Review of Nostalgia (1983) by John M — 10 Mar 2011

Nostalghia, or Two of the Longest Hours of Your Life. So Nostalghia is about is a poet who travels from Russia to Italy with his translator. He's there to do research on some composer who committed suicide, but he is actually much more interested in testing my patience.

Now I watch movies by directors, and being that I am on the library of Tarkovsky, it took me forever to get around watching this. I already knew his movies are inherently slow, but a movie about a poet called Nostalghia, are you fraking kidding me? It even SOUNDS as boring of an experience as reading the encyclopedia.

Well, it's about as boring as the title may lead you to believe it is, because NOTHING happens. You can blame modern movies for shaping my malleable attention span to what it is today, sure, but I really don't think I'm out of line with my assessment.

There's a four-minute scene of our main character falling asleep while it rains. There's an eight-minute scene of our main character crossing from one side of a drained pool to the other, trying to keep a candle lit.

.. I had to take a break halfway through this, due to the glacial pacing. It is well shot, as expected, which is the one positive thing I have to say about it, but other than that, it's two hours of a man trudging through ankle deep water, smoking cigarettes and contemplating.

That's about it. If you get something out of this movie, that's great, but this is a movie that 98% of the standard movie going audience will find completely and utterly inaccessible, myself included.