Customer Reviews

Nostalghia - 1983, Andrei Tarkovsky [Import, All Regions]

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This Korean edition is the only available and affordable DVD version of this Tarkovsky's masterpiece. Picture and sound quality are perfect; however we would expect The Criterion Collection to come out with a remastered version sooner or later. In the meantime this is the way to watch such a beautiful work. For those new to Tarkovsky, this is poetic cinema at its best from a Russian filmmaker who denounced banality and shortsightedness in today's dominating materialistic societies (still in a time of materialist communism ruling the USSR) and searched for true spirituality with a real challenging style of filmmaking. Tarkovsky makes patient films, avoiding the rush of contemporary hollywood cinema (as a statement too) and rediscovering the beauty of the surrounding creation. Narration plays with time, with dreams, with colors, but somewhow everything flows magically. Camerawork and lighting make art almost in every frame, while dialogs and situations bring us to sobriety from the foolishness of a culture that boasts modernity but hides spiritual emptyness. If you're familiar with the author but haven't seen Nostalgia, this is another must, as are the seven films he managed to direct before dying of cancer. It may be one of the slowest in terms of action, but the message is strong and beautiful: a traveling writer finds the power of nostalgia for his land while studying the story of another man who's own nostalgia made him return to slavery rather than renouncing to his beloved country. Through his journey he will accept the challenge of a mad man -to cross a natural pool with a lighted candle- as he finds that such an act makes much more sense than what it seems.

I was able to see Nostalghia when it first was shown and it floats through my mind like a leaf on a lake.
He was such a gifted artist and it seemed that he saw the way I did.
I thought I was alone.
He was like no other artist and there are only shadows who try to follow him.

Rational analysis will only get you so far with his movies. I enjoy them the most
when I just drift along with a subjective mindset. Although I viewed this one first
on openculture.com, the experience was enjoyable enough to warrant viewing at my leisure
more than once.

Product is entirely satisfactory and exactly as described by vendor.
Very pleased with this transaction. Highly reccommend this vendor.