(Assignment #1)
Andrei Tarkovsky was a Russian director who made films in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Over the last few years, Tarkovsky has become my favorite filmmaker. As he was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, each of his films deal with religion. In treating his religious themes, Tarkovsky often had to allude to them obliquely or allegorically because the communist regimes in power in Russia were strictly atheist. In the science-fiction film, Solyaris (1972), an omniscient-like being is manifested in a strange planet that a group of scientists is sent to to research. In his other sci-fi film, Stalker (1979), there is a fenced-off and highly guarded place known as "the zone" where a meteor had crashed decades before. Illegal tourist guides bring people to the zone and their deepest wishes come true. In Andrei Rublev (1969), the title character is a religious icon painter. The film was banned in Russia for decades after a very limited release. Tarkovsky struggled his entire life with Russian authorities and it is amazing that he made these films at all, no less so because many of his films used large government subsidies to fund the films.
Tarkovsky's preoccupation with big issues of religion and the meaning of life are dramatized in ways that make his specific world-view very appealing. I am not religious and at times can be particularly anti-religious. However, Tarkovsky's vision of religion has made me respect religion as a way of life. The way his characters question and reassess their purpose and place in the world resonates with my own desire to help the world become a better place. He doesn't do this by creating explicitly subversive films or films that question the orders of society, but by peering inward and inviting his audience to do the same.
The characters in Tarkovsky's films are not just spiritually disillusioned, but are at odds with the exterior realities of their worlds. Most of his films follow a traditional status-quo-crisis-confrontation-redemption plot. I identify with these characters and their struggles because of my own insecurity about big questions that arise from the conflicts in my life. I too seek some kind of redemption, but like these characters, I am unclear about how to go about achieving it.
In Andrei Rublev, the protagonist is one of those most sought after icon painters in Russia during the 15th century. Rublev renounces his faith and quits painting because of the enormous suffering that he witnesses when a Tatar army slaughters an entire Russian town. His faith in religion and humanity is restored at the end when he witnesses a 15 year-old boy pour his soul into an artistic creation (I'm trying not to give away too much).
Formally, Tarkovky uses long takes to build sequences with wandering camera movements. Much of the images are filmed are extraneous to the plot. This gives his films a slow (but only boring to those with short attention spans) and ruminative effect, maybe somewhat comparable to the steadiness with which one reads a written poem word by word and conjures its images.These formal techniques find there way into all of Tarkovsky's films. Each film also tends to deal with similar - but by no means exhausted - themes of religion, suffering, and purpose. Consequently, if you like one of his films, you will probably like all of them, as I do. For those who want to see one of his films and haven't before, I recommend Solyaris and Stalker because of their relatively fast pace and sci fi intrigue. These will prepare you for his no less beautiful but puzzlingly ambiguous The Mirror (1975) and his 205 min. loosely structured Andrei Rublev.
For more reading, I suggest Senses of Cinema's article on him.
