… In Tarkovsky's entire cinematic oeuvre there is only one true establishing shot, marking the sudden shift in location to Rome from Tuscany towards the end of Nostalghia. As he discusses in Time of Travel, in Nostalghia Tarkovsky also sought to avoid seeing Italy as a tourist, whose gaze is attached to pretty spots on the landscape; rather he wanted each character (and viewer) to conjure up his or her own Italy – in anonymous ruins, modern hotels and bare apartment. It was uncharacteristic of Tarkovsky to place his films in any objectifable or recognisable landscape; his spaces emerge in the visual plane of concrete characters, not as the recepticle holding the action but as its consequence.

Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema