Nostalghia, a film made in Italy by this most Russian of directors, was the penultimate film in Tarkovsky's career. Appropriately, it's a tale of a Russian poet named Andrei (Oleg Jankovsky), who visits a Tuscan village spa to research the life of a Russian composer with the help of a radiant Italian translator named Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano).

Andrei's relationship with Eugenia is tenuous at best, as her patience with his melancholic state of mind grows thin. He's continually distracted by black-and-white visions of his Russian homeland. Worse, he's more fascinated by the spiritual quest of a local eccentric who's waiting for the end of the world than he is by his studies. These influences catalyze Andrei's internal journey, which we are made to share.

Lush, textured, and many-layered, Nostalghia is one of those films that can seem impenetrable on first viewing, but begins to divulge its secrets on reflection, or on repeated visits. The stately camera movements, which often define long, wordless shots, invite the mind to wander, creating in the willing viewer a nearly trancelike state. In this respect, the tracking shots echo those perfected by Sacha Vierny, the cinematographer for Alain Resnais' early films and, more recently, for Peter Greenaway. Less a narrative than an evocation of melancholia, Nostalghia comprises a beautiful but almost suffocating mise-en-scene.

The new Fox Lorber DVD has been mastered from a stunning transfer of the film, and likely looks better in this version than it has since its original release. Only in a few dark, low-contrast scenes can digital artifacting be detected. A goofy made-for-video "trailer" that reveals too much of the film is included on the disc, along with some half-hearted production notes and filmographies. Unlike Criterion, Fox Lorber doesn't even offer liner notes in an attempt to place the film in context. Even so, this is an admirable DVD transfer of a hypnotic near-masterpiece.

I qualify my assessment only because it's possible that Nostalghia is too melancholy, so wrapped up in its artfulness that it nearly collapses from the weight of pretension. And some elements, like the you-men-are-all-the-same tantrum thrown by Eugenia, are uncomfortably trite cliches in the European art film mold. At the same time, this is a film that repays your emotional involvement with more and more astonishing imagery. Quietly, intensely personal, it is most certainly not a movie for the impatient, or the staunchly literal-minded. Finally, in mapping the interior of its Russian poet's mind, it has the ability to take you someplace you've never been before, and that's a hallmark of great cinema.