POSTED MARCH 28, 2021
Andrei Tarkovsky was the finest Soviet film maker of the mid-twentieth century. Although he is not as well known as some of his European contemporaries, his films are among the greatest ever made. They are not "easy" films. Tarkovsky's style is uniquely his own. Dream sequences mix with reality. Images, metaphors, and episodic events, that connect intuitively if not logically, play a vital role in shaping the films' characters. Tarkovsky has been called the chief exemplar of "slow cinema", in which the camera lingers in long takes on austere landscapes and scenes of minimal activity. The artistically composed scenes of his films reflect his background in photography. As one Tarkovsky admirer, New Yorker's culture critic Alex Ross, puts it, "You could take fifty stills from any Tarkovsky film, mount them on gallery walls, and make a stunning exhibition."
Ivan's Childhood
Andrei Tarkovsky made just seven feature-length films before his untimely death in 1986 at age 54. His first, Ivan's Childhood, came about when the producers became disenchanted with the previous director's work on the film and asked Tarkovsky to remake it. Ivan's Childhood tells the story of an orphaned boy, whose parents were killed by invading German forces, and his experiences during World War II. The film mixes dream sequences of what might have been Ivan's childhood in a normal world with scenes of twelve-year-old Ivan scouting behind German lines for the Soviet Army. [trailer right]
To say that Ivan's Childhood was personal for Andrei Tarkovsky may be to state the obvious. He was 9 years old when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's epic about the great Russian icon painter, was suppressed in the Soviet Union after it was completed in 1966. Its themes of artistic freedom, religion, political ambiguity, self-learning, and the making of art under a repressive regime were a few steps too far for the Brezhnev era. The film is a series of episodes set in 15th century Russia, a turbulent period characterized by fighting between rival princes and the Tatar invasions. [1]
The episodes follow the travels of three wandering monks and religious icon painters looking for work. The three represent different creative temperaments. Andrei is the observer, a humanist who searches for the good in people and wants to inspire and not frighten. Daniil is withdrawn and resigned, and not as bent on creativity as on self-realization. Kirill lacks talent as a painter, yet still strives to achieve prominence. He is jealous, self-righteous, intelligent and perceptive.[1] On their journey, the monks encounter a jester, a holy fool, and a famous Greek icon painter (both before and after his death). They witness as well a pagan celebration, a Passion play, the massacre of a village, and the casting of a great bell under threat of beheading for the artisan if the bell fails to ring.
In a filmed interview, Andrei Tarkovsky, Poet of the Cinema, Tarkovsky speaks of art and the themes of his epic film - that art is created because we live in an imperfect world, that we must live our own experience, and Rublev's is about "the search for harmonic relationships among men, between art and life, between time and history." [excerpt right "Tarkovsky on Art"]
Tarkovsky's Art
Tarkovsky was intent on creating art in ways that only could be accomplished in film. For more on how his techniques heightened the viewer's emotional intensity and created "atmosphere" through the use of texture (e.g., smoke, rain), sound and silence, and long takes, see the Cinema Cartography YouTube video "Andrei Tarkovsky - Poetic Harmony" [right].