Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema

Andrei Tarkovsky Elements of Cinema ROBERT BIRD

'A major contribution to the literature on the filmmaker. Robert Bird is thorough!} familiar with Russian sources unavailable to Fnglish readers and he has a remarkable sensirivit) ro the nuances

of cinematic construction. His writing is lucid and consistently illuminates Tarkovksy's c<.:ntral preoccupation- "tht.: tragic failure of spirituality ... in conflict with its natural conditions".' - P.

Adams Sicncy, Professor of Visual Arrs, Princeton University, and author

of Visionary Film: The Amcrhwz AL'(l/lt·Garde

19-U-2000

A revered filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovskr is secure in the long and illus­ trious line of Russian masters in arts and letters. Linki ng cinematic technique ro broader questions of meaning and interpretation, Robert Bird offers a wholly originnl investigation into rhc a�.:srheric principles of Tarkovsky's filmmaking. While providing a com prchensi vc ana lysis of his work in all media, including rndio, theatre and opera, Bird argues that Tarkovskr was most at home in the cinema. Accordingly, the author dwells chiefly on Ta rkovsky's major films: ivan s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia and Sacrifice. With its wealth of film stills and photographs, this book is a key text for all admirers of Tarkovsky and European cinema. Robert Bird is Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, and the author of Andrei Rublev (2.005), a monograph on Tarkovsky's film of that name. With w6 illustrations, 32 in colour Con!r image: Lars-Oiof Lothwall/no�talghta.com/sFt

flU! ISBN 978-1-86189-342-()

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Andrei Ta rkovsky

Andrei Ta rkovsky Elements of Cinema

Robert Bird

REA KTION

BOOKS

To the memory of my grandparents.

Contents

And now, in the future times, Like a child, I stand up in the stirrups. Arsenii Tarkovsky

Abbreviations 6 Introduction: Elements of Cinema Published by Reakrion Books Ltd 33 Grear Sutton Srrccr London E.Cl:V ODX www. rca ktion books.co.u k First published

2.008

Copyright© Robert Bird

2.008

All rights reserved No parr of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, ele ctroni c, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, w ithout the prior permission of the publishers.

earth

Bird, Robert, 1969Andrei Tarkovsky: elements of cinema r.

Tarkovskii, Andrei Arsenevich, I932-I986- Cri ticism and i nrcrprcrario n

2. Motion picture producers and directors- Soviet Union- Biography I. Title

79'·4'3'02,33'092

The System

2 Space ...,

fi rc

water

Printed and bound in China British Li brary Cat al oguing in Publication Data

1

.

atr

27

51

.)

Screen

4

Word and Image 91

5

Story

6

Imaginary

7

Sensorium

8

Time

9

Shot

10

70

107 P4

.

-

l49

1 69 189

Atmosphere 209

Chronology 225 References 228 Filmography/Credits 239 Bibliography

245

Ac k nowledgemen ts 249 Phoro Acknowledgements Index

25 I

250

7

Introduction:

Abbreviations AT/

Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews, ed. John Gianvito Uackson,

cs

Andrei Tarkovs ky, Collected Screenplays, trans. William Powell and

MS,

:z.oo6)

Elements of Cinema

Natasha Synessios (London, 1999) 011

Andrei Tarkovsky: A Poet in the Cinema, dir. Donatella Baglivo ( 1984).

ll

Instant Ught: Tnrkovsky Polnroids, ed. Giovanni Chriamonrc and Andre)• A. Tarkovsky, Foreword by Tonino Guerra (London,

Ml'

2.004)

A. M. Sandler, eel., Mir i fil'my Andreia Tnrkovskogo: Razmyshleniin, issledovaniia, vospominaniin, pisnw (Moscow, 1991)

MC

Andrej Tarkowskij, "Der SfJeigel': Novelle, Arbeitstagebiicher tmd Materia/en z11r Entsteh11ng des Pilms, trans. Kurr Bauclisch and Ute Spengler (Berlin, 1993 )

Mj

Zerkalo lin .Jap:m�.:scj (Tok)•o,

)

Mosfilm

Archive

OS

Ol'ga Surkova, S Tarkovskim i o Tarkovskom, :z.nd edn (Moscow,

:z.ooo

of Mosfilm Studios (Moscow)

2.005) OT

0 Tarkovskom: Vospominaniia v dvukh knigakh, ed. M. A.

Tarkovskaia (Moscow, :z.oo:z.)

oz

M:trina Tarkovskaia, Oskolki zerkala, :z.nd edn (Mo scow, :z.oo6)

RGAKFD

Rossisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kino-forodokumenrov (Moscow)

RGALI

Rossisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (Moscow)

ST

Andrei Tarkovs ky, Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (Austin, TX, 1986)

"II UR

Time of Tmvel (Tempo di viaggio), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky ( •980h983) Andrei Tarkovskii, Uroki rezhissury: Uchebnoe posobie (Moscow, 1993)

zv

Andrei Tarkovskii, Znpechatlennoe vremia in Andrei Tnrkovskii: Arkhivy. Dok11menty. Vospominaniia, eel. P. D. Volkova (Moscow,

2.002.)

In his memoir Safe Conduct the poet Boris Pasternak tells how he ,.H.:ri ficed a career in music bec:wse, unlike his mentor Aleksandr Scriabi n, he bcked perfect pitch. Some 50 years later the young Andrei Tarkovsky, hi msclf an avid devotee of Pasternak's poetry, likewise passed up music, e ve ntu all y settlin g on the ciJlenH\ as his metier. He was never able to explain exactly what had drawn him to the cinema. Nonetheless, it was here rhat Tarkovsky discovered his own form of perfect pitch, manifested .u, an unerring aesthetic sensibi lity and acute responsiveness to cultural impulses, which made each of his seven feature films resonate as a major cultural event in the USSR and throughout the world. T a rk ovsky's

renown began with Ivan's Childhood (1962), an orphaned project that was entrusted to the novice director as a last re orr . Tarkovsky shot rhe film in the Auid manner typical of the Soviet New Wave during the Thaw period that followed Nikita Khrushchev's

condemnation of joseph Sralin in 1956. In the West, Tarkovsky's debut joined such films as Mikhail Kalarozov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957) and Grigorii Chukhrai's The Ballad of a Soldier (1959) in providing unsuspected glimpses of rhe Soviet people's suffering duri ng World War 11 and t heir potential rejuvenation, represented equally by the films' young protagonists and bold, self-confident aesthetic manner. Both at home and abroad, Ivan's Childhood captu red the spirit of the moment, and at the tender age of 30, Tarkovsky found himself lauded at premiere European festiva Is, discussed by leading European i ntellectuaIs and pushed ro t he fo refront of Soviet culture. Unlike his closest peers, however, Tarkovsky refused to allow this acclaim to drown our the more subtle promptings of hi s individual artistic 7

voice. Over the next quarter century Tarkovsk y would often find himself ar loggerheads with the system that sought above all to protect irs own smooth functioning. His next film, the ambitious epic Andrei Rubliv i (completed in 1 966), was not only an instant classic; it was also imme­ diately received as a kind of gospel for the Soviet intelligentsia, as -

imprinting their rather vague spiritual yearnings together with their sense of oppression, ennui and possibility. Of course, Andrei Rublev, like Tarkovsky's subseq uent films, was rendered doubly inaccessible by its experimental narrative structure and by the restrictions on its distri­ bution. However, the system's clumsy efforts to prevent any exhibition of the film - completed after Khrushchev was removed from power and the Thaw ended, the film was shelved for over three years unti l a copy was mysteriously released to the West and shown at Cannes - only heightened its cultural resonances. Andrei Rublev became the cinematic equ ivalent of

Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, a novel that ha d inspir ed its difficult narra­ tive structure. As with Pasternak, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature after Doctor Zhivago was banned in the ussR, and as wit h Aleksandr S olzheni tsy n, who refused to be satisfied with the limited suc­ cess of h is officially recognized One Day in the Life of lva11 Denisovich (1962), both at home and abroad Ta rkovsky's travails endowed h i m with unparalleled cultural authority. Historical study will show rhat, even under prohibition, Andrei Rublev shaped many of the best Soviet (indeed, Soviet­ bloc) films of the late 1 96os; after its success at Cannes this influence was extended worldwide. Each of Tarkovsky's subsequent Soviet films- Solaris (1 972), Mirror (1974) and Stalker (1 979) - played a similar role within the ussR, as a bell-wether of the social mood and an outlet for the intelli­ gentsia's inchoate creative and spiritual yearnings. Each was received in the West as a revelation, confirming Tarkovsky's status as the only Russian filmmaker since Eisenstein who could rival Russia's great writers and com­ posers in the power of their epic narratives, at once deeply national and profoundly universal. Ta rkovsky departed from the Soviet Union in 1 982 in order to shoot the film Nostalghia, a joint Soviet-Italian production that ostensibly concerned the peculiar heartache experienced by Russians when separ­ ated from their homeland. Tarkovsky's temporary estrangement became

a permanent 'defection' in 1 984, an event that i n some respects marked the Soviet system's final refusal to be rejuvenated from within, by its br igh test talents. lr i s a poignant derail that Tarkovsky's death from cancer at the very end of 1: 986 coi nc ided with the beginning of Mikhail .

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.urbachev's liberalization of the Soviet Union (perestroika), which wou ld quickly lead to th e demise of the country, and to Tarkovsky's n11 husiastic acceptance into the official canon of Russian culture. In th e <

h.mg,ed political climate Tarkovsky's films became a staple of perestroika 'tm:ma and television; today they remain seminal components of rhe Ru,-;ian cultural identit)� In many respects Tarkovsky's films have continued to be defined by 1 hetr Cold War p oliri ci zarion. This is especially true of Tarkovsky's final him Sacrific e (1 986), which has often been presented as his resramenr ro 1

1 he world, a warning of impending disaster stemming from nuclear war, �.tpitalist materialism and modern dislocation, perceived messages that "ere buttressed by the publication in 1 986 of his book Sculpting in June. These collected essays, written or dictated over the course of his �.treer bur heavily revised in his European exile, convey an increasingly hteraric tone that has found a w i ll i ng audience both in the p ost Soviet l.tndscape and in the West. Given this history, it is no great surprise that l '. t rk ovsk y has been enlisted as a prophet: of Ch erno byl , of his own death, of the co lla pse of the Sov iet Union or of the impending apoca­ l)'pse. However, to look in Tarkovsky's films for sybilline predictions is -

,orcJy ro mistake their nature. Ta rkovsky sought not to impose an i nter­ pretive scheme upon rea l i ty, but to im print or record i t together with all itlt contingency and po te nt ial i ty; Tarkovsky was not an orator, bu t an observer and a listener. It is Tarkovsky's sense of cinematic pitch, rathe r than any discursive 'meaning' of his films, that is my main focus in this book. I progress through ren elements of his cinematic aesthetic, following a roughly chronological examination of his films. The first three chapters (grouped together as 'Earth') address the material conditions of Tarkovsky's cine­ marie world: the system in which he worked, the spaces he constructed, .lnd the screen that he endowed with such expressive depth. The discus­ -.ion in this section is centred on Tarkovsky's early films, including Steamroller and Violin, Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev. The next three chapters ( Fi re') deal with the discursive aspects of Tarkovsky's films: the interaction of word and image (Andrei Rublev), of story '

(Solaris), and of the social imaginary (Mirror). Chapters Seven to Nine ( Wate r') focus on rhe structure of the image itself, which i mp ri nts sensorial experience and rime itself in the si ngle continuum of the shot, which Ta rkovsky p laced at the centre of his cinematic aesthetics. This sec­ tion deals mostly with Stalker and Nostalghia, i n addition ro Tarkovsky's '

introduction

I

9

work i n theatre (Hamlet and Boris Godunov) and documentary film (Time of Travel). I n the final chapter, focusing on Sacrifice, I address the intangible atmosfJhere of Tarkovsky's cinematic world, which imbues the spatial, discursive and aesthetic conditions of his films with the poignant sense of potentiality. The cumulative result of these analyses, I hope, is a thorough account of Tarkovsky's approach to film-making that will illumine individual films while uncovering the basic elements of his creative project. Andrei Tarkovsky's seven full-length films have sometimes been revered as a sacred septateuch on a par with the masterpieces of Russia's novelists and composers. His work may rank as the single most impor­ tant influence on the style of contemporary European film, with its open narrative structures and slow, pensive mood. Yet Tarkovsky has remained an elusive subject for reflection and analysis, and his name is surprisingly rare in discourse on film, whether popular or academic. This book is intended to help rectify this situation by providing rigorous analyses of his films and other creative projects. One of my major argu­ ments is that Tarkovsky has in part been a victim of his reputation as more than a 'mere' movie director. True, Tarkovsky also staged works for the radio, theatre and opera, and was in addition an accomplished actor, screenwriter, film theorist and diarist; 1 discuss most of these facets of his talent in their place. However, my claim is that Tarkovsky was a filmmaker before all else, and my intenrion is to examine what his cinema reveals about the medium in which he worked. Despite a widespread sense that Tarkovsky achieved something unique in and for cinema, opinions differ widely on what and how valuable it was. One could legitimately see his films, for better or worse, as attempts to justify his youthful declaration that 'Cinema is high art not entertain­ ment'.' In particula r, compared to outcome- and income-driven genre mov ies, Tarkovsky's stories and characters sometimes seem like mere occasions for showing earth-stained objects, burning buildings, water­ logged la ndscapes and, perhaps most fundamentally, an invisible but poignant atmosphere. The thought that Tarkovsky's cinematic work is based on an examination (or celebration) of the four basic elements of earth, fire, water and air can be expressed in rather banal ways, for instance in Donatclla Baglivo's documentary Andrei Tarkovsk-y: A Poet in the Cinema, where footage of Tarkovsky lounging about in trees is interspersed with shots of streams, moss and furry animals. However, the recognition of something elemental in Tarkovsky's films has also been ro

I

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h 1 I 11Inv
du J,,,\" of "'d1 lilumin;uing explorations as Chris Marker's documen­

I>.,,, 111 tlu•J,fi• of Andrei Arsenievich (1999) and the major inrerI'll II\\ ""·'>' h) �Lwoj Zizek and Fredric Jameson, who have written \1111111�1) o( the way T:trkovsky's 'camera tracks the moments in which IIH dl·mem' '>peak', which allows it ro probe 'the truth of mosses'. I or .J.lme�on, however, the elemental character of Tarkovsky's cinema nnpile'> .1 l:tck of ophisrication and a naive belief in the objectivity of rhe cinematic image: ' 11'

I

•

The deepest contradiction in Tarkovsky is [ ...] that offered by a v:tlorization of nature without human technology achieved by rhe highest technology of the photographic apparatus itself. No reflexiv­ ity acknowledges this second hidden presence, rhus threatening to transform Tarkovskian nature-mysticism into the sheerest ideology.• Could it be that Tarkovsky's desire was ro chase the genie of spiriru:1liry back into the bottle of modernity by using the most modern of the :trts, and that, purporrin� to capture the objective Aow of time, his trademark long-takes merely showcase the virtuosity of the filmmaker? The problem with jameson's charge is nor so much that it ignores the conspicuou ly meracinematic passages in Tarkovsky's Mirror, where the prologue begins with a TV set and ends with rhe shadow of a boom microphone, and •.vhere the documentary sequences foreground rhe figure of the cameraman. or is the problem that Jameson ignores the self­ referential ' AT' monogram throughout Stalker and rhe episode where rhe Stalker's wife directly addresses the camera. The problem is that Tarkovsky' entire cinematic project was aimed precisely at exploring the cinematic apparatus and inve tigaring irs impact upon human experi­ ence- as much sensory as intellectual and spiritual. Tarkovsky's 'mysti­ cism' can only be assessed through his technique; his cinema of rhe elements requires consideration of the clements of his cinema. Vadim lu ov, the cameraman for Tarkovsky's first four films, has remarked that, in modernity generally and in cinema in particular, 'scientific and tech­ nical progres has for the first rime touched upon the sphere of rhc spi rirua I activi ry of humanity' .3 Ta rkovsky was acutely conscious of his precedents, believing that in cinema 'there is nothing more ro invent and accumulate: the earth has already been divided from the warers'.4 This nor only means that technology has spiritual significance, but also that henceforth spirirualmarrers must be seen in the light of technology. 12 I i111 roducrion

llu" I believe it possible both ro rake seriously the spiritual claims made 1•11 h h.tlf of Tarkovsky's films and to analyse these films on rigorous aes­ ll�t ••� �o.rueria; anything les would be ro do them a grave injustice. I he power of Tarkovsky's films lies not in their capture of the mys­ ' '' d pre�ence of narure or Russia or what have you, bur in tbe way they 111 •ke the clements of cinema inro conditions of the new, achieved in the �pc�o.t.Hor through the creen's mediation. As early as 1962., Tarkovsky h 1d ,t.ned his inrenrion ro base his work on the problem of 'the relarionlup hcrwecn spectator and arrisr',s thereby implying that he would nor .llll"lllpt to portray the 'e:trrh' and the 'nation' as essenrialized landscape 111 human m:tss bur preci ely as a Aar screen that facilitates encounters. l1ue, carl)' on he viewed this relationship in rather didactic terms, calling upon the cinema indusrry to rake up 'the development of spectators' .ll''lhctic raste' in order to create 'the most advanced cinema in rhe world' and fulfil 'the aesthetic tasks set before the art of cinema by the < nmmuni t P:uty'.6 More typically, however, Tarkovsky gave a purely .lc,rheric accounr of rhe problem: 'Cinema must nor explain but act upon llw spectator's feelings, so that the awakened emotion might give an nnpul!lc ro thought.'7 Slavoj Ziick has written thar 'Tarkovsky's cinemalic texture undermines his own explicit ideological projecr',8 but I .ll'g,uc rhar Tarkovsky's only real project was precisely the creation of this cinematic texture. As filmmaker Aleksei German has said, Tarkovsky was nor a 'grear thinker' but a 'great practitioner'.9 Nor was Tarkovsky a political or philosophical filmmaker. He made little overt comment on the Soviet system; his loudest may well have been the poster of Stalin which is Aeeringly glimpsed in Mirror as the camera pans obliquely through a printing plant. Instead, rhe earth was for him the set of spatial and ocial constraints that condition temporal existence and irs capture on film. His films arc a crucible of ideology and of the entire social imag­ marr, which incinerate upon re-entering the time of human life and the indeterminate space of the human body. I argue that Tarkovsky never lost ighr of the fact that he showed the world nor as it is, bur as it appears when distorted by refractive media, as if through a film of water. The fourth narural element, air, is most closely linked ro the ineffable atmos­ phere of hum:m life in rime, but this, I argue, is preciselr a sustaining condition that always remains beyond direct representation. Late in life Tarkovsky described himself as 'a poet rather than a cinematographer', yer in rhe same breath rejected the 'so-called "poetic cinema" where everything is deliberately made incomprehensible' (ST y

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In 1.1� I, 1 he prcv�1lcnce of atmosphere over space, story or image ,1, ,ttl) ·"�m 1 .1 1c� · 1:11·kovsky with the rubric of poetic cinema, a concept dt.ll 111111 ""'�'\ 10 cnio>' wid�:: currency despite its inherent vagueness. It '' 1 fliiiiiiOII 10 \l'C poetic cinema as a distinct genre, which displays a 'l.thk ''' uct ure and performs a specific social function (i.e., that of elite Ulll'lll.1). l lowcvcr, theorists of poetic cinema have frequently defined it ,1\ 1 he very esse11ce of rhe cinematic medium. The coiners of the term in 1 he e:Jrl)' 1920s, French critics Louis Delluc and jean Epstein, regarded poetic or 'pure' cinema as that which captured the flow of life, as i f rhe bobbins of film partook of an eternally continuous flow of images. Cinema w:�s the closest marerial approximation w Plato's concept of time as a 'moving image of eternity'. Practically, pure cinema could mean any number of things. In Epstein's 1928 film The J-ail of the House of Usher the poetic qu11lity can be attributed to everything from the supernatural narrative to rhe incorporation of poetry (from Poe's story). lr is curious, though, that Epstein - like Ta rkovsky after him - showed a particular fascination with the natural flows of water, fire and wind. One sees here such peculiarly 'Tarkovskian' features as the currains blow­ ing into a room, as if admitting an alien presence, or a picture frame filling with fire. Yet i f these shots reflect a startling belief in the power of cinema ro channel fundamental forces of human reality and thereby transform the human world, rhey also measure this mystical aspiration against the representational limits of the medium. The tension between the intimation of metaphysical presence and consciousness of irs mechanical representation is what Delluc and Epstein termed photogenie - the peculiar power of the world on-screen. Early Russian film theorists responded warmly ro the concept of 'poetic cinema'. In addition ro defining i t in terms of medium specificity, however, the Russians demonstrated a marked tendency to link poetic cinema to a particular treatment of narrative. The idea of a qualitatively different kind of cinema plot appeared as early as t9.1.3 in a private letter of the young Boris Pasternak, who remarked: 'cinema perverts the core of rhe drama because it is called upon to express what is true in it, its sur­ rounding plasma. Let it photograph nor tales, but the atmospheres of tales.''0 This statement was echoed in 1928 by critic Viktor Shklovsky, who commented that the filmmakers Grigorii Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg (known as rhe Facrory of the Eccentric Actor, or FEKS) 'film the air around their subject'. ' ' Not contenr with such breezily metaphorical descriptions, Boris Eikhenbaum suggested that the unique province of J J 1)

r4

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tlw Llnema was a distinct narrative temporality, 'as if, after reading a 1111\d, you have dreamt it'.'� In the best works of early Soviet cinema, such ,,, l'udovkin's Mother ( 1 926) and Dovzhenko's early films Arsenal ( 1 929) 111d Farth ( 1930), critic Adrian Piotrovsky saw the rise of an 'emotional 1 J I H: m a and a 'lyrical' cinema, dominated by the close-up and long 1.1kc.11 Perhaps more important than any particular technique, however, ''the way that these films shifted the cenrre of the film's meaningfulness It om rhc srory to the viewer's creative reconstruction of it. Alexander B. 1 kshy saw poetic cinema as rejecting the model of representation and ll'VC:lling instead the modes in which we present the world ro each orher.'4 'In general', Shklovsky agreed, 'the point is not the structure of the mon­ '·'l!,C, bur the method of the artist's attitude towards nature, in the type of .111enrion which he teaches rhe viewer.' •s The concept of narrative thus reconciles the two major conceprual11 .1tions of poetic cinema - as a discrete genre (among many) and as the purest manifestation of the cinemaric medium - by focusing attention on cinema's u e of temporal form to cultivate modes of attending ro rhe world. The idea of poetic cinema owed much ro Henri Bergson's philoso­ phy of rime, though Bergson himself rejected cinema because of irs inher­ ent need to convert the seamless flow of lived rime into a sequence of frozen instants. This distinction - between the illusion of continuity and rhe actual discontinuity of the cinema apparatus- has replayed itself over and over in the hisrory of cinema aesthetics. A new beginning has been marked by the work of Gilles Deleuze, who, by rejecting the simplistic bipolarity of conrinuiry/disconrinuiry and reality/representation, captures the complex interaction of image and world as a constituent element of rime itself. Deleuze's analysis of the rime-image is of particular impor­ tance for understanding Tarkovsky, who consistently defined the basic clement of his cinema as rime. However, I believe that the resolution of this dilemma- and the peculiar temporality of Tarkovsky's works - can be formulated most precisely in the broader aesthetic framework of narrative. The cinematic apparatus merely internalizes the fundamental tension within all aesthetic work, that between continuous progression (suspense) and the isolated image (suspension) that interrupts and ulti­ mately ends the narrative flow. If cinema is rhus bound continually to conremplare irs paradoxical nature, as at once continuity and disconti­ nuity, simultaneous presence and a layering of memory, then poetic cinema is rbar which addresses this dilemma in the most direct and ele­ mental manner. '

.

inrroducrion I 15

Th�: clcm�:nral character of poeric cinema must nor be confused wirh

llll ll', of potentiality within rime, which cinema intensi fies in human

192.7 Cl>�ay 'The Fundamentals of Cinema' lurii Tynianov

nplricnce. In Tarkovsky it is rhc clements of cinema that enable rhe

naivcq•. In hi�

dtmcnts of nature ro be.

compare� rhe ri!>e of cinema art to rhe development of writing our of

c,,,·en rhe conscrvari m of many of Tarkovsky's public staremenrs

�chemaric totemic drawings. Just a rhe poorly drawn fur and head of a

'helped the drawing to turn into a sign', so also 'rhc "poverty" of cinema, ir flarnes and colourlcssness, ha,•e become positive mean�,

thour art. especiall)' later in life, ir is no surpri e rhat critics have recipro-

genuine rc!>ource!> of arr'.'h The flar screen allow

space', for in.,r.tncc in fade-out!> ro Aa hbacks, which contravene the m,Hc­

.1 rule, more exciting and rewarding respon e have been provided by trtt'>t�. from Chri �larker and Alck andr okurov in their cinematic

rialit)' of bodie while uggesring the ceasele s commerce between bodie!>

hon1.1ges, and Toru Takemir u and Fran<;oi Couturier in their musical

and imaginarr experience. Black-and-white image free rhe cinema arrisr

�rtburc , ro rhe contemplation� of

leopard

1ll·J br applying rather rc trained methods of analy is ro his films. A

for '!>imulraneiry of

Stalker in KenzaburoOe's novel A c>met l i{e and David Bate'!> Zo11e (2.001), a series of photographs taken in I ..wnia, where Stalker wa� shot. For imtanc<.:, Bare's Gathering Crowd

from the illu�ion of realism and allow for rhe manipulation of calc and

.

perspective; Tyni:mov argued thm colour film would make dose-ups impo!>siblc. Only ob ervancc of cinema' distinct mean of distanciarion allows for rhe intimacy of representation. This goes even for rime: '"cine-rime'' i!> nor real dur:uion, bur conventional [dur:Hion), based on rhe correlation of shot!> or the correlation of visual clements within rhe shor.''" I wam, in a cerrain sense, ro re-examine Tarkovsky through the remarks of the carl>' Russian theorists, raking rhc elemems of cinem:1

ro

be convenrions like the crude notches in totemic inscriptions, which refrain from suhsriruring rhcm:.clves for rhe material reality (or meaning) to which they gesture. Ta rkovsky's cinema is authentic nor because of

whar it represents, bur because of whar it enables in rhe viewer as a project. A poet Robert Kelly has written about experimental filmmaker Sran Brakhage (with whom Ta rkovsky has a surprising elective affinity), Tarkovskr ·�ilcnces srorr so that we can happen'.'8 It i

no coincidence rhar rhe Russian words for natural clement

(stikhiia) and poctr)' (stikln) arc et}'mologically related; both derive from the ancient Greek stoicheo11, or 'clement', suggesting that poetry i� nothing bur the clement of language in irs spontaneous self-manifesta­ tion. Br analogy, Tarkov ky' 'poetic' oeuvre i an investigation into the element of cincm.t by mcam of which a merely visual world is di�placcd by an imen�el)• p.1lpahlc realiry, the cea eles Aows of information cry:.­ rallizing into concrete, !>Omatic experience. In examining this idea I shall focus on ·uch major fc:uurcs of Tarkovsk>r's cinema as the crossing of human ga7cs in the space of rhe screen; rhe sometimes violent sublima­ tion of rhe imagt: as it is transformed into temporal experience; rhe usc of cinematic narrative ro culrivarc new types of arrenrion in rhe viewer; and rhe !>tudy of atmospheres as conditions of experience. In sum, rh�: clements or cinc111:1 arc inscparnblc from th<.: unifying S<.:nSe of pr<.:gnant

16 I tmruJuclioll

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17

Solans (19-2 Andrei Tarkn1 I

hnng it into living rime and ' stabilize' it as a compo ire 1mage th;ll, •H the very least, facilitates 'contact' between the viewing subject and the .lh-.enr original. That is ro say, Soderbergh 's remake unwittingly makes "' experience the uncanny sense of recognition and loss that lies at rhe hc.ur of Tarkovsky':. inimicable film. Moreover, Soderbergh renders a ,,duable service b)' reminding us that, as a true artist of the cinema, I ,lrkovl>ky's films arc closer ro rhe studios of Hollywood than to those of the Dutch Old Masters, and that our understanding of both Tarkovsky .llld of film history can only be enriched by integrating them in the

'·'me ana Iys1s. . 19 Indeed, Ta rkovsky's film provide valuable material for our under­ ,r.lllding of arr i n irs contemporary state, in which new media and new

types of aesthetic encounters have proliferated. In Douglas Gordon's \ lOco installation 24-lfour Psycho ( 1993), for example, Hitchcock's �,:l.t!>:.ic fllm is projected :tt a slow rare of rwo instead of the normal 2.4 frame� per econd. According ro new-media theorist Mark Hansen, the sul>pcnsion of Hitchcock's narrative ' trips the work of representa­ tional "content" ( . . . 1 such that whatever it is that cnn be said to con­ ..urure rhe content of the work can be generated only in and through the newer'!> corporeal, affective experience, as a qunsi-nutonomous cre­ anon'.'0 Hansen argues rhac, by withholding representation and render­ mg the spectator's body as the compositional centre, recent video art

captures the way rhar the surface of Tarkovsky's screen u es subrle varia­ tion in texture and colour ro puzzle our vision and elicit from us a more assertive po:.rure of viewing. Given the inreresr of so many arrists in Tarkovsky's work, it is ironic that Solaris, a film about unsuccessful copies, has been the only Tarkovsky film ro suffer a Hollywood remake, at the hands of Steven Soderbergh in 2002. T�ukovsky purists were understandably bemused; even Stani taw Lem, rhe author of the original novel and Tarkovsky's nemesis, allegedly acknowledged Tarkovsky's pre-eminence. Yet, while

redefines the very nature of the image, which 'now demarcates the very process through which the body [ . . . 1 gives form or in-forms informa­ tion'.>• While Hansen insists rhar this is a distinct quality of the new digital media, Tarkovsky's films demonstrate its applicability also co

the value of Tarkovsky's films seems inseparable from their unrepcatable virtuosic performance, even Solaris-2 responds creatively enough to be thought-provoking. In fact, the very idea of remaking Solaris reminds us that Tarkovsky's 'original' is also a kind of copy of Lem's novel, which in turn is concerned precisely with the srarus of clones vis-a-vis their human prototype. Like 'Hari-2' (as Kris dubs her), Solaris-2 is a deriva­ tive product chat borrows irs inrelligence from an 'original' and is sub­ jeer co the imperfection:. of the distracted copyist; just as Hari-2.'s dress apes deraib of rhe original design without understanding their function­ ality, such as the laces wirh no ends, so do echoes of Tarkovsky's film surface randomly in Soderbergh's remake (bur without formal acknow­ ledgement in rhe credits). Like Kris with l lari, the sympathetic viewer tries to guard Sodcrbergh's film against the shame of being exposed as an empty Aow of neutrinos. Suspended between the crossed gazes of the Ocean and of Kris, llari-2 is positioned as a human subject and begins ro respond accordingly; similarly, a film depends on the quality of the gazes that r8

I i Ill roJucrion

I rl

, lu

rh lntroducrion

I

19

works in older media where the suspension of narrative flow makes the specraror (or reader) the centre of composition. To my mind, the key dis­ tinction between Tarkovsky and Gordon is not so much the medium itself (i.e., film vs digital video), but that Tarkovsky retains the pretence of narrative continuity within rhe bounds of an autonomous work, whereas Gordon presupposes the viewer's familiarity with Hitchcock's classic of suspense. However, rhe underlying relationship between suspense and suspension in the two artists (and, more broadly, in poetic cinema and contemporary video art} differs only in degree, not in kind. Tarkovsky's treatment of the image is exemplified by the character of Foma, rhe unsuccessful apprentice icon-painter in Andrei Rublev. As I have argued in my book on Andrei Rublev, Foma is a poor icon-painter nor only for his indolence and empty ambition, but even more for his tendency ro imagine. 'You're endlessly making things up', Andrei scolds. I f we attribute the scenes of flying and rhe Russian Calvary ro his imagin­ ation, we see thar Andrei's comment touches on the heart of hi's own dilemma as icon-painter - and of Ta rkovsky's as the author of the film: how can one convert the world into an image without reducing it to one's own fantasies? Unlike Foma, Andrei is receptive; he observes and analyses before setting brush ro surface. Though representation is not per se a pious or passive enterprise, ir does involve detaching one's vision from one's own mental images, verifying the image with time. l n this T sec a distinct parallel between Tarkovsky's films and Mark Wallinger's remarkable installation Via Dolorosa (2002), a video projection of excerpts from Franco Zeffirelli's film jesus of Nazareth (1.977) with a large central porrion of the screen blacked out. Unlike Malevich's Black Square, which it overrly references, Via Dolorosa retains the promise of representation even as it denies the viewer easy visual gratification, thereby dramatizing the role of narrative (whether inherent or external to the work) in filling in the em pry spaces in the representation. This is just one more suggestive example of how Tarkovsky's films continue to func­ tion creatively within rhe world of modern art and can continue ro make crucial contributions to contemporary aesthetic theor)' The foregoing provides a preview of some of my speculative claims, but first and foremost this book is intended ro serve as an hisrorical and inter­ pretive guide ro the seven major films and numerous other projects of Andrei Tarkovsky. The following chapters deal with each major work in rough!)' chronological order, beginning with his student works and 20

I inrroducrion

ulmi nating with his staging of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Codunov and Ill., linal film Sacrifice. As far as possible I have tried to take each film on its own terms, happily ignoring, for instance, the old canard that Tarkovsky 'o1w.:how disfavoured his third-born feature film Solaris. At various times hi.' was viciously critical of Ivan 's Childhood and Andrei Rublev, but they .m: no lesser films for it. Unfortunately, by adopting a moralizing and often ,df-important tone, in his printed texts (especially the late compilation \wlpting in. Time) , Tarkovsky unwittingly comributed to the tendency of uucrprering his films as woolly mystical fables. Tarkovsky's reflections on h1s craft sound suspiciously like a negation of the cinematic, a legacy that h.1� been further ingrained by his closest disciple in Russia, Aleksandr )okurov. Certainly Tarkovsky's essays and interviews over rhe years are uwaluable supplements ro his films. His insistence on rime as the central c�regory in his films seems to me both correct and productive. However, my inclinarion throughour has been nor ro read Tarkovsky's films through his statements, but ro read his statements through his films. The organization of the book also reflects my underlying argument, 1 har the meaning and significance of Tarkovsky's films are accessible only through their direct apprehension as art works. I rake as my guides the four traditional elements of matter, each of which is approached through disLincr elements of cinema that conditioned Tarkovsky's work, from 'l>ystem' and 'imaginary' to 'screen', 'image', 'story', and 'shot'. Along the way I shall consider and clarify Tarkovsky's thought in rhe broader context of film theory, especially in the final chapter on 'atmosphere', a profoundly problematic concept bur an almost inescapable term of refer­ ence in discussions of poetic cinema. I begin with the first primal element, earth. I n the final episode of Andrei Rublev, Boriska discovers the right clay when he slides down a muddy slope in torrential rain. This clay forms the mould in which rhe bell is forged as a thing of beauty and a clarion of hope. Following the ana logy, it mighr seem that earth is the element in Tarkovsky's film that is most susceptible ro being a holder for symbolic meanings. After all, earth surrounds and supports the home, which one abandons only for shameful reasons (Stalker, Nostalghia, Sacrifice), to which one returns barefoot so as to sense each step of approximation (Mirror). Earth is the nation, Russia, and - at least in Solaris - the planet. These are all retrograde concepts, perhaps, but nor only in the sense that they appeal to an earlier time. They also have come to obscure what they represent and must be renewed in a fresh experience of earth itself. �

inrroducrion I 2 1

Earth is far more than a ve sci for nostalgia. Eanh dominates Tarkovsky's There Will Be No Leave Today ( 1958), in which a store of unexploded bombs is discovered beneath a town that has only reccnrly been reconstructed after World War 11. The very ea nh that has hosted and preserved rhc scarred town has become irs secret enemy. Aware thar detonation might Aarten the town, effectively reprising rhe effects of rhe war, a group of young oldiers excavate the bombs wirh loving attention, cradling rhem like newborns as they carry them out of rhe pit and rhen transport them by truck to a desolate gully. Tarkovsky himself played rhe soldier who lights rhe fuse, scoring rhe earth with craters and filling the air with smoke and dust. Earth is a vulnerable ground constantly covered, bartered and hurnr hy rhe other elements. The rrue marrcr of Tarkovsky's films, carrh is a necessary counterpoint to the catastrophic events - Aoods, storms, conAagrarions - rhar really interest him. Earrh, for me, denorcs rhe spatial conditions for Tarkovsky's depictions of humlln interiority. Earth is rhc system within which Ta rkovsky worked, rhe locations where his films unfolded, and rhe screen on which rhey are projcered. Fire is more broadly rhc clement of thought for Tarkovsky, who was at hellrt a committed iconoclast and bibliomachisr. Tarkovsky's films presenr a continuum of images rhar render rhe world visible while, at the very same rime, obscuring its material reality beneath the representation. By his own admission, Tarkovsky intended for his carefully crafted images ro burn up in rhe viewer ro acrivare ever-new meanings and senses (ST 89). The de igns we ee arc merely rhc medium reacting to rhc invisible pre cnce of a fire rhar is nor - and cannor be- represented. Ar the end of Andrei Rubliiv ir is when rhc coals srop glowing thar rhe icons appear. Thus fire comprises the words, stories and imaginary rhat do nor so much signify a presence as outline a poig nant possibility. Water is rhc universal clement of arr, for it reflects and refracts light around the objects ir covers, removing them from everyday use while intensifying our visual contacr with them. Tarkovsky's fascination wirh rhe di:tphanou clement of water was in evidence as early as Steamroller and Violin, where he repeatedly studies rhe effect of people and things passing through puddles and tracking water onto dry pavement, as if painting in water on the earth. Over rime, the ubiquity of water in Tarkovsky's films accrued baptismal connotations, as witness rhc fish thar swim in rhc submerged world of Stalker. However, as in rhe other cases, water is first and foremost a medium of representation; indeed, ir 1.2.

I

int roduclio11

the very basis of aesthetics, as a medium that transforms the world 1nLo image. These chapters rhus examine central features in Tarkovsky's .u�srheric presentation of material and ideological reality: rhe sensorium, tunc and the shot. Which leaves the clement of air, ro which Tarkovsky dedicated his final film, Sacrifice. As wind, air is an uncontrollable Aow like fire and water, destructive of human dwellings and human order. I n Stalker it is the most palpable trace of rhc :tlicn presence. Yet wind is also what is 1111 ed mosr in rhc sp:tcccrafr orbiting the planer Solaris; the cosmo­ n:tur attach paper strips ro the vents ro simulate rhe rustle of leaves in .1 breeze. Similar- in an as yet indefinable w:ty - is the concept of cine­ marie :trmosphcre, :ts rhm which both makes the film human and opens it up to the endlcs and inhospit:thlc Aows of nature. Atmosphere is the clemcnr of T:trkovsky's creative world that bridges his anistic and theo­ retical registers of discomsc. It is my ultimate task to define and account for rhis elusive clement that anim�ltcs rhc image without ever becoming visible. •�

i\ nore on technical marrers. I have taken rhe libt::rty of translating rhe titles

of Tarkovsky's films and orhcr works as rhey srrike my car in the Russian. This nor only involves rhe choice of /tlfli/S Childhood over the nonsen­ sical bur deeply ingrained My Name is Ivan, and of Time of Travel instead of rhe incorrect Travel in Time, but also rhe elision of rhe definite article from the films Steamroller nnd Violin, Mirror and Sacrifice. When nor drawing direct comparisons, I have used rhe ride Andrei Rublev for borh exranr versions of rhe film, despite my preference for the 1966 ''ersion that actually bears rhe ririe The Passion According to Andrei. While I have consulted as much of the documentary and secondary lit­ erature as possible, including unpublished archival holdings, I have tried throughout ro avoid duplicating material that is otherwise available in English. I eire exisring translations when available, although for the sake of accuracy and consistency I have provided my own translations of Tarkovsky's rexrs. I n light of rhc vast number of different editions my references ro Tarkovsky's diaries provide only the date of the relevant notanon. .

imroducrion I

2.3

ear

1 The System

,,. ,, I I, olm)

When the door opens in rhe first shot of Steamroller and Violin one 'l'll!.cs rhe curtain going up on Andrei Tarkovsky's career in cinema. ( )ut of this door will proceed an entire line of characters, from the t11cdieval icon-painter Andrei Rublcv to rhe post-apocalyptic visionaries l>omcnico and Alexander. It will open onto native landscapes and alien worlds, onro scenes of medieval desolation and post-historical apoca1> psc, and onto rhe innermost recesses of conscience. Yet, for the momcnr, rhe open door reveals only a chubby little schoolboy named \asha with a violin case and music folder, who awkwardly and renta­ l ivcly emerges into the familiar, if hostile courtyard of a Stalin-era block of Aars. Tarkovsk>r's seven major films have achieved such exclusive status in \oviet cinema that i r is easy ro ignore rhe degree ro which he, like little Sa ha, was at home in the very system that threatened and ultimately rejected him. There was, of course, no other way for him to pursue his vocation in the USSR, where everything from the total number of releases to each studio's supply of film-srock was stipulated in the yearly plan issued by rhe government, whose monopoly on film production was exer­ cised through rhe State Committee for Cinema Affairs (Goskino). While Tarkovsky's relationship with the authorities was never easy, his travails taught him how to use the system for his own ends. In years when numerous major films were banned outright, ro be released only with the onset of perestroika in the mid-1 98os, all of Tarkovsky's films were approved for domestic and foreign release and were reviewed in the Soviet press. Moreover, while Tarkovsky was at times inconvenient for the system, he was irs greatest international star throughout the 196os and '7os, an invaluable advertisement for Soviet art and the source of scarce

hard-currency earnings. In shorr, Tarkovsky and the system found ir within their mun1al interest ro achieve an accommodation, however tense and uncomfortable. The full sror)' of this fragile peace reaches epic proportions, especially in the years of Andrei Rublev and Mirror, which were both completed and released to international acclaim despite entrenched opposition within the Soviet bureaucracy. However, its main lineaments can be recogn ized already with Ta rkovsky's first steps in film, at a rime when he was unknown beyond rhe narrowly professional com­ mun ity, and when his high self-estimation had not yet been marched by comparable achievements and was certainly not shared unconditionally, even by his closest reachers and colleagues. Andrei Tarkovsky wa born on 4 April 1932. near Iurevets on the River Volga to the cast of Moscow, into a prominent family of intellectuals. His father, Arsenii Tarkovsky, was a respected but somewhat margin::tl poet who became a war hero in World War 1 1 . Arscnii Tarkovsky left his family soon after Andrei's birth, and rhe future director grew up in a household consisting of his mother Mariia Vishniakova and his sister Marina. He began his university studies at a n institute for Asian languages, but soon left and, after a term spent on a geological expedition, enrolled i n 1955 at VGIK, the main Soviet cinema institute, i n Moscow. Little i n Tarkov ky's previous life had suggested film directing as a vocarion, and he did nor approach his course of study as a maverick with firm preconceptions. Tarkovsky's education at VGIK formed him as a dis­ tinctly Soviet filmmaker in the academic tradition established by Sergei Eisenstein. In a 1966 interview, noting the careful orchestration of shot structure in his fir r feature-length film, Ivan's Childhood, Tarkovsky characterized it as 'a typical VGIK film, thought up i n rhe srudenr dor­ mitor>''·' Claiming rhat he had become a director only after Ivan's Childhood, he declared that, above all, 'studying at VGIK solidly con­

vinced me that you can't teach art'.• However, his srudenr films vividly illustrate the many benefits that Tarkovsky derived from his studies. For one thing, VGIK acquainted him with the very latesr in foreign film trends, such as Italian Nco-realism and rhe French New Wave. For another, one should not ignore the fertile creative environment fostered by Tarkovsky's classmates, from Andron Konchalovsky to Vasilii Shukshin and Orar losscliani, who would go on ro constitute an entire generation of young Soviet filmmakers. z.8 I c�nh

\Iter assisting JVI:trlen Khursiev on rhe film The Two Fedors in 1956, "l11d1 'r:trred Va ilii Shukshin, Tarkovsky and his future brother-in-law

\1, k,,mdr Gordon co-directed rhe short film The Killers in the same year, I 1 nlon Ernest Hemingway's short story and also featuring Shukshin. I I • J... dlers i in many respects a crude celebration of American film noir ""I J.III-agc culture, replete with blatant errors (from misspclt English 111 •ll lpttons ro dum y cuts) :tnd misjudgements (such as the' egro' cook 111 hi.H:kface). More accomplished is Tarkovsky's made-for-television 1111>\ 1c Ihere Will Be No Leave Todlly ( 1958), which made a deep impresu m on rhe denizen of VGIK and became a staple of commemorations of \\orld War 11.1 It tell of a detachment of young soldiers sent to remove a hur u:d each..: of explosives left over from the German occupation. \Vhile ll ltl.unmg firmly in the Soviet mould of narratives of patriotic heroism, it n\\nl ,, particular debt to Henri-Georges Clouzot's Wages of Fear ( 1953). I tkl· hrs rrench counterparts, Tarkovsky proved inclined to utilize classic ,1, \ 1ccs of suspense ro probe metaphysical resonances within a plain, 1111.1dorned picture of reali ty. Nonetheless, Tarkovsky n:mained within tlw mechanisms of rhe Soviet system ;1nd rhe world of the Soviet imaginary, I" " cvidenr from his collabornrion wirh Andron Konchalovsky and Oleg t >wt msk>' on a screenplay 'A nrarcric: Disranr Land', a heroic talc of cxplor­ lllllll in the spirit of Mikhail Kalarozov's The Unsenl Letter.� 13)' contrast with his early noir, Tarkovsky's first feature film

\ft'dmroller and Violin appears a quaint and harmless cinematic poem, prmocative only in irs unabashed innocence. It tells of the friendship hctwccn rhe young musician Sasha and a steamroller driver Sergei, who '·"c the lirrle boy and his fragile violin from rhe bullies who hang Hound Sasha's building in a Moscow rhar still bears the scars of war. l im rc\·erie is curtailed by the intervention of Sasha's morher, and Sasha " left to dream of a symphonic harmony between people and brighrly u1loured steamrollers in the renewed ciry cape. It is still patently amateur­ "h in ome regards; for instance, right at the beginning of the film one of the boy is playing keep-up with a ball, and when he clearly drops rhe ball he keeps kicking rhe air as if nothing had happened. If Tarkovsky had nor m.1de his other films, one would hardly be talking about Steamroller and Vwlin at all. Yet Steamroller and Violin is important not only as Tarkovsky's debut and the beginning of his collaboration wi rh co-scrcenwri ter 1\ndron Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, c:1meraman Vadim lusov and com­ poser Viachesbv Ovchinnikov. In rhe first place, since ir was produced the S)'Stcm I

29

a a student project under clo e up�:rvision, i t is one of Ta rkovsky's best-documented films. Moreover, it provides a kind of compendium of all the techniques he learned at VGIK, as well a a tentative departure from the e tabli hed patterns of Soviet film. Surprisingly, i t was Tarkovsk>''s subrle innovation in this seemingly harmless short film rhat inaugurated the adversarial tone that subsequenrly came to dominate his relationship with the Soviet cinema authorities. Unlikely as i t seems, Steamroller and Violin was hounded from pillar ro posr by vigilant aesrheric watchdogs and was lucky to have been released ar all. Tarkovsky's project for Steamroller and Violin was accepted in 1960 a his final srudenr work and was lared for production at the Fourth Artistic Unit 'Yourh' (lunost') of Mosfilm, which specialized in chil­ dren's films. lr was to be a short film in colour, which if approved would be senr ro general relea c. Tarkovsky's supervisor was Mikhail Romm, an accomplished director and sympnrheric rcncher who ar rhe rime was resting rhc boundaries of posr-Stalin liberalization wirh his film Nine Days of a Single Year ( 1961 ), which provided a rare glimpse inro rhe for­ hidden world of nuclear physics. In rhe Soviet film syswm, preliminary npprovnl and even production were ofren rhe easy parts of rhe process. Ench completed film was shown ar Mosfilm for rhe members of the Artistic Council, who then subjected the work to comprehensive critique and discussion. As at previous stages, everything was up for collective deci ion, from rhe screenplay to casring, and from the scenery ro rhe camera angles and editing; many of the comments were subjective and amounred ro perry sniping. Tarkovsky accepted collegial review as pro­ ductive in principle, willingly irring in on discussions of others' work. Invariably, though, Tarkovsky did not relish his colleagues' responses ro his films.s At a meeting of rhe arrisric council of rhe Fou rrh Creative Unit on 6 .January 1961 Steamroller and Violin was subjected to a withering critique. Screenplay editorS. Ia. Bakhmer'eva insisted that, given irs sub­ jeer marrer, there was a dearth of mu ic in the film: 'I am nor at all persuaded by A. Tarkovsky's claim rhar he likes rhe fact that the viewer leaves the picture feeling that there is nor enough music.'6 The film was criticized for irs slow pace and weak dialogue. For M. Kh. Kochncv there was in ufficienr humour and it failed ro reach 'correct language usag.c'.7 He concurred with N. L. Bysrrova rhat ir was nor a film for children. While annoying, such nip,gling criticisms were never going tO concern Tarkovsky roo much. More worrying was the consensus view 10

I c:mh

1h.1t Steamroller and Violin displayed profounc.l ideological flaws. The 1 trher inisrcr characters of the teacher and mother, both of whom seem 111 Jclight in thwarting Sasha's dreams, implied a distressingly dis­ ll"'J1l:crful view of authority. The film's mo t rabid criric was one T. V. \ I.n n:evn, who condemned rhe film ourrighr as 'inrellccrual-philosoph­ ll.ll'. For Marveeva, even Sasha 's render age constituted an ideologica I 1111�1ake: 'He !Sashn] is nor a pioneer, nor even a little Octobrire. As of H"l, rhe norms of the social collective exert no influence over him.'� The 111.1in bone of contention, however, was 'the theme of rich and poor': "·"hn appeared as a spoilt little rich kid, socially disrincr from the street �hildren and the worker Sergei. When pressed, Tarkovsky's critics referred h:'� to rhe narrnrive rhan to formal aspects such as shot angles and t Jn1ng. Bakhmcr'eva clarified: Often this shift in accenr occurs due ro lapses. The carved leg of rhe piano, shot in close-up, has made rhe room look like a rich salon. It is evident that some derails nnd perspectives which have surprised even rhc director arc responsible for re-interpreting rhis scene.Y It w,t� as if the story would be basically acceptable if only i t were tole.! traighr, without 'derails and perspectives'. This aesthetic critique ccrilr foreshadowed Tarkovsky's more serious problems to come, while l.tlling arrenrion ro rhe way that his directorial technique would shift rhe l'mpha is in his films from narrative representation ro visual presentation. The problem was summa rized by Kochnev, who alleged rhat the him was 'objectivist' since i t refrained from staring the 'nuthorial attitude to the depicted phenomenon'. '0 lusov was :macked for the same alleged 'objectivism': 'How can an experienced cameramnn [ . . . j pass through the entire film a a figure of silence. ( . . . ] You should have taken up a definite position', Kochnev rold lusov." It mny seem strange ro call h1�o'·'s camerawork a 'figure of silence' when nor one shot is free of con­ 'Picuous refocusing, signalling a switch of perspectives within the lr.1me. The lack of a unifying authorial perspective also rendered rhc n,trrative insufficienrly clear. M. D. Vol'pin complained about rhe dance of rhc steamrollers at rhe end of rhc film: 'Nor a single viewer will understand rhat ir is ISasha's] dream.'" M. E. Gindin bid rhe blame on f\likhail Romm for encouraging excessive expcrimcnt:Hion, which may be .tcceprablc in film school, bur is 'impossible in :1 work which is supposed rile sysrcm I

31

educate, entertain, and how instructive rhings'. •.l What seems ro be ar issue is neither 'objectivism' nor 'subjectivism', bur the very multi­ plicity of perspectives, none of which is privileged as authorial and, therefore, authoritative. The situation was exacerbated by Tarkovsky's prickly response ro the to

criticisms. The deputy head of the Artistic Council, V. N. Zhuravlcv, summarized the meeting by predicting that Tarkovsky 'can become a good director of Soviet cinema if he rakes into account all of his shortcoming s'. Turning to Tarkovsky, he advised him to show more flexibility: 'Andrei, )'Oll will never be able to work well if you behave like rhis.''4 Thanking his elder colleague for their input, Tarkovsky noted that in the presence of a stenographer he was obliged ro register his disagreement with the ideo­ logical critique, which he couched in typically strident language:

I don't understand how the idea arose that we see here a rich little violinist and a poor worker. I don't understand rhis, and I probably never will he nblc to in Ill)' entire life. If it is based on the fact rhar everything is rooted in the contrast in the interrelations between the boy nnd rhc worker, then the point here is the contrast between art nnd labour, because these arc different things and only at the stage of communism will man find it possible ro be spiritually nnd physically organic. Bur this is a problem of the furure and I will nor allow this ro be confused. This is what the picture is dedicated ro. •s Tarkovsky crowned his spirited rejoinder by exclaiming rhar rheir enrire critique was 'forced' (vysosa11o iz pal'tsa, literally 'sucked out of their fingers'). More to the point, he rook issue with the qualification of the film a 'reali ric', revealing in the process a surprisingly nuanced appreci­ ation of rhis ambivalent term. Reali 111 is a flexible concept. The realism of Mayakovsky, the rea lism of Pausrovsky, the realism of Serafimovich, the realism of Ole ha and others, these arc all different. And when we speak of rea lism we musr speak regarding our own work. In the present case we arc dealing with a short film. A short must have irs own genre. This picture must belong to a certain genre and we have tried ro preserve this genre. Our task was to cr�:atc a convcnrional reality. Whar is the convention? That we could not develop the characters of rh�: Jl

I c�rth

h�:roes over four or five reels (chasti) in the manner of Gorky or Furmanov. We develop them in a purely conventional manner, �chemaricall)', which is what we are being condemned for.'6 \\ hen asked whose manner he worked in, Ta rkovsky answered: 'We \\nrk i n no one' manner' ('My ni pod kogo ne rabotaem'). In these 'P.lr�c, off-the-cuff comments Tarkovsky moves seamlessly from sran­ d.trd categories of Soviet artistic discourse (communism, realism) to ,t.1rtlingly original aesthetic conceptions. For him, apparcnrly, there was no outright conrradiction between the system's thematic and srylisric lumrarion and the ambitions of his cinematic project. The problem '' ·'' in read that his treatment of the conventional themes and stories of 1 he ovier S)'Stem avoided staking out an explicit position, and this lack of
JJ

windO\v that is uncovered as huge wh i te leners are drawn upwards in from of ir. Evidenrly the letters are ro form a political slogan for May Day, displayed, as was customary in the ussR, on rop of the building. Sasha takes no notice of the slogan that is imposed on the world; instead, he looks beyond the slogan into the window, where he sees himself reflected in four different mirrors. Then, by shifting his posi­

n,� face of Soviet

.un horiry: Sasha·s violin t�.1Ch�r (St�mnro/lcr .uul Violin).

tion, he views the surrounding world through the same multiplication. In the screenplay Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky commented: 'The mir­ ror surfaces slice up the sparkling space and heap onto each other the reflected objects, which are cast from one dimension into another, engendering a new, wonderful and fantastic world of colour.' '7 The quinrupled shot of a reversed clock indica tes that such visua l reflections actually change the flow of rime, an impression that is heightened by a n abstract aural pattern. Ta rkovsky's and Konchalovsky's screenplay includes intriguing mu sica l instructions for this scene (which also sug­ gests why the composer Viachcslav Ovchinnikov later laid claim ro having invemed concrete music}: The music thar Sasha composes appears from concrete sounds which he hears as he looks into the reflections in d1e mirror. These concrete sounds are developed by a musical instrument. The musical sounds explode and are extinguished, but still explode and merge into a melody, which marks time more than it develops. It is harmonic development with instrumental enrichmenr.'8 and rc\'crsccl (Steamroller and Violin).

