Day 10: Film with Great Nostalgia
In a way, most of the things I watch have a kind of imaginary nostalgia
for things I’m (too) much too young for, but my choice for this one is
something I posted about just a few weeks ago: Soviet WWII espionage thriller
“Seventeen Moments of Spring” (1973) is so steeped in wistful longing and
powerful feeling that the rest of its exciting events almost fall by the
wayside in your memory, things like Stirlitz making a secret feast of potatoes
and vodka to celebrate his faraway homeland alone and in half-silence, or
agonisingly concealing all emotions when he is allowed to see but not speak to
his wife for a fleeting reunion at a bustling hofbrau (that violent restraint with which he pulls from his cigarette to calm himself is such a moving, heartbreaking departure from his usual unruffled control). It’s there right through
to the very end, and right from the very beginning, as Stirlitz is absently
absorbed in watching wild cranes flying home, holding little buds from the
forest’s branches in his hands, and when his friend, elderly Frau Zaurich
innocently asks him if it’s time to go home (to town), he hesitates and then
answers with his usual careful lightness, ‘It is,’ knowing he won’t quite yet.
For anyone who’s ever longed for something or someplace they know not what,
it’s not hard to feel how heavy that answer is, no matter how quietly
resignedly spoken, so far and so near Xo
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