Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the front-runners of an obscene, almost obsessive level of minimalism. Inside that mininimalism, there is gorgeous photography, immaculate design, and obviously wonderful composition, so it's like if you went to a museum but you had to stay there all fucking day. C'mon, at some point you just wanna go outside and have a little stimulation. Now, mind you, this movie is short for him, but it just crawls by.
Andrei is a Russian man who comes to Italy to research Pavel Sosnovsky, an 18th century composer. While he is there, he begins to feel nostalgic for Russia, and he encounters some strange offbeat characters. He meets a local somewhat crazy acting man, Domenico, who has stories about the upcoming end of the world and is a bit of a theatrical performer and zealot. Domenico talks Andrei into helping him stop the world, by walking a lit candle across a pool of water. That's basically the plot.
It's thin, it's vague, and you won't really know that's where this is going. Instead, you'll have long, detailed shots of intensely artistic but also intensly unknown goings-on and if you're like me, you'll sit there saying "this looks awesome and all, but what the fuck is going on?" In that way, it is similar to Mirror, The Sacrifice, and even Stalker. There's a contemplative, examining approach, and he is perhaps the best I've ever seen at doing that, but shit yo, you gotta be in the mood.
There is also a certain poetic, haunting, and very addictive feel to his films though, and since there is usually a "thing" that happens in the end, it can be looked at perhaps the most slow burn films of all time. They're very atmospheric, and certainly influential in that way.
I find this movie extremely hard to rate, so I'd have to compare it to his other works. I would say, I liked it more than some, less than others, which puts it probably at around a 2.5.
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