posted by ElDiablo at 23:15
From the 13th to the 25th of January
The London French Institute is doing a retrospective on Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and on Saturday I went there to see his film
Andrei Rublev
. It is considered his best movie and I had missed it when (amazingly, given the unspeakable kind of crap that usually populates the TV schedules) it was shown last year on one of the terrestrial channels, so now I jumped at the chance. Although I was aware of his reputation as one of the great directors of the 20th century, before this I hadn't seen any of Tarkovsky's movies so in a sense I didn't know what to expect: I knew that the movie was roughly about the 15th century Russian monk and master painter Andrei Rublev, that it was long (just over three hours), mostly in black and white and in Russian with English subtitles; so it could prove to be a test of endurance. Fortunately in the end that wasn't the case.
Apparently the print we saw is the only existing copy of the film with subtitles in English. The subtitles are difficult to read when the background to the scene is predominatly white, which is often the case as quite a few of them are set in snowed landscapes. This sometimes makes the dialogs hard to follow. The movie hasn't got a clearly defined storyline but works as a series of episodes connected by the presence of Rublev, mainly as witness to events of which other people are the real protagonists. These include the punishment of a jester that refuses to entertain the ruler of the land, the struggle of envious fellow monk Cyril to accept his (in comparison to Rublev's) lack of artistic talent, a witches rave, the raid on the city of Vladimir by the Russian-Tartar army and the casting of a bell. Throughout the movie we also get an insight into the troubled spirit of Rublev by means of a series of conversations he has with his mentor Theophanes the Greek and his soulmate Danila. It is clear that he's at pains to reconcile his faith with his art: he gets commisioned to decorate a church with a fresco of the Last Judgement which he doesn't have the courage to turn down but then is also unable to complete because as he puts to Danila "he doesn't want to use his art to frighten people". It is only at the end of the movie, when a repentant Cyril opens his heart and urges him not to waste away his God-given talent that Rublev fully embraces his art as his mission in life.
Historically, little is actually known of Rublev's life, just records of his presence in Moscow and other locations during different periods of time so Tarkovsky and his co-writer Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky had licence to basically make it up as they went about writing the script. They used the characters to convey their feelings about human nature and the situation in Russia at the time: during the raid episode, after the church congregation gets massacred by the Russian-Tartar army, the Tartar commander asks the Russian chief about a fresco depicting the Nativity: "Who is that?", "The Virgin Mary" comes the answer; "And the one in the box?", "That's her son Jesus Christ"; the Tartar then replies "How can it be her son if she is a Virgin? But then anything is possibly in your Russia, isn't it?".
Visually the movie is breathtaking, Tarkovsky conjures images of stunning beauty: long tracking shots of rained-down taiga; close-ups of paint from brushes being cleaned creating hypnotic patterns when floating away on a stream; a recreation of the Crucifixion on a barren snowed landscape, the Cross towering over rows of kneeling peasants covering the hills. As if he himself was trying to paint, Tarkovsky seems to apply several visual layers on each scene: we can see Cyril scurrying in the rain to tell the soldiers where to find the jester through a small window in the hut where Rublev is sitting out the storm in the foreground. And he pulls no punches either, some scenes are as brutal as they are compelling: masons whose work didn't please the Grand Duke get circled in a forest and their eyes gouged at knifepoint; also during the raid episode a horseman being chased by Tartar cavalrymen tries to escape by riding up a staircase but is intercepted at the top landing, dismounted and slain, his horse then tries to back down the stairs but loses its balance and ends up falling spectaculary from a great height. I can't read Russian but I bet the closing credits didn't include the usual 'No animals were harmed during the making of this movie'.
The film was introduced by writer Sean Martin, author of a biography of Tarkovsky. He told an anecdote about British director John Boorman admiting during an inteview that he found Tarkovsky movies heavy going but that he "didn't dare to fall sleep because he was aware he could miss the meaning of life". When the reporter asked if he really wanted to say that, Boorman replied "Yes, absolutely." I'm not so sure about the meaning of life, but if you were to fall sleep during Andrei Rublev you'd be missing a truly intense and rewarding cinematic experience.
Related Products:
Labels: ElDiablo, Film, Tarkovsky
(both on VHS and on DVD) and this morning placed orders for Andrei Rublev
, Nostalgia
, The Sacrifice
and Solaris
(not the Clooney remake). I also had a browse around the video library of Babel for clips from his films and was surprised to find more than a few.
, a group I very much like, but visually it takes a very simple idea and works it to great effect.
