The final film, before his death by cancer, of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, made in Sweden with local cinematographer (and regular Bergman collaborator) Sven Nykvist — and recommendable on that count alone. In fact recommendable on the basis of the first shot alone, a placid, contemplative long-take, with leisurely and stately sideways movement, and everthing within the roomy frame equally needle-sharp in focus, and a total effect of deep-breathing pastoralism. A similar hyaline clarity and stately gait permeate the imagery throughout, such that, in less distant set-ups, you feel you could count the hairs on heads or blades of grass on the ground; and all of this makes you painfully aware, if you were at least mildly uncomfortably so beforehand, of how high the average smog level is on the contemporary movie screen. In a movie about, or partly about, the necessity of retreat from the clutter of modern life, this constitutes what we aesthetes might call a unity of style and content. Or we might, on the other hand, note that the camera makes the point immediately and then has to wait an inordinately long time for the other elements of the movie to catch up. In any case, such a constant and static virtue as the camerawork, thus singled out from the rest of the movie, is perhaps specially susceptible to the laws of diminishing returns, and viewers will differ on exactly where and how steeply these take effect, on just when to take a snooze or make for the exit. The movie runs (crawls, rather) two and a half hours. With Erland Josephson. (1986) — Duncan Shepherd