Andrei Tarkovsky

[ando]

I was just speaking with a friend, remarking that although many people find Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and/or Mirror two of the greatest films ever made (and I'm in full agreement), seldom do I see or hear his name on the lists of the greatest directors. I once thought it was because he was too idiosyncratic a filmmaker, but so were John Ford, Kenji Mizogichi, Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni! It seems that the works of all the truly great filmmakers are difficult to deconstruct or even analyze in any drectly coherent fashion.

In any event, I do think it true that when Tarkovsky left (what was then) The Soviet Union, his work suffered. The intangible that his main characters are groping for in Rublev and Solaris seem completely out of reach for his main characters in the films he made outside of Russia. Russia (the land and people) seems to have given Tarkovsky a kind of anchor or base from which he could soar artistically and spiritually. Minus that he does (or his characters, at any rate) seem to flounder rather than take up in earnest a spiritual quest for truth. Perhaps a revist is in order, though.

[miless]

I have heard the arguments against later Tarkovsky, and have never given them much credence simply because I love The Sacrifice (it may well be my favorite Tarkovsky film).

Nostalghia works very well as the work of a man in exile (even if he defected after its completion) as that is the main character's dilema (and the original meaning of the word Nostalgia).

The Sacrafice, on the other hand, is so mysterious and impenetrable that I can watch it over and over and notice new things every time. The characters do seem fairly thin, but they're so thin they're like ghosts, only revealing enough to outline their aura. Of all his films, all of which are open to much interpretation, The Sacrifice is the most oblique, often leaving the details in a haze/dream-state that is nearly impossible to truly comprehend without taking in all possibilities.

[PimpPanda]

It's very interesting to see that general criticism of Tarkovsky seems to fall into two distinct camps: devoted followers, and those who are extremely frustated by and heavily malign his work. Since that he's my favourite director, it's clear where I fall into place. However, I notice this tendency (I don't even know how accurate I am) while reading the CinemaScope article on the newest collection of essays. The writer disliked the book for not being critical enough, but his article itself held the flaw of the implicit notion that the directors that Tarkovsky is put in the pantheon intrinsically deserve to be there. There's also the idea that people have never been critical enough in Academic writing on this subject, even though The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, a 1994 book on the subject, is rather venomous in my opinion. It also looks like that the essays that are the most critical are given the highest praise.

[ando]

To begin with, Tarkovsky didn't have the material resources that he had in the Soviet Union. And although his understanding of the human soul (for lack of a better term) may have deepened in his later work, he was physically and emotionally severed from his homeland. This is clearly felt in his later work. His characters are like spiritual refugees searching, if not for a home, at least a kind of spiritual footing with which to move through the world. Now, one could say that this may have been Tarkovsky's trajectory from the start, but the results would have undoubtedly been starkly different had he returned to Russia to work (presumably with the resources he has access to previously). His palette, his sensibilities, his references and especially his sense of history are Russian (and admittedly so). And Tarkovsky, like any other artist taken out of their element, isn't nearly as effective as when all of his tools (and gifts) are working at their potential.

I don't know about the two camps for Tarkovsky theory. Although I regard him as a kind of genius (who could have been a saint had he returned to Russia to work) I feel he suffered a kind of fate that was inimical to making really great art.



Tarkovsky is a recent notable Tarkovsky release. I especially like the Sartre essay on Ivan's Childhood. It's a response, really, to an Italian journal editor's "miscomprehension" of the film.

[razumovsky]

The current edition of the London Review of Books (dated Feb 26) includes Gilberto Perez's review of the Nathan Dunne and Robert Bird books about Tarkovsky. He doesn't quite get around to saying what he thinks about the books, but along the way he has some interesting observations on Tarkovsky's views on Eisenstein and Dovzhenko, and explains why he prefers Mirror to Stalker (making an interesting contrast to http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb ... -chernobyl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). There are also some great quotes from Tarko himself,too - from the Interviews book perhaps. In any case, worth tracking down.

[aox]

Does anyone have a link or citation of Tarkovsky's thoughts on Kubrick's 2001?