Time splintered

rhe mi rror augments the harmonic resonance of the images, without propell ing the narrative forward; by contrast, narrative development requires Sasha to avert his gaze and move away. As soon as he does, the 'oundrrack changes to a fl uent passage of piano-playing. This scene is rcrnnrkably precise sraremenr of Tarkovsky's view of ideology and art. rhc camera suspends the forward thrust of material and ideological rcaliry i n moments of complex, multiplied vision, which mark rime only 10 allow time to begin to flow with renewed density. A similar moment occurs during Sasha's lesson. He plays the begin­ rung of a passage three times, each rime interrupted by the grim teacher, .1

who is the closest Tarkovsky ever came ro a caricature of Soviet author­ ities. Sasha's dreamy gaze is depicted as a lcftwards pan across the music, suggesting that he has begun reading ir in reverse. Saying 'you must keep count', the teacher tries to dispel Sasha's daydreaming by

\'"'·'I resonance (Stmmrol/er ilml Violin). J.l

I carrh

rhc sysrcm I

J5

-

setting a metronome, but the onset of irs ticking heralds the end of his playing. Within the diegesis of the film, art is a force that halts and even reverses time, providing revela tory 'crysta Is of time'.'9 This is why Tarkovsky claimed to have lim ited the amount of acrual music despite irs importance co the story: he wanted the viewer to leave the film with a desire for more music. The screenplay notes: 'The music is born in rhe boy's soul but cannot yet become a finished work. And unexpectedly it is cut by dissonance. The "shards" of the wrecked design Ay apart.''0 Instead o f imposing a conclusive storyline or soundtrack on life, Tarkovsky identifies and celebrates dissonance and discontinuity as markers of expansively meaningful moments. Sasha never gets beyond a single phrase of his music, and he is thwarted in his desire get to see the classic Soviet film Chapaev with Sergei. These two works remain frozen potentialities, rhe full realization of which becomes the viewer's project i n real rime. The shifts and reversals in perspective layer the viewer's experience of the narrative, just as a violin's resonators enrich its sound. Soon after Sasha explains rhe function of the violin's 'holes' to Sergei, reflections of the rain on the walls turn their final encounrer into a magical, under­ water dream, as if mediated by visual resonators. In a later scene, Sasha's conversation with bis mother is shown mostly in mirror reflec­ tions, reducing her presence to that of a sinister apparition. However, turning an alarm clock towards the mirror, Sasha i s able tO freeze the momenr as a play of depths and distances, o f harmonies and rhythms. Similarly, Sasha's playing throws Sergei into a reverie of recollection abour the war, which appears to be the source of his mental blockage and his mortal seriousness. His only response is work, which in the world of the film is equated to Sasha's music-making. However, the ending, which Tarkovsky's elder colleagues found so confusing, succeeds precise­ ly because it is not clearly tagged. It resonates with all of the dimensions o f experience that have been shown throughout the film in and out of focus, near and far, in mirrors and kaleidoscopes, in aural shards and fluent music, creating a dense world in which the characters share without controlling- or even understanding- its causality and significance. Despite the Aap over Steamroller and Violin, Tarkovsky was offered a full posirion a a directOr in Mosfilm's First Creative Unir, aptly named 'Time' ('Vremia'). His first assignment was a rough one, but in retrospect ir was a marvellous stroke of luck. Vladimir Bogomolov's war story 'Ivan' (1958) 36 I carrh

It td hccn adapted for the screen by the author in collaboration with • ll'l'nwritcr Mikhail Papava, and production had been initiated in 1961 1>1 .111 untried di rector named Eduard Abalov. The rushes from Abalov's hoot proved unacceptable for the Unit's artistic cottncil, which fired the h.tpk-<.� Abalov and his director of photography S. Galadzh in December 1•160. Against the wishes of Bogomolov, who campaigned for 'one of the 1 'Jlcricnced directors who know the war situation well', the studio leader­ 'h•p .tssigned rhe project to rhe brash young Tarkovsky.'' In his 'explication' of his project Tarkovsky expressed his intention 1 1 1 .. h.upen the film's anti-war message. Noting that one version of the '� tl'l�nplay had Ivan surviving, Tarkovsky exclaimed: 'That's impossible; t h.H doesn't correspond ro the truth. One mustn't escape the war, but 1 . 1 1 her speak about it with all possible passion.' Stressing that the story tt l\olved trench warfare, Tarkovsky pointed to the lack of tension in the 1 "'nng screenplay: 'In Bogomolov's srory the narrator's remarks tell the whole story. But in the screenplay this is not translated from remarks into 1 l'>nal images. I believe in this picture. Let's say this is a film about war, .thont its horrors, and about people at war.''' Ta rkovsky also remarked on dtl' film's meaning for him personally: 'I a m simply enamoured with this thl·me. I was also twelve years of age when the war began. This epoch is 11nhuccl with great paLn. This is the fate of an entire generation. Many .1rc no longer with us; they died like grown-ups.''' In line with his inter­ pretation (and perhaps ro avoid confusion with Aleksandr Dovzhenko's 1 9 p. film Ivan), Tarkovsky recommended renaming the film Ivan's C!Jildhood. He added to the screenplay several dreams experienced by Ivan, which (in rhe words of the official report) 'underscore the theme of the ruining of his childhood'."� He also complicated the male characters' relationships with the medic Masha and added the scene with the demnged old man amidst the ruins of his house. Despite all the addi­ tions, Tarkovsky noted that, since the previous director had wasted part of the budget, the production must be short and quick. Throughour production Tarkovsky weathered an almosr continuous barrage of criticism from the screenwriters, especially Bogomolov, who was especially upset with the way that the young acror Evgenii Zharikov played Lieutenant Galtsev as insecure and immature. At the meeting of the Artistic Council following the first showing on 30 January r962, Tarkovsky blamed the screenwriters for Galtsev's shortcomings, refusing to omir the scenes and shots that some found drawn-out or objcction­ ;lble.,5 The studio agreed with the screenwriters, however, finding the film rhc sysrcm I 37

-

l.ltkO\\k_\ \\llh

\�1kmnM �l.tlla\'lllJ. .11 thl· \'cmcc Film h..-�"'·'1. •lJ6.!.

In rhe end, a11 of Tarkov!>k� ·• \ rr:tv:1il were rew.uded and relieved 111 .1 1nglc -.rrokc when

ll'an s Childhood won (among other priLes) :1 Golden

l 1 1 1n .u rhe Venice Film Fesriv:tl in September 1962. and rhe prize for besr

.J. rl'ClOr .It the San Francisco Film Festival in November of the same year lllt medi.trcly following rhe conclusion of rhe Cuban Missile Crisis}, rh<.: i.Htcr for 'rhc powerful style :tnd the poetry of his im:tges'!� The film l([r,Ktt:d comment and ignited :1 polemic between rhc international nora­ hk., Alherro 1\ luravia and .Je:lii-Paul Sartre. t

o

les!> important was the

nrhu�i.hm of audience in the lN>R, where anything related ro World W:tr

11 ,,,1, rrcared with the utmost solcmnit)c Tarkovsky was interviewed on n.IIHlllwidc mdio, and from April 1962. until thc middlc of 1963 Mosfilm fielded numerous n.:quesrs for special screenings of rhc film, which 1cc.:eivcd thc Ministry of Culturc's 'hig.h evaluation'. Ti·anslations of for­ l"l�n pre'� rcporrs Rowed in, confirming Tarkovsky\ ncw star srarus.

o

Jc,., import.tnt for him .1 s .111 .trrisr wa· his new-found accc s to foreign him, .md lner.uurc; his influenc.:e� changed from to

co-realists like Clouwt

more exmic filmmakers such as Roherr Bresson, A In in Resnais, Jean-

1 uc Godard, Luis Bllliucl :tnd Kenji Mizoguchi.

The talc of lun11 s Childhood would be a simple onc of pcrseveram:e rewarded if ir wcrc nor clouded ovcr by omens of what was to comc. On the ground� that ir was made by the children'!> unit of Mosfilm IIIliII's

Childhood wa mostly shown in c:trly mati nees without any advance notice. Tarkovsky's independent-minded behaviour in San Francisco prepared the ground for 'rhe future legends about T:t rkovsky's difficult and prick I y cha racrer' ,:9 a I rhough press reports noted on I y his 'very poinred, Hollywoodish shoes'. 10 The file on

Ivan s Childhood

also

rclarcs rhe curious case of the missing photograph. On the day of the premiere of

ll'an $ Childhood, 6 April

1962., a parry was held ar rhe Dom

roo long, rhe char.1crer of Galtsev roo 'infanrile', rhe character of Ivan

kino, a kind of official centre for cinema workcrs rhar included a norori­

roo 'hysterical', and rhe finale roo 'naturalistic' (a word applied ro

ou�ly wcll-srocked bar. At somc point, omeone rippcd some photo­

scenes of graphic sex or violence)Y• A document of 1 2. February 1962.

graphs off a small phoro exhibit dcvotcd to rhc film :111d presented rhem

lists specific shors rhar should bc cut or removed entirely in order to cor­

to Ta rkovsky, who was accosted hy local balmshki and accused of rhefr.

rect these hortcoming.s. A telegram dated 2. 3 March 1962. dem:tnded rhe

The :trgumcnr escalated, :tnd T:trkovsky resorted ro somc choice phrases

deletion of Hider's corpse from rhc documentary montage, as wc11 as

in defence of his insu lted wifc, lnn:1 Rausch. A ludicrously exrensivc

the cutting of rhe !>hot where the dcranged old m:lll !>how!> Ivan a

•m·csrig.ttion hy a commi!>-.ion of rhc Mo film Parry Committee and

certificate embo!>!>ed wirh rhe likenes� of Stalin.:- The finn I version of

thc Part)' Bureau of the First Creati,•c Unit absolved Tarkovsky of .Ill)'

/umr s Childhood sri11 attracted criticism from higher authorities for rhe

wrongdoing, bur it also notcd that rhe incidcnr h:1d contributed

gruesome document:try foot:tgc, and ro thi!> cia)' copies of rhe film differ

.1

in rhe com posit ion of the final sequence.

drunkard, :1n arroganr and mornll)' dissolme 111:111 who bears wairr<.:sses

18 I c�nh

to

situation wherein 'widespread rumour is alre:tdy calling Tarkovsky a

-

and concierges and comm irs a11 manner of unsightly deeds'." None of rhis was rruc, ave perhaps rhe accusation of arrogance, bur ir illustrates the oppressive, poi onous and demeaning atmosphere of intrigue and innuendo within which Tarkovsky was obliged to work. Throughout 1962 Tarkovsky had been working quietly with Andron Konchalovsky on a screenplay about rhe greatest Russian icon-painter Andrei Rublcv, whose hypothetical 6oorh birrhday had been widely cele­ brated in 196o. In early 1963 Tarkovsky and his screenplay were able to transfer ro rhe more independent-minded Sixth Creative Unit 'of Writers and Cinematographers', i n order 'to work with people who :1re closer ro us in spirit and in creative aspirations'Y His hopes were nor misplaced, and rhe di cussions of the screenplay at meetings of the artistic council between April 1963 and July 1964, under the leadership of writer lurii Bondarev and rhe directors Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov, were cxccpr ionnlly positive. Elder colleagues repeatedly remarked on rhe his­ toric significance of rhe screenplay and on the film's exclusive porcntinl. At one particularly enthusiastic meeting Bondarev compared the screen­ play ro War and Peace nnd N:lllmov remarked to the visiting historian V. T. Pashuro (credited as a consultant on the film): 'I should say rhar you arc present ar a unique Arrisric Council meeting because these people..: can be furious and mean, and indeed rhey often are.'H Tarkovsky remained ar this same unit of Mosfilm for his next three productions. This was rhe height of Tarkovsky's official recognjtion, and therefore an opportune moment to Lmderrake a controversial, progra mmatic film about the monk Andrei Rublev. Tarkovsky initiated a multifaceted c:�m­ paign to ensure ir success, showing himself ro be a consummate man of the system, anything but the semi-outcast rhar he became after rhe film's completion in 1966. In rhe first place, Tarkovsky utilized rhc official ideo­ logical language to present rhe film's conception. In rhe introduction ro their creenplay about Rublev, Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky wrote that rhei r conception arose from our profoundly conscious love for the Motherland, for our nation fnnrodj, and from our respect for irs history, which laid the way for rhe October Revolution, from our respect for nation's lofty rradirions which :1rc irs spiritual treasure, which has been deeply imbibed by rhe new socialist culture);

l lcre and elsewhere, Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky did nor fail to mention dur Rublev was first in a list of artists included in Lenin's 1 9 r 8 decree ttr)!,ing the construction of monumcnr�d propaganda !� ln his comments .11 the Arristic Council Tarkovsky explained the opposition between I heophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev by calling the latter a genius: ' I or thi very reason even the wall of a communist society can withstand Ruhlcv' Trinity, this icon [ . . . J because it expresses the nation's moral tdc.ll, it aspiration for fraternity, beauty, etc.''6 Tarkovsky compared the l rc.Hion of rhe bell in rhe film to a grand Soviet feat of engineering like the 'damming of rhe Ycnisei'- not, i n retrospect, the mosr auspicious .111alogy, bur an effective one :1r rhe rime in the way it conrcxrualized the li lm within the Soviet irnnginary.1� As Andrei Rublifv was beginning irs tortuous path ro fruition in 196 J, Tarkovsky functioned ns :1 full member of the cinema establish­ nH.:nr. He took an active parr in the meetings of rhc Sixth Creative Unit of t.. losfilm, supporring Konchalovsky's First Teacher (although he rook rhe liberty of suggesting nn nlrern:Hive ending), criticizing R. Gold's film / Iockey Players, and remarking on rhe poor quality of sers at Mosfilm .lpropos of rhe film An Inch of Earth. 18 In the autumn of r964 he re­ turned ro Venice for rhe ixreenrh Fcsriv:1l of Children's Films, where as a member of rhe jury (alongside A1m:ricnn animator john Hubly, amongst others) he reported thar he had secured a 6:o victory for socialist coun­ tries over their capitalist counrcrparts.J9 (First prize went to There is Such ,7 Guy by Vasilii Shukshin, whom Tarkovsky consistently rated as one of his only serious counterparts in Soviet cinema.) In transcripts of these meetings Ta rkovsk>' appears comforrnble speaking rhe official language. Defending his friend Gennadii Shpalikov's screenplay 'Point of View', which had originally been entitled 'Happiness', Tarkovsky asked: 'who else, if not a young Soviet citizen, hould be making a film about human happiness?' .

.

If you er yourself the task of seeking some nspecrs of happiness i n life around you, I assure you that, despite some very vivid moments which arc obvious for nil people wirh an elementary Marxist education in the social sense, this concept will be quire limited nnd rruc; but if you put all these aspects together and organize such n specmcle, I think that rhe result will be a very unsuccessful film, because it won't hnve a clc..: nr perspective. lr will be an illustration of Mnrx's indisputable conception of happiness rhc s)'srcm I 4 1

from his personal point of view, and ro make a film on this, so to

.1rrange for the screenplay to be published in the leading film journal

speak, cemenr, would be a thankless task on the one hand, and

Jskusstvo kino and to secure financi11g for the projecr.4J Publication and

destined for absolute failure on the orher.�0

budgeting effectively legalized the film, although they also bound Tarkovsky to shoot exactly what and how he had promised.

As wirh Steamroller and Violin, Tarkovsky appeals to official names and

The seeds of rhe protracted conAicr were there from rhe beginning.

concepts, bur only to look beyond them; a film can deal with ideological

Already in the Artistic Council of the Sixth Creative Unit of Mosfilm,

cliches only as objects of individual regard, as occasions for the exercise

both Konchalovsky and Tarkovsky had underscored rhe fact rhar rhe film

of human subjectivity. Andrei Rwbliiv is the greatest example of this.

was nor called Andrei Rubliiv. Konchalovsky declared:

Tarkovsky was drawn to Rublev not for reasons of patriotism or adula­ tion, bur rather because Rublev's icons provided a powerful means to

this is nor a screenplay about Rublcv. [ . . ] We wanted to see the

enquire into ways of viewing rhe world, borh i n Rublcv's time and in

epoch with Rublev's eyes, and in this form the viewer will know

our own.

precisely who Rublev is; he won't be able to remember how Rublev

.

Despite the unstinting support of his colleagues and his own efforts

acted in this or another case, bur he will have a thorough know­

ro interpret the screenplay, Tarkovsky soon ran into trouble with Andrei

ledge of his psychology. We wanted the viewer to understand how

Rubliiv. Intimations of rhe problem emerged as early as a meeting of the

[ Rublev] experiences things.H

Artistic Council on 3 October 1963, where Tarkovsky expressed both

] that

his exasperation ar the constanr rewriting of the screenplay and his

Tarkovsky added: 'Of course this is nor a picture about Rublcv [ .

refusal to change it any further. Screenplay editor N. V. Beliaeva hinted

is a major misrakc.'4S Never intending to tell a particular story or interpre­

at dark forces at work against the film:

tation of Rublcv, Tarkovsky instead traced irs outline in order ro suggest

.

.

an unimaginable and unrcprescnrable fullness of vision. At rhe Artistic

I will perhaps die soon, and I want ro die wirh a clear conscience.

Council he described the screenplay as a musical development 'from

For me, rhe story of this screenplay goes far beyond the realm of

major to minor' and then 'from minor ro major' .46 The connection

our creative and administrative circumstances. [ . . ] The elastic of

between the constituent 'novellas' is not in Andrei's progression rowards a

this tale has been stretching for two years without end. Moreover

denouement, but in rhe 'emotional movement of Andrei's moral desriny'.47

i t i s unclear. Perhaps the comrades here have met with people who

Within this progression, the shift to colour for rhe closing display of

voice active objections? For me this is some kind of elusive ghost

Rublev's icons 'will create the unusual effect of a blow, the very step

with which i t is difficult ro fight.

which, perhaps, somewhere conventionally divides life and arr'.48

.

I am simply raking advantage of the presence of a stenographer

Throughout this and other discussions, while underscoring the ideologi­

and, as a communist, would like ro declare that I consider rhe

cal relevance of Rublev, Tarkovsky poses his own task as rhe visual and

whole story with this screenplay as a crime against the narion.4'

aural communication of an inner stare of being, which resists being reduced ro a tidy message.

At the same meeting ir was decided ro present rhe screenplay to rhe

As Tarkovsky planned, shot and edited the film, irs visual discourse

central leadership of Mosfilm and rhe Committee for Cinematic Affairs

constantly became deeper and more intricate. There arose new diffi­

(Goskino) for inclusion in rhe plan for 1 964. P. M. . Danil'ianrs expressed the common sentiment when he exclaimed: 'I shall be in seventh and

culties, such as the authorities' reluctance to fund a double-length film

even eighth heaven i f we arc able [ . . . ] ro find numerous supporters for

rhe need tO shorten the film, Tarkovsky consciously chose ro 'violate irs

this screenplay up above (na verkhu)'Y In rhc end a single high-ranking

intellccrual integrity' for rhc sake of irs 'plastic inrcgrity'.S0 As the film

supporrcr proved sufficient. An official of rhe Ideological Section of

gradually approximated an abstract composition, a 'figure of silence',

rhe Central Committee of rhc Communist Party helped Tarkovsky ro

Tarkovsky's colleagues warned against experimentation rhar might

42 I carrh

.:111d the difficulty of selling such films abroad.49 Faced at every step with

rhc S)'Stcm I

43

cloud d1e clarity of the ideas, as had allegedly happened with Ivan s' ChildhoodY

The story of what happened after the film's completion is complex, but it has been rold before and need not be repeated in full hereY Tarkovsky edited his mass of material down to around 205 minutes and submitted the film on 26 August 1966 under the title The Passion accord­ ing to Andrei, a version made in such a hurry that some actors' names were omitted from the credits. The film was returned ro Tarkovsky wirh a list of changes ro be made, mostly concerning rhe film's excessive length, scenes of brutality, nudity and vulgarity. By December 1966 Tarkovsky had made most of these changes to a film now called Andrei Rubliiv, creating a second version (one that has never been seen bur is still rumoured to exist), only for Goskino to present a new list of demands, some of which Tarkovsky refused tO meet. Once again d1e ultimate source of the amhoriries' objections has never become clear, bur they must have been quite serious for the cinema system basically to reject one of irs greatest products and heaviest investments. While fault­ ing Tarkovsky for his stubbornness, Rostislav lurenev has expressed his sympathy for the young director's plight: 'there were no concrete resolu­ tions on rhe film, and it srands to reason that Tarkovsky could not cur and paste it according to rumours concerning rhe opinions of some [officials'] wives')J The stalemate persisted until 1969, when the new version of the film was approved under the title Andrei Rublev with a run rime of 187 minutes. It was sold to a European distributor and was entered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The Soviet authorities allowed irs domestic release only in 197 1 , after Tarkovsky faced down calls for further cuts.H By rhis time, Tarkovsky and the state cinema apparatus had resigned themselves to an uneasy accommoda­ tion, which persisted right up to 1983. Once rhe interminable controversies over Andrei Rublev had died down, Tarkovsky began work in earnest on Solaris. In a letter ro Stanislaw Lem of 27 June 1970 Ta rkovsky declared: 'Pan Stanistaw! You can't imagine how glad I am. At last l can work !'H Based on a science-fiction novel by a Soviet-bloc author, Solaris was a relatively safe project. In the proposal Tarkovsky underscored the necessity of preparing the populus for <�II contingencies in the exploration of space and depicting the conditions for 'rhe final barrie of [human 1 reason for its future, for progress, and for rhc beauty of rhe human soul'.56 Tarkovsky could proudly represent 44

I c�nh

tlw film as funda menta lly Soviet: 'From the mora l, ethical and idco­ ����u.:.ll points of view this picture could not be made anywhere bur lu rc [i.e., in the USSR].'P Nor least impor tant was the guarantee of hn.tncia l success'.58 Still, Tarkovsky endured incessant demands that he d.tr�fy the ideological and national allegi<�nces of its characters (Kelvin 'l'l'mcd roo foreign, the unimaginative authorities roo Soviet), stress rhe progressive nature of future society, show more clearly the success of the crew's attempts to deceive the Ocean by sending a encephalogram of Kelvin's vvaking thoughts (as in the novel), and remove 'phrases trc.tting of matters of fare and religion')? They also objected to Kelvin l .tvorring in bed wirh Hari and running amok on the spacecraft in his untk:rwear. Tarkovsky addressed these in 22 curs, re-dubbings and clarifi­ l.ttions, like the introductory titles that affirmed 'the constant develop­ tllcrH of huma n cognition' and 'the utility of studying the cosmos', as well as describing the 'state of society'.6o However, most of these subse­ quent ly disappeared from the film i n its final version, which enjoyed 'u�:ccss ar festiva ls such as Cannes and has remained Tarkovsky's most popular film in the West. In fact, at home as well, Solaris proved the least 1 ont rovcrsial film of Ta rkovsky's entire seprar euch, engendering broad dr�cussion in the official press, largely centred around rhe film's relation to the novel and irs bearing on the Soviet space progra mme.6• The success of Solaris confirmed Tarkovsky as the major Soviet direc­ wr and as a thorn in rhe side of the authorities. Mirror was treated more or less as a vanity project, allocated to the Sixth Creative Unit (which dur­ mg production was renamed rhe Fourth in an internal reorganization of Mosfilm). At Mosfilm many concurred with director Georgii Chukhrai's view that 'we can allow ourselves one picture that, albeit incomprehensi­ ble, is talenred'.6� The reaction of Goskino was harsher; its head, Filipp Ermash, reportedly declared: 'We have artistic freedom [in the ussR], but nor to that extent.' One shot in partic ular- of Margarita Terekhova levi­ taring - was repeatedly singled out as excessive. As late as June 1974 rhe head of the srudio, Nikolai Sizov, was imploring Tarkovsky: No one except the refined clientele of the Palace of Cinema will understand your profound thought. We can make one version for distribution abroad, but for Soviet viewers . . I can't for rhe life of me understand why after killing the rooster she has to ascend to the heavens. After all there's a war going on.6J .

the S)'Stcm I

45

Each rime Tarkovsky would promise ro remove rhe shor, bur it somehow

t·,pcriences something similar when placed hy reality before

remained in rhe fi lm . I n July 1974 Sizov repeated his objection: 'There is

thc problem of choice. Therefore, when you ask me whether l have

no need for such evangelical tendencies in a Soviet film.'6" Ar rhe same

nude any compromises in my life, whether l have ever betrayed

rime Filipp Ermash pleaded for clarity , 'logic and a more triumphant

myself in my work, then my friends who do nor consider my fare

presentation of h isrory 6S During September and October Tarkovsky

too

made only cosmetic changes : he added the foorage of Soviet aviation

thar my entire life has consisred of compromises .

'

'

'

.

deepl y would tell you 'no'; bur l consider, on rhe contrary, .

.

[ os r 8o].

hero Valerii Chka l ov's tickerrape pa rade ( 1 936); fixed the ch ronology of the warrime newsreels, adding a shot of the liberation of Prague and

ln,kcd, in 1 980 Tarkovsky wa awarded rhe distinction of 'People s Artist

removing foorage of Vietnam and the Middle East; shortened rhe shot

.,f

of the levitati ng woman; and re-edited the protagonist's speech on his

hlmmakers that year, where he gave a speech beneath a giant bust of Lenin.

sickbed.66 Despite Tarkovsky s only partial fulfilment of his obligations,

In the fallow periods between films, as he awaited approval for screen­

Mirror was approved its harmfulness having been curtailed by limited

pl.w�, budgets and shooting schedules, Tarkovsky was rarely idle. In r965

distribution, despite rhe studio's ofren voiced concern to maximize box

ht p ro d uced William Faulkner's 'Turnabout' for Soviet radio, and in 1 •J"'h 7 he sraged !-lamlet in 1\il oscow with many of his favourite actors.

'

,

office receipts from the film.

'

'

1hc R�FSR ; he was a featured speaker at the conference of Soviet

unit of

\l.tny of rhese projects shared the fare of his films. Conceived during

Mosfilm, rhe Second, which showed more patiencc with the di rector's

1>. hr11shchev's Thaw, likc A11drei /Zubliiv, Tumabout was completed only

poerics True, production was marred by a mysterious flaw in the

lltcr Khrushchev lost power. Because of its perceived pacifism and unusual

film-srock, which p rom pted Ta rkovsky ro fire his cameraman Geo rgii

'ollnd, unril the 1 990s Turnabout was broadcast only once ( 1 4 April r 965)

Rerberg and repeat rhc ent ire location shoot shot for shor. The only reall y

"n Central A ian radio, in place of rhe regular nocturnal concert of clas­

critical document i n the files on Stalker is an editor's report from !arc

'll'.tl music. A 1 976 feature on Marg;1rira Terekhova mentions that she is

1 977, which demanded that Tarkovsky make the screenplay more fantas­

uu·renrly playing Queen Gertrude, bur conceals rhe name of the play's

tic by stressing the alien origin of the Zone irs 'violation of earthly

director and passes over in silence her recent role in Tarkovsky's Mirror ­

laws', and also rhe fictitious nature of the bo urgeoi s' country in which it i s set.6- Ta rkovsky's quick and easy acquiescence ro these demands ­

the role for which she is best known and most highly regarded.69

and their irrelevance ro rhe subseq uen t discussion - leads one to suspect

.trt direcro r for leon Kocharian's One Cha11ce in a Thousand (Odessa

that rhey may have been parr o f a ploy ro get Mosfilm ro re-launch pro­

I ilm Studio, 1 968); as screenwriter for Z. S abi rov's Beware, Snakes!

For Stalker Tarkovsky moved to a new reculiar

'

ex peri me nta l

'

.

,

'

Tarkovsky periodically worked on other's films: as screenwriter and

duction of Stalker as a double-length film, which it did in early 1978. The

(Uzb ekistan, 1979); and (allegedl y) as uncredited assistant on several other

only demands made of the prelim i nary edit were rhar Tarkovsky add an

lilms, such as Shaken Aimanov's End of the Ataman (Kazakhstan, 1 970)

explanarory text at rhe begi nnin g of the film, amend the Professor's line when he rcl cp bones his institute (instead of the 'head of the laborarory

'

he now requests 'rhe ninrh laboratory') and chan ge rhe Professor's weapon from an 'atomic mine' ro a gen eric 'bomb'.6� After the struggle owr Mirror and rhe exertions of Stalker, Tarkovsky felt sufficiently exhausted and c xasperarcd to compare his pli ght ro rhar of Hamler (in Tarkovsky's idiosyncratic i nterpreta t io n) : The rragedy of Hamler for me is nor that he is fared ro die physi

­

cally, bur rhar he falls morally and spiritually that before he.: kills he ,

is requi rcd ro ac:c:cpr rhe laws of rhis world. [ . . . [ l n a sense.: everyone

46 I c�nh

l.1rkH\''k}

Ill

'•'1'1:<'1 /.1;<1 (19�-). rhc system

I

47

and Tolomush Okeev's Fierce One {Kazakhstan, 1973). These works did lirrle to enhance Tarkovsky' official sranding, bur at lea t they avoided the scandal of his two major acting roles. Suffice it to recall the sarcastic com­ ment of Tarkovsky's character in Marlen Khursiev's The Gate of lf'ich {aka I Am Twenty, 1961). The earnest young protagon ist professe his rev­ erence for 'the Revolution, the hymn of the International, [the repressions of] 1937, the war, the soldier, the fact that none of us have fathers, and the potato which saved us in a rime of famine'. 'And the turnip?' asks Tarkovsky's character sarcastically. 'How do you regard the turnip?' In 1967 Ta rkovsky flew ro Kishincv to help Aleksandr Gordon wirh his film Sergei L.azo; he ended up adding a new character to the screenplay, a White officer who shoots rhe eponymous hero and other prominent Bolsheviks. When tarkovsky volunteered to play the role himself, the head of Goskino apparently viewed the character's ;�ctions as Tarkovsky's own wish-ful­ filment. Tarkovsky's roles contributed to a virtual ban on both films."' The constant tension surrounding his productions understandably wore on Ta rkovsky. By 1982 he had been engaged in almost constant conAict with the sysrem for twenry years. At 50, he perhaps sensed the need to ration his remaining strength. The aesthetic success of Stalher may have erved to underscore rhe fact that further development in the same direction might finally cross the bounds of the permissible. Using a commission from the fralian TV network RAJ, in March 1982 Ta rkovsky travelled to lraly ro shoot Nostalghia as a joint Italia n-Soviet produc­ tion. His failure to return to the u R rendered Nostalghia ineligible for distriburion in the Soviet Union. As a 'non-returner', Ta rkovsky put on a production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at Covent Garden in 1983-4 and shot Sacrifice in Sweden in 1985, editing the film as he lay dying of lung cancer in a Paris hospital. Ta rkovsky often cited his record of seven feature films in 24 years as proof of the res istance he had faced, but it has been pointed out that he was notably more productive than comparable filmmakers in rhe West such as Carl Theodore Dreyer and Robert Bresson. onetheless, Ta rkovsky took to his grave numerous cheri hed projects, notably film adaptations of Shakespeare's 1-/amlet and Dostoevsky's The Idiot. In a letter to his father dared 1 6 September 1983, Tarkovsky regret­ ted that he was being portrayed as a 'traitor' to Russia just because he was requesting permission ro remain abroad.7' (This permission was denied, and on 1o july 1984 T�1rkovsky officially declared his break with the Soviet authorities.) Of dozens of 'demeaning' incidents, Ta rkovsky o�8 I

C:trl h

mentioned the lack of any public recognition of his sorh birthday and the alleged machinations of the Soviet delegation to the Cannes Film I e\uval in 1983 to prevent any award for Nostalghia, which he called a p.ltriotic' film. (Tarkovsky still won a special prize, which he shared " 1rl1 his menror Robert Bresson.) Nevertheless, he assured his father that 'ltht as I have remained a Soviet artist, so do I remain.' The injustice of the entire siru�Hion was brought home to many when Tarkovsky died ­ on 2.9 December 1986- on the cusp of perestroika; nor long thereafter Ill'> films were restored to the highest distribution category and re­ rdcased to general acclaim, and i n 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize. The difficulty of understanding or even imagining the intricacy of l .ukov ky's relationship to rhe Soviet system undermines our desire to ddin!r a clear judgement on his personal behaviour vis-a-vis the state. I he fact that he began his regular diary only in 1969 makes ir impossi­ ble also to ascertain his own feelings on the rehuionship during irs formative years. However, here, as in every other regard, the films speak for themselves with the greatest eloquence. The fundamental basis of l.u ·kovsky's di fficulties was rhar, while the system required explicit 't hemes' and detailed 'screenplays', Tarkovsky always regarded these hrond categories less as goals than a poims of departure for creating film of atmosphere and texture, in which conventional narrative schemes become tracings of an unprecedented potentiality. With the possible c"ceprion of Sacrifice, each of his films is profoundly 'Soviet' in irs point uf departure - in its theme, story and characters. However, the Soviet background of his films is only the framework for the more universal project of exploring new modes of attending to the world.

rhc sysrcm I 49

2 Space

\horrly before his death Ta rkovsky recorded

:1

dream in his diary:

I dreamt of a quiet monastic cloister with its enormous ancient oak rree. Suddenly

I become aware of

a Aame rising up at a poinr

among the roots, and I realize that ir is the Aamc of many candles burning in rhe secret underground recesses of rhe monastery. Two frightened young nuns arrive. Then the Aame leaps high, and I sec rhar by now it is roo Iare ro put out the fire - almost all rhe roots have become burning embers. J am deeply saddened by this, and 1 try ro imagine what the cloister will be like without the oak tree: it will be useless, meaningless, miserable [29-30 September 1 986] . rhis dream captures rhe temporality of Tarkovsky's films: in a gram­ matical pattern frequenrly encountered in his screenplays, the narrative past shifts into an introspective present that gradually focuses on the .llltici pation of future loss. Ir also captures the essential geometry of l arkovsky's imagination, as in his films, so in his stage productions, Jrawings and Polaroid snapshots: a horizontal plane intersected and '>llpporred by a vertical one. It could be a mere post or a scraggly tree, as long as it suggests the spatial metaphysics of the cross over a grave, or of , , church rower over a plain. It is both pillar and pillory. lt suggests that if Andrei and lloriska nt ohc post

(Am/rei Rubli'l').

Two phorogrnphs by Tnrkovsky.

'>pace is a prison, altitude is liberation. lt suggests- as for the child Ivan, the monk Andrei Rublev and his young friend Boriska, the Stalker, (,orchakov and Alexander- that the mastery of space is a crucifixion. Bur this would be a dangerous over-simplification of a kind typical for those who judge Ta rkovsky by rhc pious and prophetic rone he t . dopted in his later years. The dream is acrually one of a tragic failure

'

A Jr.n' mg h

/

L�rkm 'k).

lilt.:\ irably reclaimed by nature - whether flooded by rain, engulfed in ll.tme or simpl)' worn down b)· riml!- their ruins continue to rand as loci of memory and places of epiphany. Each of the three paces - nature, home and c:Hhedral - is distinguished by a characteristic visual tension, formed by a crossing of the camera's gaze with rhe characters' and spec­ t.uors' lines of sight. laturc is simply a f-low that absorbs the human )!..t7e, though sometimes it eerily :.eems ro be returning it. The home has \\ mdow�,

through which denizen!> pcl!r our into rhe world, while strangers

look in. The cathedral is markl!d by upright columns whose seemingly rl!gular arrangl!mcnr is disrupted by inexplicable folds in space, which •

.. � j. �-: � 1'' ."'f . ;

•

• •

'

'

' �

.

neate a spl!cific density of rime. Tarkovsky's carhedr:�l spnce is demon­ ,

.,trared mosr fully at the beginning of

Nostafghin, where a fertility ritual

.., performed in the rigorou ly �comerrical yer disconcertingly elusive

. •

•

.

,

...pace of a columned crypt. Jaml!� Macgillivray has :.hown that, while the camera appear!> to represent thl! per pecrives of thl! characters, most norably Eu�enia, Tarkov sky suwre� different point� of view to crc:lte :1 .,cn�e of confusion and powerlessnl!ss, rendering rhe grid of columns as a Danrean 'dark wood'.' The peculiar meshing of g:tzes in each kind of .,pace corrl!sponds ro a pecific kind of rime, which knits rhe spa rial folds IIHO a unique fabric of experience. Constructed by human gaze!>, :.pace is alwa)' personal, never merely decorative or informative. In A11drei Rubfeu, for example, Tarkovsky

of spirituality, which enrcrs inro conAict with irs natural conditions; rhe inrensity of rhe prayer undermines the shelter that makes it possible. This pessimism is more in line with Tarkovsky's films. In Ivan s Childhood

used some of the most famous monuments of old Ru sian architecture, such as rhe Church of the Protection of the Morher of God on the Nerl

eros es either smnd crooked on ruined gr:wes or arc formed of the detritus

of war, like rhe rail of the crashed German aeroplane. After rhe sack o f Vladimir in Andrei Rublev, Andrei say!> 'there's nothing more frighten­

ing than when ir nows in a church'. Tarkovsky's camera may soar over. rhe characters, bur (unlike his polaroid photography) it never achieves Olympian tranquillity in irs observation. In the spaces of his films rhere is neither captivity nor liberat ion, neither Promethean heroism nor

Chri r-like acrifice, bur human figures being rugged acro�s space, up and down and through it, and also our ide of it. The film il> nor a liberation from pace, bur rather irs formation inro a locus of vi ion.

Three kind!> of �pace domin:tre :�11 Tarkovsky's films: nature, rhe home and the shrine or cathedral. l lumans construct fragile homes to �helrcr from hostik forces and n lil!n �nze . When rhese homes arl! ).l.

1 <'3rth

'P:JCC

I 5'

River, known very widely from irs reproductions on postcards and calendars. Both Tarkovsky and lusov insisted that their usc of original historical ires as locations for Andrei Rubliiv was morivared by rhe need for 'aurhenriciry'. However, since these locations are shot exclusively from the our ide, and their ourer appearance bears all the traces of their long hi tory, 'authenticity' here cannot mean that they are supposed to rc emblc their putative state at the rime of the action; it is rather rhc way they disrupt rhc expected spatial and temporal flows with unexpected folds and scnms. Thus ir is nor surpri ing that in Tarkovsky's entire cinematic oeuvre rhcre i only one true establishing shot, marking the sudden shift i n location to Rome from Tuscany towards the end of Nostalghirt. As he di cusses i n Time of Travel, in Nostalghia Tarkovsky also sought ro avoid seeing Italy as a rourisr, whose gaze is attracted ro pretty spots on rhc landscape; r:trher he wanted each character (and viewer) w conjure up his or her own Italy - in anonymous ruins, modern hotels and bare apartments. It was unch:H:tcreristic of Ta rkovsky ro place his films in any objecri fiable or n:cugnizablc landscape; his spaces emerge in the visual plane of concrete characters, nor as rhc receptacle holding the action bur as ItS consequence. Space is an excerption, the framing and folding of a field of vision our of rhc chaotic flows of natural objects and human gazes. The folds remain conspicuous: characters move unpredictably through rhe fra me, which itself is constantly in motion and subject ro refocusing. Build ings always bear traces of their construction and - more conspicuously their gradual disintegration. The natural flows continue ro dominate rhc no man's land that separates dwellings from each other. Between his home and his violin lesson the young Sasha (in Steamroller and Violin) i at the mercy of hallways and streets. Wide-open spaces prove no less ominou than rhe staircase of his building. When rhc wrecking ball opens a vista onro one of rhe Stalinist confections rhar circle Moscow rhe sheer verticality is eerie and oppressive. Only one architectural form is free both of claustrophobia and vertigo: the arch, perhaps rhe most prominent feature of Tarkovsky' Moscow (nor only in Steamroller and Violin, bur :tlso in Andrei Ruuliiv and Boris Godunov). The arch describes space as both enclosure and epiphany, rwo opposing forces whose rension composes expenence. In his lectures to student directors Tarkovsky suggested they trcilt loca rions as medieval Russian arch i rects chose the sires of churches; 0

5-!

I c�nh

'.�rchirecrure', he said, 'should be the continuation of nawre, and in the �incma also the expression of the char:lcters' stares and the author's 1dca (uR p). Architecture is nor merely a mental space, however; it is .1l·o formed of the specific gazes that conjure ir up. Tarkovsky stipulated thar the et designer take into considemrion 'what optics and what film �rock rhc cameraman will shoot on and what camera he will use'. In '>horr, sires of human dwelling must nor only organize space within the frame, bur also enable vision on-screen. Surprisingly, Tarkovsky did not unconditionally favour filming on location. In the studio, he said, 'you can do remarkable things, as long as you know how to do it and arc correspondingly confident of the plau­ sibility of your idc:ts in the conditions of the studio where you arc !>hooting' (uR 55). Thus, while the landscapes in Fellini's Casanova 'could nor have been shot better in natural locations', Tarkovsky admit­ led: 'I would never dare ro shoot such sccm:s at Mosfilm'. He did, rhough, construct ebbor:tre sets at Mosfilm for Solaris (by designer Mikhail Romadin) and Mirror (by Nikolai Dvigubsky). Still, Tarkovsky was a plcin-air filmmaker, perhaps for the same rcaon that .John Constable adduced in 1 8 1 9 :tpropros of his large canvas Stratford Mill: 'It will be difficult to name a class of Landscape, in which the sky is nor the "key 110te", the srnndard of "Scale", and the chief " Organ of se11timent". The sky is the source of light in nature and gov­ erns evcrything.'1 With characteristic panache Chris Marker has shown how frequently Tarkovsky uses a raised camera to frame his characters against the earth; this is nor merely ro root them in the soil, but also ro view rhem from rhc sky. In Tarkovsky the sky keeps the earthly forms and dwellings submerged in the conditions of their appearance and, at the same time, on the verge of their disappearance back into rhe natural flows of wind, rain and fire. It was in lva11 s Childhood that Tarkovsky firmly established his poetics of space. The film open with a shot that rises up a pine tree as Ivan disappears from view and then reappears (improbably far away) at rhc back of rhc frnme, looking towards the camera. One of the last shots in rhc film closes this movement by descen ding back down a tree, now a dead stump by the sea, as Ivan walks towards the camera. That these shots arc marked as dreamlike or even fantastic underscores their symbolic value; lv:111's journey is both nn ascent and a descent, leading to no particular go:tl bur descri bing a defined locus of experience. It is never specified whether the four inserted episodes are dream or memory; '

space

I 55

after all, the final one occur after we learn of Ivan's dc:uh, when rhere i no one lefr to dream or remember. We therefore do nor know whether rhc e sequences belong ro Ivan's mind's eye or to that of the spectator. More likely they are formed precisely i n the crossing of these perspec­ tives, as a purely imaginary space. The fir t and last shors of Tarkovsky's final film Sacrifice echo those of Ivan's Childhood. At the end of the opening credits rhc camera rises up the tree on Leonardo's painting of the Adoration of the Magi, after which there is an extremely long rake of Alexander and his son pl::tnring their own bizarre tree, essentially an improvised concoction of sticks. The final shor of the film, after Alexander burns down the house, is of the child lying under said rrcc, with the camera again ascending. up irs marred, scraggly torso. Rcsi ring the cathartic deere ccndo of Ivan's Childhood, rhe screen fades ro an inrcrrirlc bearing a dedication to Tarkov ky's son Andrei, 'wirh hope and consolation' - only ro fade hack into rhc shor of rhc tree. There arc many orhcr echoes in the rwo endings: the beach, rhc bucker of water, rhe add res of an absent parent. Yer rhe very motion of the camera reverses lvan!s Chiltlhood, and the bmenr for loss is re-dedicated tO a hopeful future. The parallel between the two endings raises rhc question whether, by bearing their author's imprint too overtly, Tarkovsky's last works restrict rhe abiliry of specta­ tors actively to parricipatc in the creation of the filmic space. Filmmaker Alcksei German has even linked the banality of the ending to the aes­ thetic of Socialist Realism.J Indeed, has the living tree become the rod of Aaron and the artist - a high priest? The issue, as I sec it, is basically whether Tarkovsky constructed his spaces as vehicles for his intended meaning or as sires where something unplanned and perhaps unintended can arise spontaneously for the spectator. In a 1962 article he discussed ar length rhc relationship between intention and chance in the shooting of a key scene in lt1an's Childhood:

\Y./e had the following project for conveying the spies ro the opposite bank: thick fog, dark figures nnd Rashes of the flare . The figures were to cast shadows like incorporeal sculptures. However rhe light breeze of the Kancv basin (where the 'flooded forest' was being shot) would probably have broken up our smoke pnrrerns. Then we thought of giving some shots of the operation during rhc flashes of rhe flares and separating rhem b)' other shots, in this approximate s6 1 carrh

manner: flash- two figures in rhe frame and rhe shoulder of a third, moving ro rhe right; Rash - three small figures in the distance moving away from us; Rash - the frame shows eyes and wet branches . . . ere. When we rejected this idea we shot the material which ended up in rhc film and it seemed most simple and nnrural.4 I ,1rkovsky drew from this experience the lesson rhar the mise-en-sdme ,hould nor be tailored ro the intended meaning of the shot, bur almost 1 1 1 re�isr it, in rhe manner of a counter-flow. He cited the example of k.ln Vigo's J.'Atalante, which begins with a wedding procession that lollows rhe bride and groom around rhrcc haystacks: 'What is this? A •Hu.ll, a fertility dance? No, the episode is ignificanr nor in irs literary rl·tclling, irs symbolism or visual meraphoriciry, bur in irs concrete sarur­ llcd exi renee. We cc here a form filled with fecling.'s In this manner l.ukovsky saw spatial figure less as enclosed sets than as bare stages 1h.u invite and even require the specraror ro fill in the gaps. What props 1 here arc, like Vi go's haystacks, must work as insensate material objects 1har resist our desire to allegorize or to turn the narrative into ritual. The cinema returns us to material rcn liry nor by representing ir ro '"• bur by forming a space where things and human gazes encounter �:.tch orher as forces of resistance. Throughout the opening and closing ,hors of /valls Childhood and Sacrifice rhe single most imporranr force 111 Ta rkovsky's construction of space is rhe motion of the camera. . I ukovsky's manner owed much to the mastery of Vadim lusov, a trusted lOIIaboraror who bore much of the responsibility for scouring locations .111d for establishing the look of Tarkovsky's films. Tarkovsky had ori­ �inally wanted to team up with Sergei Urusevsky, best known for his work with MikiH1il Kalarozov on The Cranes Are rlying and I Atn Cuba, where the camera excctltcs sweeping movements and stages dramas of hghr and shadow in each frame. In lusov, Tarkovsky found Urusevsky's Jramaric style balanced by a welcome patience, even implacability. .1\loreover, lusov con isrcnrly provided :1 finely minted image of such 'risp clarity and high resolurion that it has often been credited with ensuring rhc 'aurhcnriciry' of Tarkovsky's visual textures. lusov's cam­ era captured both the flows of space and the forces - both material and psychic - which sr:1bilize it, at least for a moment, ns a definite image in .1 definable location . But Tarkovsky's usc of space was nor only rhc stabilization of its tlows under rhe forthright eye of rhc camera; he was also intensely space

I

57

sensitive to the ways in which specific spaces - no less than individual people - elicit distinct responses from u , directing our gaze rowards specific possibilities in the world. Spatial framing is a precondition for the event, the irruption of the new from without; ir is therefore both a stabilization of rime-flows and the condition for their destructive and revelatory manifestation. In Ivan's Childhood the radiant idyll of Ivan's dreams is hown as no lcs distinct and 'authentic' than the dark intima­ cy of the bunker or rhc terror of open combat. \XIh:u distinguishes the th rcc kinds of space, more rha n anything else, is rhe logic of rhc c:um:ra 's gaze. While scenes i n the bunkers arc shot with a relatively stationary camera, on rhc barrlcficld the camera soars and wanders independent of rhe characters. The scenes of dream or memory, by contrast, purpose­ fully confuse the camera perspective: now we sec with Ivan's eyes, now we look stmight at him or sec what he cannot. The three kinds of space coincide only i n Ivan's fantasy of revenge, inspi red by his viewing of Albrecht Dtircr prints, when the barrlcticld invades the bunker and the dream i s deployed in barrie. ltmn 's Childhood is thus a drama of space, nor only in the way thar Ivan comes from and returns to 'the orhcr side', bur also - and more fundamenta lly- in rhc w:1y rhat action is equated ro the: formation of visible locations amidst rhc elemental Aows. lature in Ivan's Childhood appears in three main guises: the idyllic land­ scapes of the dream sequences, filled wirh vegetative and animal life (shot in the Crimea and at Mosfilm); the swampy wood of the front (shot near Kanev); and the birch grove near J\llasha's infirmary (shot outside Moscow in Nikolina gora). The prologue links the first two natural land­ scapes. Ivan is first shown i n a sun-drenched forest. Both Ivan and the camera arc in motion, which creates a disorienrating and dizzying per­ spective; this i s crowned when we imagine rhc camera to be following Ivan's perspective as he runs down a hill, only for ir ro swoop up violently and inhumanly. Ivan is rhcn shown framed against the earth, which itself i s knorrcd with tree roots (a shot that is repented practically verbatim in A11drei Rublev, in the episode 'Thcophanes the Greek'); the camera suddenly turns upwards to frame the anxious mother in close-up. Ivan then wakes up i n a disrincrly different space; i f previously rhe four clements appeared in vivifying harmony, here rhey arc jumhlcd: rhe smoke fills the air and water covers the land. As in the fi rst shot of the film there arc folds i n rhis space: when Ivan emerges from his hideout he slips off-camera left and re-emerges on camera several seconds bter in an impossibly distanr )8 I l::mh

ilo

rlh

I.

•

"

I

'

1l1

Ir

location. \Y/e then see low shots of Ivan framed against an ominous sky; like the Stalinist high-rise i n Steamroller and Violin, the windmill is roo vertiginous ro be a dwelling. Subsequenrly, having lost his home in nature, Ivan will nor be framed against rhe earth, but concealed by it, almost swallowed up by it. Galrsev's dark, dank bunker (shor at Mosfilm studios) is a poor sm­ rogatc horne, evidenrly the cellar of a disu ed church. Galtsev has done little ro domesticate it. The main di fference between the bunker :111d the hostile world outside is the relatively stati omH)' camera through which we view it (and the orher internal spaces of war). As announced by the remarkable first shot of Galrsev's hand, the emphasis here shifts tO rhc framing of shors, blocking of characters and the mise-en-scene. Space becomes a passive arena for human actions where a semblance of family can arise; moreover, here the clcmenrs of narurc are resrorcd ro order by space

I 59

rhe fresco in ,,, C/,ilrliJoocl.

II lr

,.

.I •nl \nJn.,l t I 111 luff\ I ' ( r.mde ••

The bunk<·r in lr'""i C!Jilcllu><Jcl.

being pur to usc b)' humans: hot water cleanses Ivan; plants arc enlisted for inrelligcnce purposes; and rhe wood fire warms. There arc momenrs of illumination i n the bunker, especially when they listen ro the record of Fedor Shaliapin. However, even this space is overtaken by the war which confuses day and night, up and clown, and the order of the elt:­ ments: first through Ivan's dream of being at the bottom of a well, and then in his violenr fantaS)' of revenge, when his mother and sister emerge from the bunker's sh adows It is on!)' outside, i n the midst of war, that one sees cathedral spaces: a ruined arch of the church wirh the remnants of a fresco of the Mother .

6o I c�rrh

of God and rhc infanr Christ, and the ruined home of the old man, where the only things left srandi n{l. arc the rombstonc-likc chimneys, tree trunks and the canopy over the well. These verrical structures arrr·act the characters as remnanrs of (lost) human order. Though the crazed man's house around i s completely destroyed, Ivan enters through the door and leaves provisions for the host. (ln Nostalghia Domenico also walks through an unattached door in the columned space of his home.) After Katasonych's death Kholin lights his cigarette be[\.veen the icon and a raging Aamc; when he enters the bunker it suddenly resembles a church during liturgy, replete with a bell, a Aame, crucifixes and an altar with bread. However, Kholin disrupts this mood by ringing the bell in an act of violent frustration. The combination of classical architectural form and unsettling absurdi ry in these scenes associates Tarkovsky with the sur­ real neo-classicism of an Andrea Beloborodoff or a Giorgio de Chirico. The scene of the crazed old man is immediately followed by the only significant contrast ro the dark world of devastation: Masha's infirmary and the nearby birch forest. Tarkovsky wrote thar he and his crew searched long for rhis location, where 'the sterile birch texture of a lifelessly beautiful forest somehow "hinrs", if only mosr ind irectly, at the unavoidable "breath of the plague" within whose radius the film's characters exisr'.6 I n the fore t the birchcs arc like the columns of a nat­ ural cathedral, amongst which rhc char:�crcrs and the camera execute a sp:1ct:

I

6'

A cathcJr.al of harch (11'.111 s

C!Jild!Jood).

complex ser of m::tnoeuvres: M::tsha performs a strange mating dance wirh Kholin, full of rather violent sexual innuendo, and then is shown returning alone to rhe strains of a waltz. I t could justifiably be said rh:u nothing particularly revelarory occurs in the birch forest. The charac­ ters, ar any rare, arc nor forthcoming in their words or gestures. Indeed, rhe rhythm of the movement may be more important than it purarivc significance. Tarkovsky jokingly described his direction of the scene a limited ro walking alongside the camera and counring our 'one-two­ three one-two-three'. It i indeed the rhythm of the episode, more than its conrenr, rhat explains the sudden change in vision experienced by the camera and the characters. Unlike in the scenes of crossing the flooded wood, where the camera' woops and swerves make the protagonists seem vulner:tble, the camera here merges with individual characters' perspectives, suggesting a singular elevation of vision. Having been excluded from the ritual, Galtscv quickly shrinks as a character and seems for :1 while endlessly less m:�rure even rhan Ivan, at least unril he returns from the unexpected mission of delivering Ivan 'to rhe orher side'. The spectral and cbusrrophobic space of rhe forest allows for rhe violation of norms of bchaviom and cognition; it is a place where rape occurs as easily ns revcl:lrion. 62. I earth

,.,,, ,,, lht• I I" ul,

The cathedral is rhe dominant architectural form of Andrei Rublev. The prologue to the film read like :1 visual homage ro Ivan's Childhood as the pea anr aviator Efim pa ses through a flooded wood inro the ruin of a columned church, where i n a single long wke the camera captures him in unexpected positions within the frame. The first episode, 'The jester', set in a pea am hut with several wooden columns, is also replete with folds in space. Fir t, the jester walks outside and instantly appears on rhe roof, hanging down over rhe doorway. The second instance comes during a 360° pan around rhe peasant hur (extant only in rhe original edit); beginning with Andrei and Kirill, the hot proceeds clockwise around rhe hur until it arrives back at the initial position ro find Kirill absent. As I discuss in chapter inc, these long takes work together with the location both ro foster a sense of fluid continuity and immediately to disrupt ir, thereby conveying a specific temporal pressure. The episode 'The Last Judgement', which rnkes place mainly inside a newly whirewnshed cnrhedral, features two very long rakes during which lusov's camera weaves in :1nd our of rhe columns, surprising the figures in llnexpccred locations and poses. The cathedral begins as an almost profane place, the sire of perry squabbling amongst Andrei's crew: everyone is on edge hecnuse of the summer he:tt and the idleness caused by Andrei's inexplicable inability ro begin rhe painting of The Last judgment. The scene is interrupted by a sequence showing the blinding of a crew of masons by rhe prince's personal guard. Echoing the haunt­ ing fore ts of Paolo Ucccllo's Hunt in the Forest and Rene Magritte's Signature in Blank ( r 965), the sombre wood provides a natural counterpoint to the pri tine cathedral, suggesting the danger­ ou forces that lurk amid t the holiest of spaces. Indeed, Andrei responds to the sequence (which he either remember or imagines) by daubing the cathedral walls with ashes. This seeming desecra­ tion actually marks And rei's overcoming of his painter's block: if only in the mosr abstract sense, Andrei learns to give form ro evil. The images Andrei eventually cre:Hes :He nor absolute. It is only when rhc cathcdr.1l is besieged by the Mongols and gutted by fire, when Thcophancs returns from spncc

I 63

tiH dl·.td

th:d.ue that heaven 'is nor at all how you imagine it', and '"'l'll "ww fnlb in the church, rhat the building becomes a true temple, no lon14er an outward representation of human ideas abour God but a �til: uf commemoration and of epiphany. The final columned pace in Andrei Rublev is rhe scaffold and pulley system used to elevate the bell that Boriska forges in the final episode of the film. Frequently interpreted as the redemption of creative endeavour, this scene is no lc s rhan rhe rc rorarion of the possibility of ascent. 10

It has often been noted rhar Tarkovsky adapted Safaris to his own poet­ ics by bringing it down ro earth, rooting Kelvin's cosmic experiences in his home. However, it is no less important rhar Tarkovsky chose a srory based on the power of an uncanny (uniJeimlich) Ocean endowed with an alien intelligence. In many respects Solaris takes to an extreme the spari:tl drama of Ivan's Childhood, where human habitations arc over­ taken by the Aows of w:trer as much as by the shifting front of war. Surrounding rhe home as a churning ocean, penetrating within as unc:tnny rain, warer becomes nn all-destructive force. Ar the same rime, in Solaris lusov's camera reaches irs own Auid extreme, never stopping for a rill shot of anything, in any place, always reminding us rhar space is constructed ar the intersections of visual planes as a disruption of natural Aows. Solaris is unique among Tarkovsky's films for the lack of any sacred space akin ro the forests and cathedrals of Ivan 's Childhood and Andrei Rublev. lt was, after all, rhc only film Ta rkovsky shot mostly i n rhe studio, on an elaborate and expensive set that itself became a main attraction for visitors to the studio, who included Akira Kurosawa. If in Andrei Rublev rhc widescrecn format had opened rhe inti mare scenes ro rhe infinitude of space, i n Solaris it has rhc opposite effect, ro surround rhc figures with rounded walls rhar curve around the characters. In fact, insofar as rhe spacecraft consists of pure geometric grids and claustro­ phobic runnels, ir might be said rhar Solnris lacks any human spaces at all. If Ivan respects the old man's obliterated home by entering through wh:tr remains of rhc door, in Safaris Hari fails ro understand rhc very principle: she rips right through rhe metal door, leaving (in Kelvin's words) a 'mere semblance' (vidimost' odna). True, rhc inhabitants of rhe orbiting srarion rry ro dome ricatc rhc spaces. Gib:trian' cabin coma ins mnny of the visual clements of Kris's c:trrhly home; Snaur shows Kris how Gibarian :ll't:tchcd paper strips to the vents ro imitate the rustle of 6� I earth

leave . Bur rhis fails to save Gibarian (the problem, he says, i nor home­ lessness bur 'something to do with conscience'). Th<.: dos<.:st the charac­ ters come ro shaping rhc spatial man ifold into a habitation is during rhc panied by 30 seconds of weightlessness in rhe orbital's library, accom images of Bruegel ::tnd by rhe strains of Bach. Snaur chooses it for his birthday parry because 'ar least it has no windows' and rhus allows at least a semblance of insulation from rhe Ocean. However, rhe charac­ ters' weightless stare and fluid movements seem to remind them of their prccnrious srare between rhe cosmic void ::tnd the alien Aows of Sol::tris. Hari's rcmprarion ro become incarnate in nature, essentially in time, fails ro result in life; she remains a mere flow of neutrinos, and her only recourse is ro freeze herself solid. Only in his dream docs Kris transform hi cabin inro home; but rhis location is characterized by multiple folds rhat undermine his security. First Hari appears in bed nexr ro him, then naur makes an impossibly quick circuit of rhe spacecraft, rhen finally Kris dreams of multiple Haris occupying the amc space at rhc same time. While Kris docs end up domesticating his cabin with objects from earth, rhere is rhc suspicion that they ar<.: also solarian copies; typical is rhe shot of a glass jug containing various everyday objects and filled with water. They arc no more real rhan rhc solarian objects rhar appc:tr in his delirious vision of his home. And ycr, as is underscored by rhe presence of Soviet coins embossed with the profile of Lenin, they are mimed with such solidity and authenticity rhar they serve w return Kris ro material existence. Slavoj Zizek reads rhe ending of Solaris as meaning rhar 'within rhe radical Otherness, we discover rhc lost object of our innermost longing'.7 The fallacy in Zizck's approach is ro reduce complex narratives ro the logic of a classic bait-and-switch operation. Tarkovsky is not choosing 'home' over 'rhe Other' of an unknown nnd unknowable nature, nor is he substituting one for rhc other; he is investigating precisdy the inrerAow bcrwecn rwo fundamentally unstable configurations of space. Thu while the 'prologue on earth' root Lem's story in rhc earth, it both begin and ends with depictions of rhe Aows rhar desrabilize any sense of location as such. Like Solc1ris, Mirror both begins and ends in the space of an idyllic home, bur ir is no more an idyll than irs predecessor. lusov defected from T:nkovsky's ream in rhe build-up ro the shoot nor only because he disagreed with the <.:thics of this autobiographical project (as lusov has always explained ir), but because its intensely di continuous storytelling 'pace

I

r.s

and editing fundamentally contradicted the fluid sryle lusov had per­ fected in

Safaris. The first sequence after rhe opening credits suggests a

home like that in Solaris, invaded by a Aoating camera before which

I ·"I'"'

D.wod l·w..·Jru ..h, Ruin a/ 1/dt'll.l ( oS��).

even the wind and inanimate objects manifest an alien will. Bur rhe fire behind the house, like rhe bonfire made by lgnar outside the narrator's apartment, turns these places into shrines of a kind, and rhe final shot places all the temporalities and spatialiries of the film within the cathe­ dral-like space of rhe forest. lr is a direct srep from here to the final shot of Nostalghia, where the lost home emerges from within the ruined cathedral at Galgano, both of which arc simultaneously emerging from and being reclaimed by nature. It is tantamount to a declaration by Tarkovsky that he ha succes fully balanced the three spatial configura­ tions of his imagination. In fact, these shots betrny the ubiquitous temptation of romanti­ cism in Tarkovsky's films, underscored by the fact rhar rhe fin:tle of

Nostalghia direcrly references Caspar David Friedrich's hyper-romantic Ruin at Eldena ( 1 82.4). This romanrici m is in full display in rhe finale ro Sacrifice, where fire transforms the desolate home into a narural shrine

The noon ao G>lgano

'Jost.tlp.IIIJ),

her"""" h ot-droch's rnmanooc od) II >nd Rnl)•p· 11c mgh1m�rc.

to itself. However, this romanticism is mitigated by Ta rkovsky's reluc­ tance ro con ummare rhe rran formation of ruined home into :t shrine;

Nostalghia is also reminiscent of the desolate finale to Rossellini's Germany Year Zero. The very sequences of Mirro1· after all, the ending of

that bridge the rimes and spaces also contain the seeds of their own des­ olation - namely, the wind

that scatter the objects from the table and

the shot of a trash-filled well, both of which mark an acknowledgement of the entropic force of nature and of history. Today the village of lgnar'evo, where

Mirror was filmed, has radically changed from irs stare

circa '973· The open spaces have filled with new construction, increas­ ingly in rhe ryle of American suburbs, each house surrounded by a ten­ foot fence. It is the epoch of enclosure in the Russian countryside, where each individual seeks to create a separate zone, perhaps even inspired by Tarkovsky' idyll of the country home with irs private memories. It is not just the ubiquitous rubbish rips asrridc each sertlcmcnr that make any idealization impossible. Across the Moscow River from lgnar'evo is an idle factory that presents a familbr post-Soviet landscape. It is impossible rod:ty ro believe in Tarkov ky' domestic idyll; bur could that have been Tarkovsky's point? One wonders whether ir w::�s nor rhis very sight that led Tarkovsky from

Mirror ro rhc posr-indusrria l desolation of Stalker, shot mainly ar

66 I earth

-

Srill rrom Roberto Ro�sclhni, (;ermany, YeJr Luo.

