Materialism undone in a confusing spiritual classic

It is a remarkable thing that arguably the most overtly spiritual director of the 1970s and ‘80s was a product of the decidedly atheist USSR. Andrei Tarkovsky imbued each film with a yearning for spiritual truths, even while cultural authorities policed films for such ‘subversive themes’. Two of Tarkovsky’s films make the Vatican’s 1995 list…