I only found this.

Didn't he resent the Solaris/2001 comparisons? Solaris was not a response to 2001.

[knives]

To my knowledge, don't have any internet proof, he plainly and simply hated 2001 as a cold piece of technology. Absolutely hated the comparisons, and I believe he didn't even develop, in his eyes, as scifi but rather nothing.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Perhaps a new thread for The Sacrifice?

Courtesy of Nostalghia.com comes this info.

[kaujot]

Well, as long as they use a different cover..

[Monsieur Zy]

I'll probably be rendered a pariah by this statement, but I find Tarkovsky to be vapid. Watching his films is like staring at a Seurat painting; though nice to look at on the surface, the more you delve, the more you begin to realize how empty and soulless a piece of work it really is.

@Scharphedin2

Is that a picture of Tarkovsky or Gary Olman?

[thirtyframesasecond]

Blimey.....I don't think any film maker besides say, Haneke, has ever made me think so much about so much after watching their films.

[Fiery Angel]

Film Society of Lincoln Center to present new doc on Tarkovsky, directed by Trakovsky:

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky
Dmitry Trakovsky, USA, 2008; 90m
Director Dmitry Trakovsky in person!
In 1987, a year after Tarkovsky's death, Dmitry Trakovsky and his parents emigrated from Russia to the United States, where he grew up feeling a special relationship to the images, sounds, and themes in Tarkovsky's films. Here, he goes in search other lives affected by the auteur's work: collaborators Erland Josephson and Domiziana Giordano, friends Krzysztof Zanussi and Franco Terilli, an Orthodox priest, and even the director's son. Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky. The result is a touching, highly personal and provocative record of the lingering effects of Tarkovsky on an extraordinary range of individuals.
Director Dmitry Trakovsky will introduce these screenings.
Tue Jul 7: 2:15pm and 6:15pm
Wed Jul 8: 6:10pm
Thu Jul 9: 4:15pm
Tue Jul 14: 1:15pm

[aox]

Film Society of Lincoln Center to present new doc on Tarkovsky, directed by Trakovsky:

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky
Dmitry Trakovsky, USA, 2008; 90m
Director Dmitry Trakovsky in person!
In 1987, a year after Tarkovsky's death, Dmitry Trakovsky and his parents emigrated from Russia to the United States, where he grew up feeling a special relationship to the images, sounds, and themes in Tarkovsky's films. Here, he goes in search other lives affected by the auteur's work: collaborators Erland Josephson and Domiziana Giordano, friends Krzysztof Zanussi and Franco Terilli, an Orthodox priest, and even the director's son. Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky. The result is a touching, highly personal and provocative record of the lingering effects of Tarkovsky on an extraordinary range of individuals.
Director Dmitry Trakovsky will introduce these screenings.
Tue Jul 7: 2:15pm and 6:15pm
Wed Jul 8: 6:10pm
Thu Jul 9: 4:15pm
Tue Jul 14: 1:15pm

and they are showing all 7 of his films as well.

I will be catching Stalker for sure.

[jsteffe]

and they are showing all 7 of his films as well.

I will be catching Stalker for sure.

Thanks! I'll let some of my friends in New York know about this.

It looks as if they're showing the 205-minute version of Andrei Rublev("The Passion According to Andrei"). I'm still wondering about that digital restoration that the cinematographer Vadim Yusov oversaw a couple years ago, exactly what it consisted of.

The other odd thing I noticed is that the still for The Mirror is not any scene from the film that I can recognize.

[Ahti]

Me neither. I guess it's an unused sequence with the grown up Aleksei.
Here's a higher rez version of the image and here's an image of Innokenty Smoktunovsky.

[aox]

I have a question for some of the older members.

As you may know, there has been a retrospective on Tarkovsky here in NYC all week. Solaris is planned for tonight (Friday). My question is, was Solaris always Tarkovsky's best known film out of the seven with the novices and the mainstream (if any in this group), or was it Soderbergh's film that helped it get more recognition?

