Andrei Tarkovsky also believed that some sensibilities are culturally unique, such as a form of nostalgia that is unique to Russians travelling or living abroad, which he believed was even deeper than toska, “almost a disease”:
…”an illness that drains away the strength of the soul, the capacity to work, the pleasure of living..”
And, in another breath:
…”a profound compassion that binds us not so much with our own privation, our longing, our separation, but rather with the suffering of others, a passionate empathy…”
This whole idea and his personal experience, too, he turned into a film, Nostalghia, where the protagonist, a writer, travels to Italy to do research about one Russian composer, but nostalgia aroused by homesickness starts haunting him.
The film is sedate and slow and is full of long takes, symbols and dream-like sequences. The last scene features an 8-minute-long take where Andrei Gorchakov, the protagonist, tries to carry a lit candle through a pond without letting it go out. The camera follows Gorchakov carrying the candle and goes back with him when he starts another attempt.
We’re not going to put here our interpretations of this sequence — there’s no need: Tarkovsky already explained it himself in his dialogue with Oleg Yankovsky, the actor playing Gorchakov: “If you can do that, if it really happens and you carry the candle to the end—in one shot, straight, without cinematic conjuring tricks and cut-in editing—then maybe this act will be the true meaning of my life. It will certainly be the finest shot I ever took—if you can do it, if you can endure to the end.”
After the candle scene, there’s the final shot in the film. In black and white, we see Gorchakov and a dog resting on the grass of the Abbey of San Galgano, but in contrast to this piece of Italian architecture, we see a Russian wooden house and landscape in the background. Perhaps, you can find many interpretations of that shot, too, but we think it is just a perfect, sublime depiction of nostalgia caused by homesickness and loneliness, that kind of nostalgia Tarkovsky claimed to be unique to Russians, the one he experienced himself. In this type of nostalgia, you, like both Andreis, are forever trapped in one place whereas your heart lies somewhere else. Your nostos cannot be done, for there’s no sea, no ship, your Ithaca has sunk, and you’re not even Ulysses.