People had been telling me to watch this movie for years, I finally gave it a shot and it’s mindblowing. The film is a total artwork that takes place in an interior landscape of the human soul, called “The Zone”, with deeply felt apocalyptic evocations of Christianity. Tarkovsky provides us with aesthetic mastery of all the filmmaking elements, from set-designs both naturalistic and sculptural, breathtaking cinematography, deely psychedelic music, and brilliant portrayals of raw human emotion. With all these filmmaking elements in place, he conducts them all like it’s a Beethoven symphony. This film might contain the most aesthetic merit of any movie I’ve ever seen. Another thing is that the movie actually killed them to make it - some of the cast and crew including Tarkovsky and his wife were poisoned while filming scenes on a river near a chemical plant, and they died as a result. Essential viewing!