Nostalghia

1983, Italy, Andrei Tarkovsky, 125 min.

Introduced by critic, translator, and author Liesl Schillinger.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece explores nostalgia through the eyes of a spiritually weary poet, Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovskiy). While traveling in Italy to research the life of an eighteenth-century composer, Gorchakov meets Domenico (Erland Josephson), a local lunatic. When Gorchakov falls asleep and dreams of his Russian homeland, he comes to see the wisdom of Domenico’s lunacy.

Tarkovsky, a world weary poet himself, creates a moody, deeply inward-facing film that peers into the universe within.

“Nostalghia has achieved what so few films even attempt: it transports us to a place that no longer feels temporal, but spiritual.” —Josh Larson

About the speaker

Liesl Schillinger is a New York”“based critic, translator, and moderator. She grew up in midwestern college towns, studied comparative literature at Yale, worked at the New Yorker for more than a decade, and became a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review in 2004. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Vogue, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her recent translations include the novels Every Day, Every Hour by Natasa Dragnic and The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils.