Thoughts on Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (By The Interfaith Youth Team)

There is a scene in Nostalgia that I shall never forget. A man walks slowly across an abandoned bathhouse, cupping a candle, trying desperately to shield it from the wind. He is walking from one side of a bathhouse to the other. That’s all. It is one of the most sacred things I’ve seen. Tarkovsky, here, is allowing his audience to wait, to feel the weight of time, to bear witness to his message. 

The film follows a Russian poet named Andrei, who travels to Italy, attempting to write about an 18th-century composer. He becomes emotionally paralyzed, wandering through empty cathedrals and fog-drenched ruins, too haunted by his own sense of memory, loss, and belief to take action in his work. A stranger, named Domenico, enters his life. They speak, they don't speak, it doesn't seem to matter. What matters is the silence between them. The slow drift of snow. The look in Andrei’s eyes as he kneels on the church floor. The faint echo of Gregorian chant in a room that seems to have no sound at all. 

I don’t believe Nostalghia to be about art, Russia, or even nostalgia, for that matter. I think it is about prayer, a deep reflection of Tarkovsky’s life, his sins, wrongdoings, etc., coupled with the ability of the camera to capture almost divine stills.

Growing up in the Islamic tradition, I was taught that God is closer to man than his jugular vein. Nostalgia reminds me of the idea in its uncertainty, its doubts. Because it doesn’t try to prove God’s presence, but aches in His absence. 

Andrei’s journey is not one of suspended faith. Like a candle’s flame flickering inside a cathedral with no roof. Like the cry of a prayer, you are no longer sure someone hears.

There is a line from the Qur’an about how God guides whom He wills into His light. I thought about that line as I watched Domenico scream into the square. As he poured petrol on himself and the people stared blankly, the people hardly moved. Perhaps Tarkovsky is discussing the measures to which people shall go to avoid great messages in this world.  

I pray for a world where we no longer need grand revolutions. I pray for a world where just a candle, carried slowly through the fog, can make a difference.