You may dread being ground down by this extraordinary film, but fear not. It will bear you aloft.

It evinces a complex understanding of spirituality and faith that would inform all of Andrei Tarkovsky's subsequent films.

Tarkovsky's version of an indifferent world is inflected with the spirituality that is ever-present in his work, a sense that while we may be on our own, we are never quite alone.

Tarkovsky’s vivid vision is both unnervingly intimate and overwhelming. It’s about art and faith colliding with the brutal reality of the world. And you see what art can do when everything else is just cruelty.