Or was it always more well known because of this falsely perceived rivalry between it and 2001:ASO? It just seems like any time I talk to someone that hasn't heard of Tarkovsky will know this film for some reason and not his other six and I am wondering if that has always been the case since the 70s or if it is all due to Soderbergh.

[zedz]

In my experience, Solaris was always the best known Tarkovsky film, and maybe the only one with any degree of crossover recognition, however feeble. As you suggest, it's largely down to the perception of it as the "Soviet answer to 2001". I know people who have seen the film (and found it boring) who still don't know who Tarkovsky is. This is all decades before Soderbergh (whose version I actually prefer - I love Tarkovsky and am generally indifferent to Soderbergh, but I think Solaris is probably the former's worst film and the latter's best).

[colinr0380]

I think the commentary track on Solaris also mentions a 'rediscovery' of the full length film in the West in 1992 that led to it becoming better known again. It was premiered on UK television the same year in the Moviedrome season on the BBC, which was the first time I remember seeing it (I was only 12 at the time, so I cannot speak for how it was received before then!)

[swo17]

Don't ask me how I know this, but one of the episodes of Felicity, which aired well before the Soderbergh remake, involves a character priming up on Solaris in order to impress her film geek boyfriend. So um, there's that.

[geosochi]

Solaris was his biggest and only hit in the Soviet Union. The two generations before me (who grew up and lived in Russia) all know Solaris, but none of his other movies. (mostly because all his other movies, save his debut, were heavily censored and their distribution was extremely limited)

[aox]

thanks so much for your insight.

(mostly because all his other movies, save his debut, were heavily censored and their distribution was extremely limited)

Why did Mosfilm continue to fund/pay for them then?

[knives]

Shits, giggles, and having to fill a quota if I remember correctly. Also the state approved scripts were usually changed around behind the backs of the bosses.

[zedz]

thanks so much for your insight.

(mostly because all his other movies, save his debut, were heavily censored and their distribution was extremely limited)

Why did Mosfilm continue to fund/pay for them then?

There's quite a bit of research around this area, and it's a fascinating subject. Film funding was heavily bureaucratized and heavily politicized, and it was incredibly difficult for officially out-of-favour directors (such as Muratova and Paradzhanov - and Tarkovsky, though I suspect he exaggerated his marginality for dramatic effect) to get projects off the ground. Being a bureaucracy, however, there were ways and means of getting around it (e.g. adapting an 'approved', non-controversial text; performing some act of contrition for your former problematic work), just as there were ways and means for Mosfilm to withhold approval and funds without actually overtly doing so. And, with Solaris, it probably helped to cast the daughter of your purse-string-holding arch-nemesis in the lead role.

Another factor in Tarkovsky's case (not so much in others') was that he was a director with a significant international profile, and it was a bad look for Mosfilm to be seen to be censoring or suppressing his work, so even if they hated what he did, it was better for them to fund and then sit on the results than prevent him working altogether and have him bleating to the overseas press.

From memory, Ivan's Childhood was officially-approved, internationally acclaimed and a decent commercial hit - best of all worlds for all concerned. This success earned him the extraordinary indulgence of the mega-production Andrey Rublyov, which pushed all sorts of the wrong political buttons (not a patriotic pageant at all!) and was stuck on the shelf for several years (leaking out for a belated Cannes airing).

He only got to make Solaris, based on a respected novel by the approved Lem, after years of development hell. As far as I recall, Bondarchuk didn't particularly like the film, but, as noted, it was relatively unproblematic politically, and Tarkovsky got the green light for A Bright, Bright Day, which he'd been working on for some time and which turned into Mirror.

This ultra-art film was roundly loathed by Mosfilm, but couldn't really be attacked on obvious political grounds, so instead was buried with a tiny release. Tarkovsky always insisted that the film could have been a decent hit if it had had a proper release, because of the anecdotal evidence of Russian audiences identifying strongly with (and allegedly completely understanding) it. Make of that what you will.

