Andrey Tarkovsky
In those times, I used to think that watching a new Andrey Tarkovsky film was a must. No other director had ever been so close to nature, the human soul and all that can’t be put into words. But Stalker wasn’t just some psychic or mystical or purgatorial zone; it got you inside one.
Also, Tarkovsky always went up against Soviet agency bureaucrats. Andrei Rublev (made at the same time as Fellini’s 8½) was his second feature, which wowed audiences but got shelved for five years. For the bosses of Soviet culture, he was “ahistorical,” anti-Russian, too individualistic and too Western and when his movie Nostalghia played Cannes, it was sabotaged by a pro-Soviet special operative named Sergei (War and Peace) Bondarchuk.
So when his last picture appeared: 1982’s The Sacrifice. One friend of mine infuriated me with his reaction to the opening scene. As Erland Josepson struggled to plant a tree in a longshot that seemed to never end what is now my friend said? “What the fuck is it with these Swedish movies?”
Well actually, this being late exile from Russia Tarkovsky yes, he did shoot it in typically austere-bergmanesque Swedish landscape with Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographer Sven Nykvist. My friend wasn’t referring to locale though “Swedish” meant glacial pacing, endless soul-searching monologues where Erland Josephson pushes and pulls on a scraggly tree in wan light while telling a parable about a monk; after four or five minutes: “Oh look! A guy on a bicycle! Action!”
As made crystal clear in Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer (a loving tribute by the late filmmaker’s son), there were uncannily luminous, pastoral images throughout Tarkovsky films not to mention scenes that had a haunting metaphysical buzz. But like Béla Tarr (or Gus Van Sant at his most death wish), he could slow things down to a soporific snail’s pace.
In approach, A Cinema Prayer is close to the Marlon Brando doc Listen to Me Marlon. The younger Tarkovsky avoids talking head experts, friends and family in his documentary his father (who would be 87 if he hadn’t died prematurely) beams in directly via the many audio and filmed interviews he conducted; we hear his voice throughout over photos of real life (particularly childhood) merging with scenes from Stalker, Andrei Rublev, The Mirror, Solaris, The Sacrifice: directing scenes; engaging actors with hypnotic intensity; repairing the roof of his beloved country house, gazing heavenward.
Chapters include Childhood and Youth and Leaving Russia; we learn little about private life or relationships except for the poet father he worshipped and his mother but do hear about beloved childhood garden; how father took off but then returned to demand custody of young Andrei; how getting boy through art school during wartime was accomplished by mother’s working as a nurse; “Khrushchev Thaw” of late ’50s-early ’60s which gave him freedom to launch himself as artist.
Otherwise, Tarkovsky can be heard philosophizing, examining, praising. He always appears tidy but never smiles or shows irony; rather he speaks about art and religion: how they are equivalent substitutions for each other. Art is lost without it, said the director while “the meaning of art is prayer.” Also, according to him there is no more important human activity than service which every artist performs.
A romanticist who loved nature dearly, Andrei Tarkovksy bemoaned that we have “cut nature out of film.” What he meant was that movies focus too much on human activities alone instead of showing the larger and more beautiful natural world.
These passionate ideas are inspiring but as the movie goes on there’s an overload of declamatory even self-important sermonizing. It seems like he becomes too sanctified just like those religious icons which fascinated him. This would’ve been nice to see more of him interacting with people in a non-professional way or directing what did he do beyond what Tarkovsky called traditional dramaturgy? How could he show such beauty inherent in all things created by god including stones themselves? Why did Andrei think Stalker was his greatest cinematic achievement ever made?
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