Its story concerns a man in his 40s looking back over his life. The narrative moves back and forward in time in a way that seeks to abolish the distinction between past and present, and thereby to evoke on screen what it’s like – from the inside – to live, as we all do, within time, somewhere between past and present, a place where the past is not past but remains present to us.
The images and sequences are presented in collage: some are colour, some black and white; some are the protagonist’s own personal, ‘subjective’ memories, others ‘objective’ memories, ones left behind as traces on strips of celluloid – newsreel footage from Germany, China, Russia. Tarkovsky needed twenty rough cuts before arriving at this intricately interflowing system of flashbacks and archival footage. It’s a stunning piece of filmmaking.
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