faith vs. worldliness

His films obsessively contrast spiritual transcendence with bodily desire and consumer capitalism, particularly in works like *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* and *Salò*.

He explores the tension between religious conviction and worldly suffering through austere, meditative cinema, most powerfully in *The Passion of Joan of Arc* and *Vampyr*.

His metaphysical works like *Stalker*, *Mirror*, and *Nostalgia* interrogate faith, memory, and material existence through poetic, long-form meditation on the sacred and profane.