The closing image of the Tarkovsky film Nostalgia depicts the central character poet, Andrei Gorchakov staring at the camera from amongst the ruins of the San Galgano Abbey near Siena in Italy, the Dacha from his Russian homeland is superimposed in to the interior of the Abbey. This image has been cut through and combined with an architectural drawing of the original St Peters Basilica in Rome. This Basilica pre dates the great schism of 1054, and the Eastern Orthodox Church splitting off from the Roman Catholic Church. Nostalgia is the most autobiographical film that Tarkovsky made, the central character takes the film makers name, his own father was a poet. This film is in part about the bringing of faith from east to west, a meditation upon exile and displacement, Western materialism and spiritual decline. It depicts the ultimate impossibility for the protagonist to find a true spiritual home in the west. The flame of the candle forms a continuous thread throughout the film and represents the carrying of the soul, the spirit, the flame from the Orthodox Church. The film posits that salvation for the planet and humanity lies with the maintenance of faith.