-

an idle ovier power :.ration in rhe our kirrs of Tallinn, Estonia, and ar an active one on the river i n t\ tloscow. As Tarkov ky' sryle became more elementary, rhc three dominant sp:tccs of his world achieved ever purer expression: rhc rickety apartment alongside the railway tracks th:tt serves as home; the nawre of the Zone, which appears in league with an alien will; and the cathedral space of rhe 'Room of Desires' to which rhe three men trudge, where their own wishes will reorganize rheir world. The antechamber ro the Room - where the protagonists decide ro forego this resr of rheir will - was especially designed as a columned 'temple' stand­ ing right on rhe lapping waters (os 274). Many attempts have been made ro define what is meant by the 'Zone' in Stalker. For Raymond Bcllour it is an image in which dream is indistinguishable from memory.8 For Ziick it i 'the material presence, the Real of an absolute Otherness incompatible with the rules and laws of our univcrsc'.9 More specifically, Zi7.ek lists se,reral connotations of the word 'Zone' in the Soviet imaginary: a prison camp; the sire of an ecological dis:tster; the area where elites live; foreign territory; or a site of cosmic incursions such as meteorites. Zizek concludes that 'the very indeterminacy of what lies beyond the limit is primary'. In fact, rhe limit itself - or rather the act of delimitation - is the primary condition v

•

v

for rhe 'presence of the Other', the source of 'the void that u rains desire'. In many respects rhe Zone is simply the demarcated area with­ in which an event can occur, akin to the screen in the cinema. Tarkovsky defined the Zone as 'nor a terrirory, but a test thar results in a man either withstanding or breaking. Whether a man survives or not depends on his sense of individual worth, his ability to distinguish what is impor­ tant from what is rransienr'.'0 The Zone, then, is rhe quintessence of Tarkovsky's spaces: a locus of experience formed of inquisitive human gazes and an uncanny impersonal gaze that cannot simply be identified with the camera. The Zone is where one goes to sec one's innermost desires. It is, in short, rhe cinema.

"l{o.u.l,ldt.• Picuu .' nc.u· 'I ulhktwu,

-.U1111111:1' .too6.

68 1 canh

space

I 69

innocenr of rhe artifice. 'What we sec cou ld become nature; but the l.u.:t that we sec it is wholly unnatural', explained Bah1sz. Given rhe inexorable artifice of film it may be instructive ro lay greater stress on rhe fir t member of Tarkovsk>''s formula 'the illusion of reality'. After all, in his lecrures to student directors, Tarkovsky dear­ ly stated: 'It is impossible ro photograph reality; you can only create irs image' (UR 45). A I showed in chapter Two, far from trying ro repro­ duce or even represelll narure, Tarkovsky undersrood that rhe spatiality of film - and also the idea of anyth ing happening i n that space - is mediated first and foremo r by the creen zone. While for other film­ maker rhis may have led to an obsession w ith meta cinema tic n arratives an d shots ( from Anronion i' 131011'-11/J ro K idlowski 's Camera Buff), Ta rkovsky makes his viewers question rhe medium by engaging r he m di rect ly in the composition of rhe im ng.e upon rhc scree n Vivia n Sobchack has i nsrrucr ivcl>' classified rhe prevai ling concep­ tions of r hc screen :IS three me tap hors: t he p icture fra me the window and the mirror. Tnrkovsky's early films e xplore all three qualities of the screen. The action in The Killers is rhe::t r ric af ly framed by a wa II of frosrcd glass thar includes us in the priv:ue world of the bar while rende ring rhe world beyond sinister in irs impcnetrnbiliry. In Stea111rofler and Violin the shop window disp lays mirrors rhat provide S:1sha with a ka leidoscopic view on the world beyond. In Ivan 's Childhood the boy s individual drama is played ou r again st the backgroun d of war, creating a deep space that is sometimes at odds with the foreground. Here rhe screen begins ro be used i n a way remini cent of Jean Renoir, a� a field of varying depth, held rogether by the crossing of t he charncrers' and specta tors' gazes. In rhe angry conversation berween Griaznov and Ivan, Ta rkovsky wrote: 'only rh e bac kgroun d - the work of rhe soldiers outside rhe window- adds

3 Screen

-

Ta rkovsky frequcnrly defined the aurhenriciry he sought on screen as 'the illusion of rea lity' . This asp iration is probably impossible and most cer­ t:linly unwise; as nunH.:rous rea l ity ' television shows have demonstrated, the more uncriticnl the nttempt ro 'catch life unawares' the more ir is linble ro seem uncnnny, forced or rehearsed. Indeed, the renl rn:1y only be d iscern i bl e on fi lm in irs very refusal to be represented . Thcn.:fore, th ro ugh out h istory nrrists have repea tedl y discovered that rhey arc rhe mosr re:1lisr when they foreground rhe very strictures of observing and recordi ng, that is wh en they subordi nate represenration ro prescmarion. Bela Balasz once observed rhar the 'absolute evidence of reality' may be pos ible only in n ature fil ms because on l y 'Plants and animals do not act for the director. And si nce s u ch gl impsed scenes ca n n ot be imagina ry, they po ess omething metaphysically u n setr l i ng for the ma n who is terrified of the uncontrollable power of his fa ntasy. Perhap the least re:tli tic moments in Tarkovsky's films come when his animal perform complex movemenrs as if on cue, manifestin g an alien will thar is :tr once within and outside the aesthetic event. The fact that the cruel treatment of an im:t ls in Andrei Rubliiv - Kiril l 's bearing of h is dog, the burni ng cow, the hor e thar fall and is lanced - has :1lwa)':> been the mo:.r conrrover ial clement of the film shows how disconcert­ ing it ca n be to h:we the fiction ruptured by a udden consciousness of realiry; :ll> Ak ira Lippir has observed of Eisenstein's Strike, rhe actu:1liry of the animal slaughter 1 . . . j i mposes from outside th e d icgesis a ta ste of death , of rhc real'.• A similar rcacrion is perh a ps elicited by rhe fre­ quent shors of chi ldre n observi ng rhe action from wi th i n the frame, for instance, during the jester's dance or in th e scene of rhe Russian Cal va ry. A 1 such moments 1 h e ca mcra seems ro a sk how rhc scenes look to those

.

'

'

,

-

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'

'

70

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It

lh n.l,

IIH I U�H\ ...ky

I\\ lfl Iht.· U'CC"'

I1tw ll.uhlr>•).

screen I

71

I he -.t.:rc.:n ' '' mtiO\\ tf, prlll\.t.'"\• t�. u,l (Audm l�ul•l

It is also uggesti\'e ,·i-;-a-\'iS the icon!> in rhe fin:�le of Andrei Rubleu, which alway!> extend berond the frame, and of the widcscreen video monirors in Solaris. The screen conjures a world that aspires to shape our vision of the world beyond the frame. There i�, therefore, :1n entire ethic� of the screen. When working on

Andrei Ruhliiv, Tnrkovsk)'

W:lS

:�sked to react ro .Jco.y Kawalerowicz's

claim that hi!>torical films should seck

w

estrange contemporary �pecra­

ror ' ':nrromatism' by showing them alien types of movemenr and ges­ ture. T:� rkovs ky disngrced emphaticall)•: 'this distracts the spccraror's arrenrion, focul>ing it on what i., secondar>''.' While Tar kov!>k' ) implicitly agreed that rhe task of film was to ove rcome modern distr:lction, he saw rhe way tO achieve this nor as showing spectators a vision of reality, but

an clement of life an d give the specta tor mareri:tl for fur rhe r thought and a��ociarion!>' (n _n ; LV r 2.7). As Sobc hack concludes, in of:n :1s 'all three memphors rcbtc [ . . . [ only ind irectly to rhc dy n:1 rni c activity of vie wi ng rha t i engaged in by bo th the film an d the spectator', the >' uppn:l.s the 'exchange an d reversibility of perception an d ex pression' an d 'the inrr:1su bjectivc and in rcrsu bjecrive foundations of ci ne rna ric comrmrnication'. 1 To un de r ran d Tarko vsk' ) ir is imperative to develop thi s complex �en e of the crcen as a locus of inr crchangc between world, image and spectator. Andre Bazin once compared rhe cin ema screen to 'rhc little fla sh­ light of the u her, moving like an un certain corner across the night of our waking dream, rhe diffuse space without sh:1pe or frontiers tha r su rrounds the !>creen'.4 Th e screen do es not simply illuminate objects; it create the sp:�ce in which spectatOr s encounter rea lity. B:tzin's image vividly recalls the river crossing in fva n 's CIJild!Jood, where rhe frame is conrimmlly reconstitmcd by the came ra, the figure!> an d the enemy fl:�rcs.

by eliciting from them a new kind of vision. As filmmaker and critic Jean Epstein once wrore, 'There is no srill-lifc [nature morte] on the screen; the objects arc ways of seeing, [allitudes ['.''• By cxtension, cinema

i!> a field where inrclb:r coincides with the mosr vi!>cernl experience, whcrc somatic enga�cmenr in the plot (suspense) coincides with inrcl­ lccrion ( uspension). It wa!> here more than anrwhere else rhat Tarkovsk)' showed himself a student of Roberr Bresson, who allegedly explained his poctics with refe rence ro Lconardo da Vinci's dictum 'Think about the surf:lce of the work. Above all think about the surface.'- In his lectures Tarkovsky elaborated: In his pictures [ Bresson) turns into a demiurge, the creator of a world which almost rurns into re:1lity because there is nothing in it ro reveal artifici:�liry, inrenrion:�lity or the violation of a kind of unit)' In him e\·erything is erased nearly to the point of inexpres­ sivity. This is expressiviry taken ro such :1 degree of precision and laconism rhar it ceases to be expressive I UR 471·

Of the difficulties rhar arise from this approach rhe most conspicu­ ou� j� perhaps Ta rkov�ky's rejection of psychology in his characteriz:�­ rions, which :1s a re�ult seem wooden, passi\'e

or

simply bbnd. Spect:ltors

rarely idenrify with Tarkovsky's characters enough rhl· "t'l't.,l a.. 1111rror: Fonu .u

sympathize with

rhem. Indeed, Ta rkov�ky's actors rc ·tif)' with remarkable unanimity that his dirccrion of them was usually limited

ro

extern:�l positioning and

1f1t.' river look'

ge�rure; he consistently avoided di cu�sing with them what they should he

( lm/r,•t RuiAt·t•

feeling or thinking. T:�rkov k)•\ rea�on' arc illumined by his comment'

Hill; �,..uncr:t

-z. I earth

to

,crcc11

I

7>

on Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra's L'Avven.tum. Tarkovsky remarked thar the unprepossessing plot of the film ('the film's heroes unsucces fully seek a young woman who has disappeared without a trace') was 'free of any symbolic or al legorical information. The authors simply follow rhe people's bt:haviour with unusual precision and arrenrion. A tiring and frustrating search. Without superfluous ("momentous") words and forced ("expressive") acrions.'N In our com­ mon parlance we might speak of such a film as 'A at', just as we do of medieval art that resisted linear perspective, dramatic posing and allegor­ ical puzzles. However, as in the icon, the refusal of surface expressiviry is merely the consequence of a different kind of relation between image and viewer. Just as the tension of L'Avventura (and, in a different sense, 8/ow-ufJ) was based wholly on 'observations', so did Tarkovsky's films resist any separation of the im:1ge from the actual act of looking - and of being seen. The implacability of Ta rkovsky's screen could be as frustr:�ting for the actors :1 for the spectaror. Ta rkovsky liked ro eire a maxim he :1rtributed ro Rene Clair, rhar rhe director does not work with actors, he just pays rhem (UR . p ). At time Tarkovsky followed Robert Bresson's example of using non-professionals, such as the poer Nikolai Glazkov as the flying peasant Efim in Andrei Rublev. In some cases Tarkovsky explained his casting of non-acrors in terms of 'typage': his producer Ta mara Ogorodnikova played Christ's mother in Andrei Rublev (and small roles in the next two films) on the strength of her 'Russian' fea­ tures (she is strikingly reminiscent of the poet Anna Akh matova), while real foreign journalists filled out the audience at Berton's debriefing in Solaris. Preferring to cultivate a stable of his own actors, who appeared in film after film, T:ukovsky avoided using actors with established per­ sonas, with the notable exceptions of Oonatas Banionis (in Solaris}, who by 1970 was a major Sov iet star, Oleg lankovsky (in Nostalghia) and Erland .Josephson, one of Bergman's favourite ncrors (in Nostalghia and Sacrifice). The ideal actor creates 'the sense of a real man who is not showing the spectator that he is doing something or bearing an idea, :�s we say, bur is completely and impossibly convincing, genuinely unique. Unique and not expressive. He is in his right place, :1nd this is the high­ est degree of exprcssivity for an actor in the cinema' (uR 41 ). However, the peculiar inexpressiviry of Tarkovsky's characters was far from being some kind of innare or pristine authenticity; it required from actors no less skill anti efforr (and patience) than Stanislavsky's Method. Banionis 74

I c.1nh

h.1s spoken candidly about the tension that arose from Tarkovsky's refu al to provide pS)'chological motivation for his instructions: ' I was �upposed to turn just so, to continue moving for so many seconds, and to turn also in the course of a certain number of seconds- not a second more or lcss.'9 Banionis felr he was not acting but 'posing'; bur on the screen it came differentl)r: 'The continual need ro count prevented me from concentrating during the shoot, bur in the frame you can't see whether I am thinking abour something or just counting one-two-three . . . That was the director's conception: a conception of genius.' Indeed, 'I needed the actor to dissolve in the [film's] conception', Tarkovsky once said (uR 36). Like Hari in Solaris, actors' minds arc blank slates, to be constructed in rhe act of viewing on the basis of their relative posi­ tion in phy ical and narrative space. As with Hari, our emotional atr:tchmcnt with the characters is likely to b�.: limited to frustration at 1heir impassivity and the shame that arises from seeing others - and being seen oursclve - in rhe frailty of a hum:1n 'identity'. Like rhe figures in :111 icon, T:trkovsky's characters may se�.:m 'Aar' until one realizes the inrensity of the gazes that cross the plane in :til directions and from all sources. In a sense, this was Ta rkovsky's st:trring point in Andrei Rublev, which sought to ger behind some of Russi:t's most famous icons ro capture the kind of life-experience rhat could hnvc given rise ro them. Ln the process of resolving the relationship between icon and film, image and narrative, Tarkovsky nor only developed tech­ niques for his subsequent films; he :tlso formulated his ideas in his single most important essay 'Imprinted Time' ('Zapecharlennoe vremia', 1.967], which placed his cinema poetics into a rich tradition of Russian aesthetic thought. In Andrei Rublev the drama of vision begins with the prologue about the Aying peasant Efim. The film opens with a shot of men l:tshing the bal­ loon over a fire; the shot closes with one of the men turning his gaze towards the camera. Such shots frequently recur in Tarkovsky's films, for inst::tnce with Hari in Solaris; it could be th:H rhe camera wanrs to avoid the direct gaz�.: of the characters, bur (espcci:tlly in H:tri's case) it seems more as if rh�.: characters fear being abandoned by the camera. The next hot (in the 1969 version) bows Efim hurrying across a river :1nd ends with him also looking into the c:1mera. Tht: third shot begins with the first man turning his gaze away from rhe camera, back ro his work. The fourth shot shows Efim mooring his bo:tt behind the other men :tnd scrct:n

I 7s

running inro rhe dmrch, as his pursuer'> become 'isiblc and audible on the ri,·er. Thc'>e '>hem dc�cribe a cl.w.it: cha:.e, to be �ure, bur it is a pecu­ liarly visual pur�uir. After Efim ascends rhe rower and rake:. Aight, we sec thar his endeavour is nor only one of new physical movement, more Auid even rhan that of animals or the river below, bur also of new vision. lusov' camera insistenrly rem inds liS that ir is capable of creating and recording a wide variety of motion�; the vertigo of Efim 's Hight i'> produced by wooping sl1or., from Efim's point of view (taken from a crane and a helicopter), bur :1bo alternaring shot'> where the camera :.eem!> to lurch around a sraric Efim. His Aight come� ro a sudden halt in a freeze-frame, :1frcr which rhe :1ir of his balloon is released into the river. Docs he Ay far, as suggested by rhe crane shots, or j liSt a few yards, as is suggcsted by the '>taric shors that hover unchanged!)• over the same river bend and village? Doc the hor'>e rolling on the ground represent an angelic 'l ie i'> saved ', or the face of a n.tture .1s indifferenr a'> the camera? In :my c.1se the linked dreams of Hying and of toral vision borh run up against the solidity and immobility of rhe cnrrh, which is conrrnsted to the graceful fluidity of flight, the river and the horse. The prologue declares rh:1r the.: srory will concern rhc challenge of arraining tran.,ccndenr vision 011 1he earth with­ our �uccumbing ro impossible fanra'>ie'> of Auencr or weighrlc<,sncss. Ir is important ro nore rhat here, a in other sccncl>, the drama of ,.i ion i much more pronounced in the original edit of the film from 1966, enrided TIJe Pc1ssion according to Andrei. Here, as Efim's collaborator turns around ro fnce the camera ar the end of the first shot, we immedi­ ately see and hear rhe crowd chasing Efim. The implication is rhar the first man has heard the commotion and is looking in our direction to idenrify irs ource. Howe,·er, thi apparent connection is actually impossible hecau e thc crowd io, roo disranr ro be audihle, nor docs ir eventually arrive on the scene from this direction. Whar, then, docs he look at? We can nor dwell for long on rhi!> my rery, becau e new ones keep arising, nor only in the juxtaposition of &hots, bur abo within shots and in rhc soundtrack. For instance, as Efim pushes off from rhe church, an unseen woman seems to whi per '0 Lord', bm rhis derail rcmains cnigmaric. The j!.re:ucr con­ 'picuousne!>'> of rhe di�conrinuirie� in the original version warns rhe \'lewcr nor ro ru'>h to condu ions, bur r.tthcr ro focu on containing the full amplirudc of mulrivalem rea lity with a single field of vi'>ion. The first epi.,ode, 'The jeMcr', cxtcnds this medir:Hion on filmic vision in a number of ways. Firsr rhcrc is rhc Tarkovski:tn rain, which fall:. in sheets in fronr of rhc camera whilc rhe rhrcc monb jog. along in -(, I C.Hih

-

the background, bathed in sunlight. Thcre arc !>imilar "rccns of rain ar the end of this cptsode and throughout the film, most notably in rhe recurring imagc� of the monb under an oak tree and in rhe final :.hot of four horses on a spit of land (which also srand in sunlight, barring away Aiel> with their rails). This insistent rain exaspcrated even so patient a viewer as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who cxcbimed: '\XIhat rain! Antediluvian, unbelicvahl)' heavy rain, rime to bang rogcrher oah's ark! Life il> beaten down hr this rain, and rho�c !>ilcnr horses arc washed up, and the Rublcv frcscoc!> are washed away, and nothing remains . . .''0 It is roo conspicuous to be di missed as amateurishness or oversight; Ta rkovsky was wcll aware of the kitschy implications of using 'cine-rain' from fire-hosc� (111{ 54). Evidenrly thc rain here is not really a !>ign th,tt 'it is raining'; instead, such scrccm of water (invari­ ably pumpcd out of tho�c ver)' �ame fire-hoses) effectively acsthcticize the world by holding ir ar the di'>timil.tr effect i achieved ''hcn we realize rhar we have hccn watching the monb through a window that matches the proportions of rhc screen; rhc c:1mera rccedcs ro �how thc jcsrcr who cmbarks on a circuit of rhc hut. This extremely long l:lkc bcgins with a shifr hctwccn rhrce plane� of dcpth, and then flattens the duce­ Jimcnsional �pace inro a tbt, q•lindric:1l panorama. The two-dimen­ sionality of the screen i rhus both a limitation and a condition of rhe versatility of the filmic narrative. just as the narrative import of rhi� episode (if any such reduction bc possible) is the monks' and rhe jesrer\ observation of cach other, so irs point is tO en�age rhc specraror in :111 active interchange with the scrcen. The epilogue of A11drei Rublet' sers rhe camera in direct relation ro rhe work of the icon-painter, as if tcsring ro <;cc if it can measure up. It

wrccn

I

77

I

is interesting that Ta rkovsky wholly entrusted the photographing of the icons ro lusov, \vho in this regard appears as a master alongside Rublev. " (Indeed, Tarkovsky is more like Boriska than Andrei, more a maker than an observer.) Iusov has pointed out that the widescreen lens precluded the vertically orientated icon being placed within the frame, but encouraged the camera to move over rhe icon's surface, dwelling on specific details and textures. As Tarkovsky said at the time, It's impossible tO show Andrei Rublev's magnificent icons in such a short time, so we tried to create an impression of the totality of his work by showing selected derails and guiding the viewer past a sequence of derailed fragments towards the highest of Rublev's creations, ro the full shot of his famous Trinity. We wanted ro bring the viewer ro this work through a kind of dramaturgy of colour, asking him to move from particular fragments towards the whole, creating an impressionistic flow [AT/ 2.4]. While The Old Testament Trinity is indeed shown in full, ir is flanked by broad bands of empty space, which underscore irs subordination ro the space of rhe cinematic screen. Another telling detail is that, while lusov was able ro shoot the actual icons in the Tretyakov Gallery and in rhe Cathedral of the Annunciation (which was handily filled with scaffolding at the time}, he substituted a copy for the Saviour icon which is sprinkled with water. Apparently it was less important that the camera view the 'original' image than that it view the image through water, augmenting the play of distances thar separate the viewer from the 'reality' represented on-screen. Both the motion of the camera and irs distanciation via a watery film contribute to the shift in emphasis from the represented object to rhe very mode of its presentation. Recalling Pasternak's image, the cinematic story is the atmosphere or the plasma that surrounds the icons. The flat screen is revealed to be open in every direction as an enabling condition of vision. At first glance the suggestion of a relationship between the cinema screen and the icon seems at best unlikely, even unproductive. The vener­ ation of the icon is based on the presence of the represented saint in his or her physical image, whereas the screen is simply a blank wall that allows a transient dance of light. The traditional emphasis on presence i n Russian aesthetics complicated the early reception of rhe cinema. In 78 I earth

one of the earliest known responses to the new art form , in r 896 Max.im Gorky characterized the 'moving photOgraphs' as 'nor life but the shadow of life [ . . . ] nor movemenr bur the soundless shadow of movemenr'.'1 Gorky likened the 'madness' of the cinema to Symbolism, the dominant aesthetic movement of the age, bur the Symbolists themselves were far from enamoured with the new medium of art. After all, their ideal was an artwork that granred form to the elemental flows of being, so that the image might 'stream' onro the passive viewer. Like Henri Bergson, the Symbolists saw the cinema less as a continuous flow than as a discontin­ uous flickering of light that signalled the failure of the image. As Andrei Belyi wrote, 'Rhythm without image is chaos, the roar of primeval ele­ ments in the soul of man.''J However, there were in Russian modernist aesthetics important resources for a more positive theorization of the screen as a membrane that facilitates communication between visible and invisible realms. The Symbolist Viacheslav Ivanov was well known for his ideal of breaking down the barrier between stage and audience (the word he used - rmnpa - could mean either the footlights or the raised stage). Ivanov considered the barrier 'the enchanted border between actor and spectator' which 'still divides the theatre [ . . . ) into two alien worlds: that which only acts and that which only perceives' . ' ·1 At the same time, Ivanov warned against merely demolishing the barrier, insisting on 'an aesthetic resolu­ tion to the problem'. ' 5 In short, the modemist dream of destroying the separation between stage and audience fostered a constant meditation about the nature of the separation and its bridging within the aesthetic event. Vsevolod Meyerhold in particular explored the possibility of a two-dimensional theatre that did not conceal, but explicitly called spectatOr attention to the necessity of mediation. Theatre theorist Alexander Bakshy suggested that Meyerhold's use of space shifted the emphasis from 'representa­ tion' ro 'presentation'. \XIhen he turned ro the cinema, Bakshy was natur­ ally drawn to the screen not as a limitation, but as a crucial medium of meaning: Today the screen [ . . . ] is merely a neutral surface for carrying images, and only helps to emphasize the gap which divides between the two, and ro make this link perform irs liaison service rhe visual images must be hitched to the screen. In other words rhe screen must become a physical reality in the eyes of the screen

I 79

audience, a parr of the theater building which provide the graphic frame of reference for the very being of characters in space, as well as for the form in which they are presented to view. '6 Only by acknowledging and utilizing irs conventional limitations can the cinema maximize irs impact upon the spectator: 'Once the picture is visu­ ally related to the screen and the subject of the picture is seen as presented unmistakably from the screen, a direct physical contact is established with the spectator, which is the condition of all theatrical intimacy.''7 Bakshy encouraged the innovative use of the screen, including variable dimen­ sions, spl ir screens, surround screens and tht: simultaneous projection on adjacent screens, always wirh rhe goal of heightening the specta­ tor's consciou ness of the immateriality of the representation and the materialiry of the very mode of presentation. Remarkably similar thoughts were expressed at the same rime by Sergei Eisenstein. Speaking (in his distinctive Engli h) in Hollywood in 1930, Eisenstein advocated the square screen, which allowed rhe vertic::� I nxis of composition to dominate over rhe lateral: rhe screen, as a faithful mirror, nor only of conflicts emotional and tragic, bur equally of conflicts psychological and optically spatial, must be an appropriate battleground for the skirmishes of both these optical-by-view, bur profoundly psychological-by­ meaning, spatial tendencies on the part of the spectator.'s The advocacy of variable spatiality was one means of exploiting the con­ ventions of cinematic presentation to suggest someth ing beyond visual . repre entanon. In hi own experimentation with screen shapes and conventions Ta rkovsky was implicitly engaging with this tradition of Russian stage and cinema aesthetics. Tarkovsky's first films show him to be a devout proponent of widescreen cinema, a format that for some is linked ro the triresr traditions of narrative cinema, in which the emphasis is wholly on the action or the l:tnd capes, not on formal composition. Opponents of widescreen cinema eire Eisenstein's predilection for a square screen, in which vertical and horizontal axe bear equal weight, and in general to the experiments of the 1920s. For Tarkovsky (and Vad irn lusov) the wide­ screen was a retu rn ro jusr such experimentation with the shapt: of th�.: cinematic image. Solaris was not only shor in widescreen, bur it also So I carrh

features widescreen monitors at Kelvin's home (doubling as a video­ phone) and on the spacecraft. The subtle alternation between colour and black and white projection underscores the intentionality of Ta rkovsky's visual experiment. At one point the characters (in colour) watch a film (in black and white) of the space authorities watching Berton's film (in colour). The authorities' response to this film is also indicative: 'You filmed clouds! Why did you film only clouds?' they exclaim. Thi says less about Berton as a cameraman than about them as viewers. After all, in the closing sequences Kris sees very much the same clouds over the planer Solaris, just before he discovers a simulacrum of his home on the planet's surface. After Solaris Tarkovsky resorted to aspect ratios closer to the stan­ dard 4:3. When television sets arc featured in Mirror and Sacrifice they have regular-size screens, appearing to serve more as furniture than as meta-cinematic ropoi, though in Sacrifice the impending aromic apoca­ lypse is rather conspicuously conveyed over a dying television broad­ cast. Like Bakshy, Tarkovsky replaces any notion that he is representing reality by an intense study of rhe modes in which reality may be pre­ senred. Speaking of his production of Hamlet, Tarkovsky directly addres­ sed the problem of mediation: 'in no case should one destroy the fourth wall or speak direcrly to the audience. Something collapses here, I'm not sure what' (AIF 297). However, his very next film, Stalker, features just such a collapse of the fourth wall, when the Stalker's wife addresses her monologue directly to the camera. Instead of seeking to conceal the screen or pass it over as 'reality', Tarkovsky is constantly playing with its mediation - not to overcome the separation between actor and audi­ ence, or between fiction and rea lity, but to transform their interrelation. As Ocleuze has written, the screen is 'the cerebral membrane where immediate and direct confrontations take place between the past and the furure [ . . . ] independent of any fixed point'.'9 The same obsession with aesthetic mediation also lay at the base of the Russian modernists' interest in the icon. There are two scenes in Andrei Rublev that explicitly dramatize the distinction between iconic and screen presentation. In episode 2 ('Theophanes the Greek') Theophanes' and Andrei's dispute is shot in a single long take of almost three minutes, which commences with Foma crouching on the river bank. The camera rises rogether with Foma, but then dwells on Andrei and Theophanes, whose figures execute a complex ballet while the camera Aoars around them. As Andrei expounds a paradoxical understanding of screen

I

81

rhc Ru sian people and rhe Crucifixion, the camera comes ro rcsr on rhc back of hi head and then curs ro a hot of a white clorh i n Aowing warcr; a the camera zoom our, thi� cloth is revea led to be the fir t hor of a new ccnc consisting of a Pa -,ion pia)•, set in wintry Russia, accompanied by a drum and choral music, and featuring winged angels. lusov has explained in general terms rhat the invisibility of rhc :.tngels was ensured by the close coordination of dark and lighr clements in the fr:1mc, rhc careful sclccrion of film nnd rhc usc of optics thar hciglm:ncd rhc per­ spective on creen ., The voiceovcr of And rei's rheological arg.u menr con­ tinues throughour thi sequence, bur rhe inrensiry of rhe images makes ir difficulr ro follow. The cenc ends wirh a cur-back to Foma's face, as he crouche at rhe water's edge and dip hi painrbrushes in the Mream, scr­ ting whire specks Aowing .twa): The imilariry between rhc firsr �hot of rhc Crucifixion scene and rhe fir�t one to follow it allow� one ro read horh hor as rcprc cnrarion of the same evcnr ccn by Foma firsr in his imagination and rhcn in rcaliry. In orhcr words, Foma 's fantasy of rhc Crucifixion sequence is formed by an evcnr rhar acrually follows it in earrhly remporaliry, rhar of the washing of the brushes. The inscription on the cross, which corresponds nor ro the Gospel nccounr bur to the convenrionnl wording on icons of the Crucifixion, suggest� rhat rhe fnn­ rn )' i caused by Foma imagining :tn icon: what he sees in a momentary Aash of inspiration, rhe film can depicr only as a cquential narrative in earrhly rime; moreo,·er, rhc fanra )' docs nor srand on its own, bur rem:.tins atTached ro its subject's act of vi�ion. imilar ambiguity mark rhe cene where Andrei imagines rhe blinding of rhe masons. In episode ·h 'The Last Judgment', he is shown nervou ly hiring his fingernails, his creariviry evidently blocked by his unwillingness ro painr an admonitory icon of the Lflst judgment. The camera curs to Andrei i n a lighter moment, playing wirh rhe young princess i n a palace of brill i:tnr whirc srone, filled wirh the ai rborne popl:tr fluff rhar blanket� Ru sin every spring. The scene, white on whirc, is almosr blinding, and rhe Grand Prince squinrs agirnredly at rhc itl\'i�ible reliefs rhar his henchm:tn Stepan recommend� painting wirh hrighrcr colour . Fed up, rhe �tonemasom. leave for Zvcnigorod ro enrcr rhe employ of rhe prince'� younger brorhcr. Stepan rhcn leads forth rhe prince'� guard and they blind the !.roncmasons i n gruesome fashion. The ccne end wirh white paint spilled into rhe flowing water. The nexr shot is like :1 negative image of this: a hand smearing dark pnint over nn immacubre white wall. The painr smear is nor yet a fresco, bur ir docs 8::. I c�rrh

express Andrei's desire ro form his raw horror inro a visual representa­ tion, and ro interrupt rhc Aow of spilled blood and painr wirh an image. Curiously, when rhe holy fool looks ar ir in anguish rhe smear ha a dif­ ferent shape, uggc ring rhar ir speak in disrincr W:l)' to each pair of eye . The Ia r shor of rhc episode is also suggestive: afrer Andrei leaves, rhc remaining characters arrange rhemsclvc· inside rhe church in two ranks (reminiscent perhaps of the ranks of saints in the iconosrasis), and rhen rhe hoi)' fool exits through rhc doors inro rhe light and rhe rain, ns i f into the spnce of Rublcv's icon of rhe Old Testflmenl Trinity. The dearhs of Efim and Foma arc shot o as ro mnkc rhc camera's mediation immediately pnlpnble ro rhe viewer; by contrast, Rublcv never once interfere wirh rhe transparency of the camera lens. The flatness of rhe crccn explain rhe Aatne!>s of Andrei Rublcv's character in rhe film. Jusr as ·Andrei'� strength is his ability ro enrer rhe hide of any of his contemporaries', o abo the 'character of Andrei's genius i an nggrcg:ne of cnsations belonging ro Kirill, both princes, M:.ufa, tcpan, and each scpararc chnmcrcr'!' T:-trkovsky linked his usc I I luul th

luud1

1<. ,,,.,

of a mulri-cenrred ser ro the example of Vittorio Carpaccio, a Venetian masrer ,,·hose work expressed 'rhe sense of a promise of rhe explanation of the inexplicable': 'the centre of Carpaccio's many-figured composi­ tions is each of his characters. Concentrating attention on any of the figures, you begin to understand with unerring cl arity rhat eve ry thi ng else is merely an env iron ment [sredaJ, an en rou rage constructed as a pedestal for rhis "incidental" character' (ST 50; zv 147). Tarkovsky spoke of rhe way this ineffable environment or atmosphere 'condensed' on­ screen as particular visual texture: Let's say a man is walking along a white wall covered in shells; the sh ape of rhe srones, the character of the cracks and the ru stle of ancient seas th:u is condensed in their silence crcares a chain of ideas, associations, a single parr of the characterization. Another parr appear when we rake the opposite point of view and the hero is shown moving against the background of the dark-blue sea and bla ck, ar h yrh mi ca ll y a rranged pyramidal trees. He changes th e angle of his head, arguing with rhe th oughts h e h as j ust ha d . In oth er words, wc arc moving not a long a rational and logical path, where words and acti ons can immediately be j udged , but along a poetic path.'' may seem counter-intuitive to attribute rexrure ro the cinema, which is devoid of a sense of rouch ; it is like rhc hand of a paralytic, 'which can on l y touch things from afar, but never grasp thcm'.2.1 It is p recisel y this elusive attraction of the cinematic surf:�ce that inrensi(ies our experi­ ence of ir s texture. I n sh o rt Tarkov ky's cinema was tied nor ro a parricular shape of the screen, bur to the very concept of th e screen as the exterior skin of observed reality: 'Film directing starts [ . . .] when rhe interior gaze of rht: person making the film [ . . . ] sees an image of the film, wherher as a deta il ed series of episodes or only as the se nsat ion of a rexture and emotional atmosphere which musr be reproduced on rht: screen' (sT 6o). This texture is rhc product of rhe apparatus; l u sov spoke of 'communic::tring rhe tcxtmt: of rhc image of rhe rt:al world, thereby revealing irs inner essence by rhc means of arr, bur using rhe bt:sr available optics and colour capabilities of rhe film-srock'.1� But i t is al so ::1 palp::tblc sr:�te of matter; Tarkovsky cited the cx :� mp l c of Earth ( 1 930), d irected by Alcksandr Dovzhenko and shot by D a n ii l Dcmutsky, wh�.:rc a low sho t of a horse-driven plough shows 'rwu types of lr

,

8� I

c:lrlh

ploughedness: rhe dark ploughed earrh and the white douds, which also seem ploughcd'.2> The screen, in sum, returns rhe image ro racr i le m a teri a l i ty. The

material thickness and opacity of the cinema screen might well be

sub ject of Mirror, which is the story not of the filmmaker's life but of his visual imagination. Tarkovsky was frequently tempted ro include hjmsclf i n his films; his voice adds irs criticisms of Berton ar the press conference in Solaris. While he chose n ot to narrate Mirror himself, he did include a shot of his hand tOssing the b i rd ; the first edits also showed his face, bur the studio's opposition to such self­ indulgence pe rha ps strengthened his own doubts about whether his sub ject ivi t)' could be represented by rhe very screen that i n Minor seems ro look with his eyes. Several discrete levels of memory are interwoven with cinematic glimpses of history and significant paintings and photo­ graphs, as if in an attempt to measure the refractive power of the eye and the material resistance of the image. The abil i ty of the screen to b rin g all of rhcsc impressions inro a single frame is undersco red at the end of the first episode in the na rrat ive which is set at the country home i n Ignat'evo, before the war bur after the departure of the husband . The episode (in vivid colour) ends wirh three figures standing before rhc burning shed in staggered formation and then with a shot of the mother sta nd i ng ;H the well as the old man runs by, towards the fire. Th en in comparatively quick succession, there follow shots of the little boy asleep in bed (in colour), the ed ge of the forest blown by a wind (in black and white), and again the little boy (in colour), who utters 'papa', awakes and walks forwards as a white cloth flies across rhe frame. Each of rhesc shots manifests the absence of the husband/father as an abhor­ rem vac u um rhar human memory and imagination strive ro cou nteract. There then follows a confus i n g sequence of shots, all i n black and wh i te and all within the space of what we w il l lea rn ro be the a pa rtment of A lcksei , the film's protagonist: of the husband pouring water on the mothe r's hair over a l a rge basin; of plaster fall ing in a torrent of water; of rhc morhcr walking under rhe falling plaster and reflected in a series of mirrors; and of an old wom an seemingly walking our from the orher side of a p:1inring. Here, in :1 pu rel y imaginary realm, the absence is replaced nor by p resence, but by thc very multi p l ica tio n of i mages in vari­ ous refraction. The lasr rwo s hot s a rc especia lly complex . In the first, the panning camem shows the m o ther in three distinct fra mi n gs, caused by regarded as the central

,

,

screen I 85

TI1c finlli•lt• Ill• �cqucnu·

Mirmr.

her being reflected in rwo mirrors and then, so to speak, in the flesh. The second shot initially appears to be compounded from rwo (one of the painting on rhe wall and another of the mother walking towards the camera), bur then she reaches our a hand and touches the glass of the painting. The initial effect of both shots, in shorr, is both to reveal 'reality' as image and simultaneously to break the plane that holds the two separate. The sequence ends with the beautiful colour shot of a hand held in flame (from a memory that appears later i n rhe film), which could sug­ gest an arrempr to verify one's waking stare or ro awake from a stare of torpor or temptation; sure enough the next shot- a magnificenr panora­ ma of rhe unseen protagonist's apartment, which situates the previous shots in a real space - is accompanied by the sound of a ringing tele­ phone :1wakening Aleksei. There ensues an uncomfortable conversation between him and his mother, who is calling ro inform him of the death of Elizavera Pavlov na, her old co-worker ar rhe priming plant, rhar very morning. If the preceding sequence had confused real and imaginary dimensions in spnce, this conversation confuses real and im:1ginary dimensions of rime that seem to converge ar the borderline moment of :1wakcninv,. Alcksci asks his mother ro provide :1 date for his memories IIr.

I c.1rl "

111

of his father's absence and the shed burning; she answers (1935), and he then asks rhe current rime. This clash of real and imaginary is under­ scored by the camera, which in a single tracking shot (too smooth to be the Aleksei's point of view) surveys a window with an open book and a pigeon on rhe sill, a French poster for Andrei Rublev showing the Old Testament Trinity in flames, and a framed photograph of the mother (i.e., of Tarkovsky's actual mother, who plays the old woman, circa 1935). Aleksei, oblivious ro real time and unwilling ro leave behind his eternally present memories, reacts ro his mother's news only by (apparenrly) imag­ ining rhe scene at the printing plant. Again, imaginary time seems to run in a direction opposite to that of real time. These densely layered opening sequences convey abundant narra­ tive information about the story without providing any sense of a plot, that is to say, without posing a clear question to which the spectator will be seeking an answer. The plot almost wholly consists of a circling amongst images: of the mother in memory, in imagination, in photo­ graphs. If there is a definable problem, it will be for the mother to enter real time and space for the SOil. It is strange that, when later lgnat opens the door for her, they do not recogniz<.: each other. However, this merely underscores the fact that there is no simple way out from imaginary space and time into 'reality'; just as the dizzying array of images is unified only by rhc refractive medium of th<.: director's gaze, so also the point of the film is most of all the heightened sensitivity and attention that the spectator takes aw:1y from it. This is the limitation of the screen, and also irs unique power and privilege.

screen

I 87

•

I re

4 Word and Image

The last line spoken in And rei Ta rkovsky's cinematic oe u vre cites the o pening of S t Joh n's Gospel : 'In the beginning was the Word.' Is this Tarkovsky s confession that he viewed his task more as telling than sh owin g? Indeed, there is ample evidence of Ta rkovsky's logocent r is m . '

Of his seven full-length films, three were adaptations of literary works, two wen.: based on previously published literary sources of his own composi tion, nnd one of the others is about a poet. His characters dilntc at length on philosophical and ethical problems, reciting poems or

Scri pture, both on-screen and in voice-over. Even his usc of well-known images from cultural traditi on seems to confirm a mistrust of rhe cine­

marie image, ns if it can be legitimated only by being grafted onto canonical culrural tradition in the most bookish sense. Indeed, these images arc often motivnred die getica ll y by having characters peruse art albums. If Tarkovsky's begi n ni ng was nor rhc word, was it the book? Ta rkov s ky s frequent citation of literary and visual artworks ostt:n­ '

sibly contradkrs his theory of film as a sovereign field of representation beyond rhc word and the painterly image. In 'Imprinted Time' Tarkovsky explicitly drew attenrion away from verbal discourse: 'One can't con­

centrate the meaning of a scene in the words that characters utter. [ . . . ] Only by precisely coordinating the action with rhe pronounced word, onl)' from their differenr trajecto ries is born the image I call an "image­ observation", an absolutely concrete image' (ST 75; zv 178). In a 1985 interview he declared: for me as a cinema artisr the word is just rhe same kind of material 1'huto);r.1ph of h�m ll•w• s Child/mod).

as nnything else. [ . . . ] As far as words in general arc concerned then, despite some perhaps very serious pronouncements by my

protagonists, I view these words and statements more as under­ scoring and expressing their character rhan as expressing an authorial point of view. [ . . . ) art in general - and cinema especially- is expressed nor b)' means of words bur by means of feelings which the author invesrs i n his works. 'In general', Tarkovsky concluded, '1 view words as noise made by man." When the word can be defined as both a spiritual element and mere noise, there is an obvious need ro get beyond the logic of either/or. In fact, the cinema might even be defined i n rerms of irs ability p reci scl)' ro render the image as a word and rhe word as an image, and i n rhis way to heighten the fragile materiality of mediation. This tension i n Tarkovsky's discourse on language and arr is graphically displayed in scenes where books and images are torn, bLlfnt, soaked or otherwise obscured. His filmic narratives incinerate texts and images i n order to form an original world our of their ashes; moreover, rhis world is never entirely present on-screen. Tarkovsky understands that his film will also be burnt up in the viewer's appropriation. Therefore the scenes of burnt books and desecrated images are emblematic of Ta rkovsky's broad interest in how images interact with material life to create the specific density of lived existence. I attach particular importance ro Tarkovsky's usc of both handmade and mechanically reproduced media, both origi­ nal and cOp)' As is most starkly suggested by Hari in Solaris, the copy is a condition of the original's rejuvenation. Tarkovsky's cinematic attitude towards books and paintings was mani­ fested as early as Ivan's Childhood: the fresco of rhe Mother of God, invisible to rhe characters in the film, is seen only by rhe observant eye of the camera, which ;'!(so marks our rhe crosses formed by rhe rail of a crashed aeroplane as a sanctifying ruin and as the tomb of meaning. These arc the only traces of human endeavour above ground; the destruc­ tion of all orher human creations allows rhc dcsccrarcd earth ro be cleansed of irs cfAuvia and restored ro a pristine stare of basic (and holy) clements: earth, warer, wind and fire. Ycr rhe visual force of rhc fresco vis-:\-vis the viewer is only strengthened by irs desolation. The im:�ge survives nor as a manufactured artefact, bur as a pattern embedded in nature and revealed in apocalyptic cleansing. Ar fi rs t glance, the printed book and language as such seem utterly de-funcrionalized. Language no longer works for communication. Ivan ')1.

I fire

1•11�• II

l•·.m$

I

writes his letter in a secret code using quantities of seeds and thorns instead of words. Language is desecrated on rhe misspelt sign that the enemy has hung around the neck of two fallen comrades; to Kholi n's disgust, however, Galtsev fails ro remove the sign or the bodies. Ivan says rhat Germans cannot have an)' writers because he saw a public burning of books in a German city; bur then i n the circumstances of war rhe Russians do nor have roo many books around either, only some maga zi nes rhar Galrsev recommends to Ivan for their pictures. The written word is good only for a desperate epitaph rhar teenage Russian soldiers facing execution have scrawled on the wall of the bunker. The camera is consranrly attracted ro this graffiti, bur i r remains as helpless as the hunker's present inhabitants ro respond ro it in any meaningful way. It is notable rhar, amidst the general collapse of image and language, rhe two instances of effective communication involve media of mechanical reproduction. Karasonych fixes rhe gramophone (probably a war rroph)'} and comes up with a record of rhe Russian baritone Fedor Shaliapin. Shaliapin's voice remains mute until the gramophone is repaired, bu r rhe first rime ir is pla)red rhe music is immediately shut o""ff by Kholin without explanation, while rhe second rime the needle gets stuck in a groove. word :�nd im:t�;t: I

�3

II u l11 I lur..:r. Possibly, I ''" llursemen

tht: voice is roo powerful ro be activated at this moment; it must remain a latent presence, etched inro the grooves of vinyl. Even more curious is the fact that, while waiting for his new mission, Ivan rejects the illustrated magazines (he says he has read rhem all) before picking up an album of Albrecht Di.irer's prints that had also been captured from the Germans. Di.irer's The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse immediately captivates Ivan; he recognizes rhe skeletal figures as the very same 'Fritzes' on motorc ycles who had raided his village and killed his mother. johnson and Petrie claim the picture 'is used ro intensi fy the horrors of war [ . ] and ro provide an ourlet for the anri-Nazi sentiments'.� Ho,vever, wh)' Dlirer, and why this engraving? From the perspecti ve of Russi an aesthetic tradition, specifically the .

.

aesthe tic s of Pavel Florcnsky ( • 882-1937), Diirer's engravings were symptomatic o f the spiritual crisis of modernity. Viewing the artistic

composition and techn i que as expressions of artists' 'metaphysics', Florensk)' took as his ideal the fifteenth-century Russian icon, for instance Andrei Rublcv's

Trinity.1 The complex technique of preparing

wooden panels, rrncinp; the c a nonical composition and layering colour onto irs forms, background and faces is filled with symbolic profu ndity. I n sum, 'the icon-painter 'lcpicrs

being, moreover well-being Jblago­

bytiel'.4 Th<.: <.:ng ravin g by conrrast, typi fies Protesranr spirituality in irs ,

rejection of corpor<.:al sensuousn<.:ss and its rational de-composition of objects into conc<.:pt ua l our Ii n<.:s: 'The <.:ngravi ng is a schema of the image, constructed on th<.: sole basis of rhe l:tws of logic [ .

. . 1 d epri ved of borh

pi r it ual and sensuous giv<.:nness'. Moreover, the engravi ng i s a 'mechani­ cally reproducibl<.: work', :1 cl iche rhar can be imprinted on any surfacc.1 Florensky likens this indifference ro Ka nt s philosophical method, which 'reconstructs rhe ncriviry of form-creation' and therefore 'is free!)' accepted by any Sln·facc'.1' For Flo rensk), photography (an d , by i mplicat ion the cinema) marked a funher step in the direction of abst ract, soulless and mecha nicnl rep r<.:scnra rion .7 Yet Diirer s prim a lso serves as an in dex of rhe e xpressive porenrial of rhe cin<.:matic im:1gc, which is not :1 full depiction of reality, rather a mech­ anical imprint of irs ourline. ln /l'a/1 s Child/)()od, 0[irer's engraving allows Ivan rhc fre<.:clom ro trace his own r<.:a I it)' within its frame, ancl ir endows his rraum:uic realiry with rhe :1poc:1 ly pti c meaning of rh<.: image. In a similar fash ion, Tarkovsky's cinem::uic imnj!.C provi cks a shape and a directionality for the viewer's real ity wi t hou t im posi n g :1 strict narrative or ideological s

'

,

'

'

content. Th<.: vicw<.:r animates the cinematic image by <.:mplotting it within word

:mel image

I 95

a meaningful narrative framework. Just as rhe print is an imprinted shape, so for Tarkovsky rhc celluloid image is imprinted rime. However, an engraving or a film is not simply a mechanically repro­ duced image that requires emplormenr; ir is also a material arrcfacr that intervenes in material existence. The Durer book is a tattered war rrophy that is immediately discarded when read. Quire different is the photo­ graph and dossier on Ivan rhar Galrsev finds i n bombed-our Berlin; this material trace, preserved i n rhe midst of the burnt city, is informed by the entire preceding narrative. \X/e can rry ro view this phorograph just as Ivan viewed the Diirer engraving, as a visual tracing of the narrative we have just experienced. Yet it resists being sublimated i n this way; rhc nar­ rative has culminated in an image rhar coincides with life and becomes, for rhc viewer, a memory. Regarding his next film Andrei Rublev (1969), Tarkovsky once noted thar 'For us the srory of Rublt:v's life is essentially the sror)' of a taught or imposed concept that burns up in the atmosphere of living truth to arise again from the ashes as a fresh ;111d newly discovered truth' (ST 89; zv r95). Indeed, Andrei Rublev provides memorable images of burnt books and charred icons, which according to Tarkovsky must 'rise again' from the ashes of rhc film. The inscribed image and rhe wrirren word arc obviously central ro Andrei Rublev, a film about icon-painters that in irs episodic structure can be likened to the illuminated manuscript of a monastic chronicle. Mall)' of the major characters have peculiar relationships to books. For instance, Daniil is often shown with books bur he rarely reads them. I n episode 1 ('The Jester') he nods off ro sleep in his reading. In episode 2. ('Thcophancs rhe Greek') he feigns reading the book to avoid talking ro Andrei. Others show bookishness ro be a dubious virtue. In episode 4 {'The Last Judgemenr') Foma is seen with an open volume of icon tracings, as he waits ro begin the frescoes in Vladimir; the book con­ tributes to his {misplaced) confidence rhar he is qualified ro begin working independently of Andrei. In the same scene, Daniil instructs rhc young Sergei ro calm Andrei by reading from the New Testament; the passage from St Paul actually irritates Andrei even further because it painfully con­ tradicts observed realiry. Kirill's interaction with books is even more nega­ tive. He eires written authorities in his conversation with Thcophancs the Greek and, for his sins, is !:Iter cold ro copy our the scrip[Ures fifrcen rimes. As is made clear in his final conversation with Andrei, this penance dot:s Kirill lirrlc �ood. Copying is nor rhe same as understanding. ')6 I fi rc

I 111111 huok I• ' I .,/./cr •).

Most emblematic of the book in Andrei Rublev is Theophanes' appearance from beyond the grave in episode 5 ('The Raid'). At first the viewer sees only an unknown hand leafing through a charred volume. In rhe course of the ensuing convt:rsarion Thcophanes surprises himself by speaking I i nes from the New Testa mt:nt, exclaiming 'I rem em bcr! I haven't forgorren ! ' The book is unn ecessary in heaven, where God communicates without verbal mediation, though ir remains dear to Theophanes, perhaps as the medium through which he encountered God, however darkly, in rhe world. Theophancs deals with images in a similar way. He noncha Ianti y dism isses Andrei's grid over his burnt iconosrasis: 'Do you know how many iconostast:s I have had burnt?' he asks. Answer­ ing Andrei's question about heaven, he says: 'It doesn't look at all as you imagine it.' However, after calling into question the accuracy of the icon, Thcophanes adds: 'Still, it's all so beautiful!' Theophanes demotes rhe icon ro an approximation of tht: truth that, far from 'expressing' transcendent rcaliry, imprints ir as a tracing of an outline. At first Andrei rakes rhis entire experience as a denial of the word and the image, and he responds b)' disavowing speech and icon-painting. Bur at this point Andrei Rubliiv becomes a film about the resurrection of the word and image through Andrei's purgative silence. He must rediscover the burnt word and image as imprints of a spiritual shape, and nor as transcendent reality itself, and he must cmbod)' that spiritual shape in his actions, which arc more durable than words and images. The rediscovery of rhc icon as an imprinting of heaven concludes an intense discourse on images in Andrei Rublev. The film is full of icons. They arc propped against walls in Thcophanes' and Kirill's work­ shops. When Foma imag;incs the Crucifixion scene, he stocks it with winged ang;cls, melodramatic mourners and Bruegel-like landSC
')7

Bur Foma is a minor artist, one who rakes inspiration from books of canonical models. Kirill's bookishness does nor completely obscure his vision. When he returns ro the monastery after years of wandering the world (episode 6, 'Charity'), he notices the shadows of people and beasts

opposite a boarded-up window. He seems to discover for himself the secret of representing l i fe in a camera obscura. Bur Kirill is also a failed arrist. Andrei, rhe real painter, has no such epiphanies of visual imagination and technology; he merely sees. Only once i s Andrei shown handling an icon. I t depicts Sr George killing the dragon and has been singed by a fire in rhe Grand Prince's palace. The Grand Prince glances at the icon just after he sends Stepan upside-down on the wall

our

ro

blind rhe stonemasons, as i f ro acknowledge the diabolical simi­

l:triry between St George's spiritual labour and his own treacherous crime. Like Diirer's

Four 1-/orsemen in Ivan's Childhood, the desecrated

icon of Sr George is revealed as a pattern for the apocalypse, from which

tl1 foiii1Uf

the film. firsr, rhere is the Russian language spoken by the characters to

humanity's cruel overlords trace their actions. However, the end of the

j l !llllj',l"

each other in the film's diegcsis. Second, there are three extensive quota­

film denotes a stark reversal of this iconoclastic theme. Boriska stamps

'""", /(u!J/et•).

tions from Scripture, read mostly as voice-overs. Third, there are two

St George's killing of the dragon onro his triumphal bell; we firsr sec the

groups of foreign characters who speak their own languages, which arc

relief of St George when the burnt cast is chipped away. The Grand

presumably not understood by the Russian characters and arc not trans­

Prince arrives and contemplates the raising of the bell. Boriska's violcnr

lated for rhe Russian viewer (although their speech is sometimes translated

firing and smashing. of rhe casr renews the image itself.

As

in subtitled versions). Lastly, as aI read)• noted, language appears several

with rhe burnt

times in rhe form of written texts.

icons in Vbdim ir, the image must be incinerated in order to be imprinted

In contempor:uy interviews T:ukov sky consistently spoke of the

as a rr::1cing of eternal rrurh. The epilogue ro Andrei

Rublev would seem to confirm this paradox­

ical icon-veneration by displaying the icons with a mobile camera ::1nd prinkling them with water. 1 informing rhem

with

film

aurhenricares

on

bell , ,.,,,, , Rublet•).

need to avoid stylizing the narrative ::1ccording to current ideas of what medieval Russia should look and feel like. Instead, he sought to render

images b)•

m::1rerial content; yet these images do nor coincide

with life. The cinema is a rhe temporal

arrarive

1 1 Hurl!�

narrari,·e

in which

progression only ro be suspended

word and

image suspend

themselves by rhe forward

thmst of suspen c. There can be no final word or still image. The most conspicuous thing about language in

Andrei Rubli!v is its

inconspicuousness. The film treats of a distant historical and culrur:JI epoch (fiftccnrh-ccnr ury Muscovite Rus), a

distanr linguistic milieu (icon­

painters in the Russian Orthodox Church) and several non-Russian nationalities (om: Greek, a couple of Italians and rhe Tara r-J'vlon gol horde). However, rhe film is dominated by a kind of neutral-modern Russian (albeit with a folksy tinge) rhar avoids foreign loan-words just as studiously as :Hchaic forms. Four levels of language can be iclenrifiecl in ')!!

I fire

word and imn!-\c I 'J'I

rhe setting parscl}', wirh rhe effect of underscoring irs material presence on-screen and making it seem inhabitable: 'A chair musr be seen nor as an arrefacr in a museum, bur as an object on which people sir.'8 A simi­ lar stri ctu re applied ro the actors, who, Tarkovsky stipulated, 'will play people they understand, subject co essenti a lly the same feel ings as con­ temporary 1nan'.? This need for immediacy resulted in a neutral and transparent language. Tarkovsky's colleagues were symparheric with rhis conception. At rhe very first Artistic Council meeting on Andrei Rubfev, on 28 April 1963, the screenplay was praised for irs 'rich, colourful, juicy' language 'wirhour modernization and without returning to the language of the fou rteenth [sic] ccntury'.'0 This is 1-ruc even for rhe extensive quotations of Scripture in episode 2 ('Thcophancs the Greek'), when rhc rcxr of Ecclesiastes (in voice-over) accompanies Kirill's silcnr conrcmplarion of his position, and episode -1 ('The Last Judgement'), when Andrei and the )·ourh Sergei borh read sections of Paul's First Episrle to the Corinthians. All three rexrs are read following the srandard Russian rr:111slation, completed i n 1 876. The usc of this text in rhc film is technically anachronistic, insofar as it postdat es Rublcv's life by almost 500 years and pre-dates th e Film by almost a cen­ tu ry, and :dso anaropic, insofar as it is still nor used for ecclesiastic purposes in the Russian Church. (To monks and other ccclcsiasrics, the Slavonic text continues to be current and more familiar.) By using this translation, Ta rkovsky brings the rext to the viewer, bur also alienates it from its native habitat. This is a dcfamiliarizing bmiliariry, which forces the viewer ro n::-calibrare the proper distance ro rhe n.:presentarion and ro ask 'arc these rhe righr words?' The second Scriprural text in episode -1 is read at random by the youth Sergei who rrips over rhe complex grammar and unfamiliar words. His poor performance of rhe text serves nor ro 'ridicule' ir, as Solzhenitsyn has claimed;'' rarhcr, Sergei's reading reinforces the point rhar, in adulthood, a childish understanding and a childish language cede nor ro a Aucncy of understanding and language, bur ro :1n appreciation of rhe failure of l a n­ guage before the enormity of the truths that it denotes. Reading the rules of church conduct brings rhc characters closer ro God by dramatizing their distance from true understanding. Rublev realizes rhar, void of love, his words arc merely 'sounding brass'. Removing Scripture from irs usual pragmatic conrexr, rhe child's voice docs nor render ir rransparenr, rarher ir reveals it (and all language) as an opaque medium that both joins us to and scparares us from knowledge. 100

I

fire

The rwo instances of foreign speech reinforce rhis idea of language as ar once a barrier and an almost impossible aspiration. In rhe firsr instance, Tatar-tvlongol marauders descend upon Andronikov Monastery during Rublev 's ordeal of silence. He watches mutely as they tease the h oly fool with a chunk of horsemear and then carry her off. Throughout this scene rhc rough beau ry of their Turkic speech is from and centre. To a Rus�ian ear perhaps some of rhe exclamations arc even vaguely comprehens1ble, such as '>rakshy' ('good'), 'ki bashka' ('put [the helmet) on your head') and 'ayda' ('let's go'). One knowledgcable sou rcc on Turk ic languages has . tentatively identified rhe s peech here as a dialect of K1pchak, poss1bly Nogai, which preserves archaic fe<� tu res of an earlier, more unified state of the Turkic languages. . . Whether he w<�s aware of it or nor, Tarkovsky succeeded in c rea ti ng a language that, rruc ro rhc general tendency of rhc Film, refrains from projecting a specific time or place, and which instead invites multiple inhabitations. The unrranslated Turkic speech also confirms Tarkovsky's studied avoidance of any definitive inrcrpretation of rhe narrative. The holy fool who is carried off in rhis scene appears to return ar the very end of rhe Film as a Tarar princess. The film gives little grounds for confidence in this 111arrer. lr is nor unknown for actors ro play multiple roles in Tarkovsky's films; in Andrei Rublev, lurii Nazarov plays both the elder and younger princes, while Nikolai Glazkov appears as three distinct character�. The screenpla)' appears to Fill in the gap by showing rhe holy fool regmn her sanity after giving birth ro a Tatar-looking child; however, the screenplay lacks both rhe scene of her abduction by rhe Tatars and her reappearance at the end of the film.'� The mystery of the holy fool deepens if one understands the Tatars to say, as they carry her off, 'Let's rake her with us and abandon her on rhe road.' Perhaps this statement is not supposed ro he understood, bur its mystifying effect rcAccts a significant fact abour the Film: rhe more one investig:Hcs rhc evident discontinuities within the plot, rhc more one uncovers the cons iste nt pu rs uit of discontinuity as an aes­ thetic pri nci pic. Sp a rse ne ss and even absence :1 rc rcvea led as indexes of a superabundance of meaning that simply c<� n not be rcp resenrcd on the screen, which becomes more expressive as it becomes gradually less transparent. Far from imposing an inrcrpremrion on the fragmented narrarive, rhe voice-overs and unrranslared speech of rhc Tatar-Mong,ols confirm how far rhe f11m must be even from understanding itself. The untransl:tred speech of the Italian diplomats in 'The 13ell' is mere charter, soon drowned out by the proverbi a l 'sounding brass' of Boriska's word �nd im�g<: I

10'

both the image and the word ro their sovereign functions. Almosr alone among rhc major characters of rhe film, Boriska speaks wirh cffecr: when he invokes the name of his father to have And rei ka whipped, Andreika is led away; when he demands more silver from rhe Grand Prince, he gers ir. When Boriska confesses ro Andrei, he elicits the monk's firsr words for sixteen years. It is said that bell. The triumph of 'The Bell' resrores

is a cipher of the film's struggle to master irs own discourse. The boy's

Anatolii Solonirsyn, the actor who played Andrei, refrained from speak­

s uspende d in the Bach prelude (Das Orgelbiichlein no. 1.6, 'Das alte jahr vergangen isl') wh ich accompanies rhe opening credits. The fluid musicali ty of speech is confi rm ed in the fir st-p erson retrospective voice-over, which is read by lnnokentii Smokrunovsky. Having taken flight, language has its wings clipped in the halting conversation between rhc mother and the cynical new-found fluency is ar once confirmed and

an entire monrh prior ro shooting rhe final scene in order, as Tarkovsky said, 'ro find the righr intonation for a man who speaks after a long silence' .' 4 Rublev is able to speak once again, nor because he has learnt the right words, but rather because he has re-learnc the language of children and has reconciled himself to its inevitable but noble fa il ure . Andrei's words are not self-sufficient; they convey rhc monk's intention to

docror. Thus language wavers between muteness and eloquence, which

resume painting and to encourage Boriska's bell-founding. These words

brated like a thcophany'. As the voice-over intones the words 'mirror

are both the 'beginning' of the deed and merely a 'noise' that humans

The story of Solonirsyn's vow of si lence seems dubious given the fact tha t, fol lowing Soviet practice, di a logue was recorded at the end of the shoot and dubbed into the film; perhaps Tarkovsky felt thar speaking after a long

A s the voice reads thar 'speech swelled in my throat', the mother picks up a notebook, as if ro seek the h:11 1dwrit ten text tha t can mediate between the full-sounding voice and the memory of irs a utho r the father who has not rcturn ed from the war. ln his absence, the tex r occupies a p hys i cal locus at an imaginary point of convergence between the father's voice, his notebook of poems, the

silence affects not only the voice, but also the gesture of speaking. In his

mother's memory, her reading of the notebook and, now, the narrative of

following films Tarkovsky appears to have placed even less importance on

rhc film.

ing for

make, both transparent medium and opaque film.

underscores its status as an opaque medium.

The pe rforma nce of language eschews simple communication for the manifold of human experience. W hen the mother wanders through her house in a reverie of memory, the voice of Arsenii Tarkov sk y begins to read (in voice-over) a poem: 'Each in stant of our meet in gs I We cele­ glass', rhc mother looks our the window.

,

not even listed in the credits. V I !orcover, Jarvct's

A similar conclusion can be made regarding the temporal moment recorded i n the poem. A l th ough this scene is set immcdiatcly after World War 11, the poem is d ared 1962; it is being read for a film made in 1 974, and now is being viewed at a co mple te ly new time a nd place. By imprinting mu l t i ple laye rs of time and place, the text overloads thc

grasp of Russian was so poor that Tarkovsky later regretted that he had nor

sensorium and blocks any attempt ro reduce the experience to a verbal

let him read the lines in his native Estonian: 'it was anyway necessary to

interpretation; rhc text becomes the guarantor of materiality.

voice and language. In Solaris, he went our of his way to engage two actors,

Donatas Banionis and Juri .J arver, who spoke Russian with stron g Baltic accents. The actors who provide their voices, Vladimir Zamansky and Vladimir T:ltosov, were

dub his voice and he could be even freer and therefore more distinct, rich­

Other instances of books and texts reveal an equally amhivalcnl

er in col ou r, had he pronou nced the text of the role in Esto nian' (ST 1 48 ; zv

a rri ru dc towards the possibility of specifying any m eani n g. Whc11 th�.: protagon ist's mother tells him of the death of her former col lc:q �ue :11 :1 p rin ting plant, we sec his imagined me mory of an incidenr in her c:m•er as proo f reader. She runs to the printing planr in thc po u rin � 1'.1 i11 1 0 check a horrible misprint she may have let through. Alrhou�h dw honk

266). Cll·uc, he failed to act on th is observation; i n Nostalghia he still had

Erland Josephson mouth his lines in Italian.) It is puzzl in g that the on ly character with a plausibly Soviet name, the Armenian C ibn ri an , is the only one to speak Russian with an accent and he docs so only in recordings. -

In Mirror, a confessional film, one might cxpccr a greater emphasis

on speech; however, rhe film is much more concerned wirh the muteness of real experience, in which on ly rarely and for brief momcnrs can you sec the full co i ncidence of word and gesture, word and act i on , wo rd a n d meani ng, (.\ / 75; �.:v 178). The p rol og,ue, which shows the stutterer cured, '

'

•oz.

' '

I rm·

-

has already

been printed, ir bccomes clear that she must have iii 1.1J:IIH'd the misprint. Sw itchi ng to the present, young lgnar is joined . 1 1 hcH1H' hy an unidenti fied older woman who instructs him 1 0 read fro111 .1 111111111 scri pt book (a journal or dia ry) He rc;1ds Pushkin'� k-111'1' 1 1 1 1'1•1• Chaadacv, wri tren in answer to Chaa d acv s :1s yet unpu hi i�lwd ' llt t'•H .

'

word and im.ll\1' I 11>1

Philosophical Letter'. In this case, a manuscript exchange between authors, which has long since been com mined ro prinr, is copied our by hand and read our loud. At the end of the film, the hero is shown as a child turning the pages of an old book abour Leonardo; he lifts up a tis­ sue-paper divider to reveal a plate, and then we cringe as he roughly turns more pages, creasing and ripping the divider. The film manifests an obsessive need

ro

appropriate books and words inro one's own expe­

rience; otherwise words are spectral vestiges of elusive beings who, like the father and like Stalin, never enter into human community or who, like !gnat's mysterious visitor, dissolve inro rhe very air. The original working ririe of

Mirror was 'White Day', taken from

nnother of Arsenii Tarkovsky's poems: It's impossible

tO

rt:rurn there

And impossible ro narrate, How overfilled with bliss Was rhis he:wcnly garden." If this poem comnins the initial idea of

Mirror, then it is norable rhar ir

is nor cired in the film. The impossibility of returning ro rhe original

11" huuk .111d the

'''"" 'Justal!!.bia).

Indeed, Gorchakov subsequently sets fire to a book

of Arsenii Tarkovsky's

poems, while a voice-over reads the.: lines:

experience is both posed and resolved by the film in irs complex layer­ ing of visual and auditory registers from distinct places and rimes. These

And this page will rell )'OU

magically give a sense of rhe fullness of the experience rhar remains,

How to cry and what to treasure,

unspoken and unsct:n, at the heart of the film - in its encounter with

How

a vtcwer.

Of merrimenr and ro die easily,

.

While Ta rkovsky used his father's poetr)' in three consecutive films,

ro

give aw:1y the lasr third

And in the shade of a random shelter

the figure of the poet is completely withheld from view. Only in

NoslnlgiJia, Tarkovsky's first foreign-language film, is rhere a poet

To catch on fire after death like a word.'r.

amongst the characwrs - :1nd even rhen Gorchakov (originally conceived as <1n :uchitect} only reads other people's texts. In

Noslnlgbia the dichot­

Tarkovsk>r's characters arc unable ro find shelter in language as a social

omy of foreign vs nnrive speech rakes Aesh in rhc person of Eugenia,

body or as a historical text; to a significallt dcgrt:e, they are left - l ike the

Gorchakov's attr:lctive imcrpreter. She shows him a book of Tarkovsky's

mute Andrei Rublcv before the alien marauders - with language as a

poctr)' in Italian translation, prompting Gorchakov ro voice doubts con­

form of alien music. If this langu;lgt.: is a medium of exchange, it is one

cerning th�: possibility of translating poerry. l r would be a mistake to

that can never be cashed in, either by the characters or by the viewer. Language is parr of a complex aun1l landscape, which is filled wirh disconrinuitics that arc borh failun.:s of and possibilities for me:�ning. As Andrea Truppin has nored regarding Tarkovsky's last three films, 'the usc of ambiguous sound plungt.:s rhc audience inro a never fully resolved

regard rhis view as the ;luthor's own. In

Time of Travel the same thought

is expressed by Tonino Guerra, wirh whom Tarkovsky collaborared on the scrccnpby of

Noslnlghia, as he proceeds to transbre his own poem from

di:1 h.:c.:t inro st:uH.brd l r::t lian, eliciting from Tarkovsky a grateful 'Bene'. IO•i

I fi•·c

word and imag.<.: I

105

sr �·uggle to believe in the diegesis, much as the film s' characters struggle . With the1r own ab11ity ro have faith.''7

Ma ny viewers encounrer Tarkovsky's films via sub titles. Describing a screenmg of rhe film in America, Solzhenitsyn lam ented rhat 'irs living language, even w1th a moderate stressing of "o" characteristic of rhe Vladimir accent (and in part with a typically Soviet harshness of conver­ sario l ) was replaced by sparse, imprecise and anachr onistic, inexpressive � English subrirles'.'8 Bur then the material presence of an obviously in­ a cquare texr on-screen, wit h hal f of the titles invisib le against rhe snow, m1ghr prove to be the epitome of Tarkovsky's discour se on language.

�

5 Story

We often regard stories - especially those of the cinema - as discrete messages to be received and registered, meaningful in their own right and transparent in their meaning. If that is the case, then it must be admitred that we usually prefer to hear stories that merely confirm what we already know: that couples couple, the good prevail and grief is over­ come. In some postmodern cinema, even of the most popular kind, rhcse kinds of stories arc complicated and even thwarted, without nec­ essarily yielding any positive alternative: stories have simply ceased ro be meaningful, meaning to be retrievable. Tarkovsky's storytelling is neither the reiteration nor the rejection of standard plots; it is their rad­ ical suspension and analysis. Just as his films place human dwellings precariously within rhc ceaseless Aow, Tarkovsky's stories plot our a field of vision, a visual atmosphere, within which the fragile Aame of potentiality is glimpsed. Tarkovsky once rated Nostalghia as his favour­ ire among his films precisely because 'it is so far rhc only one of my films in which the screenplay is free of any independent significance'.' There is indeed lirrlc point to reading a Tarkovsky screenplay, no more than in listening to a Ta rkovsky soundtrack, outside rhe finished films; their information value is nullified outside their performance, for which they arc merely conditions. Tarkovsky once said rhar 'entertainment in rhc cinema [ . 1 degrades .

.

borh sides - both the authors and the spectators' ( M J 427); however, the facts show rhat he was nor an implacable opponent of heavily plorred film. After all, he wrote the screenplay for the very average detective StOf)' Beware, Snakes! and served as co-screenwriter and arristic director for the run-of-the-mill World War 11 spy film One Chance in a '111ousand. True, he criticized genre films as 'commercial enterprises', 'intended to 107

l compulsion to remain faithful ro the screenpla)', declaring rhat 'the more derailed rhe screenplay, the worse the picture' (UR r6). H e singled our the examples of Jean-Luc Godard, whose film Vivre sa vie ( 1.962.) was based on a single-page screenplay with improvised dialogue, and of John Cassavercs, whose Shadows ( 1 959) was composed inro a narrative after improvised scenes had already been shot. Tarkovsky came closest to this model i n Mirror, the project proposal for which (under the title 'Confession') made provision for an interview with Ta rkovsky's mother shot with a hidden camera; the improvisatory clement ran against rh grain of the usual process, bur was approved (ST 1 32.). 'For the first rime', Tarkovsky said,

�

I am try ing nor ro adapt a plot for rhe screen 1 . . . 1 bur ro make my own memory, my worldview, my un de rstanding or misunder� standing of something, my stare of mi nd , rhe subject of a film. In fact the film is to become nothing orh er than the process of my conception's maruration [os 98 ]. It was only i n Feb ruary 1 974, after several months of shooting the fi lm (by now re-titled 'White Day'), rhat Tarkovsky decided ro replace the inrervicw wirh new scenes featuring Margarita Tcrckhova as rhe wife of rhc protagonist (AI/ 3 4 1 ) . At the same rime he shifted rhe centre of the film from the morhcr ro the first-person protagonist, and changed irs ntlc ro Mirror, citing the proliferation of reccnr films with rhe word 'whirc'.7 Even then, the precise narrative sequence was worked our only ar rhc editing table; Tarkovsk)' allegedly sewed rwemy pockets onro a sheer, wrote our the sequences on index cards, and over the course of a month literally shuffled rhe sequences as i n a game of patience unril they lay righr;s several distinct vari:1nrs were viewed and discussl!d by the srudio between April and July 1 97+ Throughout the official discus­ sions of Mirror Tarkovsky's arritude was one of 'trust me': 'Artists arc denied the right to experiment ("Production!" "Money!"). ( . . . 1 There arc things that I can't explain righr now, bur they nrc clear w me :mel 1 have an inner convicrion thar what I :1111 doing cannot fail.'9 Still, subsequent ro Mirror Tarkovsky reverted ro a derailed screen­ play thar he used as a more or less rough outline of rhe finished product. If a screenplay musr be used, Tarkovsk)' claimed, it will work only if 'in the process of work the screenwriter's and di rector's origin:ll designs arc broken :111d crushed and on their "ruins" arises a new conception, a new 1 10 I fire

organism' (UR r8; sT 76; zv 178). This was certainly the case in Stalker, in which, at rhe end of nine distinct drafts, the 'entire plot of the Zone remain[s} off-screen'.'0 True, there were practical reasons for a maximally expansive screenplay; Tarkovsky once suggested that the screenplay of Stalker had been inrenrionally padded to secure a higher rare of funding, which might have been jeopardized by his more ascetic plan (os 2.46). At any rare, Tarkovsky's constant changes ro his screenplays have created a voluminous documentation on their development, although the most important discrepancies - like the addition of the poems and of the closing scene of telekinesis in Stalker - usually seem to have been made silently, without any explanation. This was a potential problem with rhe authorities at rhe studio and at Goskino, who saw fidelity to thl! approved screenplay as a lever of control on directors, and later with Western producers, who needed some concrete basis on which ro provide funding. When asked why Soviet filmmakers displayed such a preference for adaptations of literary works, Tarkovsky bluntly answered: 'Because rhey don't have their own ideas'." Yet three of his films were based on well-known literary sources, and his lists of future projects regularly featured several more such projects, especially / lalldet and the novels of Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann. One cannot judge films rhar were never made, and rhcre is every reason to believe that, had these projects materialized, they would have surprised us. Reflecting on Stalker, T:u·kovsky declared that the 'mean­ ing of any film adaptation is not to illustrate a famous work, but rather ro create a new work of cinema apropos of it'.', 'The better rhc writer, the more impossible it is to adapt him', Tarkovsky concluded in his lecrun:s (uR 19). To usc Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky remarked in his proposal for The Idiot:, 'is tantamount ro cby passing through the heat of an oven, where it can cirhcr attain form - borh fire-resistant and waterp roof - or mclr up and turn inro something formless and petri fied'.•; More con­ crl!rcly, Tarkovsky speculated that he 'would rurn into action the contcnr of Dostoevsky's surprisingly profound authorial asides (remarki); they arc practically the mosr important thing and bear the weight of the entire idea'.'4 \XIirh respect ro 1/amlet, by contrast, Tarkovsky professed rota I ser­ vility to the rcxt: 'i nsofar as he spoke of absolutely eternal problems, which arc always of the essencl!, you can only produce Hamlet exactly ;1s Sh:1kespcare wnntecl'.•s Any attempt ro update it, Tarkovsky said, would be 'to pull it onro con rem pora ry problems I i kc a j ackcr rha t srory

I

11 1

bursts ar rhc scams; if it fails ro burst, it jusr h angs formlessly, ns if on a hanger'. , t; Pcrh::�ps this explains why Tarkovsky never filmed Hamlet, but only smged ir in the theatre, or perhaps it indicates rhar Tarkovsky's own visualization of 1 /amlet was so complete that i t had completely merged with the play in his mind, making i t impossible to explain, ler alone realize on screen. Tarkovsky frequently spoke of the inevitable subjectivity of a direc­ tor's adaptation of literary works. In literary prose, Tarkovsky wrore, 'the reader sees what he has been taught ro see by his experience, char­ acter, inrerests and taste. The most derailed passages of prose leave the control of the writer, as i r were, and arc perceived b)' the reader subjec­ tively.·· - In the cinema, by contrast, the camera 'captures rhe action, the landscape and the characters' fnces' in an 'unambiguous designation of concreteness, against which rebels the personal sensuous experience of the viewer as an individual'.'� The only alternative for rhe directOr is ro record his or her own visual experience of the narrative: I have noticed from my ovvn experience that if the external emo­ rionrtl structure of images in a film rests on the author's memory, on rhe kinship between the impressions of one's own l ife and the fnbric of the picture, then i t is ca pable of exerting an emorional effect on the spectator. In hi comments on Mirror T::�rkovsky would expand this argument ro encompass nor on I>' the adaptations of literary works, bur also original screenplays based on the authors' subjective memory and the entire social imaginary. In his essa)'S, interviews, lectures and (mosr importantly) films, Tarkovsky consistently held that rhe arrisr 'thinks in images and only rhus is able to demonstrate his attitude towards life' (UR 22). H e wa never interested in rhe ideas with which he ragged his films for official and com­ mercial consumption; one senses thar he would have preferred nor ro speak abour his �lms at all: 'When we deal with a genuine work of art, wirh a masterpiece, we de:1l wirh a "thing-in-itself", with an image that is no less i ncomp reh ensi bl e than life irsclf' (UR 22). Like rhe physical serring of the film, rhe srory provides a framework within which natural Aows and human gazes cross and enter inro i nte ra cti o n. It is, in short, the crucible in which tht; spccmror will burn the film inro ex peri ence {ST 89). 1 1 2.

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Tarkovsky's first feature film schooled him in managing the competing interests and purposes involved in rhc writing of a script. Faced wirh a ready screenplay, each detail of which would be passionately defended by irs authors (Mikhail Papava and Vladimir Bogomolov, the author of rhe original srory 'Ivan') and the studio authorities, Tarkovsky had little latitude with which ro make the film his own, which he did mainly by adding fou r dreams and a sequence of newsreel footage, by redefining cerrain characters and by changing the ririe from Ivan into Ivan's Childhood. Tarkovsky was keen to resist the temptation of mitigating Ivan's death in any way; but he also desired to centre the srory less on Ivan's scouting expeditions rhan on the tense 'pause' between them, full of rhe 'atmosphere of tense expectarion'.'9 'We saw the possibility of creating a newly truthful atmosphere of war with its over-tensed nerv­ ous condensation, invisible on the surface of events bur pal pable me rely as a subterranean h u m' (ST 17; z. v 1.09). Tarkovsky likens this tension to the image of the spring that K ntasonych finds a nd uses to fix the gramo­ phone, just in rime for it to be used to mourn Katasonych's own death. Similarly, the film story is conceived as a machine for creating the ability to mourn, perhaps even for creating Dosrocvskian characters like Ivan, 'externally static but inwardly tense with the energy of the passion that overcomes them (ST 17; zv 1 10). Tarkovsky insisted that the final dream (of Ivan playing war with other ch i ld ren ) by no means l ightened' the ending: 'The spectator looks upon a hero who is no longer alive and absorbs particles of his real and possible fare.'>o Tarkovsk>r's main concern was to replace Bogomolov's matter-of­ fact manner wirh a 'poetic' visual srylc. Poetic cinema, a t least for Tarkovsky as this rime, meant 'exploding' rhc logical connections between events and examining rheir 'inward force', their 'associative connections' (.rr 20; zv 1 1 2- 1 3). Considering rhe way human memory forms a compos­ ire image of a temporal experience, Tarkovsky adduces a characteristic spatial image: 'Against the background of the entire day this event looks like a tree in rhe fog' {.w 2.3; zv 1 16). In p;1rticular Ta rkovsky speaks of the need for rhc spatial composition - the mise-en-scene - to provide a con­ trast to the srory- logi c (sT 2.5). If it merely repe
'

srory I

r

r3

unapologcricnll)' described a difficult narrative: 'Arbitrarily breaking the narrative plor, we will strictly observe the poetic logic. \Y/e will try to combine apparently incomparable things. There is much poetf)' in this method. It allows us ro speak in rich images of what is most impor­ tant.'>• It was conceived less ns a story than as an extended pause before the demonsrrarion of Rublev's icons, expressive of 'the life of his spirit, the breath of the atmosphere that formed his attitude towards the world' {ST 34-5; LV 129). The long, d i fficult production of rhe film confirmed Tarkovsky's belief in the need for the d i rector constantly to rework the literary source. The srory became the material basis for a study in visual registers. This was increa ingly a problem for Tarkovsky's bosses at the studio and ar Goskino. Responding ro one of rhe many lists of demands from his colleagues, this rime to remove the scene of Kirill meditating in his cell, Tarkovsky remarked: lndeed norhing hnppens there. Kirill stakes his emire life and awaits Theophancs' invitation. 1-1<.: is exhnusrcd; he is drawing a line ahead of time. \XIirhour this it's unclear (that is ro say, plot-wise it's clear, bu r emorionnlly unjustified) why Kirill leaves in rhe next episode. Our picture will never b<.:comc plot-based {siuzhetnaia). lr won'r be a \X/esrern, even i f I discard another 300 metres of film.,, Nonetheless, rhc authorities evemually prevailed on Ta rkovsky ro re-edit the film in order ro uggest cnusal relationships berween loosely related shors and scenes. Ta rkovsky was so exhausted by the incessant conflict over Andrei Rublev thar for his next film he chose the relatively safe route of adapt­ ing a popular science-fiction novel by a Sovier-bloc author. To be sure, Tarkovsky's proposal of 8 October 1968 began with an acknowledgement of the popularity of science fiction and the 'enrerraining plot' of Lem's novel, 'rcnse, surprising,, full of unexpected peripcteia and suspenseful collisions', :1nd conclud<.:d wirh assurances of rhe film's commercial success.>' In f:H.:r, Ta rkovsky's interest in Solaris predated the major conAicts over Andrei /{uiJfell, and he was clear in his public staremcms begin ning in 19ll7 rhar he had no intention of satisfying viewer expecta­ tions wirh a �enre (ilm; inde<.:d, he s:1w this as consistent with the novel's cenr.ral collision of :1n 'cncounrer wirh rhe Unknown': l l .j

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IHlll o11 ho' <ell l11./1o I 1<11/Jfi't'}.

For me there is no difference between a science-fiction, an histOri­ cal and a contemporary film. If it is directed by an artist, then the problems that concern the director arc the legacy of the current day, whatever time the plot might occur in. The most realistic plot is always invented, is always fantasy, while the ideas and thoughts of a true artist arc always topical and current, they are always reality, whatever unlikely or supernatural form these ideas might take. After all rruc realism is not rhe copying of any particular circumstances of life, bur the unfolding of phenomena, of their psychological or philosophical natur<.:. [ . . . ] This is why I dream of screen ing Stanistaw Lem's novel Solnris; I am attracted nor by its enterraining and provocative plot, bur by the profound philo­ sophical idea of the knowability of the world, which is conveyed in a precise psychological conception. [ . . . ] 1 do not yet see the future film completely, bur I would nor like to make it an enter­ taining science-fiction or adv<.:nture film. It appears that I should have to reject the science-fiction trappings and call the spectator's attention ro rhe psychology of a protagonist who has encountered his past. I am ;lfraid that this is impossible, but ideally I imagine the action rakin�; place in a single room with each character seeing his past - even if it's unnppea Ii ng- as r<.:a I iry, and nor as som<.: dusty junk in a hold-all of m<.:nwry. The task of such a film is to show people that even in everyday life it is necessary to think in a new way and nor ro settle with customary categories that have frozen into prejudices!·1 srory

I

1 1.5

Solaris, more than any other film, is precisely a srudy in authenticity in Tarkovsky's sense. It is doubtful whether any of Tarkovsk>r's characters are shown i n their authentic 'being'. Certainly nor Ivan or Galrsev, who arc too young ro be fully conscious; nor Rublev, tortured by insecurities; nor Kelvin or the Stalker, or Gorchakov or Domenico/Alexander. Only Solaris asks dirccrl)' : who is this person wirh whom I share space? Kelvin has ar some point in the past avoided this question, but remains trapped by ir, unable an)' longer to escape through a hole in time and rid himself of an inconvenient body. H e is a cosmic traveller who keeps stumbling over his unricd shoelaces. So the film, also, was conceived as a Aighr inro rhe cosmos that finds itself lashed to the earrh- and as a film ar war wirh 1ts own sto I')' .

However, ro reduce the film to any 'point' whatsoever is to negate it as :1 narrative that is extended in rime and perceived by tbe entire sensorium. The real conAicr between Lem and Tarkovsky concerned less their con­ trasting philosophies than the very admissibility of such philosophical interpretations of a film. As an exasperated Tarkovsky said following a long discu ssion of the film by everyone from critics ro cosmonauts, 'our film contains more than one idea by which irs merits and shortcomings should be judged ' �7 l f there is 'philosophy' in rhe film, he said, i r i s 'the impossibility of repl aying what you once experienced in life. You would play ir all again rhc same way.' His emphasis, as always, was nor on this philosoph)•' but on rhc tangible and visual experience : for instance, by introducing earth, Tarkovsky expl ained 'We wanted to see earth with a .

'

,

monotonous, as if numb gaze !� Another talking point about Solaris was its relationship ro Stanley Kubrick's zoo r : A SfJtlce Odyssey ( 1968}, which was released in the bui l ei ­ up to Tarkovsky's shoor. Tarkovsky's stated response to Kubrick's film was purely negative; he called it 'a spectral sterile atmosphere, like a museum of technological achicvcmenrs'.<,The contrast helped Tarkovsky to formulate anew his distinct understanding of cinematic representa­ tion: 'Of course, the acrion of Solnris occurs in a unique and unfamiliar atmosphere' he exp la ined. 'Our cask is tO conc reti ze this uniqueness in irs sensuous external featurcs, so rhat it be material and tangible, without anything ephemeral, uncertai n special or intentionally fantastic; so that rhe screen manifests rhc "Acsh" an d the texture of the atmosphere .'

Tarkovsky's adaptation of Sranistaw Lem's novel Solnris immediately became the ccnrral ropic in critical responses tO the film, even of subse­ quent responses to the novel as well. The controversy began when Lcm travelled to Moscow in 1969 ro advise rhe studio on Ta rkovsky's screen­ play (co-wrirren with Fridrikh Gorcnshtein}; Lem did not approve of what he saw. Some of his complaints were relarively minor. He disagreed with the invention of a charncter, Mnria, for whose sake Kris Kelvin had abandoned his wife, Hari, and to whom he would return, chastened and renewed, at the end of the fi lm; after some argument Tarkovsky relin­ quished rhe ch:uactcr. Mor<.: serious was Lem's consternation concerning rhc addition of an extended prologue on earth. Lcm felt that the prologue on earth and rhe changes to Kelvin's chnracrer betrayed rhc 'poinr' of his novel: since in our cosmic wa nderi ngs we may be confronted with a fundamentall y different kind of intelligence, we must pursue the open­ minded bur rcl e nrless exploration of rhc unknown. He larcr claimed that Tarkovsk)' 'did nor make Solaris; what he made was Crime rmd

Punislnnent'. !� If for Lem the unknown is elsewhere and in the future, for Tarkovsky rhe unknown is in the here and now. As Zizek comments, Communication with the Solaris-Thing [ . . J fails nor bccaus<.: Solaris is roo alien, the harbinger of an i ntel lect infinitdy surpass­ ing our limited :tbilirics, playing some perverse gnmes wirh us whose rationale remains fon.:vcr outside our grasp, but bec:wsc it brings .

roo close ro whar in ourselves must remain at a distance if we arc ro susrain rhc consistency of our symholic universe/' liS

1 1 6 ! fin:

,

,

(sreda).'1° Kubrick's film, b)' contrast, was merely 'fakc'Y over the screenplay that Tarkovsky had wilfully distorted Lem's book, bur rhc screenplay adheres surprisi ngly close to Lcm's text. Many seem ingly Tarkovskian features and derails arc taken directly from Lem's novel, including rhe strange illu mina­ tion caused by the blue nnd red suns rising and setting, the way this light highlights the velvety fuzz on Hari's face, and even the paper strips on the ventilators, which replicate rhc familiar rustle of leaves on earth. These arc precisely the kind of atmospheric clcrnils that Tarkovsky praised in the fictional work of his co-screenw riter Friclri kh Gorcnshtein (sT 74}. Their prominence in the novel - and Lem's own inconspicuous presentation of technologica l innovations - suggests rhar even Tarkovsky's preference for an earrhy wsmos may have stemmed from his close reading of the book. Tarkovsky was particular!)' intcrcstcd in the wny that the novel drama­ tized the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity that he had placed nr One might conclude from rhc

conn·overS)'

story I 1 1 7

the centre of his cinematic practice and theory. The Unknown that humans encounter is that of an alien flow that comes to life only in response t? the huma � gaze. In the novel Kris is oppressed not only by _ the cogmtlve and logical puzzle, bur also by the alien gaze he senses

�ommg from

the planetY It i s the gaze of a simulacrum that congeals 1mo shapes without achieving material form. In all of these respects the novel Solaris provided a kind of negative exposure of the narrative of Andrei Ruble11. Instead of mute experience being transfigured into con­ summate images, here imperfect images force their agents to confront the very nature of experience and of consciousness. Can humanity free itself from the relentless flow of nature and its simulacra? Is there no chance of suspending this flow of images into firm experience, inro a memory, inro a dwelling? Tarkovsky saw the narrative of Solaris nor merely as an occasion for showing flowing liquids, wide-eyed gazes and camera tricks, bur as a frame �vork that would at once dramatize the nature of cinematic rep­ resentation and be enriched itself by cinematic presentation. Some of his changes to the narrative were enforced by the sheer nature of the

!

c nema, which externalizes action into the visual realm and makes impos­ Sible the direct represenration of consciousness, for instance through _ rst-person narration. Some changes are typical of cinematic adaptmions 111 the way they convert meta-textual references into meta-visual ones Don Quixote which suspend the narrative i n reflections on the medium. For instance (So/uris).

�

:

II• l•l'" JcJth tot 1 I (\,.J.rris).

Lem's off-handed comparison of Sartorius to Don Quixote becomes in the film a repeated study of an engraved illustration from an old edition of Cervantes' novel, which is amongst the few mementos Kelvin takes to the spacecraft. More striking is the way Kelvin views both Berton's debriefing and Gibarian's suicide note on video, moreover in Tarkovsky's characteristic black-and-white widesereen format. Berton's film purports to show (in colour) the slime of Solaris forming all man­ ner of shapes, but instead it seems to show merely mist and w;�ter. 'Why did you only shoot clouds?' asks the main interrogator. The authorities' failure to see Berton's experience is not one of film technology, but of their own limited vision. This is Tarkovsky's most direct reference to his own cinematic method. Like Berton's, his film may seem to show merely the surface continuity of nature (Aowing water, rushing wind, ploughed earth) in long, continuous takes; however, as on the planet Solaris, when observed by human subjects these Aows form themselves into discontin­ uous folds and shapes that interact with the spectator's own memories nnd fantasies. Tarkovsky was not forcing all of this into Lem's novel, in which Kelvin remarks on the suitability of photography, film and television for recording the surface features and 'pulsing of plasma' on Solaris.n True, Ta rkovsky also added references to Russian li terature. The characters in Solaris mention both Dosroevsky and Tolstoy, and Pushkin's death-mask is prominently displayed both on earth and on the orbital,

118 I fire

swry I

J

19

The return o( rlu protlignl , cosmn '"""

(Solttris).

ll11 l'hutnl!rJph ,f 1t. mucher

\t�l.ow).

alongside Don Quixote. Tarkovsky has Snaut repeat the argument of Viacheslav Ivanov's famous essay 'Ancient Terror' concerning the histori­ cal transition from Greek paganism to Christian monotheism: 'we've lost our cosmic sense,' he says, 'fb]ut at least we now have hope'.>·t The film could easily be read through this essay as a glimpsing of the primeval faith in an absolute Goddess. After all, in Lem's novel the drnnken Snaut explic­ itly identifies Hari as 'fair Aphrodite, born of the ocean';>s in one dis­ cussion of the film Tarkovsky described Kelvin as 'a man who experiences anew - and overcomes - his ancient past'.J6 The point of pursuing such literary citations or parallels is not to ennoble the profane cinema with literary authority, but to activate another level of images i n Kelvin and in the spectatOr, what might be called their imaginary, the investigation of which, Tarkovsky suggests, is the particular province of the cinema. A similar function is performed by the quotation of painting in the fi lm. Tarkovsky once stated categorically that 'ro build the mise-en­ scene' based on paintings would be 'to create re-animated painting and therefore to kill rhe cinema' (UR 47). This statement appears to be flarly contradicted by the citation of Rembrand t's Retum of the Prodigal Son in the final shot of Solaris. Bur is this Ta rkovsky's citation or Kelvin's? One could argue rhe point, but it is necessary in any case to recognize that this argument would touch upon the central issues of the film, namely to what extent one is in control of the images that comprise one's . COnSCIOUSI1eSS.

Rcml>r.llldt, R1·1um of

Tlu•

tlu• l'rodi�o:ttl Sou (o66o<). story I

121

The particular ability of cinema to address the imaginary is evident in Ta rkovsky's treatment of photographs. I n the prologue on earth we arc shown the black-and-white photograph of Kelvin's mother in a frame on the sideboard. Then, when Kelvin is burning his archive, a phoro­ graph of Hari lies on the grass alongside a partially burnt photograph of an unknown woman in a bonnet standing at a window. I t appears that Kelvin takes the photos of his mother and of Hari to the spacecraft. When Hari finds her own image she fails to recognize it until she sees herself looking at it in the mirror, although she later recognizes Kelvin's rnorher in the family film he shows. Still photOgraphs are also used by the other crew members: Gibarian left a book with phorographs of Armenian churches, while Snaut is examining phorographs of his infant guest. At the end of Tarkovsky's Solnris Kelvin's memories, films, photo­ graphs and visions all merge into a continuous fantasy that tempts him with its fluidity. His earthly home, the spacecraft and the alien planet Solaris merge into one; simulacra of Hari multiply and fill his visual field. These representations promise to settle into symbols, that is, con­ ceptual representations that wil l yield some determinate meaning. Yet Kelvin is frustrated by the immateriality of it all and resists tarrying in rhe realm of repres<.:ntation. The problem is revealed to be nor that of accessing one's past but of getting back from the past and the entire imaginary rea lm into the present and into self-possession. 122

I (ire

The r•hmograph of H:ori un the bwn (Solari$).

II"'

u.:ctJgnizcs

l111 l'hmo while ln11�111� in the llllttlll'

This is, in a sense, the very problem that any movie-goer experiences when the lights go up. Tarkovsky hoped that the spectator,

(Solaris).

having been immersed in the previously unknown and fantastic atmosphere of Solaris and having returned to earth, would acquire the ability to breathe freely and in the familiar way, that he become refreshing!)' light in this f:Hniliariry. In short, that he feel the salvific bitterness of nosralgia.J7 It is not the viewer's own nostalgia, but that of Kelvin for the planet to which he cannot return, unlike the viewer who walks confidently out of the door. Nonetheless, the viewer's consciousness has been disrupted by the sensory plenitude of the film, which resists the mere flow of time with a semblance of presence. It suggests that if any ethical or metaphysical programme can be ascribed to Tarkovsky, it is that of cultivating a patient attention and appreciation of the unrepeatable and unrepresemable tissues of life within e:1ch present moment.

srory I '2.3

'Aowing, derailed acrion bur at rhe same rime balanced :1nd purely ilk:tl

6 Imaginary

The years of Solaris and Mirror were filled with unrealized proposals and screenplays, mosr of them co-aurhored wirh Fridrikh Gorenshtein or Aleksandr Misharin: 'House wirh a Gable', 'Bright Wind', 'Sardor' (aka 'Leprosy' and 'Renunciation'), 'The Idiot' and 'Hoffmanniana'. In addition ro these relatively advanced projects, Tarkovsk)• consranrly compiled lists of ideas on which he hoped ro work, rhe sheer number of which makes a mockery of his statement, made after rhe arduous com­ pletion of Stalker, that 'Whenever I have conceived of a film I have made ir. I've never rejected a conception.'' After rhe succt:ss of Mirror, however, Ta rkovsky nor only bt:came much more focused in identifying and pursuing projects, bur rhe projects themselves were invariably more focust:d in rerms of rhe cl:1ssical unities of time, place and action: I used l'O find it interesting ro utilizt: as fully as possible the all­ t:ncompassing possibilities of combining in a single succession borh a chronicle and orher temporal levels, drt::uns and the confusion of events that place the characters before unexpected resrs and ques­ tions. Now I don't wanr rht:re ro he an)' rime between unirs of mon­ tage. I wanr rime and irs Aow ro exisr and he evident within rhe shor while the monrage suture would mt:an rhc conrinuarion of action ' and nothing more, so thar it no longer inrroduced a temporal shift and ceased ro perform the function of selection :1nd the dramatic orga nization of rime luR 2.0]. Arkadii and noris Srrugarsky's Story 'Roadside Picnic' provided the pcrfecr opporrunit)' for rhis; afrer reading ir, Tarkovsky noted the possibility for

- thus semi-transcendent, absurd, absolute' (cs 375). Before Tarkovsky could achieve the almost classical simplicity and clarity of his !are work, however, he had ro continue to transform his very practice of cinema. In the years leading up to Minor, Tarkovsky spoke on numerous occasions of rhe need for a direcror to sacrifice the initial conception of his film in the course of production: ln the final analysis a ralenred director often creates a magnificent, beautiful conception and is prepared to follow it exclusivdy, but rhen suddenly destroys it, for he wants ro approach life in rhc attempt to rise above the idea of one or another individual episode. [ . . 1 Barding with one's own conception is frequenrly capable of lending the film wholeness and emorionalit)', withour which therc IS no true arr..

•

•

What resists the aurhor's conception is less external obstacles than the vcq• 'tissue of the work', rhe innate resist:mce of material design. There is no better example of this than rhe wa)' rhar Tarkovsky's masterpiece Mirror arose our of n suspect, seemingly self-indulgent obsession: This will be a picture dedicated ro rht: most beautiful rime in a man's life. We want to make a film about what childhood means for a man. About the longing for childhood and the nostalgia for what has been lost that t:xist in each of us. And it will also be a film about a Mother. About her difficult life, her joys, her losses and misfortunes, her predestination and her im mortality.1 The ri�orous method that Tarkovsky developed for executing this rather cxpansiw conception ensured that the material itself ·would be allowed to dictate irs own rhythm nnd structure. Although rhe original ririe for the project was 'Conft:ssion ' (/sfJcJVed'), and alrhough it begins wirh the ckclararion ' I can speak', rhe result was an almost scientific analysis of rhc images that comprised rht: arrist's consciousness. Ont: such image was thar o f Leonardo da Vinci. At first, Ta rkovsky rdarcs, he inrended to usc Leonardo's instructions for painting a h:1rrle as a voice-over accompan)'ing footage of rhe destruction of the local church in l urcvt:ts in 193X. Later this episode was omitted, and in irs stead there appeared several quotations of a purely visual nature, most imag,inary I 125

Leonardo cia Vin\.11 Giuevr,, de' Bcm '

l.fiOS.

,

I I u1\ '-Ires' I \u/.u H).

notably the large book on Leonardo and the fragment from Leonardo's

Ginevra di Benci in the episode of the farber's arrival home from war. The portrait is echoed throughout the fi lm - from the prologue to the scene of the bed-ridden Author in the finale- by the presence of foliage at the edge of the frame. 'In this strange manner', Tarkovsky comments, an episode that had been monolithic was realized in a completely different way. The idea of the in teracti on between the present and

the past was fragmented and became a component of separate scenes of the picture. It could not be the basis for the entire film, which is what I thought it would become. Evidently it was insufficient and therefore it entered into a kind of emotional or (I would say) musical intonation for the entire film, which speaks of things rhat arc much clearer, more concrete and conceptual, relating to ideas luR 3o-3 1 ]. Jn retrospect one sees rhat Ginevra di Benci played a crucial role in Solnris as well, for instance in the design of Hari's dress By isolating and .

126 I

fire

analysing the constituent elements of the dirccror's imaginary, Mirror raises more directly one of the central questions of Solaris, namely, how one discriminates between the original experience and its representations in memory or imagination. In Mirror it is not the protagonist but the viewer who is forced to work out which of the two characters played by Margarita Terekhova is her real persona and which a copy (though the protagonist Aleksci quickly poinrs our that he always remembers his mother in the guise of his ex-wife). Even Ta rkovsky's colleagues at Mosfilm - and countless viewers since - have wondered, in the words of Marlen Khutsiev, 'Who is who?'4 After the film began screening Tarkovsky admitted that 'sometimes confusion arises, but it is no big deal (eto ne stmshno) ' (AIJ 42.7). The film thus underscores the i nseparability of images from the imagination that rct�1ins and identifies them. The bounds of the direcror's conception extend far beyond the auto­ bi ograp h ica l sc reenplay and shooting script, beyond even the specific memories and associations on which Ta rkovsky based Mirror; the con­ ception includes also the implicit and perhaps unconscious scaffolding that supports any narrative, indeed which supports narrativity itself, and which reveals itself only when it collapses under irs own weight, that is to say, when experience outstrips the subject's attempt to contain or capture it. Tarkovsky con tras ted his presence within the frame to rhar of Fellini in 8'/, or Bergman in Wild Strawberries, which 'fail by introduc­ ing the Author as a regular character [which] makes rhe film a plot-based i m:tginary I

127

narration'; by conrrast, Mirror is itself 'the process of the maturation of the film and its conception, meaning that it won't conrain a fiJm as such' (os 132). In this light Tarkovsky's enrrance into the frame (as a bed-ridden patient behind a screen at the end of the film} i s merely an acknowledge­ ment of the fragile embodiment of the imaginary and of the violence with which time consumes nor only the subject's conception, but also his body. This sequence, which originally showed Tarkovsky's face, was among the most controversial in the film; as Lev Arnshram commented, 'Any lyrical work becomes universal because it is individual; but there is no need to append a photograph.'> AJeksandr Alov argued that conceal­ ing the direcror's face 'gives me (i.e., rhe specraror] the possibility of correl ating everything that happens with myself, with m y own sphere of experiences'.6 This, then, is one key to poetic cinema: the specraror's appropriation of the work incinerates rhe author's conception, releasing ir as a free potenrial that can be adopted by the viewing subject in an act of envoicing, envisioning, emplotmenr and even embodiment. One of the conditions for success i n this volatile process is the dependence of the work on a shared lexicon of images, a social imaginary, which is renewed i n the crucible of the aesthetic event. After declaring on r o July 1·984 his intention to remain i n the \XIest, Tarkovsky received a provocative lerrer from his father, prompting him to insist: 'I was and remain a Soviet artist.' \XIhen challenged on rhe 'accessibility' of his films he would frequently respond, as he did in a 1.974 interview, ' I consider myself a part of rhe people. l live i n my own country and conremplare the same processes and problems as my con­ temporaries; I love, hare and worry in the same way, and therefore I consider that 1 express the ideas of rhe people.'7 Similar in many ways to rhar of his contemporaries Vasilii Shukshin and Vladimir Vysorsky, Tarkovsk}"s innovative work was closely coordinated with key motifs in the Soviet imaginary, even as irs original treatment of these motifs raised suspicions of alien designs and meani ngs. Some of these suspicions were feel by Ta rkovsky's appeal ro rhe broader canons of European art, bur rherc was nothing explicirly seditious in that; unable ro pur a finger on overt ideological offences in Mirror, hostile apparatchiks resorted ro vague complaints about the 'sad ronality' of rhe Spanish episode or the 'un-Sovier' sound of Bach on the sounclrrack.s On the orher hand, what made Tarkovsky's work so meaningful for Sovier viewers was irs ability ro reinvest images of common experience 1 2S

I fi rc

with a sincerity rhat had always been lacking in the public sphere. Tarkovsky's co-screenwriter Aleksandr Misharin recalls telLing Tarkovsky that in their day 'the main thing is not the plot, but to make a work where the microphone is nor at rhe lips but somewhere in the throat, so that one hears rhe gasping, so that there is life'.9 \XIhile Misharin's image more vividly calls ro mind Vysorsky than Tarkovsky, it suggests that, at a rime when public discourse (including art) was thoroughly discredited, artists responded by reinscribing the Soviet imaginary into the individual body, whether as a voice or as a faculty of vision. The very corporeality of Tarkovsky's vision explains the shattering effect his death had for Soviet people, whose homages frequently begin with a recollection of their learning of his death over shonwave radio or from friends. lt is there­ fore misleading ro classify Tarkovsk)' as a practitioner of auteur cinema alongside his Western counterparts; the authorial principle had a fun­ damentally different status in Soviet art. Instead of using the imaginary as a representational language in which one could express a thought, Tarkovsky explored the distances between public im ages and ineffably private experience. He refra ined from exploding these distances, prefer­ ring to open them up as a space of possibility; his art was less powerful rha n empowering. There should be nothing surprising in rhe fact that Tarkovsky pro­ fessed to be a Soviet artist, nor indeed that he felt obliged ro do so in a letter to his father, the poet Arsenii Tarkovsky, who i n his day had contributed ro rhe formation of the Soviet imaginary, most of all with two pioneering works for radio, A Tale of Sphagnum ( 1 9 3 1 } and Glass ( 1932}. The Soviet enthusiasm for transforming nature in order ro height­ en and harness its productivity was at the centre of A Tale of Sphagnum, which told of the efforts of peat-harvesters ro riel the landscape of wasteful bogs; by separating the waters from the earth, Soviet engineers hoped ro increase the area of arable land, quicken the Aow of rivers, improve air quality and win in the bargain valuable fuel from rhe peat. The Soviet imaginary projected this desire ro manage nature as a prolif­ eration of power networks, such as the electrical grid that brought lighr and warmth to the counrryside or rhe system of waterways rhar ensured the efficient movement of goods and people. By transferring litera l")' production to the radio waves, Arsenii Tarkovsky's work contributed to the analogous task of harnessing artists' creative power in a nationwide communications network. At all levels these neat projects defied reali ty. For one thing, they were rooted in rhe modernist imagination, reAecrecl imaginary I

129

i n such science-fiction texrs as the Bolshevik ph ilosopher Aleksandr Bogdanov's Red Star (1907) and Engineer Menni ( I 9 t 2). They ultimately conrribured ro the mindser that chased the population into a network of giant forced-labour camps and tO the spoiling of the environment. Indeed, the )'Olinger Ta rkovsky's Stalker - with irs ruined post-industrial landscape and post-h uman population - can be viewed as a polemical sequel to his father's 1931 radio play. lt is this shared imaginary, more than their blood kinship, that made Arsenii's poems key elements i n Mirror, Stalker and Nostalghia, and which make them eminently quotable in any discussion of the son's work. Prior to becoming a fi lmmaker Tarkovsky's biography followed a panern typical of the Soviet imaginary. After leaving Moscow's Oriental Institute, where he studied Arabic, he embarked on a geological expedi­ tion and journey of self-discovery to the Far Easr. This kind of adventure was a commonplace in Soviet film; i t formed the basis for Mikhail Kalatozov's and Sergei Urusevsky's classic The Unsent Letter (1959), in which two men and a girl are stranded on a distant river with fatal conse­ quences, and is intimated i n Georgii Danelia's I Stroll around Moscow ( 1962), shot by Vadim lusov. Yer even here Tarkovsky appears ro have been less interested i n participating i n the social i m aginary than in anai)'Sing irs role i n constituting personal experience. Tarkovsky later commented that the problem with The Unsent Letter was nor irs schematic narrative and characters, but that it did not follow to the end the path that they marked our themselves. They should have unflinchingly studied with rhe camera the factual fates of these people in the taiga, nor worrying about whether to resolve the story linkages that were given in rhe screen­ pl ay. [ . . . J The characters are not so much created as destroyed. Or rather rhey are incompletely destroyed [zv L8o]. As early as 1962 Tarkovsky recorded his inrerest in exploring the mani­ fold layers of personal experience and memory, remarking on the distinct kinds of authenticity achieved in each layer: 'there is a grear difference between the way you imagine the home in which you were born and which you have not seen for many years, and your di rect contemplation of this home after a long interval of time' (ST 29; zv r23). While nor denying h1s complicity i n the Soviet imagina ry, Tarkovsky saw film as a means of analysing irs encounrer with lived rime. 1

·o

·'

I fin:

Motifs of the Soviet imaginary are evident throughout Tarkovsky's early work, including his treatment of the war in There Will Be No Leave To da·y and l11an 's Childhood, his concern to relate physical labour and artistic creativity i n Steamroller and Violin, his attraction ro polar exploration in the co-written screenplay 'Antarctic: Distant Land', and even his interest in Hemingway and Faulkner, two American auth01:s whose works of adventure and discovery were assimilated by the Soviet canons. Alberto Moravia dismissed Ivan 'sChildhood for merely reversing Stalinist cliches, and Tarkovsky later acknowledged the justice of Moravia's critique: if before the boy went in polished boots (he (Moravia) has in mind The Son of the Regiment:, an adaptation of (Valentin] Kataev), carried a sabre, in a Cossack hat, served with a cavalry detachment, then it follows that now Ivan is in rags, destitute, crossing swamps, etc. . . . If there the boy remained alive, then here he dies. It's the same scheme, only here it is developed differently.'0 Tarkovsky's frequent references to aviation follow the dominant pattern of rhe Soviet imaginary, beginning with the prologue to Andmi Rublev, based on the legend of rhe pre-modern aviator Kriakutnyi, continuing with the pictures of balloons and Soviet space pioneers i n the open ing _ 's episode of Solaris, and culminating in Tarkovsky's and Gorenshtem 1971 adaptation of Aleksandr Beliaev's fanrasy Ariel, which Tarkovsky put aside ro work on Min-or. ' ' In this screenplay Beliaev's story about a . boy who takes flight becomes a meditation on the vaganes of ex1st1ng in a n imaginary sphere where dream merges with reality. \XIhen the pro­ tagonist Filipp ends up in the trenches of Verdun, he is incapable of providing solace to a young conscript named Aleksandr: 'A hell of Aan1es _ and metal raged over Verdun. This was the rwenr1eth century bemg christened in a font of fire' (cs 247). The finale of Ariel leads directly into Mirror, where images of Soviet aviation are followed by footage of '\XIo�ld \XIar 11 and an atomic explosion, showing how dreams nestle alongs1de nightmares whenever the social imaginary enters the real time of human expenencc. Thus, while Tarkovsky paid lip-service to off cial ideology, his comi ments always stress rhe individual's experience of it. Presenting his idiosyncratic concept of communism he predicted that the conflict between technical progress and natural entropy would last until the stage im
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of 'social freedom, where (man[ won't have ro worry about his daily bread :1ny more.:, about a roof over his head, about securing his chil­ clr·en's future; whcrc he will be able to go deep inside himself with rhe same cnergy he previously devoted ro external freedom.''� The same goes for the structural role pb)'ed in his f11ms b>' such Soviet cliches as 'over­ coming'. A s Ta rkovsk)' said a propros of Solnris: All Ill)' protagonists arc united by a single passion - for overcoming. o knowledge of life can be won wirhour a colossal expenditure of spiritual power. There may be grave losses on rhis parh, bur all the more profound :tnd rich will be rhe achie,·emenrs. In order to arrive :�r :111 understanding of rhe laws of life, in order to become conscious of whar is besr in oneself and one's environment, wh:n comprises the heaury :mel inner rrurh of our existence, our being (and nor our mere subsistence [bytovnniel), in order to rem:tin rrue ro oneself and one's dury ro others and oneself, all my protagonists must pass through a tense sphere of medirarion, searching and aehievemenr.'1 If the ide:1l of rhe Sovicr imaginary was a closed system of dynamic stabili ty, in which natural tlows :1nd individual desires arc harnessed for maximum efficiency, Ta rkovsk)' sought to dramatize rhc w:1y thes�.: same natural (·lows enr�.:r into human rime, as a power rhar both en:1blcs and diswrrs. He channels rlu: flows of rhe Soviet imaginary jusr as he urili�ed 1 \�

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rhe continuous flow of film, not w uphold irs seamless continuity, bur precisely to serrle into rhe folds and scams thar form the fabric of indi­ vidual experience. 1 4 The task of 'overcoming' is communicated to the spectator through rhc resisr:111ce of the film tO easy assimi ati? n. . Tarkovsky's mosr powerful engagements with the Sovtcr 1magmary were nor :�!ways explicit. Rejecting rhe Soviet-speak criticism that his cinema was insufficiently inregrared wirh 'life', T:trkovsky explained:

�

Excuse me, but this is nonsense. For man lives within cvenrs, within his rime, and he and his own thoughts arc a facr of the reality exist­ ing today. [ . . . [ To judge cinematic arr by its links to a particular theme 1 Ta rkovsky tl:tnH.:s :1g.ricul rure, the working class and the Soviet inrclligcntsial is hopeless in rerrns of achieving a quality result [U/( 22, 23[. Tints, for cxample, while rhe pr�o:l nise:nf Lem's novel - the planer Solaris presents a seething flow of yellow slime rhat must be controlled and ch:ln­ nclled for human benefit - was closely keyed into the Soviet imaginary, ima!:\inary I

•33

would be occupied rhere by rhe image, nor even the image bur the stor)rline, more precisely the sroryline of rhe mother. All T knew was that I kept having the snme dre:.tm about r he place where I was born. I dreamt of the house. lr was ns if I was entering, or more precisel>' not entering but circling around ir. There was some strange shift. 1 . . . ] 1 thought rhis feeling hnd some material sense, that one cannot just be persecuted b)' such a dream. There was something in ir, something very important. And I thought, because of something I'd read, rhat I would be nble ro free myself from my feelings because ir wns quite a grave feeling, something nostalgic. Something was pulling me back inro the past, leaving nothing ahead. [ . . ] Well, I thought, let me wrire a srory. However .

ir all gradually began to take form as a film. Moreover a strange

Tarkovsky's Solnris rook a rarher more pessimistic view: rhe only way ro control rhe Aow is to kill ir or freeze it, bur ir always seeps back in th rough the cracks. A similnr concern haunts Stalker, where natural Aows repos­ sess the structures with which humans have sought to control them. The irony is rh:u the hostile alien will against which humans sn·uggle is the very source of life. Lived time arises from the friction between human d �sire and rhe seepage of impersonal nature . At rhe end of Swlpting in Ttme Tarkovsky remnrks rhar even such a rich civilization as ancient China nonetheless uccumbed when it 'collided with rhe material world that surrounded [it]', just as 'an individual collides with society' (sr 240-4 1 ; z v 348). Still, Tarkovsky concludes: ' I t is not that we live i n nn imnginary world, bur that we create ir ourselves. And therefore we our­ selves depend on irs f:til ings, while we could depend on irs strengths.' Mirror, in my rending, concerns the possibility of this very change. Much of the confusion in the history of Nlirror stems in a cardinnl shift of emphasis rhat occurred during the film's preparntion. Conceived as :1 film about Tarkovsky's mother, ir evenrunlly became an aurobiographi­ ca I srud y: At one point I A icksandr] Misharin and I wrote th e scree npbt)' '\XIhite, \X/hite Day'. I did not )'et know what this film would be about, how it would be organized in rhe screenplay and what role IJ�

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rhing happened. I i nd eed was freed from these impressions, bur this psychotherapy turned out to be worse than the cause. When I lost these feeli ngs I felt that I had, in a sense, lost myself. Everything was complicated. These fee lings disappeared, bur nothing formed in their pl:.tcc. Although, to be honest, I had somewhere supposed something of the kind, and even in the screenplay ir was wrim:n rhnr one shouldn't rerurn to old places, whatever it might be: one's home, the pl;�ce one was born, or the people one has mer. And nlthough that w;�s thought up theoreti­ cally, it turned out to be quire nccurare. The mnin thing: it turned our rh;�t rhe sense and idea of rhe film was nor :.tt all ro free oneself of memories [uR 28-91. Tarkovskv rhus indicates his disagreement with Prousr nnd Freud, borh . of whom (nllegedly) encouraged rhe idea rhar telling a story helps to rid oneself of rhe pasr. Tnrkovsky stresses rhnt, i n rhe process of seeking something personal, he found something objective and demonstrable ­ nor ;t repressed memory bur :1 clarity of vision. The idee1 of representing one's world by isolating irs principle of presentation obliged Tarkovsky to look beyond his personal imagin::�ry ro find irs intersection with rhat of Soviet society. At one point he spoke of filming rhe rehearsal of a military pnradc on the eve of rhe annivers:1ry of rhe October Revolution: 'This epi so de will take place on a single sn·eer with military hardware, crowds of peopl e and here fit will he poss ible ] ro connect evcrythin�,; into a single knot.''1 This scene, remi­ ,

,

niscent of the May Day parade in Khursiev's The Gate of 1/'ich (/ Am ima!;in:lry I

135

·tiuenty), was 'li nked to the hu m of life an

d wirh people \\·ho are brought together and sepa rated by this h u m of life'. T he episode ar the pr in rin � plant is nor remembered bur im agined; it was based on a wide spread anecdote of rhe time, which features also in Vasilii Grossm an's novel Life and Fate (parr 2, chapter to ), where a single transposed let ter rurns Stalin's name inro a pro fan i ty an d res ults in a seven-year im pr iso nm en t for the guilty proof-reader. O ne can easily believe rhar these coinc idences arose spontaneously as po in rs of in tersection between Ta rkovsky's in di vi du al im ag in at io n an d rh e social imagina ry. As Ta rkov sk y wrote con cern ing rhc w ar foo rage he fo un d for Mirror,

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\XIhen before me on rhe scre en there appeared, as i f ou r of non­

being, people who were rormen red by unbearable, in hu m an labou r, a horrible an d tragic fa re, it im medi a tel y bec:1mc de ar to me that there was no way th is episode could not become rh e cenrre, the very essence, rhe ne rve an d he ar r of our picrure, which had begun merd)' as an inrimare lyric:�l memory lsr 1 30 ; Zl' 2.43-4) .

documentary footage pe rfor ms a more complex set of functions. It is thus important to consider rhe precise origin of rhe footage :�nd the rca­ sons for i rs inclusion in Mirror.

The intersections between the p erson:1 l i ma gi na ry an d th ar o f societ)' arc vividly explored in rhc docum entary sequences of Mirror, wh ich show bu llfights and the Spanish C ivil \XIa r, Soviet :wi:Hion in the late I9 JOS, Soviet forces fighting in World War 11 <1nd cclebr:�ting victory , aromic explosions, and rhe Cu ltu ra l Revolution in Ch in a <1nd en su in g Sin o­ Rt�ssi�n co�1flicr. The three perio ds covered by th e documentary footage cou1ctde wtrh rhc chronologic a l foci of rhe au ro biogr<�phical na rr at io n: 1935-6, 1943-5 and 1969. At th e simplest level the documenra ry foorage merely provides background fo r rhe autobiographic:�l na rm riv e; th us rh e Spanish footage might well be st:en as a kind of flashb<�ck ro ex plain the presence in Moscow of rhe Span ish fa m il y which 11nds its elf rugged in the conflicting directions of no smlgia an d assimilation. lr could be taken as a tacit acknowledgement of rhe lim ited abi li ty of fictional ci ne m a ro represent the w:�r; Soviet war fil m s (The ,

Fate of a i\llan, TIJe Two Fedor:;,

The Cranes Are Flying.) tended to focus on rht: ho m e fronr :�nd the war's afterm

ath, bur when fighting was sh ow n - from M ik h: �il Chiaurc li's Fall of Berlin (1 949) to M ik ha il Romm's £11eryday Fascis111 ( 1 965) and Ta rkovsky's own Ivan s Childho od- documcnrary foor:�ge was frequently used, as if ro nurhcmicate th e fictional nat-r:�tive. In Mirr or, t ho u �-:h accompanted by Baroque mus • ic and Arsenii Ta rkovsky's po ems, rhc I >6 I nrc•

,

The Spanish footage is mostly mined from Roman Karmen's news­ reels (some of the material for which appears in different form in Esfir

Shub's Spain, 1939). K:�rmen became justly famous for his courage under fire, which helped to ral l y rhe entire progressive world in support of rhe Republican cause. Like the heroic aviarors or tractor drive rs ?f the Soviet im:1ginary, Karmen and his machine served all of h um a n t_ ry 111 barrie with rhe hosrile clements. lr is likely that T:�rkovsky saw Karmen's images as �� young child and shared in the widespread fascination with

rhe Spanish Civil War, which seemed to many Soviets an unu�ually noble :�ncl idealistic pass:�ge i n their h is ror y a return ro t he pure tdeals of the revolution before Stalinism, and <1 rare case when the USSR was on the 'right' side in in ternati ona l conflicts (ar least in the cl � mi na n r vi cw _ of inrellectu:�ls). In short, the pror:�gonisr's encounter wtrh rhc agtng S pan ish immigranrs in M oscow is borh an echo and a verification of rhc memories he was fed in childhood. ,

No l ess important, of course, arc rhc formal qualities of I<armen's

footage. The shots of glamorous women in high heels running inro rhe underground C
large modern city, something rhat had never been experienced be fore on _ such a scale. The shor of the small girl rubbing :1 stain off her dress ts reminiscent of one of Tarkovsky's f:lvourite anecdotes: in \XIorld \XIar II imaginary I 1 .17

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a soldier was hauled before a firing squad in a muddy field, but before raking his position he rook off his coat, folded it tidily and began searching for a dry place to lay it. Tarkovsky reasoned rhar rhe victim acted 'automatical ly, our of habit, because his thoughts were far away on the brink of death' (UR 2.5); where were that little girl's thoughts? There is, finally and most poignantly, the girl who turns smiling rowards the camera and gradual l}', as if under rhe gaze of the machine, adopts an expression of utter horror. These shots are all carefully edited, bur Tarkovsky insi sted rhar their inward tension bespoke their authenticity. I n rhe original edit there was another shot of a child bidding his father farewell, which stuck our conspicuously wherever ir was placed; Ta rkovsky traced ir ro irs origin and saw that it was one of three identi­ cal rakes, meaning rhat 'at the very moment that rhe child vvas flowing with tears the cameraman had asked him ro repeat what he had just done: ro bid farewell once more, to embrace and kiss [his father] once more' (u" 72). As a result, this shot 'had been invaded by the devil and he [i.e., the devil] could nor reconcile himself to rhe atmosphere [sreda l [ . . . ) of sincerity' (u" 73). Thus, in addition to their resonance in the social imaginary and individual memory, these shots possess a kind of in narc poignancy rhar resists being reduced to a mere function in the film. 1 38

I fire

Tarkovsky spoke repeatedly of the footage of rhe crossing of the Lake Sivash, a marshy region of the Crimea that had also been the sire of bloody fighting in the Russian Civil \XIar. I had never seen anything of the kind; as a rule one deals with insincere skits or short, fragmentary shots of literally conceived wartime 'life' or with 'showy' footage in which one senses tOO much planning and roo little genuine truth. And .1 saw no possi­ bility of uniting this salad with a single temporal feeling. And suddenly I find an un precedented case of newsreel footage: an episode, an entire and uni fied event, extended in time and shot (unusually} in a single place and telling of one of rhe most dramatic evenrs of the 1943 offensive. [ . . 1 I couldn't believe that such an enormous quantity of film had been spent on the extended observation of a single location [sT I JO; Zl' 2.43].'6 .

The studio authorities protested vigorously against this sombre footage, forcing Tarkovsky ro complement it with shots of triumphant Soviet forces liberating Prague and raking Berlin. Here roo, though, Tarkovsky's vision rernains detached; the shot of Hitler's corpse is followed by one of the cameraman shooting it. In both sequences Tarkovsky docs nor so much represent the war as investigate the ways in which it has been presented and has consequently shaped his vision, without necessarily having been undcrsrood. The final documentary sequence confirms rhe general pattern and suggests a link ro other issues in the film. Many of the shots arc raken from easily identifiable sources, namely Alcksandr Mcdvcdkin's documentaries imaginary I

l 39

AlcksJndr .\kd•·cdkin\ documt:ntary in .\lirror.

A Lefler to a Chi11ese Frie11d ( 1969) and Night 011er Chi11a ( 1971), although Medvedkin in mrn had taken some of his fooragc from elsewhere.•- The rhcir Lirrle Red Books Chinese rourhs (on Damansk)' Island) brandishing � and posters of Mao arc wholly (:111d bclligerenrly) in possession of their own imaginary, impenetrable to an alien gaze. The Soviet soldiers who obscrve them are ourw:ud ly calm, even b<.:mused, bur one c:m:h�.:s glimmers of an almosr primeval rcrror hcfore such fanaticism. The confronration between the stoic gaze and rhc proliferation of images is dr:1 1narii'.�.:d by a husr of Mao, which proceeds ro multiply inro dozens of identical images, which ironically recede into utr�.:r banality and insignificance. These images- evidcnrly filmed from a book - arc the only ones in Mirror thar impose a definite authorial vi�.:wpoinr. When rhe image rakes full posses­ sion of irs human subjects, th�.:se shots seem ro say, it loses both irs mean­ ingfulness and irs a urhcnricit)\ It h�.:comes an idol, whereas the opaque image that resists full absorption inro the \'iewing subj<.:ct preserves the potenrial of meaning. The cnrharsis of rhe documcnrary sequences is akin ro rhe shower rhar rhe Morher rakes :1r the end of rhe sccn<.: at rhe printing plant, which both washes away rhe ashes of rhc imaginary and resror�.:s its mc:1ningful interchange wirh the individual psyche. I.JO I fii'C

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The separation between rhc documentary and fictional layers in Mirror is far from absolure. For one thing, rhc documentary sequences come at specific momenrs in rhe narrative. The Spanish sequence follows rwo aurobiographical episodes scr around 1935, while the World War 11 :llld Chi nesc sequences come ar the end of the episode of the m iIi rn ry instrU<.:ror sct around 1943, which is introduced by the grown narrator's recollection of his first love. Given irs placement the Chinese sequenc<.: might be taken as a critique of Stalinism. However, it was originally accompanied by footage of the Vietnam War and the wars in the Middle East, in order (Tarkovsky claimed) ro show rhc path of the Sovi<.:r sol­ dier from World \Xfar 11 'through the :nom bomb, Vietnam [ . . . [ and rhc possihilit)' of new crises'.'s That was the official explanation, htll Tarkovsk)' also motivated rhc shift ro China as conveying 'rwo gazes: r) issuing from the rime of rhe narrative abour rh<.: war, 2) from one who lives today, from the author'. '? In addition ro this composir<.: 'g:1ze', the docu mcnr:Hy sequences are not com pletcly sepa ra rc from thc 'fiction a I' narrative that surrounds rhcm. In the lirst case rhe docum<.:mary and narrative sequences altcrnarc several rimes bcforc staying with the documerll':ny foorage, first to the sounds of flamenco and 1 hen im�gin:ll')' I

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In the second case a shot-r first shot (in black

and white) is followed by a passage from rhe main narration in colour, before returning to the documentary sequence. In both instances it i s a s i f the protagonist's vision is flickering on the borderline between differ­ ent stares of consciousness. The aural accompaniment adds a further level of thickness to rhese sequences, especially the second, which proceeds to rhe strains of Eduard A r rem'ev's electronic score and then ro Arsenii Tarkovsky's poem 'Life, life'. O f the use of his father's poems in

Mirro1· Tarkovsky said:

'These

poems are not an illustration; they are just poems born at the time about which one or another episode i s telling' (uR 29). This claim sug­ gests a parallel ro the epilogue to Andrei Rublev, in which (in the original conception) each icon was to be 'accompanied by rhe same musical theme

The poem appears ro comment directly on the image it accompanies, in which rhe rain dematerializes objects, transforming them into mere images, but rhe objects also contain rhe rain, bestowing on their human bearers an almost majestic power o f speech. The poem instantiates the power of rhe imaginary, which regu lates the flow of sensory information and wrns it into meaningful experience; 'you', for instance, is revealed to be a majestic sovereign. The film is at a more distanr remove, ques­ tioning whether this imaginary suspension of rhe sensory flow can ever be stabilized and sustained as a personal or cultural identity. The indeterminate relationship between word and image is con­ finned by rhe second poem, which begins towards the end of rhe images of rhe crossing o f Lake Sivash. The first stanza reads like a memorial for the soldiers depicted:

that sounded in the episode of Rublev's life corresponding to rhe time

I don't believe presentiments, bad omens

during which the icon was conceived'. !o In fact, the three poems actual­

Do not scare me. I avoid neither slander

ly read in the film all dare from the T96os, long after rhe events rhey

Nor poison. There's no such thing as death.

illustrate before and during the war.!' Moreover, the fact that the choice

Everyone's immortal. Everything. Do nor

of poems was finalized only quire late in the film's production suggests

Be afraid o f death ar seventeen years old

that they must have exerred little influence on the images that they

Or at seventy. There is only clarity and light,

accompan)' Much more important than autobiographical authenricity

Neither gloom nor death exists in this world.

were the concrete juxtapositions of images with words that resonate at

Already we stand on the shore o f rhe sea,

multiple levels of rhe author's imaginary. A s the rain streams down our­

And l am one who chooses a net

side rhe mother picks up a notebook of her husband's poems and reads:

l-

. . ] rivers pulsated in the crystal,

Mountains smoked, seas quivered, And you held rhe crystal sphere I n your palm, and you slept on a throne, And, God a lmighty, you were mine. You awoke
142. I (ire

When immortality grimly stalks. Tarkovsky suggested that the poem 'formed and completed rhe mean­ ing' of rhe documentary footage, helping a document of truth become 'an

(ST

image r 3o;

of a spiriwal labour

zv

(podvig)

and o f the price of this labour'

244). The focus of the camera on the men themselves, and

the viewer's knowledge that almost none of them would survive the war, 'gave these moments imprinted on film a particular multidimensionality and depth, engendering feelings close ro a shock or catharsis'

(sT 1 3 1 ; z v

244). However, the second stanza shifts the focus at once inwards and forwards, into an open fuwre: Live in your home and your home will nor fall.

I can summon forth any century, I shall enter ir and build my home in it. This is why your children and your

imaginary I '43

\XIives share a table with me, The same table as m y ancesror and grandchild: The future i s happening now, And if I just raise my hand, All five rays will remain with you. Like a hoist I have supported Every day of the past with my shoulders, I have measured time with a surveyor's chain And passed through it as if through the Urals. Arsenii Tarkovsky here seems ro declare independence from the Soviet imaginary; having measured time as one would the earth, he has not sought ro harness its elemental power (as he did in his earlier Tale of Sphagnum), bur rather to pass through ir ro rhe other side. In the film rhis line coincides with shots of a Bruegelesque winter landscape, of victory and atomic nightmare, of the boy Asaf'cv catching a bird in his hand, of Mao, ere. There can, in short, be no simple interpretation of this sequence; in fact, Tarkovsky once suggested thar the poem was imcnded precisely tO overload the spectaror's sensorium and keep ir from reAccting consciously on the imaginary.!! A similar function may be ascribed ro rhe Spaniards' conversation, in which Tarkovsky layered three distinct sound­ tracks, claiming that he himself could nor figure our what they were saying.!' The only wa)' for h i m to clarif}' the film, he claimed, would be ro finish adding 'lines, noises and music', that is, ro complete the images. \XIhat remains from rhc poems is a juxtaposition of global Aows and individual acts of resistance: a crystal containing pulsating rivers, a ncr hoisted against immortality or a hand raised against the on-rushing future. It is not rhc illusion that one can stop rime in irs tracks, bur the hope rhar one can catch i t i n the meshes of experience. It was such poignant juxraposirions that led Tarkovsky, i n rhe aftermath of Mirror, ro ponder the nature of rhe image. It is no coincidence that both documen­ tary sequences arc followed b)' references to Leonardo, which Tarkovsky explained by referring ro the pecu liar distance and superiorit)' of Leonardo's gazt:: 'In Mirror we needed this portrait I Gine/lra di /3enci] in order [. . . j ro find rhc measure of rhc eternal in the insranrs rhar Aow before us' (ST 108; zv 2.16). Such an image 'opens before us the possibility of interaction with infinity' (sT 109; z v 2 1 7). Olcg Aronson has observed that Tarkovsky ' p rovides rhe abilit)' ro deal with the infinite by indicating irs presence in rhc mundancncss of ''H

I

fin:

our memory'!4 Indeed, Ta rkovsky believed rhat only film is able to show the friction caused when the image encounters lived time, because '[t]hc cinematic image is the observation of facts in time, organized in accordance with the forms of life and \Nith its temporal la·ws'!5 Though it is not specifically a critique of the Soviet imagina ry, Mirror seeks to redefine the viewer's very attitude towards images, not as the storehouse of the known, bur as a possibilit)' for envisioning the new. If Stalker marks the moment at which the Soviet imaginary finally came a cropper- not only in the catastrophic environmental and human con­ sequences of transforming nature, bur also in its critique of desire as the basis for human economy - in his last two films Ta rkovsky radically departed from the themes and images of the Soviet imaginary, intensify­ ing instead his use of the canons of European art. Nostalghia is literally jammed full of architecture, art and music from rhc European past; in Sacrifice a book of Russian icons is reconrexrualized as part of the com­ mon European heritage alongside Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi and Baroque music. Despite Ta rkovsky's obvious reverence, these images form a social imaginary that he brought into question no less than in his Soviet films. Classic artworks emerge as ruins of the past which have been emptied of acwal mcaning and con from the viewer as a task for reconstruction and reappropriation. In Nostalghia Domenico plays Beethoven's Nimh Symphony on a cheap rape recorder wirh violent aural distOrtion. In Sacrifice Alexander sets fire nor only to his home, bur also ro rhc entire universe of cultural significrs which it conrains. The film in which he confronts this European imaginary most directly is Time of Travel, which shares with Mirror both an autObio­ graphical and documclmlr)' emphasis. His constant plainr in Time of Travel rhat he prefers not ro sec 'beautiful' sites is nor a vain hankering after an imagined 'authentic Italy', but part of a living conversation with rhe country. The peculiar problem of Italian space is that it is so dearly compound, shaped by centuries of human activit)' and mindful of its supposed starus as the centre of Christendom. Tarkovsky's intervention in the European imagina ry, like his fora)'S inro that of his native country, seeks nor to enunciate an alternative or dissident viewpoint, bur simply ro create a space within which vision can rc-calibratc irs images vis-a-vis the world.

imaginary I

145

7 Sensorium

Though he had always paid close attention ro technical maners, in Stalker Tarkovsky was almost obsessive in his pursuit of the highest pro­ duction values. The move to Tallinn, Estonia, was ostensibly caused by an earthquake ar rhc original location at Isfara, Tadjikisran, bur some collaborators felt that Tarkovsky had already been plotting rhe change ro ensure a richer palette of colours rhan was possible in rhe arid climes of Ccntral Asia (as suggested also by his diary entry for 22 August 1976). As soon as rhc move was confirmed, Ta rkovsky cook care ro adjust the film-stock and change rhe aspect-ratio from widescreen to standard 4:3. Howevcr, after completing :t brge portion of rhe location shoot he sud­ denly re:t lized that his materi:tl was of insufficient quality. T:ukovsky placed rhe blame on the suppliers for providing poor-quality film-stock, rhc originnl cameraman Georgii Rerbcrg for neglecting to chcck it, and the technicians ar Mosfilm for developing ir with the wrong proce­ dure (sec diary entry for 26 August 1977). Again, many at the studio remained convinced rhat Tarkovsky merely invented the problem :ts a pretext for correcting his own flawed conception. Nonetheless, after a brief bur traumatic suspcnsion in production during rhc autumn of 1977, th<.: emirc film was re-shot with an cven more austere scr<.:<.:npby (although several shots from rhe first version arc reported to hav<.: bc<.:n used in the final edit). With the less-distinguished Alcksandr Knia7.hinsky now installed as cameraman, Ta rkovsky rook personal charg<.: of rhc camera during the second shoor; he also rook ovcr rhe dutics of s<.:r designer. Tarkovsky's concern for rhe resolution of the image was I !II' 1 lol11t iun l111t h) t•ttW•I'iy tll""'k')·

sharcd by some; after rhc film's approval thc studio head Nikolai Sizov cxprcsscd his concern rhar Soviet rcchnolorw would nor bc ;�blc.: w make prints of sufficiently high quality. ' For most, however, Stall�er

-

The h•nd of G•hsc\•

Tarkovsky has sometimes been suspected of pursuing just such an

in /mu $ CIJildiJood.

impassive, alien view on the world. I n particular, the reactions of cine­ ma authorities ro Mirror suggest that this was precise!)' the way they read the film's portrayal of the Soviet imaginary. True, Tarkovsky did

nor submerge Soviet images in water, as he had done with Andr�i

Rublev's icons (and would do with jan van Eyck in Stalker). Bur was rh1s nor the effect of showi ng war footage

to

the strains of Pergolesi? While

he drew on srock images of Soviet culture, Tarkovsky wholly ignored its soundtrack, whether popular songs, bombastic orchestral suites or army choruses. Tarkovsky seemed in danger of becoming like the Ocean in Solaris, draining reality of irs living juices with his camera's eerily calm gaze.

. . For Tarkovsky, though, aesthetics was the oppOSite of anaesthesia.

Far from legitimizing rhc image, the Baroque music creates a jarring stylistic dissonance that opens up a play of temporal distances. Thus,

provided final proof that the infamously highly strung Tarkovsky had

apropos of Bergman's Cries and Whispers (1972), Ta rkovsky wrote that _ Bach's music 'lends a particular volume and depth to everythmg that

lapsed into mania. Tarkovsky's quixotic behaviour is of a piece with rhe narrative of

occurs on screen 1

Stalker, where a n obsessive eccentric leads two disagreeable clients

.

) Thanks ro Bach

and the rejection of dia logue by

space, where the spectator feels the possibility of filling the spiritual

As wirh Tarkovsky, the Stalker's partners arc beset with doubt concerning

emptiness and feeling the breath of an ideai.'L It is not just that the

the reality of the hazards that allegedly surround them from all sides. Yet admonitions would undercut their faith in his promise, on which rhey

•

the characters there appears in the scene a kind of vacuum, an empty

through a possessed wnsteland towards a roon1 where wishes come rrue.

they arc obliged ro suspend their disbelief; any doubt in rhe Stalker's

•

I lor h.111ds of Kri>

,,.,1 11.1ri (So/uris).

images arc estranged from their cusromary context and made palpable anew. Within the turning of the narrnrive they cease ro be merely

have pinned their hopes (in the case of the Writer) and their fears (in that of the Professor). They reach the Room of Desires with faith preserved, bur what they actually d o there - indeed whether they even cross irs threshold - remains an open question. It seems that rhe reward for rhcir travails has been the very acquisition of faith in the ncr of overcoming material resistance. Could the reward for wntching Tarkovsky's films likewise be the gift of trust in rhe meaningfulness of rhe act itself? Of course, this is precisely the question asked by Solnris, and it is one rhar Tarkovsky answered i n rhe negative. In Solaris the image burns upon entering into the specific temporal atmosphere of human memory; it becomes a person. The Ocean, by contrast, is profoundly inhuman in its pursuit of a purely aesrhcric (i.e., reactive and reproductive) kind of thought, one that would view the carrh as if under a film of warer­ eminently visible, bur inerr, hollow, beyond living reach and wirhour purpose.

1 50 I

warcr

sensorium

I

•

51

commemorative and are imbued wirh a poignanr bur

fragile curve of

ever-increasing frequency, Tarkovsky

stressed more than ever before or

possibility- rhe source, perhaps, of rhe wistfulness rhat confounded rhe

ever again the need for film ro affect viewers 'emotionally and sensu­

powers rhat be.

the narrative and visual representation. In an earlier vari ant of rhe final scene, Snaut plays Bach from a metallic disk: 'sudd enl y Kris was overcome with the smell of the earth and moist earthly planrs, and female

ously', without them 'trying to analyse what is happening right now on screen', which 'only hinders rhe perception of the picture' 8 If you fail to treat the film 'immediately', Tarkovs ky said, you run the risk of letting it slip like sand 'between your fingers'.9 This sat poorly with Tarkov sky 's studio, for which sensorial immediacy suggested a 'lack of determinacy (that] forces the reader and the possible vi ewer to guess and indulge in the most dive rse interp retati ons, which distracts from following and . I I work's meanmg . ,. •o d d correct y un erstan mg ne

hands covered in the juice of earthly fruits'.J Kris leans over to touch this

Indeed, if the temptation ro interpret arises at all, Tarkovsky sug­

newly revealed material and organic world and finds himself walking

gested, it should be fully satisfied by the characters' discussion at the end

towards his farber's home. However, he stops when he sees his double

of their journey. 'In Stalker,' he wrote, 'everything must be spoken in

walk along a dusty path amongst the trees, approach his seared father

full: human love is the very miracle that is capable

and hug his 'desiccated, elderly legs': 'Observing rhis scene through the

elf)' theorising about the hopelessness of

window, Kris wondered with horror what he would feel if his father began to speak'.4 The sc reen play ends with relatively greater cla rity than in the film: the two Krises remain separate, one discussi ng philosoph)' with Snaur, the other reconciled with the father However, Kris's fear of his father speak i ng highlights rhe fragi l i ty of the scene: as with Hari (and with Hamler), once the ghost addresses you ir ceases to be a mere ghost.

still missed this 'point', Tarkovsky rep eated it tirelessly:

The complex role

of Bach's music was evidenr in Solaris, in rhe

course of which rhe music itself is gradually deformed b)' Eduard Artem'ev's electronic elaborations. The play of fami li a rity and distortion, as well as of venerabl e age and ja rring novelty, augments the i ndetermin a

­

cies of

.

The effect of sound in Tarkovsky's films is therefore not ro render

.

of withstanding any

the world.'" In case viewers

This is a fi l m about the fact that force means nothing in the en d, and that weakness sometimes expresses the sense of a powe rful soul. It's about the way rhat, in our daily pursuit of the ma tcr ir d realization of ou r life, we lose sp iritua l ity; about the fact that we arc morally unprepared for rhc technological 'progress' that

rhe image emotionally o r inrellecrually rransparenr, bur ro intensify irs

accompanies our life and which hardly depends on

density and opacity ro rhe point rhar ir begins to exerr an almost mater­

more.,,

our will any

ial resistance. Things and their sounds are de-synchronized just enough to cast their sensory existence as a question of doubt, desire and faith.

Stalker, in short, rivets spectators' attention ro the screen in an attempt

As Del euze

tO restore faith in the

has written abour Godard, 'Man is in the world as if in a pure optical and sound si nm rion. [ . . . ] Only belief i n rhe world can reconnect man tO what he sees and hea rs The cinema must fi l m , nor rhe world, bur belief in this world, our only link.'> The linkage between faith and m:uerial rexrure is at the centre of Stalker, rhe starkest and purest example of Tarkovsky's cinematic .

ccuvre and the film that was closest ro being 'rhe optimal incarnation of [his original] idea', where 'conception (zamysel)

closel y matched

rhe resulr'.6 A major factor i n irs exceptional status was Tarkovsk>''S increasing solitude, especia l ly following the defection of Vadim Iusov

plot of Stalker was a central parr of :1 c onsci ous strategy ro focus attention almost wholly on rhe image itself and avoid 'enrerraining or surprisi ng the specraror'.7 In public forums of from his regular team. The 'ascetic'

l F· I w�rcr

world, not as parr of a grand imaginary project, but in irs 'pseudo-mundane' m ate ri a lity The harsh aesthetic texture of Stalker ensures that rhis is no romantic return to inn ocence; but how, then, should one understand Ta rkovsky's concluding sra tem e nt ahour the film, that in the fin a l analysis it is also about 't he fact that, without faith in fairy-rales and miracles a human being is incapable of l iv i ng. and, furthermore, of being called human'? Docs this not imply th:ll, just as rhe Stalker's mission may rurn out ro be a wild-goose chase, Tarkovsky is using fi lm ro induce a state of faith without himself believing.? .

Tarkovsky's aesthetic p ri ncip le was to seck the maximum effect wirh rhc m in im um of means: 'The image must be truthful a nd opt i mal ly simple. This is nor a goal in itself, but is a neccssnry con d it i on for conveyi n g to scnsoriu111 I

1 53

Unless one is as sensitive to colour harmony as a painter, one

The homl in the flame (Mirror).

does nor notice colours in everyday l i fe. For example, for me cinematic reality exists in the rones of black and whi te. Yet in

Rublev we had to relate life and reality on the one hand with art and painting on the other. This connection between thL: final colour sequence and the black-and-white film was for us his a way to express the interdependence of Rublcv's art and

and life. In other words: on the one hand everyday life, rational ed realistically presented, and on the other- :1 conventionaliz nrion artistic summary of his life, its next stage, irs logical continu

[An 2.41.

Tarkovsky returned to the problem in most derail in an interview recorded during his preparations for

Solaris:

Colour on screen is, as a rule, obnoxious and even provocative.

Why? After all no one notices colour in life. 1 . . . ] And then we

shoot what we see on l:Oiour film: everything becomes colourful! And we can no longer perceive this image as reality without the colour. Colour exists everywhere in this image; it everywhere

the spectator the spiritual essence of what is being depicted.' '> Tarkovsky's minimalism had important practical motivations. For instance, the decision to shoot Andrei Rubliiv in black and white was dictated in parr by the lower resolution of colour stock, especially when the 35mm frame is enlarged to 70111111 for widescreen projection. '4 The use of widescrccn projection became pro blematic after the move to colour in

Safaris.

After shooting its first colour sequences Tarkovsky

reportedly said: 'you can sec it's fake! I need to shoot black-and-white pictures! My next picture will be black and white and on a small screen'

(os 57) . As with sculprure in the cinema, single-tone represenration has somehow become for us more 'realistic', free of rhe conspicuous artifi­ ciality of colouration. Still, as Tarkovsky pragmatically admitted, ' [s]ince colour has been invented you have to wonder how you can make use of it'.11 Tarkovsky's solution was consramly to shift in a meticulously planned manner between black and white, sepia and colour film. What Walter Benjamin called the percussive effect of film was for Ta rkovsky not onl)' the discontinuous staccato of frames, bur also the constant alternation between types and gradations of colour:nion (as well as between diffcrenr speeds of projection). '6 Tarkovsky's most forthright statement on the matter concerned the colour epilogue to • 54

I

W:I!Cr

Andrei Ruble11:

llu hund with 1111 '""' (i\lirmr).

sensorium I '55

insinuates itself on our eye. Here there arises conventionality, which may be either artistic or anri-arristic .

.

.

•1

I , on.trdo, dr.m·ing ·I h.111d> (dc1oil, I I ,) ,

The rask is nor merely ro de-familiarize the spectator's perception of colour by creating percussive shocks; film, Ta rkovsky suggests, is capa­ ble of much more subtle variations. Using acoustic terminology, Tarkovsky claimed that it was necessaqr tO 'mix' the colour ro 'achieve rhe necess:uy measure': The first way is to 'eliminate colour' by means of colour. That is, to tone down the colour in every wa}; to seek measured, subtle and at the same time balanced spectra, ro elicit greys, so rhar rhe sense of colour is no stronger or sharper rhan in our normal life. And there is another parh which I would call psychological: ro saturate rhe action with emotion so that rhe corresponding experience of this emotion is higher, sharper, stronger rhan rhc mere sense of colour. I sec colour cinematography most of all as nor letting colour 'occupy the foregro und' or become showy.'s Tarkovsky noted that thl.! only phenomena that are always perceived as colourful arc sunsets and other 'transitional stares of narure'.'9 To make rhc spectator sec colour is rhus ro convey a transition within the reprc­ senred object, corresponding ro a change in texture. The rcxrural differ­ ence between colour schemes 'expresses the specific srare of matter in the film, the moment of irs change in rimc'.!O As in an autumn leaf, 'colour direcrly expresses processes concealed in rhe texture';" 'only together with texture, manifesting ir', Tarkovsky added, 'can colour convey rhe stare of what is depicted, its "history" and irs "actuality", so rhar rhe viewer feels he is sensing it wirh his own skin'.!! Ir is rhe paradox of Tarkovsk)"s art that such artful shocks to one's vision induce a new sensation of nature. As with colour, over rime Ta rkovsky increasingly employed sound ro punctuate and inAccr rhe images in unexpected, complex ways. According to Owe Svensson, who worked as sound engineer on Sacrifice, Tarkovsky made it clear rhar 'his focus is always on the picture, while rhc sound comes larer'.!1 What in Soviet cinema was merely rhc standard practice of dubbing in all dialogue and sound in post-production, for Tarkovsk)' was a conscious poerics of de-synchronization, by which he sought to •56 I

w:ucr

undermine rhe fixed meanings rhat :1ccompany rhc image: 'One has only ro rake away rhc sounds of the world that is reAecred by the screen or fill this world with incidcnrnl sounds rhat do not exist for rhis precise image, or which arc ddormed so :1s nor to correspond ro this image, and the film will immcdiatcl)' lind full voicl.!' (sT 169; zv 279). The cumulative effect of rhis complex synchronization is ro create images rhat resist interpretative penetration, mimicking. rhe impenetrability of material form. The besr illustration of Tarkovsky's aural aesthetics is his little­ known 1965 radio production o f William Faulkner's srory 'Turnabout' (1932).!4 Faulkner (like Hemingway) was officially endorsed in rhc ussR thanks to his Nobel Prize and politics; his story 'Turnabout' had become widely known afrer irs first Soviet publication in t96o; irs narrative ­ concerning a reckless bur comageous young p i lor of a torpedo boar ­ is somewhat reminiscellt of II'llII s CIJildiJood and the final episode in A11drei Rublii11.:1 Tarkovsky engaged his regular composer Viachl.!sl:w Ovchinnikov to compose and conduct rhe musical interludes. He w:1s assisrcd b)' Aleksandr Misharin, a radio editor with whom he bn:r co-authored rhc scrccnpby ro Mirror (among other texts) . The acrors included furun.: director Nikir:1 Mikh:dkov, rhc younger brother of i\ndron Konch:1lovsk)\ Tnrkovsky was �1ided in his staging b), his fat her's expericncl.! writing :1nd sraging the r:1dio-dramas Glass and Tale about Sphag/111111 in rhe early • 930s. sensorium I '57

Ta rkovsk>r's dramatization pursue rhc acoustic equivalent of his polycenrric and shifring framing in the cinema. The foreground narra­ tion and conversation is accompanied by rival tracks - rn1cks on rhe street, chansons in the bar- which gradually overtake the foreground at various poinrs, embedding the main characters i n a l;ugcr and some­ what unruly world. Moreover, in Aleksandr Sherel's words, 'The enrire sound texture was recorded with striking precision, unusual for radio directors in the rime. ·�6 Afrer reviewing all the sound effects available ro him, Tarkovsky set off ro record seagulls and ships i n the Riga porr with a portable rape recorder of profession:1l quality. Shere! counrs eight dis­ . tmcr tracks of sound, so that in the barrie scene one ca n hear even the sound of the empry shell casings falling ro rhe deck of rhe boar. The loss of consciousness by the first-person narrator in the midst of barrie was originally depicted by a silence lasting 30 seconds. This rechnique was so unusual rhat ir was thought ro be a mistake, and Tarkovsky was com­ pelled ro fill ir wirh rhe low roar of timpani. Shere! admits rhnr with irs high acoustic resolurion Ta rkovsky's production would probably have losr much of irs effccr over normal rransisror rad ios. Tarkovsky's emphasis on texture culmi nated in his declaration rhar 'Theoretical!>' there should be no music ar all i n a film unless it is parr of the aural reality imprinred i n the shot' (UR 55). By 1967 Ta rkovsky had clearly tired of Viacheslav Ovchinnikov's luscious orchesrnll scores, complaining thar 'Ovchinnikov musr be held in check or else he'll write nor a soundtrack bur a talented opera'.�7 Beginning wirh Solaris, Ta rkovsky engaged Eduard Arrem'c.:v, who worked mainly in electronic music, which he added ro record ings of cbssical, mainly Baroque music. \XIith Solaris, Ta rkovsky began ro conceive of his soundtracks as a n integration of music and diegeric sound, including (post-synchronized) dialogue and (de-synchronized) sound effects, resulting in a growing complexity of S)'nchronizarions between sound and image. I n Stalker, A rtcm'cv's last film for Ta rkovs ky, the three orders of sound began w blend to the degree of indisri nction. As i f in rh c folds of rhc visual rhythms, Andrea Truppin observes, 'a sound will fade in very gradually, often remaining at the border of audibility for so long rhat, as we begin to perceive it, we fir·r question if we have in fact heard anything and rhen wonder how long we have been hearing it'.�s As in so many other rega rds, Stalker marks the extreme point of ;JScericism and sensuality; the music is ofrc.:n ind isti ngu i sh a ble from diegetic noise, even when strains of Beerhoven's Ninrh Symphony emerge 158 I

water

i n rhe finale. This complex synchronization works together with the folded space of the Zone ro make the film an opaque medium rhat resists our understanding with an almost material force, using the image to renew the spectatOr's somatic experience. Faced with rhe need to define this fil m-form, at once aural and visual, inrellecrual and of the body, Tarkovsky turns to the concept of rime: 'film as a form is closesr ro a musical construction of material. \XIhat's most imporranr here is not the logic of the Aow of events, bur rhe form of rhc Aow of these events, the form of their existence in the cinematic material. [. . . ] Time is already fo rm' (UI< 26). In his final two films Ta rkovsky utilized pre reco rded music (mainly Baroque and folk songs), shifting the emphasis from the music itself r:o irs diegeric source. Thus i n Nostalghia Beethoven's Ninth Symphony blares with high distortion from Domenico's tape recorder, while in Sacrifice the ethereal strains of apparently non-diegeric Japanese music unexpectedly become localized in space when Alexander shuts off his (hitherto unseen) stereo system. Here music is present only to make palp­ able irs disappearance. Tarkovsky's final film saw significant changes to the soundtrack. Owe Svensson, the sound engineer on Sacrifice, has expressed horror at the low quality of sound effects in Tarkovsky's Soviet films and Nostalghia. It i s disconcerting when, for example, Kris's steps through the spacecraft resound like high-heels on parquet, as do Gorchakov's brogue-clad feet on the cobblestones of Rome. One can never quite be sure, thoug h, rhat rhc monoronous sound of footsteps was not intended to be ostentatiously expressive, as Tarkovsky found ir to be i n Bergman (s-r 162; zv 279). In Sacrifice Svensson saw to it that 'no rwo footsteps would sound alike and they should have a life of their own'. Still, the basic principle of complex synchronization remained the same, so rhar rhe soundtrack ro Alexander's dream 'is heard as a combination of woman's voice, the Japanese Autc and various ship sounds'. Sound ­ whether voice.:, inst rume n t or environment is used to expand rhe temporal and spatial placement of the image, dissolving any specific den ota t ion s in the atmosphere that surrounds it. -

-

As Tarkovsky's first film i n colour and wirhout an orchesmd score, Solaris is especially useful for investigating his sensorial poetics. The firsr key sequence is rhc 'ciry of rhe fururc', which was shot in Tokyo in r971 wirh both hhck-and-white and colour film and which was accompanied by :1 parricularl)' dissonant piece of Artem'cv's music. According ro lusov, sensorium

I

• 59

Tarkovsky, subtle changes to the quality of rhc image can cotwe)' more information than the dialogue or narrative. The second reversion to black and white occurs when

Kelvin views

Gibarian's suicide video for the second time, now in his own cabin. hrst we sec the black-and-white video framed by its screen within a colour room, but an axial cut reveals a black-and-white shot of

Kris watching,

and further shots of the video rake up the entire frame, so that Kris and Gibarian arc now united in the same black-and-white space. When (in the video) Sartorius knocks at Gibarian's door Kris rurns his head, confusing the tape with reality. (This confusion is consistent wirh Lem's novel, where

GibMian appears to Kris in a dream or as ll solarian

spectJ·e.) Kris then lies on the bed and views himself in the mirror; the im<�ge reverts to colour to show first Hari's face in deep shadow, and then Kris's outstretched hand. While the initial change to black and white appears ro mark Kris's transition from the real space of rhe spacecraft to the imaginary space of Gibarian's video, the change back ro colour

marks if nnyrhing a deepening of the imaginar)' and the loss of any decisive criterion of reality. The third black-and-white sequence follows

Kris's delirium, when he

dreams (?) of his home and his deceased mother, who rinses off his arm Tarkovsky did nor hm•e a predetermined plan for how he would use the footage. In the e\'cnt, he strung rogethcr a repetitive series of shots on rhc same stretch of road, gradually increasing the proporrion of colour to

Stll/k,•r: location ,hcu hy Cngun)

Vcrkhm•,kiv. .

wirh water from a pristine white porcelain jug and basin. Kris seems ro be falling inro infantilism; he calls our '1\l!ama, mama'. The black and white carries over inro rhe next shor, when

Kris awakes and calls for Hari, who

and white. In some cases, a nocturnal shot first appe:11·s black and

(he learns from Snaut) has been 'anni hilated'. By this point, having served

white, and is rcveakd as colour only by rhe colourful glow of city lights. The growing visu:tl intensity is marched by Artcm'cv's electronic noise,

informing the images with memory nnd hope, the narrative is completely suspended (for the viewer as for Kris). It has become less

which rises our of grating noise ro cacophonic be:1Ut)\ When Iusov first saw

important (or possible) ro distinguish reality from imagination th:tn ro

rhe edited sequence he felt rhar irs point w:ts ro show how rhe increasing

man:tge rhe various levels of memory and fantasy.

black

qu:111riry becomes :1 change in 'qu:diry'; the viewer emerges from the cinematic runnel with transformed powers of vision. The 'cit)' of the fururc' suddcnl)' breaks off ro a bl:tck-:md-whire sequence, beginning with a shor of Kelvin's home. Kelvin burns his

The remainder of rhe film is rhus the multiplication and ordering of rhese layers of images. Bruegel's paintings on board the spacecraft arc echoed in Kris's colour film of family memories, which itself

is repro­

duced as a full-screen image rhar blurs the boundaries between

Solrtris

aunr look on; he asks pe rmission

and irs film-within-a-film. As Tatiana Egorova has pointed our, lhch's

rake with him the 'film wirh the bonfire', as if he wishes his famil)'

Chorale Prelude in F 'nor only awakes nostalgic images in Kelvin's con­

archive in a bonfire, as his brher nnd 10

irs purpose of

mcmorie

ro include only rhosc ringed by this act of renunciation.

sciousness, it also miraculously influences rhe srarc of the inanim:11e

Colour is restored in a shot of the starry sky, wirh rhc )•cllow lights of

phantom Hari', who 'suddenly begins to "recollect" her human past', :1s

a spaceship

:t pproach i ng

rhe specra ror.

K ris asks 'When is I i fr-off?'

and is told: 'You arc :tlrcady Aying.' Im probable ;�s ir is that one would fail ro norice hcing hunched into space, ir ill usrrares rhc facr that, in 160 I

w.ucr

the soundtrack expands to include

noises of rhe forest,

a

folk chorus,

and the chimes of bells.,� After seeing her prototype on film and he::� ring irs soundrr:tck,

Hari-2 walks to a mirror, exclaims 'I don't know my�clf sensorium I 161

ar all', and then begins ro talk to Kris through the mirror, as rhe camera shifts right to show a stream of water. If one stOpped here one mighr be able ro sorr our how these images, their implied narratives and their media inform each orher. However, the film refuses to stop; at rhe shor of running water the soundtrack changes to an excerpt from Ovchinnikov's soundtrack to A11drei Rublev and Kris i s shown along­ side a reproduction of Rublcv's "Ti-inity. This weaves the characters' i m aginaries and narratives together with that of their exrn1-diegctic cre­ ator. This momenr of convergence- between different temporalities and different levels of representation - extends the possibility both of redemp­ tion and of damnation. Is Kris (and by extension Tarkovsky) forever condemned ro replay the past, locked within his representations of it (whether in memory; dream or technical media)? Docs his love for Hari return him ro a Auid state (srmbolized by the water) where memory i s i ndisri nguish ablc from perception ? In rhc end rhe film equivocates; in his single most important line K ris wonders: Do I have the right to refuse even the imaginaq' possibilit)' of conracr with this Ocean, to which my race has for decades tried to extend a thread of undersmnding, and remain here among the things and objects which we borh [i.e., Kris and Haril rouched, which still remember our breath. In the name of what? For the sake of my hope for her return? Bur I have no such hope. All rhar remains for me i s ro w:1ir. For what? I don't know. New miracles? This monologue echoes norhing as much as the ending of Samuel 13eckcrr's TIJe Unnnnwble, and its rhrusr seems to be much the s:11n c: between our inruirions of a transcendent source (i.e., the Ocean) :1nd rhe insecurity of corporeal life we erect systems of representation - threads of understanding- which never form themselves into a clear design, yet comprise the very fabric that weds consciousness to corpore:1liry. '! like making long films, films which urrerly "destroy" the spccr:1ror in a physical m:lllner', Tarkovsky once s:�id. 10 In order to cxcrr such cffccr, however, temporal form requires ar least :1 skeleton of narrative, which i n Stall�er is nor only reduced to the barest minimum, bur at key momc.:nrs rhrearens ro come completely nparr. The physical evidence for rhe Zone and of rhc Room of Desin:s is almost entirely circumstantial: th\: dosed 1 1'12 I

w:ncr

perimeter, the rumours of miracles and the Aags by which the Stalker marks our a path. In comments on rhe film Tnrkovsky stressed thnt the story of Porcupine, the Stalker's mentor, could be a mere legend (s-r t 98; zv 317); perhaps the Porcupine is really the Smlker himself. In sum, Ta rkovsky professed: 'It would be good if at rhc end the spectatOr came to doubt whether he had even seen a story' (os 247). It is almost as if the Stalker is conducting an apocalyptic variation of a children's game, like hide-and-seck or 'capture the Aag'. The only cvicknce of supernatural forces, that is of otherwise unsolvable diegetic puzzles, are the voice which calls the Writer bnck from his solo foray and the bird which disap­ pears over the sand dunes. Both arc cinematic tricks that, if anything, detract from the sense of mystery; the three characters accuse each other of ventriloquism, but the viewer i s acutely aware of the director's manip­ ulation. The general state of d iscomfirurc and unease i s maintained mostly by the smoothly floating camera, the alternations i n colour, the conspicuous sound effects and their synthesized elaboration. The ringing telephone and working fuse-box in the antechamber to the Room strike the characters and spectators as uncanny precisely because they so evi­ dently contradict the pretence of the Zone. The Professor discards his device, not because he loses faith in the Zone, bur because he comes to believe in it more than i n his own judgement. The fragility of the border between realism and fanrasy is perhaps most puzzling i n the episode of rhe 'Dry Tu nnel' - a joke, as the Stalker remarks, because it i s in fact a violent current of water. The beginning of rhe second part finds the Stalker raising his two clients from their rest; the Professor lcav\:S his rucksack, not reali�.ing that it is impossible ro return, but upon remembering it he goes hack all the same. The Stalker and rhe Writer pr\:SS on, wading through rhe water and despairing of ever finding rhc Professor again; after all, as the Stalker keeps repeating, no one ever returns the same way they came. However, the Stalker :wei the Writer emerge from the Dry Tunnel only to meet the Professor enjoy­ ing a quiet snack ncar the very place they left him. The Stalker tre;tts this fold in space as a 'trap' and their survival as proof of the Professor's benevolence, bur it is difficult ro rid oneself of the suspicion that he was acru:dly leading the Writer, so to speak, up the garden path. The Stalker's stricnares arc improvised, not to protect his visitors rrom unknown dangers, hut solely to sramp his aurhorit)' on their quest. The sequence is ret�tinisccnr of one at the beginning of Kuros:1wa's TIJr<me of Blood, when lost tr:wcllers in the fog pass the same distinctive tree three sensorium I 163

times: "What would seem simpler than placing the camera and thrice­ over showing the circular path of the characters?' (sT n:o; zv 219). Yet the sequence is not just a visual display of futilit)' \XIith each arrival at the spot of origination rhe soundtrack registers clear changes; rhe sound of falling water is suddenly and inexplicably replaced by a more violent flow.>' Changes in the surfaces of water are studied in interspersed shors of a barrel with filmy water, a polluted river and the waterlogged tile floor, each of which is subjected ro disruption and analysis. The fold in space is a warcry lens, gradually bringing into focus rhe studied image of rhree men in search of themselves. The \XIriter helpfully cites the analogy of Sr Peter: the illusion of walking on rhc water is sustainable as long as fai rh lasts. Other script ural references are forthcoming when the Stalker's wife (in voice-over) recites rhe Revelation of St John the Divine and rhe Stalker reads verses concerning rhe occurrence on the road ro Emmaus from Sr Luke's Gospel. Three days after the Crucifixion two disciples are on their way ro Emmaus when Christ joins them unrecognized and asks the reason for their sadness. They answer by briefly relating the srory of Christ's betrayal, death and resurrection. Christ admonishes them for their lack of understanding bur srays wirh rhem ro break bread, whereupon rhe disciples recognize him and he disappears: 'They said ro each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking ro us on the road, while he was opening rhe scriptures ro us?"' {Luke 34: 22). It would be simplistic to say that rhe Stalker is posing as Christ; after all, i t i s the Professor who breaks bread (in rhe form of his sandwiches) and rhc \XIrirer who dons a crown of thorns. The link has much more to do with rhe impossibility of sharing space with rhe resurrected body, which requires nor vision bur faith. This may sound like a lugubrious religious fable',;o bur it has di rect bearing on the work's sensorial effect. Salvation from the Dry Tunnel includes a colour shot of the riled floor covered by a film of dirry warer. These shots continue in sepia in the ensuing scene of rcsr. The objects glimpsed range from a borde and syringes ro a gun, coins, pages from a '

calendar and John the Baptist from Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece. The soft flow of rhe water contrasts wirh rhe objects below and rhc human figures above; moreover, rdlections from the water and sub­ merged objects are indistinguishable from refractio ns and surface pollu­ tion. The heaving swamp with swirls of airborne matter causes one to wonder abour rhc role of the camera in producing these effects. True,

lh mhrandr, Cbrist ,, I 1/IIIUIIIS ( 16 J4). lh tnhr.Ul
rhe images are accompanied by the Stalker's wife reciting from Sr John's Revelation. However, rhe images srress thar rhe three men's journey through the clements has culminated in nothing other rhan a new vision of rhe earth through the water. It is also at this moment that a dog appears and begins ro follow rhe three men. \XIhence rhe dog? Perhaps from Rembrandt's etchings of the supper held at Emmaus? At rhe end of the sequence rhc river is shown again, now apparently free of its film of pollution; however, we are now aware of rhe warer as a medium. The study of watery and underwater surfaces does nor feature in the screenplay. This sequence appears to be rhe vestige of a vision that the three men witness before reaching the Room (ir first appeared i n rhc second full version): An entire world opened up before them; a strange, half-familiar world. At rheir feer was rhe calm surface of a lake or a pond. On the low bank, on soft grass, sat a young woman, her feet gathered under her, her head lowered, long hair almost touching the water hiding her face. Behind her back were rolling green hills under an sensorium

I r65

The St� lkcr s do�

The Conductor spits.

'

(Stalker).

'The devil only knows', he says, 'whether it's somewhere or somewhen.' 'Have you seen it before?' 'This I've seen. Bur rhe pictures are always different. .

.>>

In rhe screenplay rhc vision ends when the Professor throws a log inro rhe water, spreading circles over irs surface and melting away the mists of the vision. In Stalker rhe scene was completely dissolved i n the film's murky Aui d s - from rhc beer in rhe bar to the glasses in the finale - all of

which

emphasize the opacity of the very medium of vision through

which this story, this vision, is being presented. t h� mention of lt·�·rkh in rhc 1\ -

tl-cnpb.y suggests

unibriry bc.:rwccn

1 ..

lh�· 'l"l'll\' and the.:

\\ork of �trcist

N1kubi Rocrich, '' "'cmplificd

ltl'l4..' tn his l..c

unusually radiant azure sky, in the distance the dark-green wall of

\ du primnups 1 ' 'i!.?-;o). '• rt'

At the beginning of their

path the Stalker remarks that the Zone is by defini tion a silent place. It follows that all of the sounds in the film are traces of some alien will reacting to the intervention of th e three men. It is nor so much thar rhe unexpected and unusual sounds of the Zone 'convey a sense of heterogeneous worlds existing simultaneously,

but not necessarily intcracting';J.t instead, they allow the spectator ro

dissect discrete components of experience, which is always

an encounter

between contrary forces. By 'refusing to announce the manner in which

the forest. On the top of the nearest hill there stands crookedly a pole with a bull's skull placed on top. Under rhe pole there sirs an old and snow-white man, with feet in bast shoes extended on rhc grass, his face <1lmosr black like an old, water-seasoned oak, his C)•es under Auffy white brows look blind, his crooked hands calmly rest­ ing on his knees. And beneath rhe old man there sits on a rock a half-naked curly-haired boy playing on a Aurc. One sees how his rosy checks infhuc and exhale, how his fingers skilfully run over rhc openings in his pipe. Ar rhe boy's feet a huge bear sleeps, and another one nearby lazily licks irs fore paw. Over rhe rushes rhar frame parr of the pond rhe dragon-Aies shimmer with their blue wings.

'Rocrich', the

Professor calmly says. 'Roerich rhc elder. Very

beauriful.' The Conductor I i.e., Stalker] casts a quick glance at him and turns his face to rhc Writer, who, thrusting forwards and nor turning around, with open mouth and wonder rakes in this weird picture. Then

he

turns

ro the Conductor; his eyes arc crazy.

'What is it?' he asks. 'Where is ir?' 166

I

water

SCilSOrJlllll

I

1.67

a sound should be read', Ta rkovsky is able ro represent the srrange alienation of human experience within a space crossed by alien wills. It is, of course, unlikely thar the Stalker's entire quest is intended to be seen as a mere sham. For Soviet audiences rhe ordeal of the rhrec men would have echoed cinematic and literary accounts of rhe Battle of Sralingrad, where soldiers stalked through ruins, crawling over the dust of bombed-out buildings, only to be confronted by incongruous reminders of rhe civilization that reigned there so recently, such as ring­ ing relephones (for instance, Vasilii Grossman's Life and Fate, part 2, chapter 24). However, in the final analysis it would seem unimportant whether one is 'supposed' to believe in rhe Room of Desires or not; what is important is the performance of the act of faith, which culminates in the miracle in the finale of the film, when the Stalker's daughter telekinetically moves three glasses across a table, dropping rhe final one over the edge. How is rhis to be taken? At the begi nning of the film (as in Sacrifice) a vibrating gl:tss registers the invisible tremors rhat invade the home. At the end of the film rhe glass registers the invisible power within the home, one that appears more hostile rhan protective, given the girl's malevolent sm:-�shing of the glass. However, the open finale underscores rhar the film is less about the power of the human spirit, and cerminly nor the impending (ecological, political, moral, religious, etc.) crisis, but rather ::� bout the encounter between human subjects and their hostile world :-�s it is registered and mediated by the cinematic apparatus, an opaque if ultimately revelarory medium. The promise of meaningfulness in the film (as in rhe Zone) is no Pascal ian wager on the existence of a supernatural realm; the wager is on the physical (and therefore spiritual) receptivity of the spectator.

8 Time

In Steamroller and Violin the music stops as soon as the teacher sets rhe metronome: art eludes precise calculation, Ta rkovsky seems to say. Yet on his sets Tarkovsky was renowned for playing the role of rhe metronome, counting out for his bemused actors the duration of an action or position. lr was only when rhe metronome ceased - when the director ceded control - that the exact orchestration of movement came alive as 'imprinted rime', sometimes surprising even the acrors with the precision of rhc director's conception. The idea of the 'conception' (zamysel) occurs frequenrly in Ta rkovsky's rcxrs and interviews. The 'author's work', he noted, 'begins with the intellectual conception, rhe need to tell about something impor­ tant' (ST 76; zv 179). According ro his diary (3 July 1975), the unrealized screenplay 'Hoffmanniana' was dedicated to exploring 'how the idea of a work matures'. He likened rhe director to a 'waiter who must carry a mountain of plates wirhottr brea king them' (ATI J 29). He lauded Sergei Paradjanov for remaining 'free within his own conception' (TT), and dismissed directors who 'chased' after documentary authenticity to the detriment of their authorial conception (sT 78; zv r8o). And yer he also confessed that 'when I arrive at rhe shoot it turns our that life is so much richer than my imagination (fantaziia) that I have to change everything' (AT/ 1 33). He saw this interpl:l)' as the source of spiritual meaning in an: '(The work! overco mes its own thought, which is insignificant before the image of rhe world rhar it sketches and which we perccivc as a revelation' (AT/ 137). The conception was not contained in the screenplay. A rkadii Strugatsky, co-screenwriter for Stalker, gives the following account of his collaboration with Tarkovsky ahead of the second shoot of the film:

1118 I

W:llcr

I don'r know how he worked wirh his other screenwriters, bm for

was like this. I bring a nt:w episode. We had jusr discussed it the clay before. 'It's no good. Redo ir'. 'Well rell us what to redo, what to remove, what ro add!' 'I don 't know. You're the set·el:n­ wrirer, nor I, so you do ir.' I redo it. I try ro catch rhe right rone, us ir

the right conception, as ! understand it [. . .] 'That's even worse. Redo it'. I sigh ::1nd crmvl ro

rhe typewriter. 'Aha. This is closer. Bur nor quire righr. It seems like this phrase catches it a bir. Try ro develop ir'. I dimly examine 'that phrase ' A phrase like any other. In my .

opinion it's complcrcly random. I could jusr ::1s easily have nor

ir. Bm . . . I redo it. He reads slow!)'; he re-reads and his moustache perks up. Then he says indecisively: 'Well . . . A II right, it'll do for now. It gives us something ro starr wirh :H least . . . And now re-write this dialogue. It's like a bone stuck in my throat. Bring it into conformit)' ro the one before and rhe Olll: :1fter'. 'Isn't it in conformiry?' '1 o.' A nd what don't you like in it?' 'I don't know. Redo ir and get it re:�dy for tomorrow'. That's how we worked on a screenplay that had already been accepted and approved ar all levels.' written

'

In Srrugatsky's account Tarkovsky directly echoes Boriska, rhe bell­ founder's son in A11drei Rublii11, who impertinently d em a n ds ever more silver from rhe exasperated prince, though he is rea lly inventing the secret formula as he goes along. Like Boriska, the director must allow his conception to be shaped b)' forces beyond his immediate control, what Tarkovsk)' called 'the cense­ less flow of living life th:�t surrounds us' {os 96}: the conception rakes

form by cinematic means, that is ro s:1y, it must be formd by life itself. The conception <.:omes alive in thl: film only through the most dirl:Ct and imml:dinte contact with rea lit)'· The worst and, in my view, most destructive tendency for film is to transfer one's precisl: menral constructions onto the screen . After all, rhc cinema was born as a means of capturing the very moveme11t of reality in irs photograph ica ll y concrete unique­ nl:SS. ( . . . ) The :lllthorial conception will becom e :1 living human testimony, which agitates and interests others, only when we arc n bl e ro 'immerse' it in the Aow of fast-retreating ren l iry, which we imprinr in the concrete pnlpabiliry of each rl:presl:ntcd instant, in irs textu ral and emotional uniqueness [os 1oSJ. •-o

I

w.ttcr

The conception is exactly a beginning that exposes the

film ro time; more precisely, it is a trap in which rime can be ca ugh t. In the cinema 'we con­ tnin space in order to create the illusion of time' (UR 53). The screenplay and the set were just such traps; Nikolai Dvigubsky's set for Mirror, T:ukovsky said, was 'an apartment in which rime itself lived' (UR 52.). Ta rkovsky's fil ms were m ap ped out in meticulous derail, a single shot sometimes requiring days of rehearsals and enforced inactivity while waiting for the righ t light and meteorological conditions. Ideally this extensive plan n ing would culminate in a single, unique take. Noting that it rook three rakes to complete the final shot of Mirror (2.0 metres of film), Tarkovsky exclaimed: 'Terrible! I must only shoot one rake of each shot' {MG t 1 3). To be sure, there were practical reasons to minimize the number of rnkes, for insmnce to economize on valuablt: film-stock. However, tht: intl:nded effect of Tarkovsky's meticulous preparations and preference for a single take was to create a concrete spatial and narrative matrix within which the stOchastic

Aow of rime could interfere nr once

randomly and me anin gful l y. This

approach allowed considerable freedom to the material forces and animals rh;lt were called upon nor merely to be located in the shot, bur to manifest themselves in activit)� The bird that lands on Astaf'ev i n Mirror is obviously manipulated, as is the bird with broken wings rhar the narraror rosses up ar the l:nd of the film. However, the bi rd rhat lands on rhc window during the press con ference in Solaris explocll:s the 'realism' of an oth l: rw ise mundane scene, as do rhe birds that Ay our of the stnrue of the 1\lladonna in Nostalghia, at the evidenr risk of injury to the actress. Like Stalker, despite a general atmosphere of mystery in Nostalghia ir is rhe behaviour of the clog rhar seems tru ly u1H.:anny, as docs rhe coopemrion of the w ind in choreographing the fan1ous long take of Gorchakov ferryi ng Domenico's candle across the pool. True, nor all chance was welcome; when Sven Nyquist's camera jammed in the long rake of the fire at rhe l:nd of Sacrifice, Ta rkovsky had ro rebuild the set at great expense in order 1'0 redo rhe shor correcrly. He did so not ro rcsrore his prl:cise conception, but to crea rc.: a unified spatio-rcmporal field within which the aleatory flow of time might manifest itself. While Tarkovsky spoke in reverent rones nbou r rhe inteJ,.\rit)' of the shor, he reserved the right ro undermine it through the com plex inrr:1dicgetic s ynch ron i zntion of action, colour and sound. Shors mighr inc.:lucle heterod iq�ctic rcfert:ll<.:l: ro rhe ourside world, such as dmHigh documentary footage or whl:n the Stalker's wife addresses the spectator. rime

I 17 •

The integrity of rhe shor might even be complicated by inrcrdiegeric ref­ erences ro Tarkovsky's other films. Tarkovsky's use of rhc same acrors from film ro film inscribed rheir very faces wirh the memory of previous roles and narratives. This bleeding between films thickens rhc charac­ ters' impenetrable masks, which like the death mask of Pushkin that hangs on rhe wall of rhe spacecraft in Solaris seem frozen. There is a similar bleeding o.n the soundrracks ro Andrei Rublev and Safaris, both of which included a short passage from the preceding film: as Boriska

recalls his labours one hears rhe theme from Ivan's Childhood, whereas a snippet of Andrei Ruble11 sounds while Kelvin is framed alongside Rublev's Trinity. This technique has precedents in opera; for instance, Mozart included music from The Marriage of Figaro in rhc finale of Don Giovanni. There, however, rhe music is played by an on-sragc orchestra, whereas Tarkovsky destroys rhc narrative inregriry of rhe image by merging it into an alien context. These complex synchronizations reflect Tarkovsky's concern to allow rhe viewer ro respond creatively and spontaneously to rhe image. Since actors cannot react to s i tuatio ns s po n ta neo us l y, he preferred them nor ro react ar all, ar leasr in any visible wa)'. As Tarkovsk)' once explained:

The w:ty I say I hare you' will depend nor on my hatred bur on who I am and how I feel at rhar momenr, on my sr:�re of mind; '

now I'd say ir one way, and five minutes later I'd Sa)' it differently. [ . . . ] Bu r a n actor will say rhe words one precise way, and if you wake him up in rwo (hi)'S he'll s:�y 'I hare you' rhe exact same way. Because he's playing rhe ideology of his character or his action, not its feeling. Ideology comes afterwards; it's rhe result of art and nor irs material structure, irs flesh, its meat.• Like Hari-2. in Safaris, Tarkovsky's films seek ro become enmeshed in

rime by attaining memory and hope- in rhe specraror, b)' rhe mediation of rhc screen. After Stalker Tarkovsky did nor immediately know how ro turn this culmi natin g point into a new point of depart u re. He rook a position a r rhe lnsrirurc for Cinema rogr:1 ph y, Iecru ring furu re directors on the clements of cinema. He began to make frequent public appearances, where he discussed his next projects, Nostalghia and an a da ptati on of 171. I IWtrer

Dosroevsky's Idiot, as disranr desiderata: 'In principle I do nor really feel like making films. Of course I will; I can't avoid it . Bur right now I don't want ro. Perhaps I'm tired of rhe cinema'.> This fatigue was banished by a journey in space thar gave rise to a new conception; rhis moment is captured in his shorr Time of Travel. Ar the begi nnin g of Time of Travel To ni no Guerra welcomes Tarkovsky into his house, reads him a new poem and speaks of their plan for rhe d:1y. Tarkovsky begins to complain about the possible loca­ tions rhey have seen; a cur-away shows the two inspecting Amalfi and .

.

Leece. It gradually emerges thar Tarkovsky and Guerra have already developed a firm plan for a film; rhey discuss Picro della Francesca's Madonna del Parto and a larer shot shows a folder marked 'Nostalghia'. The structure of the second parr of rhe film hearkens back ro Ta rkovsky's original conception for Mirror, which he termed a 'questionnai re­ film'; throughout rhc film Guerra asks rather t)'pic�d questions, such as Tarkovsky's greatest in fluences and his advice for young filmmakers. Shors of the interview arc interspersed with memories and fantasies, some of which arc evidently l i nked ro the premise o f rhc film. The extended discussion of an ornate floor that rhc two men are nor able ro view brings up the name of a Russian princess who lived in Italy, Elena Korchakova, which is evidently rhc source of Gorchakov's in Nostalghia. The film features several long panoramas of Bagno Vignoni, one of the locations of rhc future film. The film is unique in Tarkovsky's ccuvre for irs jarringly discontin­ uous montage of image and sound. After inspecting the inlaid floor of one ancient church the camera shows scenery from the window of a car driving in rhe country; there is a loud screech, as if before an impend in g accident, bur rhe image changes ro a shot of a smiling, relaxed Tarkovsky, and then ro fol iage and an empty cage in Guerra's back garden. As the men share a meal of seafood and pasra wirh unidentified men in the sn·cer rhe soundtrack shifts from traffic ro sou nds of caring and chinking borrles, and rhcn ro rhe steps of a child who is shown with a balloon. Ar rimes rhe sound curs our complctcl)' Time of Tra1 el is a moment of reflection and conception - a moment of spatial investigation - so fnr deprived of any d urati on in rime. It presents rhe clements out of which rhc film will emerge, bur is completely removed from rhe narrative and picrori:1l continuity rhar will bring rhem ro life. Perhaps rhar is rhe point of Tarkovsky's complaints about the preny rourisr sires they have seen so far. Guerra comments 1

rime I 173

Before shooting Nostalghia Tarkovsky knew it would be a watery film. '\�ater is a 111)1Stcrious element', he said, 'a single molecule of which is very photogenic. I t can convey movement and a sense of change and Aux. There will be a lor of it in Nostalghia.'� In Andre i Rublev, Solaris and Mirror water flowed over objects and as a film over the screen, as a means of aesthetic distanciation and a medium of vision: 'There is nothing more beautiful than water. There is not a single natural phenomenon that docs not receive its reflection in it' (on). In Stallwr the water was

that Tarkovsky had to sec all of these places in order ro know how to Time o{Trn'''''· shoot his character in neutral 'Italian' space, that is, in rhe flowing of 'neutral' Italian rime. Indeed, Ta rkovsk)' is heard inquiring of a bellringer at Bagno Vignoni whether he cooks his own food. He is seeking a conception rhat will withstand exposure to the concrete conditions of its rea lization. Tarkovsky's concern with the conception of Nostalghia is evident in his contemporaneous fascination wirh making Polaroid snapshots, a selection of which has been published in the book Jnsl'anl Light. The Pola roid camera allowed him ro capture an instantaneous picture of visual conceptions, some of which reappear in Time of Travel and Nostnlghin: a dog (German shepherd, of course) in a field, gazing dreamily off into the distance; oak trees alongside a house and groves of straight, leafless trunks; a gloomy, spiderweb-draped room illuminat­ ed by a window that frames an idyllic landscape; stea m rising over Bagno Vignoni and whitened borrles strewn at irs perimeter. Perhaps pa radoxi­ cally, compared to the films these snapshots seem staged and mannered. The composition is roo clear, the chiaroscuro roo conspicuous. Time has nor lived in them.

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stilled, stagnating in pools and barrels, the medium of vision itself accru­ ing an opaque texture and depth. The water of Nostalghia performs all of these functions, but - in line with the increasingly dramatic and psychological character of Ta rkovsky's arr- it also instanriates the vague flows of desire to which Gorchakov is subject. Cinema's singular ability to engage and manage social desire was recognized by early critics. ln the ussR the cinema performed a crucial role in channelling sexual desire in constructive directions, making the revolution nllmctive in all senses of the word. In Grigorii Kozinrsev's and Leonid Trauberg's Alone ( 1 9 30), for instance, the protagonist (a young reacher) rejects her bourgeois ideal of married domesticity for a mission to bring enlightenment to a backwards tribe in the Far East. In Stalinist film sexual couplings often were unsuccessful until mediated by Stalin or his image, which served both ro elicit desire and facilitate its consummation. In the broadest sense Sobchack spea ks of the cinema's 'capacity ro localize [ . . . ] the invisible, intrasubjective commutation of perception and expression and make it visible and intcrsubjectivcl y available to orhers'.S In terms of the politics of sexuality and gender, this power of the cinema to intervene at the most basic levels of human com­ munity can be usc.:d in borh conservative and progressive directions, both ro sublimate desire into socially constructive.: tasks and to subvert society by its anarchic liberation. In the West Ta rkovsky's sexual politics, especially in Nostalghin and Sacrifice, h:we proven one of the more controversial aspects of his a:uvre, meriting the epithets 'disturbing' (An xvi) and 'Nennderrhal'.6 However, Stalker, which directly addresses the issue in the image of the hallowed Room of Desires, complicates any such dismissal. The Stalker is the facili­ tator of desire, leading the two impotent guests through an obstacle course en rome to instant gratification. The Wri ter is forthright in his admission that the fulfilment of his desire would amount to self-aggran­ disemenr. The Professor, by contrast, plans violently ro prevent the Room's rime I

175

radical redistribution of desire. The upshot of this entire situation - and rhe kC)' to irs inveterate subversiveness - i s rhar neither gratification nor redistribution would change the economy of desire, only renunciation. This motif is confirmed at the beginning of Nosta!ghia, which con­ rains some of rhe most misogynistic lines in Tarkovsky's reuvre. Gorchakov has requested rhar his flambo)ramly elegant Italian imerprerer Eugenia rake him ro the church where Piero della Francesca's M.adonna del Parto ('Our Lady of Childbirth') i s displayed. In rhe church Eugenia encounters a sim­ ple yer sinister sacristan, who poi ntedly contrasts her appearance to that of rhe female parricipa ms in a mysterious fertility rite. The scene firs a larger pattern i n the film of opposing the liberated sexuality of modern Italy ro rhe more traditional ways of Gorchakov's Russian home. Since Gorchakov stands i n for Tarkovsky (after all, he reads the elder Tarkovsky's poems), ir is assumed rhar rhe 'point' is ro put women back in rheir place. Bur Gorcha kov, of course, is nor only silent; he never even enters the church, moaning that he is sick of Italy's beautiful sites. It is nor that Gorchakov prefers looking at the Madonna or the simple supplicant women than :lt Eugenia; he has become uncomfortable with the very act of looking. On rhis point, it is true, Gorchakov seems allied with the sacristan, who tells Eugenia that casual onlookers like herself prevent the riwal from being effecrive for the believing supplicants. When Eugenia asks what the ritual is supposed to achieve, she is told 'Anything you like'. As in Stalker, faith brings irs o•vn reward; but this does not necessarily mean that the film, like ritual, requires self-requiring faith. Renunciation might itself be seen as a retrograde norion, nor only because it suggests monasticism, bur also because i t abdicates active responsibility ; after :til, we can renounce only what we arc offered by oth­ ers. In this case, the specraror can resist the urge ro inrerprcr i n order to allow the film ro place him or her at the confluence of specific attractions, desires and promises. Moreover, by renouncing one's individual interpre­ tive prerogative one is placed in a common space thar can become the sire of community. However, all of this can occur only if an exclusive privi­ lege of vision is accorded ro the filmmaker, who shows us something ro believe in. Gorchakov's dilemma is different: in his refusal to look he becomes imprisoned in his memories and fantasies. In the second scene of Nostnlghin Eugenia and Gorchakov sir in a dusky hotel lobby discussing the impossibility of translating poc.:rry; the camera settles on the back of Gorchakov's head, bur at the.: sound of running water he turns to look 176 I

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into rhc camera; we sec a glimpse of Gorchakov's wife at rhcir coumry home, rhcn Eugenia sweeping her hair, and then a fussy lady \o al king her dog down the hotel hallway. At the end of the scene, again ro the sound of flowing water, Gorchakov once more approaches the camera and the image switches back ro that of his Russian home, even as Eugenia's con­ versation with the hotel proprietor continues on the soundtrack. The water suggests a welling-up of desire, as do Eugenia's flowing hair and garments and rhc fluid camera, which allows rhe tension between the two characters to accrue without distraction. Just as he rejects the possi­ bilif)• of literary translation and the very figure of the translator, he resists rhe need to transform his memories inro full-blooded participa­ tion i n the present. Up in h is room, Gorchakov opens the window to allow in rhe sound of rain, which dissipates with the onset of sleep and the arrival of a dog - apparenrly Gorchakov's faithful comp:111ion from home. Ar the end of this long dolly shot, the camera tracks in on Gorchakov's head; his conflicting desires for Eugenia and for home resolve themselves inro a fantasy of Eugenia's recon ciliation with his wife, and then of his prcg­ nanr wife lying on his bed. The passage between different layers of consciousness, as Gorchakov sublimates his desire into images of memory and fantasy, is inti mated less by the images themselves than by subtle variations i n lighting, sound and colour. Thus Gorchakov may avert his gaze in favour of comforting fantasies, but Tarkovsky never docs, nor v

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The kind of subversion achieved by Tarkovsky can be more precisely defined O)' exa min i ng a pa rn l lel between T,�rkovsky's Nostalghia and Roman Po l a nski s 1 95 R short Ttvo Men and a Wa·rdrobe. Two men e me rge from the sea, carrying ashore a large wardrobe wirh a m irro r. As tht:y wal k thro ugh rown rhey encountcr various forms of i ntol erance and hosriliry, so they return into the sea . The film is an allegory for the way impenerrnble private experience scnnclalizes the social order, nor on ly for rhe bourgeois, bur even for the criminal class. One parriculnr hor prefigures rhe scene in Nostalg!Jia where the poer Gorchnkov looks inro a mirror in a wa rd robe pnrkcd incongruously in the street and sees not his own reAccrion, hut that of Domenico. This shot is nor only S)'mbolic of Gorchnkov's idenrificnrion w i th Domenico and his '

doc� he nllow his spectators ro. As soon as Ta rkovsky senses the com­ mencement of desire within the frame, he analyses its directionality with an n lmost surgical precision. The specraror is involved in this annlysis not ns n p::tssivc object , bur as the very locus of medi:uion. There is no

poss i bi lity ro esc::tpe ro memory, as Gorchakov seeks to do; instend the conrr:H)' Aows of th.:sirc p lace the specraror in an incrensingl)' inn.:nsc pres­ ent moment. By unsc rrl i ng any smble sh ore in past or future, Ta rkovsk y :1chieves :111 effect on our notions of desire and fulfilmcnr th a t c:1n on ly be described as subvers ive.

acceprn n cc of Domenico's sacrifice. It is also a manifestation of the way privnrc epiphanies undermine public spnces. The urgency of the rwo men's sncrifices is evidenced by the nn·ival of emergency personnel, borh ro the Capi toli ne I f ill nnd ro Bngno Vignoni. The glnss on a mundane wardrobe bccomes a space that s u bverts rhe very bnses of ci vi I izecl order. As Gorchakov merges wi th Domenico, it is unclear whose imagina­ tion is dict:Hing the tcnns. Gorchnkov's conversation with Domenico is followed by :1 fla sh back thar shows Domenico's family being freed from his captivity; rhc childrcn :1re :1lmosr identical ro rhose who appear in Gorchakov's own memory of his home. The German Shepherd dog that visits Gorchakov at night could be from his memory or from his image •

rime

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179

Gorchakov mcrf:c' wirh Domenico

adaptations of his films, Tarkovsky nored: 'Film i nterests me in thar it pays no heed of rhe rime or rhythm of the viewer; it has irs very own. And if one were to transpose it to rhe srage, one would eliminate this issu e of th e rime I rake in my film, which is something very important. \XIirhout it every th i ng falls apart' (ATI 1 8 1 ) . Whil e he on ly elaborated a theory of the cinema, which he defined in te r ms of 'imprinted rime', the b road er argument about the tem pora l distinctiveness of each art form is borne our by Tarkovsky's sragc productions of 1-/amlet ( 1 977 ar Lenkom Theatn::, Moscow) a nd Boris Codunov ( 1983-4, Covent Garden). Both works were experimental and ga rnered mixed reviews, bur arc of central im po rrn ncc for Tn rkovsky's overall n rti sric project and aesthetic rhcory. Tarkovsky had long nou rished an inreresr in the rhearre and especially i n Hamlet, which he contemplated staging as early as 1967.- His first

(No.st.,/gbi,,),

of Domenico. Gorchakov himself seems unsure; the only mntcri�1l proof of his entire in terch a nge with Domenico is the candle he discovers in his pocket (a derail taken from ' Ho ffma nn i ana ' ; cs 349). Gorchakov rakes upon himself Domenico's mission of conveying the candle across the harh, and- in the scene of rhe mirror in rhe wardrobe - even Domenico's gu ilt; but has he nor all along been projecting his own understand i ng onto Domenico? Or i s this all a result of Domenico's claim rh;n 'one drop and another make one big drop, nor rwo', which is seconded by rhe poster on his wall d ecl a ri ng ' 1 + 1 = 1 '. For his parr Domenico has a lread y hatched a more nmbitious scheme for s avi ng the world - his self­ immolation; in his rambling speech (Eugenia compares h i m to Ficici Casrro) Domenico intimaws rh�1r he has p rogressed ro a higher stare of be ing: 'Where am I when I am not in re:1liry or in my imagin:1rion?' The two ch:1racrers meer onI>' in rhc clemenr of fire, a nd it would be fatuous ro cbim thar they constirute n k in d of ritual communi ty, allowing Gorchakov (in the finnl shot) w g.nrher the wmporal m:1nifold inro a present of plenitude and ubiqu ity, free of desire or temptation. It is only an imngc, n stirring one, bur one thnr reminds us mosr of :111 rhnt images arc mnnipulable. Time is imprinted in the image, hut only insofnr as the image continues to flow in a life, as i n n film. In his writings on aesrhcri<.:s Ta rkovs ky m<1de frcq uenr appcnl ro rhe idea rh:1r the a rrs arc distingu ished by their temporal narurc. I n a late interview, in response ro a question <.:onccrning rhc possi hiliry o f theatrical 1

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visirarion of the ghost: 'The point is not that [the farherJ was killed. People ger killed all rhe time. Bur Hamlet felt himself predestined for a different kind of life' (os 2 1 1}. Viewing The Mousetrap, the play within the play, Hamlet suddenly becomes conscious of his moral debasement, after which he completely loses the very will to live. In order ro heighten rhe tension in The Mousetrap, Ta rkovsky decided to have it performed

1-/amlet. Lcnkon1 Theatre, Moscow.

by the same acrors as played Claudius and Gerrrudc, so that the audience would see i t 'vvitb H a mler's eyes' (Ml' 297}. Gertrude, by contrast, only gradually comes ro suspect Claudius o f the deed, and i n the end chooses to drink the poison. Focused on showing the full development of each character's personality, the play ends with 'a mountain of corpses', 'a mountain of suicides', amidst which Hamlet rises ro extend a hand ro all of the other characters, 'as if forgiving them or asking for forgiveness' (MF 303, 305). Compared to his films, Tarkovsky demonstrated a di fferent method of working with his acrors, 'revealing all rhe cards to them from the very beginning' and then according them 'complete freedom' (NIF 304). According to Terekhova, Tarkovsky 'could expostulate at length, eliciting the necessary stare in the actor, so that the acror could begin to function and improvise in the necessary direction'.8 By allowing such improvisation opportunity arose only in 1973, thanks to Mark Zakharov, director of rhe Lenkom Theatre (short for the Theatre of the Lenin League of Communist Youth}. Zakharov urged Ta rkovsky to stage a lesser-known play, but Tarkovsky found lirrle to interest him in the classical Ru ssian repertoire. Hamlet, Tarkovsky's first choice, had only recently been staged by lurii Liubimov at the Taganka Theatre with Vladimir Vysotsky in the main role; bur this production may only have stirred Tarkovsky's competi­ tive spirit. (Curious ly, Tarkovsky's production of Boris Godunov was also closely preceded by Liubimov, who worked with Claudio Abbado at La Scala.} From rhe very beginning he cast Solonirsyn as Hamler and Terekhova as Gertrude (which was di fficult since they wen: not members o f the troupe), and he engaged Eduard Artem'ev to compose rhe music, all of which suggested that he saw the play as an extension of the world he had already created on film. As in film, Tarkovsky began by formulating a conception, which would gradually be shaped into a comp leted work by the resisrance of the medium and of rime. Ta rkovsky's conception was that Hamlet, a sophisticated and sen­ sitive man, somewhat unwittingly accepts the guilr of murder after the r 82.

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he sought ro preserve an emotional immediacy, baring 'the process within rhe play itself'. Thus, while Boris Pasternak's translation was in verse, and Tarkovsky wanred to celebrate the very language, Solonirsyn allegedly spoke his parr 'quierly, as if even carelessly and hurried!>'', ar rhe risk of seeming 'wan and even redious' (MF 293, 306). Despirc the emphasis on communicaring the ch:uacters' subjective attirudes, later accounts (a virrual press ban on 1- /amlet has left precious lirrlc contcmpo­ rar)' criticism) suggest a static, rnther cerebral staging. While in the cinema Tarkovsky was most concerned to create open spaces within which ro capture time, his work in the theatre suggests a greater tolerance for heavy-handed symbolism. After being stabbed by Hamler, Polonius emerges from behind the curtain and drops his red tur­ ban, which represents his blood spilling onto and (ro his shame) staining the floor. In an essay Ta rkovsky commented: 'On stage blood hns no right to flow. Bur if we see an actor sliding around in blood without seeing the blood itself, then that is theatre!' (ST 154; zv 273). Tarkovsky elsewhere criticizes a similar scene at the end of Andrzcj Wajcb's Ashes and /)iamond, insisting on the material texture of the cinema ric image; how­ ever, in the theatre Tarkovsky serried for 'metaphors', which flagged their underlying idea in a somewhat abstract manner. It is telling that, when Tarkovsky began to speak publicly about his conception for a film adaptation of Hamlet, he was circumspect con­ cerning the derails because, he said, 'I [srill] have ro find an equiv:tlenr of Sh:tkespcare in my own genre. I hnvc ro find my own form to deal wirh the story, a different dramaturgy' (,rn 123). The implic:ttion, of course, is that his 1 976-staging failed ro pose the problem of form, :tllowing his conception to loom over rhe sragc, rather rhan being consumed in its concrete pcrforma nee. A similar pattern is evident in ·1�1rkovsky's staging of Boris God�mov, which premiered on 3 1 October 1983 and has undergone periodic reviv:tls ever since. T:trkovsk)' r:tiscd a fe·w eyebrows when, in an :tppear­ ance :tr Riverside Studios before rhc premiere, he dismissed opera as an 'unnatur:tl genre' which is bcsr listened to with closed eyes (tiT/ 138). Moreover, Ta rkovsk)' volunteered rhat Boris Codunou was an in:tuspi­ cious choice for him given its need for complex 'dramatic, psychological c:trcgorics': 'It's as if I have rcjecrcd opera in a psychological and dramatic scnst: and, at the same ri me, I must do everything I can ro develop these rwo specific qualities in my production' (liT/ 1 39). In some respects T:trkovsky sought to rerurn ro the conception of Pushkin's ori�inal play,

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which, he said, Mussorgsky had 'desrroyed 1 ] and then reassembled'. His ccnrr:1l concern was thus 'the inner dr:tma of Boris himself [ . . . 1 :1 man broken by power'.9 Another notable fcarure was rhat rhe Simpleton's face was covered by a sack throughout the opcr:t, reducing him ro a kind of symbolic figure akin ro Don Quixote or Prince Myshkin. He is unveiled only after the dearh of Boris when, surrounded by a mountain of corpses, facing awa>' from the audience and towards a spectral vision of the slain Dimitrii, he pronounces silent commentary on the error of the fickle nation. Noring that he approached the operatic dram:t as he would a film, Tarkovsky beg:1n by observing a strict asceticism: the action of the enrire oper:t rook pbce on n single set (by Nikol:ti Dvigubsky), consisting of a ruined (or unfinished) stone arch asrride a bro:1d ramp that descended ro stage fronr. \XIirh no currain, scenes were distinguished mostly by rhe lighting (directed by Roberr Bryan) and by l:trgc objects lowered from rhe rafrers, such as a l:trge bell, a crucifix (in rhc Polish court) and a pendu­ lum. The discipline of rhc scr was nor :tlw:l)'S marched in rhe stage direc­ tion. During the scene in Chudov Monastery the background is suddenly illumin:tred to reveal Rublcv's Trinity as a taiJ!eau vivant. The same scene depicted rhe murder of Tsarcvich Dimirrii, which could be undersrood either as a dr:tm:ttizarion of Pimen's 'final talc' or as Crisha's dream, •

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another critic as 'a rather old-fashioned grand opera spectacle, more suited tO Meyerbeer than to Mussorgsky', redeemed only by the quality of the singing and Abbado's conducting. 12 lndeed, rhe overall effect was more than a little remin iscent of Eisenstein's Ivan the ](m·ible,'> which

Covcnr Garden.

Tarkovsky had elsewhere criticized as 'a series of hieroglyphics' (ST 67). The commission to stage Boris Godunov was extended b)' the con­ ducror Claudio Abbado after his viewing of Andrei Rublev,'4 and the difference between Tarkovsky's cinematic and theatrical poetics is espe­ cially palpable in his numerous borrowings from the 111m, such as rhe bell and the icon, the function of which verges on the decorative. The unveiling of the Simpleton at the end directly references the conversa­ tion of Andrei and Theophanes after the sack of Vladimir: with an axe lying prominently at stage front, snow falls in church and rhe dead rise in vvitness. As one critic has written, 'Tarkovsky's ominous Bm·is Godunov paled next to Andrei Rublev'.'> Indeed, the opera seems more intent on referencing the film than on adapting irs defining characteristic - its poignant temporality- to a new medium. Most interesting for our purpost::s, however, is Tarkovsky's use of a huge pendulum, which swings ar intermittent points during domestic scenes at court, accompanying the clockwork-like musical themes rhat

after which Dimitrii Aoated through the opera as the materialization of Boris's guilty conscience or as his guardian angel, in a manner reminis­ cent of Tarkovsky's Hamler (os 375). Fedor's map of Russia doubles as a large carper that Boris tramples underfoot and then pointedly wraps himself in. The way that rhe statues come ro life in the Polish court puz­ zled many critics; it appears ro have been carried over from Nostalghia, where in his letter (read by Eugenia) Sosnovsky has a very similar dream. One also sees a related image in one of Tarkovsky's Polaroid snapshots (11. ·• 1 5). Tarkovsky had particular problems plotting the interaction between rhe soloists and the crowd; in his films crowds figure only at the very periphery of the individual's private drama, i f at all, bur in Mussorgsky (and, especially, Pushkin) the crowd (symbolizing the 'nation') has an insensate agency. '0 In Tarkovsky's staging, the soloists occupy the front of the ramp, while the crowds cominually writhe behind them and on the

symbolize (it would seem) the inexorable beat of fate. I t appears at the

sides of the ramp, symbolizing the people's passive suffering as a result of their rulers' actions. The srage is rendered as polycemric as Tarkovsky's frames, bur wirhour the cam era's agency the 'atmosphere' dissolves inro symbolism without attaining a specific temporal pressure. For instance, opera critic Paul Griffiths wondered 'whether ]Tarkovsky's] ending might be more powerful i f ir were less easily posirive'." The staging struck 186

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beginning of rhc first court scene, and then again in rhe so-called clock scene, afrcr Boris's com·ersarion with Sh uiskr, as Boris portentOusly wraps himself in a map of Russ ia. It swings for the last rime as Bor is lies dyi ng when he hea rs his death-knell, and comes ro a halt undt:r the gaze of Dmirrii's ghost In the opera rhis integral part of the cinematic fabric ,

.

is separated out into a cl early legible symbol: the death o f Boris com­ pletes the C)'cle of events he initiated with the murder of the legitimate heir. At the same rime, the pendulum links Boris's betrayal to that of the younger prince in Andrei Rublev; as rhe latter surveys rhc wreck of r he cathedral in Vladimir, a l arge censer swings behind him; irs motion is

suspended as the prince recalls his conflict with his elder brother. In the film the intervention of memory literally b ri ngs rime to a stop in a com­ plex, composi te moment; the vast epic battle becomes palpable as an event in human time. If in h is stage works Tarkovsky kept the pendulum swinging for as long as the action continued, his films begin on ly when tht: pendulum ceases ro swing, liberating rimt: to flow free ly through the shot.

9 Shot

In a n interview during the production of Nostalghia Tarkovsky directly a dd ressed the nature of n ostalgi a and of rime. Nostalgi a, he said, 'is nor the same as :1 longing (toska) for rhe past. Nostalgia is a longing for rhe space of rime rhar has passed in vain.'' The reason he explained, is that the 'insranr' of the present can be experienced only 'when we fall inro :tn abyss : we.: arc in a stare betwc.:en rhe instant (of life) and the future (of the ,

end)'. The logic is nor immedi a te ly evident, bur Tarkovsky's la ng u a ge insisrs on rhe spa ria l iry of te mpo ral experience. Time bt:comes palpal;lc when it coincides with space; ir is at this ver)' momenr rhar it becomes the object of our longing and of our regret. This is :tboll t as close as one can get ro Tark ovsky's idea of rhe lo ng rake: a span of film across an :tb)'ss o f experience, which sl ips from rhe viewer's grasp c.:ven as it satisfies the desire for mon:, averring the fear of rhe end even as ir moves, inexor:.tbl )', towards a cur In Stalker Ta rkovsk )' 'wanred there robe no break in rime bet ween momage curs [ . . . ) so that time and irs fl u idi ty were m:t nifes r and existed tvithiu t:ach shot [ . j as if I had shor the film in a si ng.lc rake' (ST L9J--Ii /.1' 3 • 5). I r is nor that in these long rakes Tarkovs ky s camera exemplifies an :lll rhentic attitude towards rhe world, a pious l:1ssitude rh
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constantly reminding us of it sel f and nowhere more insistently rhan in his long tracking shots. The camera seems reluctant ro loos en irs grip, as if irs g:tzc is rhe on ly thing keepin g the world from crumbling, as if it is onl)' th e clements of cin em a rhar susrain the natural clements of rhe world. The long rake encompasses the actual, rhe symbolic and the imaginary in a single duration, al lowin g for the emergence of the real as ,

rhe fricrion between orders of reality, rhe subsrance of rime.

188 I

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It may seem unrealistic to expecr redemption from cinema ric tech­ nique, but this expectation accords with the narrative of Nostalghia.

' • rduko\· in his •• 1111 No$taighi�'>·

Discussing rhe film's conception at the beginning of production, Tarkovsky specifically norcd that Gorchakov (then a historian of Italian architecture) was on his first trip to the land he studied, which hitlwrto he had known 'only b)' reproductions an d photographs'.2 At the same time, i n Ta rkovsky's account, Gorcbakov becomes painfully conscious of the fact that 'he <::11111or derive a nyth i ng new from h i s

Italian experiences, that he won t be able to share his i mp ressi ons with friends and loved ones'. Just as Gorchakov has been unable to appro­ p riate Italian sights direcrl)', so ::tlso he will remain incapable of com­ munic::tting them direcrly ro others. Gorchakov's attempt ro turn the � hi rorical past into his own personal present runs up against his fmure '

inabilitr ro sha re this present as a common memory. In other words, his des ire ro bring photographs ro life founders on th<.: discrepancy bcrween the photographs and the original objects, as wdl as on hi s in;1bility ro record his inward ex pe ri e nces as ph otograp h s. As in the pnst, so in the future material images will continue to offer ind ispen ­ sable mediation be r wc <.:n Gorchakov and the obj<.:crs of his dcsi re, grou n d ing

the ver)' communit)' of 'friends and loved ones' that he longs

to recuperate. The film, however, is less concerned with this past or future than with the present moment in which the final it)' and possibility arc equally man­ ifest, in which the image no sooner becomes meaningful rhan it slips away. Tarkovsky srrove ro make films wirhour rense. Just as Andrei Ru!Jlev refuses to recede inro hisrory, so also Safaris resists removal into the fururc. In Stafher both the sci-fi premise ;1nd rhc Soviet background do not hing ro blunt rh<.: insistent prcsenr-ness of th<.: na rrative (which is onl)' scriously rhrcarcncd by rhe unmisrakabl<.: 19705 sound of Arrem'cv's a nalog ue syn­

thesizers). Nostalghia rook this tempo ral immediacy to an extreme. The r,]m is autobiographical only in rhc sense rhat it seeks ro insranri:ne rhc temporal atmosphere of rhc director's experience; rhe plor is m<.:rcly a means ro rhis end: 'As a sculptor needs rhe wire armarure for his sculpting, onI)' rhus- in rhis function - do<.:s rhc dramarurgy exisr in Nostnlghin: so that it :til held rogerher and accrued Acsh.'' In this sense T;trkovsk)' regard­ ed Nostafghia as his purest, most cillematic fil m. If dncma has usually sough t ro achieve tempora l dcprh by rhe inserrion of flnshbacks and still phoros, Tarkovsky remained who l ly in rhc im med i a cy of the p rese n t momcnr, caught in rhe abyss hcrween potentia lity and fin a li r). '

190 I w:m.:r

This ab)'SS is nowhere more palpable th::t n in Tar kovsky's long takes, 1n which spa ti a l fold s are sewn togerher wit h scams of rim e. A n early ex a mpl e of this is when Gorchakov lies down on his bed the rain fa l l in g ' ' ourside his open window. A Ge rm an s hepherd dog m yste rio usly emerges

from the lir bathroom and lies down beneath rhc bed. The camera holds rhroughour a series of subtle changes in lighting . Gorchakov's figure is almost invisible behind the iron grating of rhe bedstead until his face (which irsclf is nor where we expect ir) is lit by the sudden break of dawn. \XIhar we thought was an interminable instant turn s out ro have been an entire nighr; by both ex tend i ng and com p r<.:ssin g the event, Tarkovsk y allows rime ro ma nifest itself as :1 force. A rcm:� rkabk sequence of long takes occ urs when Gorchakov visits Domenico's home. As Gorchakov opens the door the camera surveys Domenico's floor, which appears ro be a m odc l lancl scapc, comple te wir h a river and rui ns. l r merges so seamlcssly wit h rhe real landscape visible in rhc window (a subtle reference ro Renaiss:tnc c painring) that it is easy ro lose rrack of rhc scale and the perspective. Afr cr Gorchakov enters he looks ar himself in a mirror; rhe camera pans lcfr , over a gourd, a porred pbnr and other objects, and unexpectedly find s Gorchakov again in what seems an impossible position; the fold in spa ce must have been pro­ duced by a cur in rim e, bur we can n ot go b;��.:k (;111d if we do we will sr i II not find the su ru rc) ; rhc shot sticks our :1s :1 tcm por;tl sca

m, which join s rhe ma nifold of rim e into a single space. Thcr<.: follows a se ries of pan nin g

shm I 1 9 1

Domenico's room with bndsc:,p�: (Nostiii,�!Jia).

shots thar, though they place Domenico and Gorchakov in the same space, continue to suggest spatial folds. For instance, there is no trace of rhe model landscape on the Aoor of the leaky, columned hall through which Gorchakov and Domenico exit into the square, where the drama of Domenico's pasr is played out. The increasing conAation of the two men is an identity less of space than of time; they will never again be in rhe same place, bur they will never again be apart. This unity culminates in one of Ta rkovsky's grandest long rakes: Gorchakov's crossing of the drained pool at Bagno Vignoni in the finale of Nostalghin. He described i t ro acror Oleg Iankovsky as 'display ! ingl an enrire human life in one shot, without any editing, from begi nning to end, from birth to the very moment of death'.� In case of success, he told Iankovsk)', 'the act m:ty be the true meaning of my life. It cerrainly will be the finest shot I ever m:tde- if you can do ir, if you can endure to the end.' However one regards such hyperbole, it would be wrong ro separate the effect of this (or any other) long take from the narrative whole. This particular long take closely echoes two previous ones. The first occurs when Gorchakov :tnd Eugenia arrive :u Bagno Vignoni to find Domenico pacing its perimeter ro the jeers of the bathers. The camera follows the characters in tum as they move around the pool, peering in from time ro time. Soon thereafter, Eugenia and Gorchakov are shown standing before a wall; the camera follows Eugenia as she walks to the left, addresses Domenico (\ovho is riding a stationary bic)'cle) on Gorchakov's behalf, and then returns to rhe right to convey the message that 'he doesn't feel like mlking'. Eugenia repeats her intercession, after which she leaves with the words 'our journe)' is finished'. Then, without
t

mh

luku\•'s h:1nd

lu, 1,1"'1! rhe c •ndlc

'-''"f,1/,t.:IJtrl).

the final long take, the camera rests onl)' after the third repetition of its lateral motion. The shot of Gorchakov in the pool is the consummation not onl)' of Domenico's cherished wish, but also of the camera's move­ ment throughout the film; it compresses within itself not only the spaces of the film, bur also its entire narrative duration. The long take was the centrepiece of Tarkovsky's theory of film, which received irs first and arguably fullest expression in his 1967 essay 'Jmprint­ ed Time'. The essa)' was composed during the protracted dispute over Andrei Rublev, and no doubt represents the fruit of the intense self­ analysis necessitated by this crisis. Detailed comparison shows that the differences between the two extant versions of the film do not hold to the convenrional distinction between a director's cur and a studio release version; in addition to cuts and deletions, some shots were added, at lcc1st two shots were replaced b)' alternative takes, and dia logue was re-recorded. Evidently, rhe objections had less to do with pure length (of film or of shot} than with the very foundations of Tarkovsk)''s cinema aesthetic. It was probably the enforced contempl a­ tion of his own aesthetic that gave Tarkovsky occasion to write 'Imprinted Time'. shor I r93

The first episode of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Passion According to Andrei features a jester who performs a ribald ditty in a barn full of rau­ cous peasanrs. The arrival of three monks immediately puts a damper on the festivities. When the monk Kirill rejects an offer of refreshment with the words, 'Thank you, we don't drink (Spasibo ne fJ'em)', the jester retorts with the unfinished rh)1ming phrase: 'And women we don't . . . (/ bab ne . . .)'. While irs form is indicated by the rhyme, the elided '..vord has to be supplied by the viewer, leaving open the degree of sacrilege or humour. The narrative simply docs not work without the viewer's con­ tribution, making the viewer complicir in his or her own construction of rhe reality represented on screen. In rhc re-edited release version of rhe film Andrei Rublev ( 1969), this ambiguity was elim inated by having the bawdy jester complete his phrase with a euphemistic subsrirute-word: 'And women we don't shake (triasem)'. The evenr remains esscnria\ly the same, bur its original open-endcdness has been sealed in a baldly implau­ sible manner. This minuscule change illustrates Tarkovsky's strategy in tht.: revised version of his film: ro re-edit the same basic shots intO a new sequence that removes ambiguities and limits interpretive latirude, even at the cost of flawed narrative logic. By conrrasr, the jester's silence in The Passion is a vivid index of Tarkovsky's prevailing approach to cinematic storytelling both in his films and in his theoretical reflections. Instead of specifying causal chains, Tarkovsky gives just enough information ro disclose the blank spots in the narrative. As filmmaker Grigorii Kozinrsev noted, 'Rublcv comes ro life nor on the screen but in the viewer's consciousness: and each has his own Rublcv.'1 In 'Imprinted Time', Tarkovsky id�.:nrifics the interaction of screen spncc nnd viewer attention as the cre;1tion of time. While this view is sometimes tHken simply HS a privilcgin� of the shot - and specifically tht.: long rake- over montage, in fact these nrc just rwo clcmcnrs in Tarkovsky's disconcerting narratives, which require intense viewer activit)' to be held together in a single narrative shape. Their central role in creating the deep texture and monumental grandeur i based in rhc fact th:H Ta rkovsky's long takes both establish and undermine spatial and narrative conrinuiry with pol)'rhyrhmic and polycentric framing. Therefore rh�.: fare of Tarkovsky's signature long rakes in rhc re-edi ted Andrei Rubfe1' can provide a concise guide to irs overall na rra rive rcndcn cy. A I though Ta rkovsky rcra ined the ma jori ry of very long rakes in the re-edit, rhey often perform a different funcrion, linked less ro rhythm and sp;Hi;ll composition than to narrative dficienC)'· 194 I

war�r

The first function of the very long take in The Passion is ro establish the space of a scene. Insofar as these long rakes impose an unproblemat­ ic sense of continuity, they can be seen as establishing rhe atmosphere of the narrative. Episode one begins with a very long rake of the three monks leaving the Trinity Jv1onasrery, and cominues with two more long rakes (48" and 2.2") of them walking to the right through fields. The fourth shot is a 36o-degree pan counter-clockwise around the barn which lasts just over two minutes and introduces the space where the rest of rhe episode will pia)' our. I n Andrei Rublev, the first very long take was judged dispensable and the third was cur appreciably. The effect was ro reduce the episode to a single centra\ location with rhe single establish­ ing shot of the initial circular pan in the peasant barn. This might be regarded as a minor change, and Tarkovsky specifically expressed his satisfaction with ir.6 The second function of the very long rake is demonstrated later in this episode by another 36o-dcgree pan around the barn, r ' 23" i n dura­ tion, this time in a clockwise direction. By reprising the earlier take, it allows the viewer to register the changes which have occurred i n the mood of rhc people since the arrival of the monks. If the first long take showed the jester's song, this one shows a tired, possibly inebriated audi­ ence breaking inro smaller groups. In this sense it contributes to the nar­ rative continuity. However, this continuity masks a disturbing fold in rime: while the shot begins irs panorama with Kirill and Andrei seared rogerher, when the camera returns to irs starring poinr, Kirill i s absent. This pan shot is somewhat reminiscent of the long 36o-dcgree pan at the begi nning of The Manchurian Candidate, during which the scene impossibly changes from the Ladies Garden Club in a New Jersey hotel to a milirary hall somcvvhere in communist Asi

llw hr r p:tn in \ndtt'l l�ubli:,,, I l"'ndl• 1 , I h�.- lc,lcl''. ...

shor I

195

-

The 1hrcc monk..: St:com.J pan in Amlrei Rnbli;r,,

Episode 1, ·The jcsrcr.

I he l.ldics of d>c

Httmg circle ,umc �uush:r \ 1.n1c commun­ ·1' Juring the lh .ul.tr pan in ..

IJ.,. ,\Jllllchuriau

• .mcliclate.

The

1\\'o monks

(Ait{ITI•i /{ubli'll,

EpisoJc 1 , 'The jcs1cr'.)

rhe club rurn into communist brainwashers. The internal discontinuity of this shot is explained away as the nightmare of Ca pra in t'vlarco, pl :tyed by Frank S inatra. Wirhour such nn extrinsic e xp l an at ion, rhc shoe in The Passion both asserts and un dcrmi m: s the realistic temporal conrinuity of rhe scene, in spiri ng both the confidence thar the viewer is sec in!:( cvcq'­ thin� and rhe fear of things unscen. Thc fate of this second 36o-dcgrcc p:tn in Andrei Ru/Jiiiv is cmblcm­ :ltic of Ta rkovsky's appro:tch to rhc re-edit. He divided it into rwo shors, which cumulatively lasr 59 seconds (2.4 seconds less than thc si ngle shot in The Passio11). The cur allows the vicwer ro assume the passaj!.e of some ti mc du rin g which Kirill m:ty have made his exir. Yet the removal of the spat i al fold dest roys rhc distinctive temporality of the shor, rhus annu l li ng the very ration;1lc of rhc long take which now scems conspicu­ ous and gra tu itous . The two very long mkcs in rhc peasant barn also perform ;1 rhird funcrion, which is ro c on tr i bute rn :1 diffuse narrative poi m of vicw. In the ,

196 I

w:ncr

course of rhis si ngle scene, and even of individu:1l shots within ir, numer­ ous characters make a claim on the viewer includi ng each of the three monks, t he icstcr, his p iti fu l imitator :1nd the children. The titular charac­ ter has nor yet been ident ified, and ar no poinr is the.: viewer given clear information either on the dominant point of view or on the desti na tion of rhe n;llTative. The viewer has simply ro :�ssume an absent unity of per­ spective, which musr be recon strucred from rhe fragments he is given. TIJe Passion pursues rh is complex strategy much more co nsistently than Andrei nublii11, whi ch diminishes ri val narrative centres (wirhout making Andrei Rublcv inro :my conventional kind of protagonist}. ,

Early on T:ukovsk y al leged l y said: ' If )'OU cx rend the norma l lengrh of a shor, first you gcr bored; bur if yOll extend i t further srill you become interestcd i n it; and if you extend i t even more a new quality, a new inten­ sity of :uremion is born' (cs 6). Tarkovsky s experiences wirh A11drei '

RubliftJ encoura!:\ed him ro develop r h i � insi!:(ht into 'Imprinted Time',

shot 1

197

essentially a defence of his cinema poetics. He locates the elusive concept of atmosphere in the 'cine-image', which he defines as 'rhe observation of facts of life in rime, organized in accordance wirh the forms of life itself and with its temporal laws' (ST 68; zv r68). In particular, Tarkovsky declared the particular ability of cinema to depict time: ' l think that what a person normally goes ro the cinema for is time, whether for time wasted, time lost, or rime that has yet to be gained' (ST 63; zv 163). He insisted that rhe sequential arrangement of images must be based on their inrernal contenr, specifically on their temporal 'pressure': rhe cinematic image cannot be divided and segmented in conflict with its temporal nature; continuous rime cannot be removed from it. The image becomes aurhenticall)' cinematic when (amongst other things) nor only docs ir live within time, bur time also lives within it, even within each separate frame. No 'dead' object - whcrhc.:r a table, a chair, or a glass - that is presented in rhe shot separate from everything else, can be presented outside of continuous time, as if from the perspective of an absence of rime [ST 68; zv 1 68-9 ]. Temporal continuity preserves the 'concrete life and emotional content of rhe object filmed' (ST 70; zv 170) - that which Ta rkovsky calls irs a/ mosphere. Alongside this emphasis on temporal continuity or atmosphere, Tarkovsky was equally concerned with the texture that is produced when shots arc arranged inro narrative strucrures. If the conrinuiry within the shot commun icates atmosphcrc, then the discontinuous sequencing of shots creates 'the sense of fact and texture (faktura) that live and change in time' (ST 69; zv 1 69). Far from privileging either extreme, Tarkovsky was lll()St concerned ro heighren rhc rension that arises between rhcm, a ten­ sion he identifies as 'rhe pressure of time'. Insofar as neither rigid sequcn­ rialiry nor spontaneity caprurc reality in irs rorality, Tarkovsky sought ro achieve a kind of discontinuous sequence of events rhar would suggest '1111Jat lies between rhem, what kind of continuity connects rhem' 1sT 65; zv t65]. This connective medium, for Tarkovsky, is rime itself. Time is not packaged as a ready commodity wirhin the film; instead, it arises as the viewer's depiO)'menr of rhc film's inward tension as a continuous narrative. Ta rkovsky's in novative usc of montage has been obscured by the emphasis in his writings on the shot and the image, as well as by his

anri-Eisensreinian rhetoric. Borh of these elements remained at the core of Tarkovsky's writings on cinema ro the end of his life; he once wrote that 'in Eisenstein's films individual shots do not possess rhe rrurh of rime. The shors themselves are absolurcl)' static and anemic' [sT r 19-20; zv 232]. However, Tarkovsky's arrirude rowards Eisenstein was nor so simple. In 'Imprinted Time', Ta rkovsky criticizes Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible ( 1 943/6) as a heavy-handed collation of hieroglyphs that the viewer is supposed simply to decipher. Moreover, the images, acting style and 'atmosphere' of Eisenstein's lilm 'approach theatre (musical theatre)' in their wildly expressive (almost expressionist) and violenrl)' affective nature. Tarkovsky sternly concludes that Ivan the Terrible 'even ceases ro be a work of cinema from my purely theoretical point of view' (.)1· 67; zv 168). The qualifying phrase here is crucial, for Ta rkovsky nonetheless goes on tO commend Ivan the Terrible for irs 'bewitching' rhythm. In facr, I would argue that, while suspicious of Eisenstein's the­ atricality, Ta rkovsky was advocating a return to Eisenstein's emphasis on the rhythm of shot and sequence, which he thought held the key to activating the spectator as a participant in the narrative enterprise. His polemic with Eisenstein essentially boils down ro the claim that montage can be applied ro blocks of longer duration than Eisenstein allowed for, as long ::ts rhe resulting rhythm remains consisrenr.7 Tarkovsky repeatedly registered his annoyance with the way the quick rhythm of rhe Bartle of Chud Lake in Alexander Nevsky 'conrradicrs the inner rhythm of rhc scene as it is shot. It is just as if one poured our Niagara Falls glass by glass. Instead of Niagara, you'd get a puddlc.'8 Tarkovsky's viewpoinr can be clucid;lted by considering his direct confrontation with Eisenstein over rhe interpretation of japanese haiku poetry. In his 1 929 essay 'Beyond the Shot', Eiscnstei n cited sevcra I haiku as images that undergo dialectical development analogous to that of a montage sequence. Of Eisenstein's examples, Tarkovsky cires the following two: Ancient monastery. Cold moon. Wolf howling. Quiet field. BurrerAy flying. BurrerA)' sleeping.? shot I

199

Each of Eisenstein's examples is divisible into three discrete sentences, and each sentence features a single figure, separate from the other rwo in space or time. This discontinuity between single images underscores rhc central aspect of Eisenstein's theory of montage, which is that shots should be combined according ro rhe dialectical logic of conflict and synrhesis.'0 As Eisenstein writes concerning these poems: 'The simplest juxtaposition of rwo or three details o f a material series produces a perfectly finished representation of another order, the psychological.'" Tarkovsky contrasts Eisenstein's haiku ro others rhar demonstrate 'the purity, sensitivity, and integrity of an observation of life': A fishing-pole in the wave Lightly brushed against By a full moon. Dew fell, On all rhe spikes of thistle Drops are suspended [sT 66;

zv

167].

within montage are inevitably in conAict'." In both cases, the 'narrative always proceeds wirh an eye towards the rhythm', as Eisenstein stipu­

lated. '>Tarkovsky simply inrerprcrs this concept of rhythm less <1S the juxtaposition between shots rhan as the play of distances and planes

I

water

The question o f cinema ric rhythm implicates the areas where Tarkovsky's cinema theory appears to depart most radically from Eisenstein's conceptual framework, namely atmosphere, texture and rime. This con­ stellation of three terms also helps ro explain Tarkovsky's use of rhe

.Just as a sculptor rakes a block of marble, and, inwardly con­ scious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything rhar is not parr of i t - so the filmmaker, from a 'block of rime'

static background and is over. By contrast, in Tarkovsky's first haiku it is the dynamic background that brings the foreground inro motion, while in his second rhc movement is created by rhe narrowing of the aperture as rhc poem zooms in from the plant ro the dewdrops suspended upon it. Tarkovsky shifts from sequential juxtapositions to what Eisenstein would call 'vertical montage' or juxtapositions between different planes within the shot or segment. Instead of destroying the sense of continuity, the dynamic focus reveals hidden possibilities within it. This docs nor neces­ sarily conrradict Eisenstein's view that 'rhc depictivc quality and rhythm

2.00

shot i n relation ro all that precede ir. This is rhe principle of my montage [An 1 9 ] .

phrase 'sculpting in rime' as a metaphor for cinema. Tarkovsky writes:

Each of Tarkovsky's poems presents a single space within which three derails arc simultaneously present. M.oreover, nor all of the lines commu­ nicate single images; some describe motion or even sound within the same frame as the preceding line. The discrete action in each of Eisenstein's hai ku - rhc wolf howling or the butterAy flying - punctures a

within the shot. As he later said:

l do nor consider that the essence of cinema is rhe j uxtaposition of two sequences rhar should engender a rhird notion, as Eisenstein would have ir. On the contrary, the n•h shot seems to me rhe sum of rhc first, rhe second, rhe third . . . [ . . . ] in short as rhe sum of all the preceding shots. And this forms the sense of a

made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need [ . . . ] [sT 63-4; zv �: 6_3 ] The metaphor recurs in Tarkovsky's statements, often with intriguing

d i ffcrcnces: The cinema is capable of capturing time, which is beyond the capability of any other art form (except for television). But if we capture on film the life of a real man from birth to death, this is nor yet arr. The essence of the author's work is a kind of sculpt­ ing in time. The arrist comes, chooses his material, discarding all that is unnecessary, leaving only that which is essen tial, ncccssaq', obl igatory, - and unexpectedly there arises a work of cinema ric art. '·I Like rhc block of marble, the raw material of continuous shots must be chiselled away with innumerable curs in order to create a surface of tex­ tures, which irself comes to life as a meaningful shape only when deployed as continuous form in rhc act of viewing. Ta rkovsky's theory of cinematic time can be defined more precise­ ly in rhc light of Andre Bazin's comparable idea that film was capable of capruring real duration in continuous vision, what Bazin called the shor I 201

-

'spatial Aow of action'.'' Like Tarkovsky, Baz.in combined rhis

'fixing') irs visible environment

Bergsonian emphasis on duration with a polemic against montage,

bilizes it as an imagc;'7 on rhe orher, as 1 have argued, rhe camera allows

applauding rhe Italian Neo-rea lisrs' efforts 'ro do away with montage

for irs self-manifesta tion as an unrepresenrable and impenetrable alien

and ro rransfcr to rhe screen rhe continuum of reality'.'6 Of particular

will, rhe Aows that intervene in and Aood over rhe image. The precise

inrerest is his appreciation of Orson \XIeUes's 'sequence shots' and of Jean

ways in which rhe camera either settles the image or renders it unsettling

Renoir's depth of field. Despite the unequivocal nature of some of Bazin's

cannor be reduced

statemenrs, a couple o f qualifications must be made. First, Bazin natur­

in particular, marshalled all the resources at their disposal ro heighten

ally appreciated rhe importance of monrage, for instance in his writings

rhis inrernal cinematic tension.

to

(sreda). On

the one hand the camera sta­

any one factor or technique. Tarkovsky and Iusov,

on Eisenstein. Second, Bazin felt that, far from presenting an unproblem­

lusov contributes a dose of sobriety b)' noting the role of cinematic

atic realiry, remporal realism and depth-of-field staging allows the spec­

technology in establishing the re<1lm of possibilities. He describes rhc

tator ro appreciate re<1liry as an ambiguous and discontinuous process.

cameraman as rhe prime 'consumer' of technology who chooses rhe besr

However, if for Bazin deprh-of-field framing reveals the ambiguity

available means to crcare 'the formal equivalent of the cinematic image'

of reality within rhe temporal continuum, Tarkovsky calls the continuum

described in the screenplay: 'the cinematOgrapher is capable not only of

itself into question; time appears nor as a Aow, bur as a scam that sutures

mechanically capturing

folds in space. Tarkovsky's long rakes undermine rhe possibility of their

The 'texture of the image of rhc real world' is conditioned by rhe 'optics

own continui ty, which is constituted and ani mated only in the act of . . VIeWing.

and the formal light qualities of the film'.'9 The camera's ability to

((ik.sirovat')

reality bur also of de-forming ir'.'s

capture movement not only by representing moving objects, bur also by moving itself, requires complex tcchnic;ll resources, of which Tarkovsky

A distinguishing mark of Tarkovsky's theorizing is rhe Auency with which

was always a greedy 'consumer', making full use of dollies, cranes, heli­

he passes from technical ro metaphysical matters:

copters, rcmow control, special effects, etc. The camera's agency also lends the image 'nor only an emotional aura

(sreda), but also an ethical

The specificity of rhe cinema consists in capturing time, and the

hue'.

cinema works with rime as with a unit of aesthetic measure that

rhe Aying peasant Efim is rivalled in h i s ambition by the camera that

can be repeated indefinitely. 1. . . ) With respect to montage my

o !

Jusov cires the example of the prologue to Andrei

Rublev,

when

follows him, swirls around him, 'fixes' him in space and then freezes up

principle is rhc following: film is like a river; monrage should be

at the moment of his fall. While Efim lies prone, rhe air escaping from

infinirel>' spontaneous like nature itself, and what obliges me ro

his crumpled balloon as bubbles in rhe river, the camera rem<1ins free ro

move from one shor ro another by means of monrage is not the

roam, like rhc horse rhat silently crosses the frame.

desire ro sec the sckcred things or to force the specraror ro hurl")'

To adapr an old s<1ying, man composes but the camera disposes; yet

up b)' introducing very short sequences. I rhink that it always

rhe horse that proceeds ro roll on rhe earth in slow morion signals both rhe

remains in rhe riverbed of time

triumph of rhe camera and irs humility before an uncaprurable will of

[AT/ t9).

nature. lusov gives another example of a shot in Solaris where preternatu­

According ro rhis logic, breaks in continuity result simply from rhe sro­

rally pouring rain floods a china cup on a wooden table: 'The transparen­

chasric intervention of n:-�rure in irs own Aows. However, throughour

cy of rhe fragile porcelain, rhe sheen of rhe pbned boards of the table, the

this book I have underscored how deeply problematic is Tarkovs ky's

mirror-like drops of moisture which rcAt:cr the ourer world' - all of this

rreatmcnr of nature. Indeed, 'n:nure' is most palpable precisely in the

conveys the inability of the 'tiny, beautiful creation of human hands ( . . . ]

guise of rime, as

ro

:1 friction that arises when the continuous Aow of images

encounters irs own inrernal resistance. Both Tarkovsky ami his original cameraman Vadim Iusov frequcntl)'

speak of the way rhe camera 'captures' or 'isolates' (fiksirovat', lircr:dly 202. I

wa rcr

conrain a millionth part of rhe moisture that falls from the sky.'!l Tarkovsky's advocacy of long rakes must be seen in a similar context,

nor as a na·lve belit:f in his ability to 'capture' natun::, but as a calculated technique of using the inherent complexity of cinema

to

reveal a para lid

shot I 203

v

complexity i n nature. Slavoj Zizek has described a fundamental distinction in Ta rkovsky's long rakes in Nostalghia, which rely either on a harmonious relationship with their content, signaling the longed-for spiritual reconciliation found not i n elevation from the gravitational force of the earth but in a full surrender ro its inertia [ . . . ] or, even more interestingly, on a contrast between form and content, like the long shot of Eugenia's hysterical outburst against the hero, a mixture of sexually provocative, seductive gestures with contemptuous, dismissive remarks.,,

Eugenia (Noswlgbifl).

immobile camera only underscored the tragic nature of what was occur­ ring, heightening its dramatism'.,4 1ndecd, rhe tension i s stretched most taut nor between Gorchakov and Eugenia per se, but between each of them and the camera, which pressurizes them, pushing them to the limit at which they begin to manifest their impenetrable identity. However, it i s strange to call Ta rkovsky's camera 'indifferent' and 'calm'; agitation does not necessarily require the violent jerks of a hand-held camera. The long take is no less 'destabilizing' in rhe final analysis. Tarkovsky's opposition to montage cinema and emphasis on the shot were not dictated by his metaphysics, but on a profound humility before the irreducible corporeality of the world. The long take exem­ plifies the way that the cinema allows rhe imaginary and symbolic world of rhe director's conception to interact with the visual manifold while remaining open ro incursions of the real, in the form of stochastic forces resistant ro the exercise of will. This is the redemptive action that Jacques Ranciere has ascribed to the cinema, which 'undoes the ordi­ nary work of the human brain' ro restore 'unto the events of sensible matter rhe potentialities the human brain had deprived them of in order ro consritllte a sensory-motor universe adapted to its needs and subject to irs masrery'.,5 Ta rkovsky's precise control of the image allows it to assert irs autonomous will, whether in irs duration or when juxtaposed with other images. This piety, at once ascetic and aesthetic, is rhe key to all of Tarkovsky's statements concerning the ethics and metaphysics of filmmaking; ir conveys not an inflated reckoning of his own i mages, bur a sober recogn ition of the role visual media have come ro play in determining the very consti tution of human reality.

Of course, Eugenia's temptation to 'surrender to the inertia' of natural Aows is inseparable from her hysterical resistance to it; this tension is at rhe heart of all of Ta rkovsky's characters and even his camera. Zizek proposes that Eugenia is protesting 'nor only against the hero's tired indifference, but also, in a ·way, against rhe calm indifference of the static long shot itself, which does nor let itself be disturbed by her ourburst'!3 Ta rkovsky had noted a similar effect in the scene of rhe blinding of the masons in Andmi Rublev, where '(t]he impassibility and frigidity of the v

204 I

water

shot

I 2.05

•

air

1 0 Atmosphere

At the close of Tarkovsky's creative life - and at the conclusion of any study of his work- one returns ro the paradox that this profoundly cine­ matic artist should have laid such stress on capturing that which must always remain hidden ro the eye: rime, faith, atmosphere. By localizing and then subtly de-synchronizing the image Tarkovsky explodes the determinacy of space, revealing that which lies off-screen and beyond the gaze. This is a paradox that I have sought ro resolve with reference to Tarkovsky's aesthetics of renunciation. Perhaps these words suggest roo close a parallel between Tarkovsky and his character Andrei Rublcv, who forsakes speech and painting for years before his faith in these media is restored. In fact, Tarkovsky was much more like Boriska, the yourh whose very impertinence succeeded in redeeming Rublev's faith in representation. Tarkovsky never forsook the image, but he recognized that its singular power is highest on the verge of failure, when the invis­ ible stuff of existence becomes palpable i n its resistance to imaging. This point is particularly crucial with regards to Sacrifice, Tarkovsky's final film and the one most susceptible to allegorical readings. True, Tarkovsky encouraged this tendency by describing Sacrifice as a 'parable' (sT 2.19); however, as I have argued, his words were not always a trust­ worthy guide to his films. Tarkovsky must not be identified with his character Alexander, who renounces his most prized possession in a misguided attempt to avert a vaguely intuited disaster. Tarkovsky's act was

I h.- hm�c > burns

(.\,, l'i(icr).

of focus, nor of destruction. Nor is his asceticism akin ro that of the monk Panwe, whose tale Alexander tells at the beginning of the film. Tarkovsky is not cultivating blind faith that averts one's eyes from the material world; rather he is enabling acute vision that renews the world in its very materi­ al it)� In the final analysis, Sacrifice is not a lament for a lost past, but a 109

courageous encounter with rhe very force of rime as it is revealed in the ever-changing textures of visi ble things. It must be recogn ized rhat Alexander's sacrifice is presented as a fail­ ure, resulting only in the final dissolution of his family and his own confinemem. As rhe apocalyptic acr evaporates in a sordid household drama, all rhar remains arc irs vapours. Perhaps this is what Tarkovsky meanr when he spoke of rhe dominance of atmosphere in his films. Certainly Sacrifice marks a further step in rhe direction of a pared-down aesthetic. Conceived as fulfilling the classical unities o f place, time and action, Sacrifice provides rhe nearly continuous record of a traumatic experience; rhe only gaps in rime are filled with dreams and visions rhat complicate rhe plor without retarding its merciless advance. The location, Tarkovsky said, gave 'rhe impression of complete emptiness' (ATI 160). Contributing ro rhc strict unity of rhe film's ronality are a single piece of extra-diegeric music (an excerpt from Bach's Passion According to St Matthew) an d a sin gle major reference from vi su a l art - Leonardo's Adoratio11 of the Magi, t he sepia tones of which match the film's re­ s tra in ed pal et te Yet this asceticism was mere ly a condi tion for the maxi­ mally p rec ise manipulation of the medium, which by means of complex de-synchronizations and spa ria I folds rends our i magi na rive gras p on reality and returns us to the stubbor n resistance of rime. Sacrifice hearkens directly back ro Turnabout i n its use of sound; in both works rhe air carries rhc noise of seagulls and distant fog-horns both ro place rhc narrative and, at the same time, to dissolve it within the greater narural and social world. Shot within a bird sanctuary during rhe mating season, Tarkovsky was insistent that no birds be audible; thus all of the sound was rccrcarcd in the studio and post-synchronized. The creaks of rhe house were reproduced by the sound engineer Owe Svensson in his own country cottage, who recorded each character's gait by walking in an old house with various pairs of shoes, avoiding the usc of stock sounds like the footsteps in Nostalg!Jia. In addition to Bach, the sound­ track featured music of the Japanese bamboo Aute and Swedish herd calling that was recorded in the 1950s from disram locations over the tele­ phone; the my steriousn ess of the voices is m agnified by irs multiple layers of mediation.' The import:1ncc of the sou ndtrack ro Sacrifice underscores that its ultimate subject of rcprcscnr:1tion is the invisible at mosphere that both sustains and oppresses the den izen s of the house, an atmosphere fed b)' the har sh sc::1 wind rhar scours the landscape, courses throu�h open windows and carries the force of war.

Atmosphcre is, by definition, a vague and elusive concept, denoting

that which permeates the cinematic narrative while remaining invisible on-screen. Yet Tarkovsky spoke of it as if it was empirically verifiable, saying for instance that Oovzhcnko was 'the first practitioner for whom the problem of atmosphere was particularly important' (An 21). Atmosphere does not represent anything, nor is it in itself a presence. It is approachable only as the mood or attunement o f the images, their mode of presentation. Vadim lusov helpfully defined atmosphere as 'man interacting with the environment'., Tarkovsky gave one of his clearest definitions of atmosphere apropos of Stalker: [The film] docs nor surprise and docs not entertain rhe spectatOr with unexpected shifts of action and the plot. This, in my view, will help the spectator to sec more fully the great ability and poetic to peer inro the pseudo- mundane Aow of life. Tt is not necessary to create at m osph ere on purpose. It appears itself out o f the task which the author resolves. If the task is

essence of

.

2.10

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ci nema

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commensurc1te ro this, of course. Atmosphere appears as

a result

of the ability to concentrate on what's most imporrant.J In re lated comments Tarkovsky underscored that 'it is necessary to elimi­ nate any vague or unspoken clements, everything that is usually called the poetic atmosphere" [which I people usual I)' try dil igently and intention­ ally to create on screen'.� In Stalker, Tarkovsky continued: ' I a m trying ro focus on the main rhing, and rhcn, I suppose, will arise an atmosphere that is more acrivc and emotionally more infectious than it has been rhus far in my films.' Perhaps ro an even greater degree, in Sacrifice it is Tarkovsk>r's focus on the image thar invests (or 'infects'?) rhe material world wirh an atmosphere of potentiality. I n Sacrifice the clements of cinema seem especially attuned to rhosc of nature. The earth that hns been appropriated for dwelling is under con­ tinual rhrear; the shrine that Alexander erects our of driftwood testifies as much to the absence of life as ro irs porcnrialit)\ The house contains a n entire world of signifiers - from Leonardo's painting to the old map that Otto gives Alexander, from the j:1panesc music ro the threatening TV news -all of which arc completel y consumed in Alexander's fi ery sacrifice. The long rake seems to borrow its majestic ind ifference from the sea , which throughout has been observing the d ram a as it develops. Th e question "

�nnosphcrc I

21 1

·The breath of plag.uc' in Luis Bui\ucl"s Na�tiTm (•959>·

Hamler in Ta rkovsky's i nterp retation , Alexander continually feels com­

pel led towards an act rhar he finds repugnant. However, Alexander's reac­ tion to the model house betrays more the guilty conscience of a Claudius (in the scene of The Mousetrap) than the accusatory zeal of Hamlet; he quotes (again in English) from Macbeth: '\XIhich of you have done this? The Lords' (111. iv. 49). It is curious that, while rhc question is posed by

Macbeth upon the appearance of the ghost of Banquo, the last two words are actually the stage direction iden ti f)1 ing the next speakers. (Since they cannot sec the ghost the lords answer: 'What, my good lord?') I t is as if Alexander is con j u ri ng u p his own 'lords', in the hope of receiving a response ro his usurpation of power. It is clear that Alex ander's guilt lies far in the recesses of the past, perhaps in rhc very construction of the house and the establishment of its household. Adelaide implies that

that rema ins at the end of the film - as in all of Tarkovsky's a::uvre - con­ cerns the possibility that water may once again serve tO sustain life on this earrh. Bur every thin g hinges on rhe fragile breath of the little boy, alone under the immense, blank sky. The narrative of Alex ander calls to mind Ta rkovsky's observation (quoting Pushkin) that 'the breath of plague' pe rvade s Luis Bui'iuel's Nazarfn (s·r 73, zv 174). However, it also recalls Ta rkovsky's description of how Bach's music opens 'a kind of vacuum, an empty space, where the spectator feels the possibi lity of fi lli ng the spiri­ rual void and feeling the breath of an ideal'.> Just as the consumption of the house by Aame frees the son to fashion his own future, in a place he will reclaim from nature, so the consumption of the film detaches the spectator from irs own speci fic configuration and returns him tO the world renewed and empowered. Ar rhc cenrrc of Sacrifice is a family of the theatre; both Adelaide and Alexander arc former act ors, and now Alexander is a well -regarde d the­ atre critic and reacher of aesthetics. When Alexander awakens after the night of apocalypse it is his ediror that he calls ro check on the existence of the world, as if rhc theatre (or literature m ore generally) were his only substantive lin k ro th e world outside. In their birthday salur:uions Alcx:tndcr's colleagues call him Rich:ud and Prince My shkin, a pparen tly in me mory of his final roles. Dos to ev sk>' is pa I pa ble rh ro ugh ou t, but the u ndercu 1-re n r of Shakespearean tragedy is especia lly strong. In the mi dst of his p hi losoph­ ical dinrribc Alexander exclaims (in English): 'Words, words, words.' Like 112. I :tir

Alexander brought her from London to this desolate spit of land on false pretences, since she did nor know he would relinquish his theatrical star­ dom. Perhaps (following the link ro Macbeth) this stardom was won ar the cost of v::mquished rivals. We are nor cold, bur still the temporal ckpth of the family drama is achieved less by the layering of images (as in Mirror or

Nostalghia) than in the characters' verbal and physical gestures, and it

is augmen ted by meta-theatri cal rather than mew-visual references. Tarkovsky consisrenrly arrested tO his desi re to observe rhc three unities, characterizing the sryle of Sacrifice as more 'dramatic' than in his previous films; in this, as in other respects, it is closest to Stalker. The main characters form two sets: Alexander :tnd Otto (and Maria) on the one hand, Victor and the three other women on the other. The leaders of rhc rwo groups a rc both contemplating a sacrifice: Alexander will destroy his hou seh old, while Victor will reli nqu ish his numerous roman­ ric liaisons and social position and emigrate to Australia. The two men arc repcn tedly brought into parallel siru:ltions; after the announcement of the crisis, for i nstance, Alexander is shown ply ing Otto with brandy, while Victor administers a sedative to Adelaide and Marra. All of the possessions and images in the house arc implicated in the interpersonal relationships; even Alexander's book of icons, a ray of light in the gloomy rwilighr, is a present from Victor and rhus tainred by his berrayal. The main bone of contention is rhe boy who silently regards h i s hapless ,

elders as they make impossible claims upon him. Crucially, though , rhe boy never enrers the main space of conren tion on the ground Aoor o f the house, appearing only in his bed and on the land outside. His gaze is as ycr un able to hold the famil)' togeth er. armospherc

I 11J

The camera pl ays a much more active role in exploring and explod ing rhe spaces of the house. For one thing, the camera is complicir in height­ en i ng the film's theatricalit)� Wirh the exception of rhe night mare and Maria's dwe lling ir limits itself to rhe house and irs immediate environs. In no orher film does Tarkovsky have such sustained scenes with a station­

I he mudd house

.\.u·r�ficc).

,

ary camera, for i nstance in rhc shots of the child's crib or of Alexander's sofa. Espec i all y in scenes with Otto - when he presents Alexander with rhe map, or when he implores Alexander ro sleep with Ma ria - the char­ acters execute an elaborate dance in order ro keep the action framed before :tnd towards rhe camera. At times it is as if Tarkovsky is intent o n

renouncing one of his greatest gifts: rh:tt of the mobile camera. Yet these aesthetic renunciations culminate in one of Ta rkovs ky's richest, most in du lgent long rakes. Just as this long rake redeems the cinema, so Sacrifice overall redeems the image as a sire of mediation. The fare of the i m age in the film is most closely linked ro th e figure of Orro, the only true omsider in rhe house (even Maria, an Icelander who lives sep a ratel y, is parr of the household). Only Otto expands Alex:tnder's world beyond the walls of the house, delivering the congra t u ­ l a tO r y te l egram from his colleagues :tnd presenting him with an cight­

Piero della Fmncesca, whose Madonna del Pflrto featured in Nostalghia).

cenrh-cenru ry map of Europe. In this respect he fulfils his voca rion as posrman by exerci sing the power of mediation. He also p rov i des the bicycle that Alexander (and later Maria) uses to escape the confines of the house. As G. K. Chesterton showed in his story 'The Invisible Man' ( 1 9 1 1 ), the ubiquirous postm:tn melts unseen into the landscape of modern i ty. It is, perhaps, this inconspicuousness that allows Orro ro dis­ cover and i nvestigate the su pern a tur:�l occurrences he collects. Bur Otto is also an actor of.sorrs, :�s he shows when he takes a theatrical rumble off his b i cycle a nd. feigns slapstick anger for the lirrle boy. At rimes there is someth ing Ch::tplinesque about h is movements, as if Otto were i nten t on turning Alexa nder 's inw:ud drama into :1 film. Otto and Alexander's relat ionsh i p is con ti n ually ch anne l led through

Otto also helps the child create the scale model of the house, which frightens Alexander as if the ph ysi cal re d u pl ica tion of his house has undermined irs sanctity. Finall)', Orro tells the s to r y of the photo­ graphic porn·air of :1 woman, taken in 1 960, which when devel oped included her son as he looked i n an undeveloped photograph taken just before his death i n 1 940. This srory suggests :1 concept of the im:�gi­

images, though Alexander is oddly numb ro their appeal. While Otto stresses rh:�r the map is an origi nal Alexander seems ro reject the very idea of an original im:�gc, excla im i ng: 'This Europe is like Mars; it has no thi ng in common with rca l i t) Alexander Sa)'S that he q u i t acting

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n:�ry as a parallel re:�lity in which images (even undeveloped, potential ones) bleed into each other, n u ll ifyin g 'objective' space and time. If for Alexander (a professor of aesthetics!) im<1ges could aspire only ro be mere reproductions of other images (and not, for inst:�ncc, of the house or of human fee li ngs), for Orro rhey arc more rC
because he w:�s no longe r able ro c.kpict ch:�racrers. When Otro has

The tension between Otto and Alex:tnder rcAects a broader tension in the film between Orro's faith in the i magi nary and Alexander's se:�rch for a more pa lpable and final redempt ion. It is not just th:tr Orro S)'mpa­ thizcs wirh rhe idea of eternal reru rn. In response ro Orro's Nierzschcan musi ngs, A lex a ndc r rej ects an)• possi bi I i ty o f erea ring an i nrcllecrua I

trOllble seei ng Leonardo's Adomtio11, A lcx :1ndcr explains that ir is merely

'model' of rhe universe, which he says would be tantamount to becoming

a copy under glass, therefore devoid of texture. Ycr Otto is so sensitive

the demi urge of a separate cre:�rion. Otto answers by paraphrasing

that he recoils in horror ar rhe L.eon:udo copy (stating a preference for

Scripture: 'Faith has been granted you, and ir will be in propo rti o n ro your

,

' ·'

2. 1 4

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armosph.:rc

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2.15

faith' (cf. Romans 12: 3, 6). Indeed, Otto provides the onl>' hints of the supernatmal in the film, with his collection of 284 uncanny srories, the sudden loss of consciousness which he attribures ro the touch of a 'fallen angel', and the idea that Maria i s a witch. His rather sinister character ensures that his views arc not identified with Tarkovsky's own; indeed, tO a significanr degree Orro foils rhc very conception that Tarkovsky was ostensibly pursuing in the film: rhar of a total renunciation. Instead, Otto ensures that rhe cleansing flames do nor jusr consume all Alexander's accumulated images, bur also allow for the reconstitution of an imaginat}( Irs architectu er and armature may be dramatic, but the effect of Sacrifice is produced by rhc purely cinematic intensity of overlapping visions and crossed gazes in which rhc spectator is· also enmeshed.

Sacrifice holds true to Ta rkovsk)"s tripartite poetics of space: nature, home and shrine. The fragile membrane of the house is breached by the clements, jusr as the house in Solaris is invaded by the rain, and that in Mirror is buffered by fire an d wind. \XIhen burnt, rhe space will remain hallowed ground, a shrine ro r hc rime that has passed through it. In fact, the house has perhaps already ceased to be a home, as is demonstrated by the schism between upstairs and downstairs. The small grove of trees ncar rhe house is aln.:ady a kind of shrine to it: in this grove Alexander has his first vision, finds a model of his house and encounters J\llaria, his putative saviour. The very walls of the house, though intended to pre­ serve it from the clements, arc woven as i f from light and air; the drama is to some degree a barrie to define and constitute the boundaries of the house as rhosc of vision itself. lr is nor jusr rhat Alexander must repeatedly steal into and our of rhe house in order ro carry our his plan, or that Vicror has brazenly vio­ lated its hallowed spaces with his adultery. Ir is rhe very elements rhat constantly invade rhc habitation, a s marked by rhc in-blowing curtains and rhe harsh light that drastically changes the colour scheme indoors. Whenever rhe proragonisrs approach rhc windows they are cast i n high conrrast, similar ro an old TV screen or a grainy black-and-white photo­ graph, as if the very movement to the perimeter bleeds the image of its vitality. The home, ir rurns our, depends less on irs physical walls than on irs cemral location in rhe economy of the human gaze; it is where people regard each orhcr (and themselves) with the utmost intensity. Tclli ngly, Alexander's resolve ro destroy the physical edifice coincides with his ceasing ro sec and be seen by others. 2.16 I air

The folds in space emerge already at the beginning of the film when Alexander settles in the small grove of trees and loses himself in philo­ sophical ruminations, ostensibly addressed to his little son, vvho has wandered off frame. The tracking of the camera through the trees sug­ gests an alien presence, as docs the mysterious sound of a female voice, which seems carried on the wind rhar rustles i n rhe grass. Alexander becomes conscious of his son's absence, appears frightened by the now sinister space of the grove, and calls our for him. However, when the boy runs u p behind him, Alexander throws him ro rhc ground, giving him a nosebleed. Alexander himself falls ro rhe ground and we are shown (in black and white) a desolate asphalred courtyard, strewn wirh debris and crossed by a stream of water. The sound of running water on the sound­ track supports the objectivity of rhc vision, but the continuing strains of the eerie female voice undercut this integrity, uniting Alexander's grove and the post-apocalyptic cityscape into a single location. As the camera pans down, it cncounrcrs a sheet of glass, stained with paint or with blood, which reflects a city skyline upside down. The next shot (again in colour) shows Alexander leafing through an album of Russian icons. The sequence is quite remini scent of episode 4 in Andrei Rublev, when Andrei's vision of the.: blinding of the mason allows h i m to overcome his block by staining the wall with ashes, after which he is able to imagine and depict the Last judgment. As in Andrei /?..ublev, fragmented space can be stitched up only by a continuous gaze that crosses all the riven spaces and orders of reali ty. Ln Lacanian terms, one might speak of a crisis i n rhe imaginary being resolved by a restoration of the symbolic; however,Tarkovsky's interest remains with rhc concrete image that mediates this divide. The spaces and g:1zes cross most intensely in the plate glass of the windows and of rhe Leonardo painting that hangs in Alexander's room. As Maria leaves the grove where Alexander has discovered the model house, the strains of a Japanese bamboo flute usher in a new sequence, which begins wirh rhe boy awakening i n his crib and hearkening to a knock at the door and rhe voices of Alexander and Otro. The conversation con­ ti nucs as we sec a tree reflected in rhc glass over rhe Leonardo, which cuts ro a shot of Otto and /\lcxnndcr contemplating the painting. Otto recoils in horror at ir and recedes to the back of rhe frame, behind a glass door, where he is cast in harsh light. The glass becomes visible because it fainrly reflects Alexander and is sreamecl up by Otto's breath. True to his role, Otto makes palp:lblc the very space of mediation, rhe :mnosphcrc I 21 7

Otto 3nd

Alcx:mdn �H

the soi3

(Sacrifice).

Ono 3nd Alcxa11dcr in the paintinf,!

(Sacrifice).

dead, though the characters still refuse ro look at each other. Perhaps only the lirrle boy's gaze i s capable of holding the world rogether; but he lies asleep upstairs. The camera mani fests Auid continuity only ro underscore the jarring discontinuities within the domestic space. The soundtrack is also full of i ncongruities that undermine any confidence one mighr achieve concerning the narrative. For a Aeeting

material ( i f invisible) atmosphere that sustains vision and the entire life of the imaginary. If rhe wine glasses mosr unmistakeably register the threat of rhe aeroplanes, so also the plate glass, functioning as both window and mirror, registers the tense crossing of gazes that alone is capable of recon­ stituting the human community. The glass over the painting may bring Alexander and Otto together into a single space, bur it is powerless to unite rhe family that by and large has ceased paying attention. After catching his reAection in the painting Alexander walks to rhe cabinet and shuts off the Japanese

second the static from the television seems to resolve itself into the sound of the bamboo Aute. Other unexplained sounds - at times close to a drum roll, at times like a coin rolling across the Aoor - disrupt the fabric of the event. Maria's mysteriousness can be attributed i n parr to her musical motif, rhe Swedish folk singing rhat appears in the grove

music, at which poinr the voice of the head of government becomes clearly audible from rhe television set in rhe room downstairs. The rest of the characters arc arranged in a circle before the Aickering set, bathed in rhc eerie light that emanates from it. As Alexander approaches, the camera begins a pan from Otto back past all of the other characters. The telephone sra rrs ringing upstairs, but a II gazes arc on the Tv, although only A lexandcr seems to notice when the feed is cur. Their static d ispa ra teness is disrupted on Iy when Orro approaches fi rsr Adelaide and then Marra; both brush h i m off and turn to Victor: 'At least you can do something', Adela ide cries (in English). She then ca lis for 'lirrle man', the boy with whom the episode began. Victor tries rhe telephone and discovers rhat their lines of communication have gone ;u8

I

�ir

( hto .md Alc.:x:lndcJ'

ll rhc window (I," ri(in·).

atmosphere.: I

2 19

and in Alexander's dreams, leading him our of his own house, through

N o marrer how artful the photographer, no matter ho·w carefully

rhe flooded plain ro (what we later learn to be) Maria's house. The

posed his ubjecr, the beholder feels an irresistible urge to search

dream ends with the sound of jcrs flying overhead, bur is rhc sound rhe

[ rhe] picrure for the riny spark of comingcncy, of the here and

culmination of rhe dream or rhe commencement of waking reality? The

now, wirh which reality has (so ro speak) seared the subject, ro

confusion of dream and consciousness is exacerbated when Orro appears

find rhc inconspicuous spot where in the immediacy of rhar

and, in a conversation mediated by rhc glass door, tells Alexander to sleep

long-forgotten moment the future nests so eloquently that we,

with Maria.

looking back, may rediscover ir.6

This is the momem when rhc psychological drama takes a markcdly supernatural turn, and when the dreams begin to look very much like

In Otto's story the woman's photograph is scared with the lost future of

visions. Alexander's rhird and last dream begins (in black and white)

her son, while the son's image, roo, is singed by the mother's future lone­

while he and Maria are locked in passionate embrace, levitating above her

liness. The very determinacy of rhesc moments imprints the intangible

bed. The Swedish fol k singing is overlaid with bamboo flute, as the image

tension with which memory and contingency constantly afflict visible

(in harsh conrrast) switches first to the crowd in the city courtyard, the

reality. Quire apart from Otto's claims concerning the supernatural, the

stained glass pane and Alexander' son, who lies asleep or, perhaps, dead.

phorographic medium is revealed to be uncanny and troubling in its very

This is followed by a shot of Maria in the guise of Adelaide. Leonardo's

realism. So roo rhe power of Tarkovsky's films, preposterous in their con­

Adorn/ion of the Magi, shown in changing light, dissolves inro a colour

ception and contrived in their images, is char they render palpable the

shot of the naked J\ilarta, who chases chickens through the hOLJse; the shot

very texture of mediation, making corporeality ineffable and fantasy

tracks right, following Adelaide, who moves along the corridor

un mistakably material, presenting potentiality as fact. lt is here, on the

ro

the

room where Alexander sleeps on the sofa beneath the Leon;Hdo. He

screen, rhat rhc elements of cinema restore the basic elements of life.

awakens, exclaims 'Mama', rises and shuts off the Japanese music, which lingers, however, for a fleering second. Encouraged, Alexander calls the

In his book

office of hi ediror to confirm that the world is still standing; rhe persist­

teur scientist and popular writer Camille Flammarion included a woodcur

ence of material reality is confirmed when Alexander knocks his knee

in the sixrcenrh-ccnrury Gennan srylc depicting the Ptolemaic universe,

again r the rable, incurring real pain and

limp rhat lasrs for rhe remain­

wirh the earth surrounded by a sphere consisting of air, fire and water.

der of the film. The viewer might b<.: tempted similarly ro classify the

The earth appears ro the wayfarer as a fragile construct, suspended amidst

foregoing sequence as Alexander's dre:11n. However, there arc any number

rhe flows of rhc three other elements, always in danger of disintegration.

of spatial folds rhar prcvenr it from being dismissed so easily. As ir com�.:s

Seeking a more basic ground, the wayfarer peers into the outer sphere.

a

aparr the space is suspended :1s tht: point of intersection of human gazes, nor as a ruin, bur as the sire of porenrial it)'· On<.: r<.:rurns ro the image of Otto and Alexander speaking through

L"AI/1/0S/Jhere: meteorologie /10/JIIIaire (1888), French ama­

This woodcut, of unknown origin (FI:unmarion may have fashioned it himself), has proved so emblematic of th<.: modcrn condition tlwt it rcpca red I)' rcsu rfaced th roughour the twcnrieth ccnru ry. It has been

the gbss door. lr is easy enough to dismiss what Otto says about rhe

suggested rhnr it could be a source of rhc ending of

mysr<.:rious photograph, the mystical terror of Leonardo's canvas, or rhe

( 1.998), where .I im Caney's character bumps up against the border of th<.:

idea of Maria being a witch, jusr as one can explain away the other­

television ser on which he has lived his life. In his novel

worldly visiror in

Mirror or

rh<.: materialization of Hoffmann's mirror

reflection in 'Hoffmanniana' (cs 334). What remains inexplicable in all

The Truman Show Dzhan (1935)

Andrei Pbronov emplorrcd the image inro a diprych that relates n small allcgorical nnrrarive:

three works is the material trace lcfr behind by rhe supernatural im;1g.c, irs very condensation on the mediating surface. This is the uncnnniness

The picture depicted a dream when the earth was considered flat

noted by Walter Benj<Jmin in the vcr)' medium of phorography:


1:1.0

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Woodcut in Camille �Ia111111:lrion 's 1."/\tmosplit•re. 1988.

spaces of home and nnturc; he spoke frequent!)' of represen ting a stable

identity on such earth)' bases. Bur as a filmmaker his centra l interest and commitment was rhe role of rhe image, especiallr rhc cinematic image, in mediating this relationship between individual experience and the material world. Language, narrative and rhe entire imaginar)' (both of society and the individual) form configurations in which a body can elab­ orate an identity and join the Aow of history; yet Tarkovskr felt that these configurations could be genuine onlr if rhcy were subjected to rhc Aame of time, which resists Auid representation and disrupts space with unex­ pected folds. ln a complex weave of srnchronizarions, Tarkovsky sewed the visible world with seams of rime, block ing our desire for continuity with a sensorial resisrnnce rhar foregrounds the material intervention of the medium itself. Ultimatclr, like the firmament in FlammaL"ion's wood­ cur, the screen offers rhe porcnrial of reconstituting the vcr)' conditions of experience , of reconstituting rime its�.:lf, ami d st rhc crossing of gazes and

mateL"ial forces.

opened our onto rhe strange in finiry of that time, and had gazed into it. And he looked for so long into rhe unknown, foreign sp:tce rhar he fo rgor about his remaining body which remained beneath

rhc usual sk)( The other half of rhc picture depicted the same view bur in a different smre. The man's torso had become exhausted, emaciated, and had probably died, while his dried-our head had rolled down into rhar world, along rhc outer surface of the sky, which looked like :1 rin rub; it was the head of a seeker after a new infinity where rhcre really would be no end and whence rhere would be no return to the bare, Aat place of rhe earrh.i Plaronov sce ms to w:trn :tgainst extending one's gaze beyond 'the usual sky' bcc:wse such invesrig:trion loses any meaning if ir beco mes d�.:r:tchcd from som:ttic exisrcnce. Only ar rhc very border docs the a tm osph�.:rc allow the way farer ro reconcile vision with phys ical exi stence. Tarkovsky, as I undcrsr:1ncl him, is conscious of Plaronov's ad mo ni­ tion. He treasured rhe secu ri ty of standing firm I>' on the earth - in social and professi o nal sysrems, in aesthetic a nd sp iri tual tradition, and in the 22.2.

I air

arntosphcre I

22.3

Chronology

1932

Born 4 April in rhe vi llage of Zavrazh'e on rhc River Volga ro Maria lvanovna Vishniakova and Arsenii Alcksandrovich Tarkovsk)\ Sister Marin:t born on ; Ocrobcr.

'937

Arscnii Tarkovsky lc:tvcs his family.

19 . )' I

Finishes school and cmers lnsrirurc of Oriental Languages (Moscow) to study

1\t"abic. Leaves rhc lnstitllle of Oriental Languages and travels ro Easrcrn Siberia wirh a geolog ical cxpedirion. '95-1

Emcrs lnstirutc of Cincm:uogmphy ('vcn:', Moscow) and is assigned to din:ctor Mikhail Romm. 71u• Killers (with Alcksa11dr Gordon and Maria lkiku).

1957

M:1rrics Irma Rausch. Works on The T111o Fiidors (Jir·ccror i'vlarlcn Khmsiev).

There Will Be No l..etwe 'foday (with Alcksandr Gordun). 1959

Writes the creenplay s 'The Amarctic, :t Distam Land' with Andron Mikhalkov· s rinsk)\ Konchalovsky and Ole�,: Oc Steamroller a11d Violi11. Gradllarcs from the lnstinnc of Cinematography and bcl,\ins cmploym�nt as a dirccwr· ar Mosfilm studios.

196�

/rl(/11 's Childhood. In rhe :111rumn travels to Venice and San Francisco l'ilm Festivals to receive prizes. Also tra\•cls ro India and Ceylon ro show rhc film. Son Arscnii born ;o September.

1963

lkcomcs a member of the Union of Cinematographers of the IJSStt.

1964

Mcmhcr of the jut')' ar the Sixrccnrh Fesrival uf Children's Films in Venice. ll11rlrei Rublev begins produc1·ion.

Records an adaptation of \XI"tlliam Faulkner's 'Turnabour' for radio.

At�drei Rubliiv completed in September (as Tbe Passion according to Andrez} bur rejected by Mosfilm. With Alcksandr Misharin begins work on the screenplay 'Confession', which is later renmncd 'White Day' and 'Mirror'.

•969

Wins Jury Prize at Cannes for Andrei Rubliiv.

1970

Apri l , begins keeping his diary, enritled Martyrology'. Marries L:trisa KiziJo,•a (nee Egorkina). Son Andrei born in August. Publishes story 'White Day'.

197 J

Andrei Rubliiv released in the ussR.

1972.

Solaris released, receiving two major prizes at Cannes.

1973

Writes the screenplay 'Ariel (Light Wind)' with Fridrikh Gorenshtcin. Shoots Mirror.

'974

Mirror completed and approved for limited release.

1975 1977

Writes the screenplay 'Hoffmanniana'. Premiere in February of 1-/amlet ar rhe Thc:tl'rc of the Lenin Komsomol (Moscow). Begins shooting Stalker.

1978

Writes the screenplay 'Sardor' with Aleksandr Misharin.

•979

Stalker relcaS<.-d.

Shoots Sacrifice in Swcclcn. December, diagnosed with lung cancer. Edits Sacrifice from hospital bed with Michaf Lcszczyfowski. Ar Cannes receives three major pdzes for Sacrifice. 29 December, dies in a Paris clinic. Buried 3 January 1987 at the cemetery of Sainr-Gcncvievc-de-Bois in Paris.

•

Receives three major prizes for Stalker at Cannes. Writes screenplay for Beware, Snakes! Mother dies on s October.

1980

Named 'People's Anist of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic'. In March, speaks ar All-Union Meetin!\ of Cinema Workers (Moscow). s Spends April-September in lraly :u work wirh Tonino Guerra on rhc creenplay 'Nostalghia'.

1982

Time of Travel made with Tonino Guerra for Italian television.

1983

Nostalgbia released. Ar Cannes receives rhrcc major prizes, including a joinr awMd for best direction wirh Robert Bresson (for Argent). In May is sacked from Mosfilm for un:nuhorizcd absence. Stages Boris Godrmov at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden).

1984

10 July, :11 :1 news conference in Milan declares that he will nor rcwrn to the USSR.

Speaks on rlu: Apocalypse and conducts public discussion at rhe St .James's Fesrivnl (London). Begins work on SaCI'i(ice.

226 I chronoiOI\)'

chronology I 22.7

Tarkovsk)• (pp. 42.-6) and I� Acbms Sime)•'s comparison of the two (p. 97). 19

Sec, for instance, Srcvcn Dillon, The Solaris Effect: Art and l'olitics in Contemf>OI"t11)' American Film (Austin, TX,

2.oo6).

20 J\•lark B. N. Hansen New Philosophy (or New Media (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 2.9. ,

2t

References

Ibid. p. ,

1:

J

IO.

The Sysrem

Andrei T.1rkovskii, 'lmcrv'iu gn7.etc "Pur' k ckmnu�', in Andrei Tarkovskii: Nachalo. . . i puti (rro>-pomi/l(miia, intem'iu, lektsii, slllt'r), cd. M. Rostotsbin (Moscow, 1994)

p. JS. :!.

N. Nikitin, 'Diia mcnia kino- cro sposob dostich' kakoi-ro istiny', Sovetskaia Rossiia {3 April r988), p. 4·

In rhe rcxr I usc

n

simplified version of rhe Libr:try of Congress translirenrrion (rhus

Tarkovsky), bur in rhc References, for rhc sake of :tccuracy, I usc a more precise version of Libr:rr)' of Congress (rhus Tarkovskii). For published translations in the References I follow the spellings given i n rhe puhlicarions.

3

Rostisbv l ucncv r , 'Kororyi mal'chik -eto Andrei', Andrei Tarkovskii: Nachalo. . . i pmi, p. r6.

r 'Percscchcniia',or, pp. 4.l7• 444-5. 4 Alcksandr Godon,

5 Rosrislav lurcnev, 'Kororyi mal'chik - cro Andrei', p. 2.1.

6

Discussion of Ste11mrolleraud Violin (6January 196r); RG,\1.1 2453+' 339, p. s. ln the subtitles ro rhc Facers DVI) of Ste11mroller and Violin Bakhmct'eva is misidentified as

lmroducrion: Elcmcnrs of Ci ncma

the author of rhc original story; in faa the screenplay was the original work of T.1rkovsky and Konchalovsky.

1

A. T:rrkovskii, 'Eto odtcn' vazhnu', Litemltmlflifl gttzeta (wSeptcmber 1 96�), p. 1.

�

F1·ed1·ic Jameson, "111c CI'OfJOiiticfll 1\esrbeti<:: Cinema and SIHICC in tbe

World Sysrem 9

Ibid., p. r +

10

Ibid., p. 2.9.

( 1977). p. 2 1 .

IT

Ibid., 1>- 6 1 .

.); unpaginared. In Sol'etskii (i/'m, no. 1 1 ( 196:1

r2

Ibid., p. .j6.

6 1:-,rkovskii, 'Ero ochcn' vazhno', p. 1 .

Andrei Tarkovskii. 'lsbr' i dobivar'sia', Sovctskii eknm, no. 17 ( 1962), p. 20.

S Sl :woj Zizek, 'l11c ·nting from I nner Space', in Sexuation, ed. Renata Saled (Durham, NC,

9

�nd

London, z.ooo), p. 2.42..

Aleksci German, '\lysok.tia pro>IOta·, lskussnro kino, no. 6 ( 1990), p. roo.

12

l bid. p. 49· 14 Ibid., pp. 53, 61.

JJ 15

,

Ibid., p. 66.

1 6 Ibid., p. 67. 17

cs

Richard Taylor 111d l:m Ch ri•ric, cd�, The Film Factory: Russian ami So11iet Ciuemtl in

• s ; rr�nsl:uion adjusrcd according ro: Stemnroller mrd Violin, RCALI �453·5-1 1 16, p. 5· 18 Steamrollt•rmrd Violin, IIGAI.I 2.JH·5·1 1 16, p. 1..

/)ocmnents, 1896-19j9 (London and New York, 1 994) , p. 3' 1 .

19

On this term and i1s applic:nion ro Tarkovsky, sec Gilles Dcleuzc, Cinem11 11: The

10 Boris l'.tstcrnak, Solmmie sociJineuii '' piati tomakh {Moscow, 198?-92), ''ol. 5 , p. 78. 11

34·

Ibid., p. 21.

3 Vadim l usov, in Chto takoe it�zyk kino? (Moscow, 1989), p. 235· 4 Quored from Ncia Zorbia, '\lozvrashchenie v budushchee', So11etskii (il'm, no. 4

7

Discussion of Steamrollermul Violin (6 .January 1961); RGA1.1 2453-4-1339, pp. 30,

8

(l�loomingron, IN, and London, 1992), p. 100.

5

7

.

a (Lcningmd, 19�7), p. 297· B. t\1. Eikhenb:llllll, /.itt•r,tttmr: ti'Oriia, kritikt1. polemik

Time-Image (Minneapolis,

I.J Adri:111 l'iOJrO\'Sk)', 'Tow:mls a ·nteory of Film Genres·, in 11 Je Poetics o( Cinema, ed.

MN,

1986). 1r:ms. Hugh Tomlinson :md Roberta Galcta,

p. 75·

Richard T:tylor, in Russian /'()etics in 7"rtmslation, no. 9 ( 1982), pp. !)0-106.

20

c:�

14

Sec Alexander Baksh)', The 1't1th o( the Modem Russian Stage and Other Essays

��

11'1111 s Childhood do�sier (9 September 1959-20 i\pril r963); RGAU 2453-4-35 r, p. 83.

15

(13osron, �'"· 1 9 1 8). Vikror Shklovskii, ·o kvarti rc

Sec :1lso Rostisl:w lurenev, 'Kororyi mal'chik -ere Andrei', p. 2 1 . H ll'mt 's Ch ildhood dossier, p. 1 15.

"r.hFa"',

ZIJili-/.Jyli (Moscow, 1966) p. 459·

16

Yuri Tyny:IIIO\', 'The Fnnd:llnemals of Cinema', TIJc l'oetics of Cinema, pp. j2.-J.

17

Ibid .. p. �o.

1S

Robert Kelly 'Nores on 1\rakha�;c', Chicago Review xr.vu/4 and XLVIII!. (Wimer 2001

2..) :1.4

.

and Sprint: .!.00.!.), pp. 16�-70; in rhe same volume sec also l�rakhagc's memoir of

25

li; rransl:trion adjustecl according to: llGAI.I 245J.).1 1 16, p. 13.

I bid., p. 1 16. This is, of course, i nacclll':tl"c; Ta rkovsky had just rumcd ten in jull' 194 1 . \( Karinov, R esolution on the screcnfllfly of lvmt s CIJildiJood ( 1 8 July 196r); rtG,\1.1 Z-453·5·698, p. 57·

l11an s

CIJildhood dossier, p. 62. references I

229

z.6

2.7 z.S 2.9 30

3r

3z.

