Andrei Tarkovsky, Nostalghia (Final Scene), 1983

This nine minute scene from Nostalghia features a man attempting to carry a lit candle cupped in his hand across a drained pool. The struggle to keep the flame lit while poised between wind and water is obviously a metaphor for life itself. According to Oleg Yankovsky , the actor who performed this scene, the director asked the actor to help him fulfill a grand idea to “display an entire human life in one shot, without any editing, from beginning to end, from birth to the very moment of death.” The final static composition features a Russian homestead nestled inside the ruins of San Galgano in Tuscany.