A Russian poet and his interpreter travel to Italy researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer and instead meet a ruminative madman who tells the poet how the world may be saved.
In an ancient spa town, poet Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovskiy), accompanied by guide and translator Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), meet the lunatic Domenico (Erland Josephson), who years earlier had imprisoned his own family in his house for seven years to save them from the evils of the world. Seeing some deep truth in Domenico's act, Andrei becomes drawn to him. In a series of dreams, the poet's nostalgia for his homeland and his longing for his wife, his ambivalent feelings for Eugenia and Italy, and his sense of kinship with Domenico become intertwined. Winner of the Grand Prix de Creation and FIPRESCI prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. (Subtitles)
Italy/USSR 1983 Andrei Tarkovsky 125m
