and feels isolated. There are so many shots in the film which showcase isolation between people and things. We see characters standing at distance from each other, not communicating not feeling/reacting to anything that happens, they are lost in their own nothingness. But one important aspect of this film is time, Tarkovsky feels time is running out and the world will come to an end, that last scene where the protagonist desperately tries to light a candle and pass it from the end of the pool to another, which he believes will save the world or himself or his faith. This scene of carrying candle across pool lasts for 9 fucking minutes. And i have never seen such a brilliant scene which is full of pain, fear, faith and loss in cinema. According to Tarkovsky the cinema is the Mosaic of time, only cinema can fix the cruel reality and real essence of time and let us roam free in backward and future and alter the events according to our desire. And this is why this scene is a masterpiece. It's an attempt to save something which cannot be saved in reality. This film is true masterpiece, a cinematic poetry of human life.