The circumstances surrounding Stalker are a bit vaguer for me, but I think it was another case of tackling a science-fiction (= non-political) subject drawn from the work of sanctioned authors, and I believe it also (according to Tarkovsky, at least) received only a limited release, though not so limited as Mirror.

Another very interesting aspect of the Mosfilm situation for me is that, presumably because these guys had seen several regimes come and go, and films fall out of and back into favour, that they generally seemed to look after most of the banned films and censored footage, so a lot of these films emerged intact in the late 80s. (Same goes for the suppressed 60s films from Czechoslovakia and East Germany.)

[aox]

thanks so much for your insight.

(mostly because all his other movies, save his debut, were heavily censored and their distribution was extremely limited)

Why did Mosfilm continue to fund/pay for them then?

There's quite a bit of research around this area, and it's a fascinating subject. Film funding was heavily bureaucratized and heavily politicized, and it was incredibly difficult for officially out-of-favour directors (such as Muratova and Paradzhanov - and Tarkovsky, though I suspect he exaggerated his marginality for dramatic effect) to get projects off the ground. Being a bureaucracy, however, there were ways and means of getting around it (e.g. adapting an 'approved', non-controversial text; performing some act of contrition for your former problematic work), just as there were ways and means for Mosfilm to withhold approval and funds without actually overtly doing so. And, with Solaris, it probably helped to cast the daughter of your purse-string-holding arch-nemesis in the lead role.

Another factor in Tarkovsky's case (not so much in others') was that he was a director with a significant international profile, and it was a bad look for Mosfilm to be seen to be censoring or suppressing his work, so even if they hated what he did, it was better for them to fund and then sit on the results than prevent him working altogether and have him bleating to the overseas press.

From memory, Ivan's Childhood was officially-approved, internationally acclaimed and a decent commercial hit - best of all worlds for all concerned. This success earned him the extraordinary indulgence of the mega-production Andrey Rublyov, which pushed all sorts of the wrong political buttons (not a patriotic pageant at all!) and was stuck on the shelf for several years (leaking out for a belated Cannes airing).

He only got to make Solaris, based on a respected novel by the approved Lem, after years of development hell. As far as I recall, Bondarchuk didn't particularly like the film, but, as noted, it was relatively unproblematic politically, and Tarkovsky got the green light for A Bright, Bright Day, which he'd been working on for some time and which turned into Mirror.

This ultra-art film was roundly loathed by Mosfilm, but couldn't really be attacked on obvious political grounds, so instead was buried with a tiny release. Tarkovsky always insisted that the film could have been a decent hit if it had had a proper release, because of the anecdotal evidence of Russian audiences identifying strongly with (and allegedly completely understanding) it. Make of that what you will.

The circumstances surrounding Stalker are a bit vaguer for me, but I think it was another case of tackling a science-fiction (= non-political) subject drawn from the work of sanctioned authors, and I believe it also (according to Tarkovsky, at least) received only a limited release, though not so limited as Mirror.

Another very interesting aspect of the Mosfilm situation for me is that, presumably because these guys had seen several regimes come and go, and films fall out of and back into favour, that they generally seemed to look after most of the banned films and censored footage, so a lot of these films emerged intact in the late 80s. (Same goes for the suppressed 60s films from Czechoslovakia and East Germany.)

Excellent and informative post. thanks.

My only comment is in regards to Stalker which cost a million rubles and brought in at least four million (2 million Soviets (Russians) saw it in its initial run) if I did my math correctly. source. I suppose it had a limited release, but it was widely seen and could be described as a phenomenon.

[zedz]

My only comment is in regards to Stalker which cost a million rubles and brought in at least four million (2 million Soviets (Russians) saw it in its initial run) if I did my math correctly. source. I suppose it had a limited release, but it was widely seen and could be described as a phenomenon.

I'll defer to your information on this, as I don't recall many details (and much of what Tarkovsky claims about the treatment of his films should be taken with a grain of salt anyway). A lot of the info about the making of this film focusses on the development disaster and the funding of the reshoot (which itself offers an insight on the bizarre workings of Soviet film bureaucracy).