It is beautifully photographed, and further established Tarkovsky as a genius with natural landscapes and settings. Aside from Orson Welles, Tarkovsky must be the king of atmosphere.
Atmosphere alone does not make a great movie. This movie is unbearably pretentious and slow beyond words. In comparison to Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman is an MTV director.
By this stage in his life, Tarkovsky was an acknowledged genius, and apparently nobody on this team ever dared to question his artistic decisions. He simply has no clue of when his point has been made and it's time to move on.
Is he a fine poet? Yes, as great as his father in many ways. I also think he has a marvelous photographer's eye for images. But he really had a complete disdain for communication with the audience, and that aloofness makes this film so hard to watch. Of course, the fact that much of the movie exists in dim remembrances and dreams makes it even less accessible. I don't even know if this film had a script. Some of the actor's dialogue, especially Giordano's, seems unrelated to the scenes they are performing. The actors performed admirably.
I watched it a second time with my fast-forward, and it was much better. He has a way of holding the camera on a still or barely-panning image for many, many seconds - with no sound either, except for his overused running or dripping water cliche. If you fast-forward all of those to the next scene, the movie flows much better.
I consider this movie a disappointment. I always thought Tarkovsky would make a great movie when given Western budgets and technology, but he pretty much just remade his earlier movies on better film stock.
He has a beautiful vision. I wish he had become a photographer instead of a filmmaker.