Ibid., p. 55· Ibid., p. 33· Vario us versions exisr of rhc final sequence, with and wirhour rhc charred corpses (which arc idenrified as rhose of Coebbcls' family). Sr:mlc)· Eichelbaum, '5. E's Film Fcstiv:�l Winners arc Named', in San Francisco E...:aminer (r4 Nm·embcr 196z.), p. r, z.z.. Cordon, Peresechenija', p. 446. 'The Russian Movie Makers', San Fmncisco Chronicle (3 November r96z.), p. 17. ltm11's Childhood dossier, p. r3G (the emire rcporr covers pp. u4-3 S). Tr:mscript of a meeting of the A rtistic Council of the [Si xth Creative! Unit to dis�uss the litcraq• scenario Beginnings a11d Ways by A. S. Konchalovsky and A. A. hrkovsky (z.S April 1963); RGALI 2.453 ·5 . J 272, p. G7; cf. L. I. Laz
Kniga vospomina11ii (Moscow, 2.005), p. 2.45.

33 Transcript of a meeting of rhe Arrisr ic Council of the [Sixth Creative! Unit to

discuss the rhird version of the lirerary scenario Begi1111ings and Ways by A. S. Konchalovsky and A. A. Tarkovsky (3 October t963); RGAU 2.453·5·1275, pp. 5 1 , Go. 34 Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky, Begin11ings and Ways, r 963; RGALI 2.453-4- n8, p. ii. 35 Ibid., p. vi. ;6 ·rr:. nscripr of a meeting of the Artistic Council of the [Sixth Cre:uivel Unit ro discuss the li terary scenario Begilmi11gs and Ways by A. S. Konchalovsky and A. A. T.1rkovsky (28 Aprii 19G3); RGAL1 2453·5·l272., p. 69. 37 Ibid., p. 13.

1\rlinutes of meetings of the Artistic Council of the Sixth Creative Unit, r9G4; 1\GAt.l 2.453+2.469, pp. 3-4, 19, Go. 39 A. Tarkovsky, Repon on a tri p to lr:tly b)' a member of the jury for the 14!11

38

Venice Film Festival for Children's Films (29 November 1964); RGALI !944·1 J.1.19, p. 5· 40 Discussion of 'Poinr of View', screcnpla)• b)• C. Sh paliko'' and A. Konchalovsky, 25 june 1963; RGAU 2453+2.141, pp. 42, .p. 41 Transcript of a meeting of the Artistic Council of the [Sixth Creative! Unit ro discuss the third ''crsion of the litemry scenario Beginnings tmd Ways by A. S. Konch:1lovsky and A. A. Tarkovsky (3 Ocmbcr 1963); RG1\I.I 2.453·5·11.75• p. 18.

Zapreshchennye (il'my: dokumenty. Svidetel'stva. Kommentarii (Moscow, 1993),

pp. 7-62. 53 Rosrisbv lurene''• 'Kororyi mal'chik - eto And ri' , p. 2.r. 54 Fomin, 'Andrei Rublev', p. 61 . 5 5 Solaris dossier pt '; Mosfilm 8.1888.1 sz., p. 89. e

56

Safaris dossier pt 1, pp. 1 , 2..

57 Di scussion of Safaris in the General Directorate of Mosfilm ( n January £972.); Mosfilm 8.1780. r 42, p. ro.

58 A. Tatkovsky, 'Proposal for adapring Smnist:tw Lcm's novel Safaris for the sc1·ccn'; Solaris dossier pt 1 , p. z..

59 'List of COI'I'Cctions ro be made ro Safaris'; 1\GALI 4·2944 .2201 , pp. 58-9; cf. Safaris d ossier pt. J, Mosfilm 8.r89Q.152., pp. 42.-3. 6o Letter tO N. T. Si zo (4 February 1972.); Safaris dossier pt 3, pp. 42-3. v

61

L1z.1rcv, Zapiski pozhilogo cbeloveka, pp. 42.3-4-

62 Discussion in rhe Artistic Council (r7 May 1974); Mirror dossier, Mosfilm r0.520, p. .j2. G3 Discussion of Mirror (24 july 1974); Mirror dossier, p. 5 3· Discussion of i\llirror in rhe General Din:ctorarc.: of Mosfilm with the participation of Coskino ( 12. July 1974); Mirror dossier, p. 57; sec MJ 404, 4 10. 65 Discussion of Mirror in the General Di1·ectorarc of 1\ll osfilm with the participation of Coskino, 12 july 1974; Mirror dossier, pp. 66-'7; sec al�o: Su�esrions for corrections in editing; ibid., pp. 72-3; sec A!J 408. 66 Pbn for making the correcrions (3oScptembcr 1974); Mirror dossier, p. 79; RGIILI 64

2.944+2719, )lp. 105, 107; .�1/ 413, 415. 67 Resolution on the screenplay Stalker by A. and 13. Strugarsky (7 October 1977); Mosfilm, unnumbered file on Stalker, p. rS. GS List of corrections ro Stalker (2.9 April 1979); RGALI 2.944..H48o, p. 97· 69 Sec 'Margarita Terckhova', Sovetskii (il'm, no. 1 1 ( 1976) 70 Cordon, 'J>ercsccheniia', p. 457· 71

42. Ibid., p. 63. 43 Ccorgii Kunits)•n, 'K isrorii Antlreitt RttiJii;ll(f', OT, pp. 414-17. 44 1hnscript of a meeting of the Artistic Council of rhc [Sixth Creative! Unit to discuss the literary scenario Beginni11gs a11tl Ways b)• A. S. Konchalovsky and A. A. Tarkovsky (1.8 April 1963); llGALI 2.453·5· 12.72., p. 66. 45

A. Tarkovsky, 'Proposal for adapting Sranistaw Lem's novel Solaris for the screen';

Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Ia ostalsia sovetskim khudozhnikom', cd. Fcliks Medvcdev, . Ogonek no. 21 (1987), p. 27; see also T 1rkovsky's letter co lurii Andropov, Ccncml Secretary of rhc Com munist Party at rhe time, dated 6 February 1984 and published i n Soversbc11no sekret110, no. 3 (•990), p. 1 4

2: Space

Ibid. p. 67. ,

46 Ibid. p. 71. 47 Ibid., p. 71. 48 Ibid. , p. 72. 49 Tr.m.cript of discussion of the directOr's

r , 'Andrei Tarkovsky's Mtulonntt dc/ l'arto', Revue canatlien11c 1 James Macgillivay

,

d'etutles cim!matogmpbiques 2. (Autumn 2.002), I>· 95·

cre n

s

e play for A. Tarkovsky's Andrei RuiJ/iiv,

24 August 1964; RGAU 2453·5· 1294, pp. 1 1-12. CuriouS!)\ Tarkovsky acknowledged 'I don't like long pictures' (ibid., p. 5-f). 50 Ibid., p.

l!.

51

Ibid., p. 35· 5 1. Rohcrt Bird, A11drei Rubliiv (London, 2004); V. Fom in 'Andrei Rublcv', l'olka, no. 2, ,

�JO

I references

z. }olm Constable's Correspondence. VI: Tbe Fisbns, cd. R. B. lkckerr (Ipswich, r968), p. 77· 3 Alcksei German, 'Vysokaia prostota', lskusst110 kino, no. 6 (1990), p. roo. 4 Andrei T:�rkovskii, 'Mezhdu dvumia fil'mami', lskusstvo kino, no. r r (r9G2.), p. 8J. 5 Ibid., p. Sz.. 6

Ibid. v

7 Ziick, 'The Thi11g from Inner Space', Se.\·11ation, cd. Renata Saled (Durham and references I

z.

31

London, .woo) p. 234. 8 Raymond Bellour, L.'Entre-lmages z: Mots, Images (Paris, 1999), p. r 9o. 9 Zizek, 'The Thing from Inner Space', pp. 237-9· JO Andrei Tarkovsky, 'Pered novymi zadachami', lskusstvo kino, no. 7 (1977), p. n8; cf. ST 200. '

22. 1-3 24 25

Andrei Tarkovskii, 'M.czhdu dvumia fil'mami', lskusstvo Kino, no. u (1962.), p. 84. jacques Ranciere, Film Fables, trans. Emiliano Battista (Oxford, 2006), p. n9. lusov, in Chto takoe iazyk kino?, p. 236. Tarkovskii, 'Mezhdu dvumia fil'mami', p. 84.

4: Word and Image 3: Screen r Bela Balasz, Der Geist des Films (Fmnfurr, 2001), p. 84. 2 Akira Mjzuta Lippit, 'The Dearh of an Animal', Film Quarterly , LVVI (Fall 2ooz.), p. 14. 3 Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye (Princcron, NJ, I992), p. 15. 4 Andre Bazin, What is Cinema?, ed. Hugh Gra)', foreword by Jean Renoir (Berkeley, CA, r967), vol. 1, p. 107. 5 M. Dolinskii and S. Cherrok, 'Vck piamadtsat)'i - vek dvadtsaryi', S011etskii ekran, no. 3, (1966), p. n. 6 Cited in Luis Buiiuel, An Uns[Jeakable Betmyal: Selected Writings, rrans. Garrett . 128. White (Berkeley, CA, 1995), pp. LO), 7 Leonardo, On l'ainting, cd. Marrin Kemp (New Haven, CT, 1989), pp. L)-r6; cf. Roberr Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer, trans. jonathan Griffin (Copenhagen, r997), pp. 22-3. 8 Andrei Tarkovskii, inrroduction ro lonino Guerra, [poems], lnostmmmia literatum, no. 7 ( 1979), p. l89. 9 Donaras Banionis, Ia s detstva khotel igmt', trans. lolita Dimbialirc (M.oscow, 2006), 10 ll

12.

J3 14 15 16

p. 174· Akksandr Solzhenirsyn, 'Fil'm o Rubleve', l'ublitsistika: v trek/1 tomakh (larosbvl', 1997), vol. 111, p. 1 67. Sec rhc inrerview with Vadim lusov on rhc supplemenrary disk of Andrei Rubliiv, I)VO, Krupnyi pian, 2.004. Maxim Gorky, 'The Lumicre Cinemarograph (Extracts)', in The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, .1 896-1939, eel. Rich:u·d Taylor and Ian Christie (London and New York, 1994), p. 25; Russian text in Maks im Gor'kii, Ob iskusstve: Sbomik sttllei i otryvkov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1 940), p. 5.1 . Andrei Bclyi, Arabeski (Moscow, 19n), p. '4· Viacheslav Ivanov, Sobmnie sochinenii, 4 vols (Brussels, 1971-87), vol. 11, p. 96. Viacheslav Ivanov, Selected Esst�ys, trans. Roberr Bird, ed. Michael Wachtel (Evanston, 2001), pp. 104-5; Ivanov, Sobmnie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 96. Alexander Bakshy, 'Scn:en Musical Comedy', The Nation, vol. 130 no. 3370 (5 February 1930), pp. 158, 160.

17 Alexander Bakshy, 'The M.ovic Scene: Notes on Sou nd and Silence', Theatre Arts Monthly Xlllh (13 Febru:Jr)' 1929), p. 107. J 8 Sergei Eisenstein, 'The D)•n:unic Square', in Selected Writings, vol. .I , eel. and trans. Richadr Taylor (London, 1 988), p. 208. 1 9 Dclcuzc, Cinemll-z: The Time Image, p. 1 25. 2.0 Vadim lusov, in Chto takoe iaz,yk kino? ( Moscow, 1989), p. 236. 2 1 ln lrma Raush, ed., 'Andrei Tarkovskii: Odin god zhizni', Kinostsenarii, no. 4 ( 199.1), p. '178.

232. I references

J

Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Ia nikogda ne stremilsia byt' aktual'nym', Forum, no. ro (r.985), pp. 2.27-)6.

2

Vida T. Johnson and Graham Petrie,

3 4 5 6

7 8

The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue

(Bioomingron, IN, 1994), p. 253. 1� A. Florenskii, lkonosttls (l'vloscow, 1995), p. 95 · Ibid., p. I35· Ibid., p. w1. Ibid., pp. to4-5. Ibid., p. 104. Andrei Tarkovskii, '[ Kogda fil'm okonchenJ', untitled contribution,

in Kogda (il'm okoncben: Govoriat rezhissery 'Mos(i/'ma' (lvloscow: lskussrvo, 1964), p. 170.

9 Ibid., pp, 170-7 1 . 1 0 RGALI 2453·). t 272, p. 41; 2453 ·5 ·1294, p. 44· a: v trekb tomakh (laroslavl', J 1 Aleksandr Solzhenirsyn, 'Fil'm o Rublcvc', l'ublitsistik 1997), vol. 111, p. 162. 1 2 1 am grateful for the help of Farida Tche1·kassova and Kagan Arik in identifying and rranslaring rhc Turkic speech in episode 7 of Andrei Rubliiv (episode 6 in 7he l'assion '

according to Andrei). Andrei Tarkovskii and Andrei Konchalovskii, 'Andrei Rublcv', lskusstllo kino, 5 ( t,964), p. 138. 14 Oleg Bclyavsky, 'The Filming of Andrei Rublyov', Soviet Film, 5 ( 1,966), p. 18. 1 5 Arscnii Tarkovskii, Sobrtmie sochinenii. Tom pemyi. Stikhot110reniia (Moscow, 19,9 r ) I>· 302. I6 Ibid., p. 344 13

·

1 i Andrea Truppin, 'And Then There Was Sound: The Films of Andrei T:ll'kovsky',

Sound TbeOt)'ISomull'mctice (london, 1992), p. 235. 1 8 Solzhcnirsyn, 'Fil'm o Rublcvc', p. 1. 57.

5:

Srory

lurii Kublanovskii, 'lnst>iratsiia vdokhnoveniia: Anch·ci Tarkovskii pcred

Zhertvoprinosheniem', Ne.uwisimaia gazeta (29 Dcccmbc1· 1992), p. 7· 2 Alcksandr Lipk<)V, 'Srrasri po Andreiu', l.itemtumoe obozrenie, 9 ( 1988), p. 78. 3

Minutes of a meeting of rhe Artisric Council of rhc Fourth Crearivc Unir ( 1 7 April 1974), tvlosfilm 10.)1-0, p. 1.6.

Razmyshlenie o geroe, dir. A. 13urimskii, Lcnfilm, 1974 (1\GAKI'D no. �4862, reel 2.). 5 Minutes of a mccring of rhc Arrisric Council of rhc Fourrh Crcarivc Unit ( r 7 April 1 974) Mosfilm 1o.po, p. 15.

4

,

references I 233

6 'Obsuzhdenie klk "Zerkalo" na khudsovetc ob"cdineniia' (17 April r974), Mosfilm 1.

10. )20, pp. 34-5.

(3 April 1988), p. 4· Andrei Tarkovskii,
7 RGALI 2944-4-2.719, p. So. 8 Aleksandr Misharin, '0 druge', Kinostsenarii, no. 2. (1988), p. H7. 9 Tanscript r of 2.7 April l973i Mosfilm t0-519·34, p. 37· ro Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Pered novymj zadachami', lskusstvo kino, no. 7 ( 1 977), p. n6. n Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Strcmlius' k maksimal'noi pravdivosti', Kinostsenarii, no. 5,

(1971), p. sr. 3 Mariia Chugunova, 'Kamen' lezhit u zhasmina, pod etim kamnem klad, otets sroir 1.1<1 dorozhkc. Bclyi, belyi den', Sovetskii fi/'m, no. 3 (1974), p. 17. 4 Discussion ar rhe Artistic Council (17 May 1974); Mosfilm 10.)2.0, p. 42. 5 Ibid., p. 43·

(2oor), p. 124. 12. Andrei Tarkovskii, 'My delaem fil'my', Kino (Vilnius), no. 10 (1981), p. 16. 13 V. l. Fomin, ed., 'Andrei Tarkovskii - neosushchcstvlcnnoe', Kinouedcheskie zapiski,

6 Discussion of Mirror a t the Arrisric Council of the [Fourth Creative) Unit (17 April 1974); Mosfilm ro.sz.o, p. 37· 7 A. Tarkovskii, 'Rczhisscr i zritel': Problema kontakra', ed. 0. Surkova, Molodoi kommtmist, no. 6 (1974); cf. OS 137, 169. 8 See V. Fomin, 'Bakh zvuchir kak-ro ne po·soverski', Nezavisimaia gazeta (8 April

110. I I (T97I), p. IOJ. ''4 Tarkovskii, 'Stremlius' k maksimal'noi pravdivosti', p. 124. r5 LipkO\� 'Suasti po Andrciu', p. 79· 16 Ibid., p. So. 17 N. Abramov, 'Dialogs A. Tarkovski m o nauchnoi fanrasrikc na ekrane', Ekmn, rS I9 w

21 2.2.

23

I970-I97r. Obozrenie ki11ogoda (Moscow, 1971), p. 163. Ibid., p. 164. Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Mezhdu dvumia fil'mami', p. 83. Ibid., p. 82. Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Ero prider na ekran', Litemtumaia gazeta (I December 1962), p. Mosfilm 6. r973 !.28. A. Tarkovsky, Proposal to adapt Sranis1'<1w Lent's Solaris (8 October 1968); Mosfilm S.r888.152, pp. 1-2.

Alcksandr M.isharin, '0 druge', Kinostsenarii, no. 2. ( 1988) , p. n6. 10 A. A. Tarkovskii, 'V bescdc s Gcrmanom Kherlingkhauzom', Kinozavedcheskie zapiski, no. 14 (I992.), p. 41. 1 1 Roberr Bird, Andrei Rublifu (London, 2.004), pp. r8-2.2.. r 2. Andrei Tarkovsk)• wirh Zbignicw Podgorec, 'Ziemska moral nose w kosmosie, czyli "Solaris" na ckranc,' Tygodnik. l'owseclmy, no. 42 (1972.), p. 3· 1 3 A. Tarkovskii, 'Zachcm proshloe vstrcchaetsia s budushchim?', p. 98; lskusstvo kino no. . n (1971), cf. In Irma Raush, cd., 'Andrei Tarkovskii: Odin god zhizni', Kinostsenarii, no. 4 (1991), p. I75· 14 A. Tarkovskii, 'Zachem proshloe vsrrechactsia s budushchim?', p. roo. 15 Transcript of Artistic Council meeting, 2.7 April 1973; Mosfilm J0-519·34· p. 37· 16 The footage is taken from The SitmsiJ l'ush (Forsirovanie Sivasha, 1944; RG,\Kl'D nos 9r58, ro842), shot br Andrei Sologubov. T 7 RGAKFO nos 25045, p86o. 9

r:.

24 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Dosroianic segodniashncgo dnia', Sovetskii ekra11, no. 8 (1967). 2. 5 Stanistaw Bcrci, Rozmowy za Sta11islmvem Lemem (Krakow, 1987), p. 1342.6 Sbvoj Zizek,'ll1e Thing from Inner Space', Sexuation, cd. Rcnara Sa led (Durham and •

London, woo), p. 2.34. 2.7 A. Tarkovskii, 'Opyt na budushchcc', Voprosy litemttoy, no. 1 (1973), p. 101. 2.8 Minutes of an artistic meeting, 22. October 1971; Moslilrn 8.J.89o. I_52., p. r2. 2.9 A. Tarkovskii, 'Zachem proshloe vstrcchaetsia s budushchim?', lskussltiO kino, no. n (1971), p. lOT. JO Ibid., p. TOO. 3 1 Abramov, 'Dialog s A. Tarkovskim', p. r65. 32 Stanistaw Lcm, Solaris, t·r·ans. .Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox (London, 1 970), pp. 156-7. 3 3 l.bid., pp. 1 r t, ns, 11.434 Cf. Viachcslav Ivanov, 'Ancient Terror', Selected Essays, rrans. Robert Bird, cd. Michael Wachtel (Evanston, 2001), pp. 144-62. 35 Lcm, Solaris, p. r84. 36 Tarkovsky, 'Proposal . . .' (8 Ocrobcr 1968); 1vloslilm 8. 1888. rp., p. 2.. 37 Tarkovskii, 'Zachcm proshloc vsrrechaersia s budushchim'', lskusstvo Kino, no. r r (•971), p. lOT.

1992), p. 5·

Discussion of Mirror in rhc General Directorate wirh the parriciparion of Goskino ( 12. July 1974); Mosfilm ro.52o, p. 68. 1 9 Discussion of Mirror (2.4 June 1974); Mosfilm lo.sw, p. 54· 2.0 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'lskar' i dobivat'sia', p. 2.0. 2.1 Sec rhe conn·acr (dared 1· Februar·r 1974); Moslihn.ro.po, p. 4· 18

22 Transcript of a mecring of the Artistic Council of rhc Fourrh Crcarivc Unit (r7 April 1974); Mosfilm ro.52o, p. ·rs. 2.3 Mosfilm, ro.po, p. 35. 2.4 Olcg Aronson, Metakino (Moscow, 2.003), p. Z43·

2. 5 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Edinomyshlcnnik prczhdc vsego', Sovetskie klmdozlmiki tealm i kino 75 (Moscow, 1977), p. r8r:.

7: Sensorium Transcript of a meeting of the Arrisric Council of rhe Studio (30 Ma)' 1979); Mosfilm r6.r2.. !7),p. r.S. 2. Andrei Tarkovsk)', 'Pcrcd nov)•mi zadacharui', lskusst110 Kino, no. 7 ( 1 997), p. r r6; cf. ST 189. 3 Solaris: literary screenplay on rhe novel b)• Sranisl'aw Lcm (3rd version, 1'969); Mosfilm 1.

6: Imaginary ,

N. Nikirin, 'Diia mcnia kino: cto sposob dostich' kakoi-ro isrin)•', Sc}/le/:skaia Rossiia

2.34 I references

references I

23 5

8.1886.1)2.. p. 8 1 . 4 Ibid., p. 83.

Oeleuze, Cinema-2: The Time Image, tr:Jns. Hugh Tomlinson and Roben Calera (Minneapolis, .\tN, 1986), p. 172. 6 N. Nikitin, 'Oiia mcnia kino- cro sposob dosrich' kakoi-ro istiny', Souetsknia Rossiia, 3 April 1988, p. -1·

33 Mosfilm uo. l2..13JL 34 Truppin, 'And Then There Was Sound', pp. 243, 245·

>

7 Tarkovsk)', 'l'crcd nO\')•mi 7.1clach:uni', p. 1 r8.

'ikirin, 'Diia menia kino: cto sposob dostich' bkoi-to istiny', p. 4; And rei Tatkovskii, 'Ncl'zia vcrit' v buclushchce, esli ne verish' v scbia', eel. Aleksandr Lopu khin . Mosko11skie no11osti ( •s February 1987), p. 11. 9 Andrei Tarkm·skii, 'M)• dcbcm fil'my', Kino (Vilniu s) no. 10 (1981), p. 16. ro Resolu tion on the cn.'Cnpb)• Stalker by A. and B. Srrugatsky (7 October l97il; 1\losfilm, unnumbcrccl file on Stalker, p. r8. Ta rkovsk)', 'l'crccl novymi zadachami', p. 118. u 1 2 Nikilin. 'Oiia mcnia kino- cto sposob dosrich' kakoi-to istiny', p. 4· 8

r Arkadii Strug:nskii , 'Kakim ia ego znal', Ekrnn 'S9 (Moscow, r989), p. 8. s dosrich' kakoi-ro isriny', Souetsknin Rossiia, 2 N. Nikirin, 'Diia menia kino- cto spoob 3 April 1988, p. -1· 3 Tarkovskii, 'V bcscdc s Germanom Khcrlingkhauzom , Kinouwedcheskie wpiski, no. q ( t992.), p. -17· 4 Tony l\lirchcll, 'Tarkovsk)• in Italy', Sight nnd Sound 1.11/ t (\\:ljmer t982-3), p. 55· 5 \ljvian Sobchack, Tbe Address of tbe Eye (Princeton, Nl, 1992.) , p. 21. 6 jon:tthan Rosenbaum, 'Inner Space (Tarkovsky's Solnris)', Movies ns Politics (Berkeley, '

,

Ci\,

13 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Bcsccla o rsvcrc', in Leonid Kozlov, f>roizucdenie uo uremeni

7

(Moscow, 2.005), p. 436. q

8: Time

2 1 May 1964; 1\Gi\1.1 2.944-4-79), P·

:u

1. 1

9 John Higgins, 'Spccrade Crystallized imo llmcr Drama', Tbe Times (31 October ' 98J) .

broadc:1st of 8 July 1990, Gosrclcrndiofond OOK·uo46. Fo1· opposing views of T:1 1kovsk)"s n·carmcnr of c,·owds, sec John w��·,·ack, 'Boris

.10 V:1lerii Gcrgicv, radio

1.6 W:1ltcr Bcnj:unin, S�tll'rted Writings, cd. Howard Eiland and Michael W. .Jennings,

Godunov', Opem (jalnl:u·y 19S4), pp. 9 2 3 ; Geoffrey Norris, 'Boris Godunov',

vol. J (Cambridge, "'''• 2002.), p. 1 19.

-

1 7 Tarkovskii, 'lkscda o tsvcrc p. 43 r .

Tbe Musical Times, ..:xxv/ 1 6 9 1 , (Janua ry 1985), p. 35·

••

2.0 21 2.2

2.3

Ibid., pp. 43 1-2.. Ibid., p. 43 L Ibid., p. 433· Ibid. p. -!33· Ibid., p. 434· Owe s,•cnsson's commcms, made on Tv for 'The School of Sound Seminar', arc cited :1ccording to: WW\\�filmsound.orglowcsvcnsson, last accessed 17 May 2002..

2.4 The broadcast i� preserved :11 Gosrclcradiofond (Moscow) D·73741 . My acconm of Tarkovsky's work is based mostly on ;\leksandr Shercl', Audiokul'tum xx

Paul Griffiths, 'A Sc:m:hlij:lll' on Mob Violence: Boris Godunov', The Times (2 November 1983), p. 1 o. r 2 April FirzL)•on, 'He:tring and Nor Hc:1 ri n�-:', Times l.irernry Supplement (18 November u

I 98 J), p. I 28 I . 1 3 john Gillen, '13uris Godunov', Sight and Sound, LJII/1 ( 198J), p. 6.

Irina Brown, radio broadcast of S July 1990, Gostclcradiofond DOK·1 1046. ' 5 Alex Ross, 'Mct:uuorphosis'. New Yorker (9 October 2006), p. 90. '-I

9: Shor

ttekll: istoriitl, esteticbeskie znkonomemosti, osobemtosti ulimtiia nn nuditoriiu. Ocberki ( Mo�cow, 2004) pp. 5 1 1-33; ibidem. . 'Siovo ob Andree Tarkovskom',

1992, Gosrcl crad iofond 1111-1 1778.

25 z.G

2.7 28 29 30

3' 32

Nikita Mikhalko'' in Aleksandr Shere!', 'Siovo ob Andree T:trkovskom'. Shcrcl', Audiokul'tum, p. 521. In Irma Rau�h, eel., 'And rei Tarkovskii: Odin god zhizni', Kinostsennrii, no. -1 (199•). p. 17-1· Andrea Truppin. 'And Then There Was Sound', in Sound Tbeory, Sound !'metice, cd. Rick Altman (New York, 1992), p. 237· T:ui:ma K. Egorova, So11i1'1 Film Music: An 1-/istoricnl Sumt.-y, rrans. Tariana A. Ganf and Natalia ;\. E�tnnova (1\msrcrcbm, 1997) p. 235 · A. i\. Tarkovskii, in Kinozttlll'dcbe�kirzapiski, no. 14 (1992), p. 49· Tru pp in, 'And Then There Was Sound', p. 2.41.

F1·cdric .J:uncson, Tbe Gl'opolitical llestbl'tic: Cinema and Space in tbe Wlodd S)•stem (Bloomington, IN, and London, 1992), p. 92. 2_!6

I rcfcn.:nccs

In l rma lbush, cd., 'Andrei Tarkovskii: Odin god zhizni', Kinostsennrii, no. 4 (1991),

8 Margarita lcrckhova, 'Ob 1\ndrcc Tarkovskom', Tcatrnl 'naia zhizn·, :z. (1989), p. 1 J·

·

(1971), p. 99·

19

,

p. 175·

15 A. Tarkovskii, 'Zachcm proshloc vsrrcchacrsia s budushchim?', lskusstuo kino, no.

IS

1997) p. 282..

Gideon Bakhman, ·o prirodc nostal �-: ii' lskusstt'O kino, no. >- ( 1989), p. 1 36; M1 9-1· 2 Ibid p. I 32· r

'

,

.•

lurii Kubbnovskii, 'lnspiratsiia '·dokhncweniia: Andrei Tarkovski pcred Zhcrtuoprinoshrnicm' Nc�JIJ!isimaia .(!IIU!tll (29 December 1992.), p. 7. 4 Oleg Yankovsk), 'How We Shot the "Inextinguishable Candle" Episode for ) Nostalgbia'. www.a.:s.uc:1lgar)�ca/-mn mdsln osralghia.comn·hcTopics/Yankovsk' .hrml, accessed 12 Febru:t r)' 2004. J

'

5 G. M. Kozimsev, Solmmie sochin('nii 11 piati tonwkh, vol. 2 (Leningrad 19lh), 6

p.

367.

\( Fomin. 'Andrei Ruhli.!v,' l'olka, no. ::., Za{lrl'shchcnuye (il'my: /)okumeuty. S11idetel'sr'"· Komnwntarii (Moscow. 1993), p. -1'-

7 Andrei Ta1·kovskii, 'lmcrv'itl gazete "Pm ' k ck ranu'", Andrei TnrkrlJiskii: Nachalo . . . i 11utti (uospominaniia. intt•ru'iu. h•ktsii, star'i), cd . M. Rosrorsbi:1 (Moscow: VC:tK, 1994), p. Jli.

references I

237

Ibid.; cf. Aleksandr Lipkov, 'Strasri po Andreiu', Literatumoe obozre11ie, 9 (r988) p. 77· 9 Quoted from Sergei Eisenstein, 'Beyond the Shot', Selected Writings, vol. I (London, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1988), p. 140. 8

Ibid., p. 145· 11 Ibid., p. 140. Sergei Eisensrein, Selected Works, vol. 2: Towards a Theory of Montage, ed. Michael I2. Glenny and Richard Ta)•lor (London, 1991), p. 229; translation adjusted according ro: $. M. Eizenshtein, Monta�h. ed. Naum Kleiman (Moscow, 2000), p. 299. 13 Eisenstein, Towards a Theory of M.ontage, p. 229; Montazb, p. 299. 14 Andrei Tarkovskii, '[Vsesoiuznaia pereklichka kinematogralisrov]', lskusstvo ki110, no. 7 (1997) p. 5l· t 5 Andre Bazin, W hat. is Cinema?, ed. Hugh Gray, foreword by Jean Renoir (Berkele); CA, Los Angeles and London, 1967), vol. I , pp. 2.7, 49·

Filmography/Credits

r6 17 r8 19 20

r. Films directed by Andrei

IO

Ibid., p. 37· lusov, in Chto takoe kino? (Moscow, 1989), p. 237. Ibid., pp. 235-6.

Ibid., p. 236 Ibid., p. 237. 21 Ibid., p. 238. Slavoj Zizek, 'The Thing from Inner Space', Se:watio11, cd. Renata Sa led, (Durham 2.2 :md London, 2000), p. 233·

23 Ibid. 24 Oleg Beliavskii, 'Na s"emkakh fil'ma A11drei Rubliiv', Sovetskii (il'm, no. 5 (1966), p. 21; cf. Oleg Bclyavsky, 'The Filming of Andrei Rublyov', Soviet Fihn, no. 5 (1 966), p. 21. 2.5 Jacques lbncierc, Film Fables, trans. Emiliano Battisra (Oxford, 2.006), p. 11' 1.

10: Atmosphere

1 Sec Owe Svensson's comments at http://www.filmsound.org/owcsvensson, accessed 17

Tarkovsky

The Killers (Ubiitsy), 1956, 19 min. Black and white Pwduction Company: VGIK (All-Union Srare Institute of Cinematograph), Director: Marika Bciku, Aleksandr Gordon, Andrei Tarkovsky, Screenplay: Aleksandr Gordon, A. Tarkovsky, based on a srory by Ernest Hemi ngway, Photography: A. Rybin, A. Al'veres Starring lulii Fait (Nick Adams), Aleksandr Gordon (George), lurii Dubrovin (firsr cusromer), Valentin Vinogradov (AI), Vadim Novikov (Max), Andrei Tarkovsky (second customer), Vasilii Slwkshin (Ole Anclreson)

There Will Be No Leave Today (Segodnia uvol'n.en.iia ne budet), 1958, 47 min. Black and

white

May 2002, and rhe liner notes ro Ancient Swedish Pastoral J lusic, Caprice Records, \l

(CAP 21483).

2. Vadim lusov, 'Tarkovskii osralsia soboi', l.itemlllmaia Rossiia (2.2 April 1988), p. n . 3 Quored from Tamara Verina, 'Tarkovskii o Tarkovskom: pochri semeinyi razgovor', Kul't11m i zhizn , no. ro (1979), p. 2.3. 4 Andrei Tarkovsk); 'Percd nov)•mi zadachami', lsk�tsstuo kino, no. 7 ( 1' 997), p. 1 !7.

Production Company: The Training Studio of VGIK and the Central Television Smclio Producer: A. Ia. Koroshev, Screenplay: A. Gordon, I. Makhova, A. Tarkovsky Director: A. Gordon, A. Tarkovsk)', under rhe supervision of A. Zhigalko and E. N. Foss in rhc course of M. I. Romm, Assistant to Director: A. Kuptsova, Cameramen: L. Bunin, E. lakovlev, under the supervision of K. 1'vl. Vcnrs, Assistant to cameramen:

5

\( Ponamarcv, Composer: lu. Matskevich, Sound: 0. Polisonov, Art Director: S. Peterson,

1995

'

Ibid., p. u6. 6 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, eels Howard Eiland, 1vlichacl \Y/. Jennings and Gary Smirh, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA, •999), p. 51.0. 7 Transbrion :1dapted from Andrcy Platonov, So11/ [Dzban), rrans. Robcrr and Elizabeth Chandler and Ol�a Mcerson, wid1 jane Chamberlain, Olga Kouznetsova and Eric Naiman (London, 2003) pp. 8-9.

238 I references

Military cons ultant: Lieurcnanr-Coloncl l. I. Sklifus Starring 0. Borisov (Captain Galich), A. Aleksccv (Colonel Gvclesiani), I� Liubcshkin (Vcrshinin), 0. Moshkamscv (Vishniakov), V. Marenkov (V�sin), I. Kosukhin (Tsignadzc), L. Kuravlcv (Morozov), S. Liubshin (Sadovnikov), A. Smirnov (man in cowboy shirr), A. Dobronravov (Dr. Kuz'min), I. Golovina (Galich's wife)

239

Steamroller and Violin (Katok i skripka), 1961, 46 min. Colour (Sovcolour)

L. L1Zarev, Art Director: Evgen ii Chcrniacv, assisted by I . No,'Odcrezhkin and S. Voronkov, Special effects photography: Viacheslav Sc,·osr ianov, Special effects design: P. Safonov, Composer: Viachcsl:w OvchinnikO\•, Costumes: L 1 O\•i, •'-'1. A lxtr Baranovskaia, Sound: I. ZelcmS0\':1, Make-up: \� Rudi na, M. Aliaurd ino, $. Barsuko'l Advisers: Dr \� Pashuro, '

Production Company: .\losfilm (Crcarin: Uni1 for 1hc l'roducrion of Children's Films) Producer: A. Karetin, Director: Andrei Tarko,·>kr, Assistant Director: 0. Gcrrs, Script: Andron Konchalovsk>; Andrei TarkO\·sk)', Photography: Vadim lusov, Editing: L. Bmuzova Script editor: S. Bakhmcr'cva, Art Director: S. Agoian, Special effects photography: 13. Pl uzhni kov, V Scvost"ianov, Special effects design: A. Rudachenko, Conductor: E. Khachaturian, Music: Vi,tchcshv Ovchinnikov, Costumes: A. lvbrrinson, Sound: V Krachkovsky, Make up: 1\. 1\llak:tshov:1 -

Starring: Igor' Fomchenko (Sasha), Vladimir Zamansky (Scq;ei). Naral'ia Arkhangcl'sk:tia (girl), Marina Adzhubci (mot her) Supp oni ng cast: lura Brusser, Sl:wa Borisov, Sasha Vi10sbvs ky, Sasha II'in, Kolia Kozrrcv, Gena K liachkovsky, Igor' Korm•ikov, Zhenia Fcdchenko, Tania Prokhorov.t, A. ,\ l.lksimov.t, L. Scm cno,·a, G. Zhd.mova, t\1. Figner

Ivan's Childhood/My Name Is Ivan (Jvanovo detst110), 1962, 95 min. Black and white Production Company: Mosfilrn (Second Crearivc Unit Tim e'), Producer: G. Kuznetsov, Director : Andrei Tarkovsky, Assistant Director: G. Naranson, Scr eenp lay: Mikh:t il l'apava, Vladimir Bogornolov, based r>n rhc SIOr' ''lv:�n' hy V ladim ir Bogomolov, Photogmphy: Vadirn lusov, Editing: Liudmila Fciginova, An Director: Evgenii Cherni:1cv, Special effects photography: \( Sevnst 'ianov, Special effects design: S. ,\lukhin. Screenplay editor: E. Srnirnov,Conduc1or: E. Khachaturian, Composer: Viachc,Ja,. Ovchinnikov, Sound: I. Zclcni'0\',1, Make-u p: L l�askakova, Military adviser: '

)

Colonel G. Gonch:1ro,·

S1arring: Kol ia Burliacv (Ivan), Valc111in Zubko'' (Captain Kholin), E. Zharikov (Licurcn.un Galtsev), S. KryiO\' (Corporal K:Ha>onych), N ikolai Gri n 'ko (Gr innov) , V Mali:wina (Mash:1), Irina Tarkm•sk:tia (Ivan'; nlot hcr ), D. Mi limcn ko (old m:111 wid1 hen) Supporting cast: A. Mikhalkov-Konch:1lovsky, I. Savkin, V Marcnkov, Vera Mi rm ich

Andrei Rublcv, 1969 (ussR release 197 1 ) 185 min. ,

Origi na l

l'er·,ion: The l'assion according to Andr
min.

-

v

S. bmshchikO\•, M. Merrsalova

Starring: Anmol ii Solonitsyn (Andrei Rublcv), Ivan L:1pikov (Kirill), Nikolai Grin'ko (Daniii Chernyi ). Nikobi Scrgeev (Feofan Grck), Nikolai Burliacv (Boriska), lurii Nazarov (Grear Prince, linle Prince), Irma Raush ('Durochk:t' - The Fool), lu. Nikulin (P:1r.-ikci) , R. Bykov (lcs1cr), N. Grabbe (Stepan), M. Kononov (Foma), S. Kq•lov (Head Bdl­ foundcr) B. lkishcn:1liev (Mongol khan), B. M :�rysi k (l'cl'r), A. Obukho11 Volodia Titov Supporting cast: N. Glazkov (Efirn), K. AlcksandrO\I S. Bar·din, I. Bykov, G. Borisovsky, \� Vasil c,, Z. Vorkul', A. Tirov, V VolkO\\ I. Miroshnichcnko (Ma ry M agdelene), T. Ogorodniko a (M:tr)\ Modtcr of Christ) , N. Radolitskaia, N. Kulllzov (Old Mason), D. Orlo sky, V Gus'kOI\ I. Donskoi, I. Ryskulm1 T. Makarov, G. Sachevko, N. Sncgina A. Umu ral ie'l Sla\'3 Tsarcv r (:-larfa), G. Pokosky, ,

'

v

v

Solaris (Sofiaris), 1972, 169 min. Colour (Sovco lou r), Cincmascope Production Company: Jvlosfilrn, Production Supervisor: Vi:u.:heslav T.'lrasov Director: Andrei Ta rkov sky, Assistant Director: Yu. Kushncrev, assisted by A. Ides, L. T.'lrkovskaia, M. Chugunova, Intern Dirccror: N. M:um, Screenplay: Fridrikh Gorenslncin, Andrei "1!1rkovsky, based on t he novel So/nris by Srnnistaw Lcm, Photography: Vadim lusov, Ed i ti ng: L. Fciginova, Screenplay editors: N. Boiarova, L Lazarcv, Art

Director: Mikhail Romadin, Sound: Semen Litvinov, Camera operator: E. Slwedo,, assisrcd by hr. Ncvsky. V. Shmyga, Special effects: V Sc,"ost'ianov, Special effects design: A. Kl imenko, Composer: Ed uard Artcm'cv, additional music by J. S. Bach, Set design: S. G:wrilov, V Prokof'cv, Still photographer: V. Murashko, lighting: E. l':munono\', Costumes: Nelli Fomina, Make-up: V Rud ina, Advisers: Dr L. Lupichev, Dr I. Shklovsky, Sta rri ng: Nat:tl'ia Uonclarchuk (Hari), Don:��as Ban ion is (Kris Kd vin), Juri Ja rvel (Snaur) , Vladisl:w Dvorzhcrsky (Berton), Nikolai Grin'ko (f:1thcr), A naroli i Solonirsyn .

(Sarror·i us)

Supporting cast: 0. 1Sarrrc1 (mother), V Kc rdi num , 0. K i�.ilova (girl), T. Malykh, A. Misharin (chai rman nf debridi ng), B. Ogancsi:1 11, T. Ogoroclnikova (Ann:l), S. Sa rk isia n (Gib ar ian) lu. Semcnov, V Sra1sinsky, \( Sumenm•a, G. Tcikh ,

l!l.tck and whi1e and colour (Sovcolour), Cincm.1scopc

Production Company: :-loslilm (Sixth Crc.ui'e Unit of Writers and Cinema Worker,), Director: Andrei Tarko"sky. Producer: T.un a r.o Ol!orodnikova. Assistant Director:

Production Company: t\ losfilrn (Fourrh Creative Unit), Producer: E. Vaisbcrg Director: Andrei Ta rkov>ky, Assistants tO the director: L. Tarkovs b i:t, V Kharchcnko, M. Chugtmova, Assistam Director: lu. Kushncrcv, Screenplay: A lcksand r Misharin, Andrei T:�rkovsky. Poems: i\r;cJlii Tarkovsk y Director of photogmphy: Georgi i Rc1·bcrg, :� ssi sted by V lv:1nov, Cameramen: A. Nikobcv, I. Shr:tn'ko, Editing: 1.. Feiginova, Screenplay editors: N. 1\oi:l!'(w:t, L. l.:n:trcv, Art Di rccmr: Nikula i i)vil!uhsky, Special effects: ,

I. Pelrcw

lmern Dircc10r: B. Oganesian , Assistants to the director: A. Machcrct, M. Volovich, i\. Nikol.te1•, Script: And rei Mikha lkov-Knndlalov>ky, An dre i Tarkovsky, Director of photography: V:1dim lusov, Photography: V. Sci'O>I'ianov, :tssisrcd by L. Andria nov, R. Ruvinov 1'. Sudilin, Special effects design: E. Kor:tblc v assisted by T ls aeva, L Pcrrscv, Ediring: 1 .. Fciginova, T Egor)'chcv:�, 0. Shcvkuttcnko, Screenplay editors: N. 1\di:lcv:t, ,

.

��o

Mirror (Zerkafo), L974 (released 1975), 108 min. Colou r (Sovcolour)

I lilmograp hy

,

fil mography I 2� r

lu. Porapov, StiUs photographer: V. Murashko, Composer: Eduard Arrcm'ev, additional music by J. S. Bach, Giovanni Batisra Pergolcsi, Henry Purcell, Costumes: N. Fomina, Sound: Semen Litvinov, Make-up: V. Rudina, Lighting: \� Guscv, Set construction: A. Merkulov Starring: Margarita Terekhova (Mm·usia, Aleksei's morher/Natal'ia, Aleksei's wife), Filip lankovsky (Aleksei, age 5), lgnar Danil'tscv (Aieksei/lgnat, age 12), Oleg lankovsky (Aieksci's father), Nikolai Grin'ko (colleague at the prim shop), Alia Demidova (Liza), lu. Nazarov (military instructor), Anarolii Solonirsyn (doctor), lnnokenrii Smoknonovsky (voice of Aleksei, the narraror), Larisa Tarkovskaia (doctor's wife), Mariia Tarkovskaia (Aieksei's mother as rhe old woman) Supporting cast: Tamara Ogorodnikova (visiror), ln. Sventikov, T. Reshcrnikova, E. del Bosque, L. Co rrecher, A. Gmrierez, D. Ga•·da, T. Pames, Teresa del Bosque, Tatiana del Bosq ue

Stalker, 1979, Cinemascope

161

min. Colour (Sovcolour and Easrmancolor},

Production Company: Mosfilm (Second Creative Unit), Administrative support: T. Alcksandrovskai
Time of Trave l (Tempo di victggio),

t98o/r983, 63

m

in.

Colour

(Tcchnicolor}

Production Company: Genius sri/RAJ 2., Director: Andrei -�:�rkovsky, Screenplay: Tonino Guerra, Direcror of photography: Luciano Tovoli, Cameraman: Giancarlo Pancaldi, Editor: Franco Letti, Assistant Editor: Carlo D'AI.:ssandro, Sound: Eugenio Rondani, Mixing: R. Chcccacci, Music selection: Andrei Tarkovsky, General Organization: Franco Tcrilli, Interpreter: Lora lablochkin�1

242

I filmography

Nostalghia,

1983,

12.0 min. Colour (Tecltnicolor}

Production Company: Rere 2 Tv RM in association with Sovinfilm (ussR) for Opera Film (Rome), Executive Producer: Renzo Rossellini, Manalo Bolognini, Producer: Francesco Casari, RAI represented by: Lorenzo Osruni, Production Supervisor: l�ilippo Campus, Valentino Signorerti, Production Secretary: Eurizio di Salvatore, Editorial Secretary: lldc Muscio, Production Administrator: Nestore Bararella, Director: Andrei Ta rkovsk)� Assistants to the director: Norman Mozzaro, Larisa Tarkovskaia, Screenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky, Tenino Guerra, Italian editing: Cesare Noia, Director of photography: Giuseppe Lanci, Camera operator: Giuseppe De Biasi, Still photographer: Bruno Bruni, Editor: Erminia Marani, Amedee Salfa, Assistant Editor: Roberto Puglisi, Art Director: Andrea Crisami, Sets: Mauro Passi, Special effects: Paolo Ricci, Music by Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Ludwig von Beethoven, Claude DebuSS)� Music consultant: Gino Peguri, Costumes: Lina Nerli Taviani, Anna mode 68, Sound: Remo Ugolinclli, Dub mixing: Danilo lvloroni, Director of dubbing: Filippo Ottoni, Dubbing assistant: Ivana Fidele, Dubbing consultant: Denis Pebrcv, Sound effects: Massimo Anzelloni, Luciano Anzellorri, Make-up: Giulio Mastrantonio, Hair: !ole Cecchini Starring: Oleg lankovsky (Andrei Gorchakov), Erland Josephson (Domenico), Domiziana Giordano (Eugenia), Parrizia Terreno (Gorchakov's wife), Laura De Marchi (woman with a rowel), Delia Boccardo (Domenico's wife), Milcna Vukotic (town worker) Supporting cast: Albeno Canepa, Raffaele Di Mario, Rare Furlan, Livio Galassi, Piero Vida, Elena Magoia

Sacrifice

(Of{ret), r986, 149 min. Colour (Easrmancolor)

Production Company: Swedish Film Institute (Stockholm) and Argos Films (Paris) in association with Film Four International. Josephson & Nykvisr, Sverigcs Tclcvision/svT 2, $andrew Film and Theater. \Xiirh rhc participation of the French Ministr)' of Culture. Executive Producer: Anna-Lena \Xiibom (Swedish Film Institute), Producer: Karinka Farago (Farago Film), Production Manager: Goran Lindberg, Production Assistant: Angeta Jansson, Casring: Priscilla john, Claire Denis, F•·an�oisc Jvlcnidrcy, Director: Andrei Ta rkovsky, Assistant to the director: Kerstin Eriksdortcr, MichaJ l.cszczyl·owski, Screenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky, Scriptgirl: Anne von Sydow, Director of photography: Svcn Nykvisr, Cameramen: Lars Karlsson, Dan Myhnnan, Still Photog(aphcr: Arne Carlsson, Editor: And ,·ei Ta rkovsky, Michal Leszczytowski, Consulting Editor: Henri Colpi, Art Director: Anna Asp, Assistant Art Director: Cecilia Iversen, Set construc­ tion: Harry Klava, Props: Jan Andersson, Special Effects: Svcnska Stunrgmppcn, Lars Hoglund, Lars Palmqvist, Music: J. S. lhch; Swedish and Japanese traditional music, Costumes: Inger Pehrsson, Cosrumes assistant: Carina Dalunde, Sound: Owe Svensson, wirh Bo Persson, Lars Ubndcr, Christin Lohman, Wille l'ctcrson-Bergc•·, Hair and make-up: Kjell Gusravsson, Florence F(>uquicr, Interpreter: Layla i\lcxander, Technical manager: Kaj Larsen Starring: Erland Josephson (Alexander), Susan Fleetwood (Adchidc), Allan Edwall (Otro), Gudrlm Gislad6rrir (Maria), Svcn \Xiolltcr (Victor), Valerie Mairesse (Julia),

Filippa Franzen (•\lana), Tornrnr Kjcllqvisr (Litde 1\ tan), Per Kallman, Tomm)• Nordahl

2.

Documented work on films by orhcr directors

The Gate of Il'ich/1 Am Twenty (Zastnvn 1/'icha/Mne dvndtsnt' let),

1961 Oircc10r: Marlen K hursi ev, Screenplay: Gcnnadii Shpalikov, Andrei Tarkovsky :1crcd in a supporting role

Bibliography

Sergei Lazo, 1967 Director: Alcksandr Gordon, Screenplay: C. Malarchu k and Andrei Tarkovsky (uncn:dircd).

Andrei Tarkovsky also acred in a supporrin�-: role As arti>tic director:

One Chance of a Thousand (Odin sbnns iz tysiachi), 1969 Director: Leonid Kocharian. Screenplay: Leonid Kochar ian, A. Makarova, and Tarkov
Andrei

Beware, Snakes! (Beregis ·, zmei!), r 979 Director: Z. S:1birov, Screenp lay : A nd re i Ta rk vsk )'

1.

Published works by Andrei Tarkovsky

Screenplays 'Andrei Rnblev', l.�kttsstiJO kino, -1

u

(L964), pp. 139'"2.00; 5 (1964), pp. 12.6-58 wirh Andrei

Koncldovskii Andrei /{tt!Jii;ll, trans. Kitty Hunrer-Blair, inn·o.

'A nwrkl'id:1, dalcbia su·ana. Otryvok iz srscn:1 r ii :�', /VIoskollskii komsomolets (3 1 .Janu:H·y

3 · Work in other media

Turnabout (Polnyi povorot

and 2. February 1960) [wil'11 A. lkzukhov :1 nd

kmgom, 1965),

Director Andrei Tarko,·sky, Bogart: Alcksandr Lazare''• Claude Hope: Nikir� :

1\ l ik h.rlko. MacGinnis: Lev Durov, Ronnie: v

ikolai Prokof'c,•, Messenger: Valentin

Pcrr Arzhakov, Jean-Pie rre: And rei Tcrck hi n, actors of

as
The:urc of t he Lenin Komsomol (t\ll nscow), Premiere: S Fcbru:tr)' •977• Director: Andrei T:trkovskr, Assistant Di rector: V l:tdimi r Sedov, Stage design : Tenv,iz

Mina,hvili, Music: Eduard Arrcm'ev, King Claudius: \( Shiriacv, Hamlet: Anamlii

Solonit
Boris Godunov by Modesr Mussorgsky (edi ted David Lloyd-Jones) Ror�l Ot,er.l at Covent Garden (London). Premiere: \ 1 October 198;

(

ikol:ri Dviv,uh,ky)

Stage direction: Andrei T�rkovsky. Light direction: Robcrr Bry�n. Boris: Robert l.loycl, Shuisky: Philip L�ngridgc, Simpleton: I'�trick Power. Pimen: Gwynne Howell, Grigo ri i:

Michel Svedev, Marina : E''" Randov:\, Hostess: Eliz:thcrh B:� inbridge, Xenia: Fion:t Kimm . Nurse: t\ll:ln:J Szirmar, Fyodor: John Rotlv.crs, Rangoni: John Shirley-Quirk, M isail: Fl':tllcis F.�tcrron. Varlaa m : Aap,e I I:111V.bn

'Gofmaniana. Srsenarii', lsk11sstr'O kino, no. S (1976), pp. 167-89

·s,•edyi vetcr. Po morivam j>O\'csti Aleksandra Bcli�e,•a "A rid": Srsenarii', Kiuostseuarii, no. 5 ( 1995), pp. -1-1""74 [ w irh Fridrikh Gorcnsluein)

'Zerblo. Srsenarii

'

, Kiuostsenarii, no. 6 (1994), pp. 3-46 [wirh

Andrei Tnrko11skii: Arkhivy. Dokttmellly. \lo:;pnmhumiia, eel. I� D. Volkova

I references

(Moscow, 2002)

Andrei Tarkouskii: Nt�cht�lo. . . i puti (11ospominmriia, intcrv'iu. lelasii, stat'i), eel. M. Rosrorsk:li:t (Moscow, 1994) /)iari: /VInrtirolo,�io

(Florence,

1970-r 986, cd. Andrej A. T.·ukovskij, tr:�ns. Norm:1n Mozz:tro

200

2)

lnstmll l.ight: Tt�rkot,sky l'olaroids, cd. G iov:1nni Chiar:tmomc :rnd Andrcy A. T.1rkovsk)• (London, :t004)

Sculpting in Time, tr.ms. Kitry Humcr-Blair (Austin, TX, 1986) Time within Time: The Diaries t97o-r986, 1r:ms. Kiuy Hunter-Blair (London, •99-!l

Uroki re�bissur : Ucbelmoe {Josobie (Moscow, 199;) y

Arriclcs

'Ad res ncizvcstcn', Komsomol'skaitl l'rnuda (J .Ju ne 1965) 'A ndrei Ruhlyov allCI rhc xx Ccntmy', Souiet l'ilm,

!44

Aleksandr Mish�rinl

Books

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Conductor: Claudio Abbado, Srage design: Nicholas Dvigoubsky

0. Oseli nskii )

Collected Scrrenplays, trans. William Powel l and Natasha Syncssi os (London, 1999)

55 min.

Radiopby, h�scd on the srory by William Faulkner, adaptation by Arsenii Tarkov�ky

Pechnikov. Bar manage r:

Philip Strick (London, 1991)

N

( 1 9!\5), pp. 1o- 1 3

2.45

'Bcl)•i den', Rasskaz', lskussrvo kino, no. 6 (1 970), pp. 1()9-11.! 'Dosroianie segodniashncgo dnia', Sovetskii ekrtm, no. 8 (1967), p. 9 'Edinomyshlennik prczhdc vscgo', Sovetskie klmdozlmiki rearm i kino 75 (Moscow, 1977) , pp. 1 81-2 'Ero ochcn' vazhno', Lireraturnaia gauta (20 September 1962), p. 1 'El'O prider na ekran', Lircrntumaia gauta ( 1 December 1962.), p. I 'Frederika Fellini', lskusstvo kino, no. n (t98o), pp. 158-6o 'Gorcnie', Ekran-65: Sbornik (J\iloscow, 1966), pp. 154-7 'Gor'koe chu,•srvo porcri' (on Grigorii Kozinrscv), lskussrvo kino, no. 10 (1973), pp. 158--9 Introduction ro Tenino Guerra, (poems], lnostrmmait1 liremtum, no. 7 (1979), p. r88-9 'lskat i dobivar'sia', Sovcrskii ekmn, If (1962), pp. 9, 20 '

'lstoricheskii fil'm ', Vccberninin Moskva ( w june 1982)

'I Kogda fil'm okonchcn]', in Kogda {il'm okoncben: Govorint rezhissery 'Mos{i/"mn·

Bachman, Gideon, 'Begcgnung mit Andrej Tarkowskij', Filmkririk, no. 12 (r962),

PP· 548-sz.

Bakhman, Gideon, '0 prirode nosral'gii', lskusstvo kiuo, no. 2. ( 1989), pp. r J r-6 Bclyavsky, Olcg, 'The Filming of Audrei Rublyov', Soviet l'ilm, 5 (1966), pp. rS-2.1 Cimcnt, Michel, Luda Schnitzer and .Jean Schnitzer, 'L'Artistc dans l'ancicnne Russc cr dans l'URSS nouvelle (Enrrcticn avec Andrei Tarkovsky)', l'ositif (Ocrober 1969) ( 109), pp. 1-13 Gibu, N., 'Zhizn' rozhdaersia iz disgarmonii. . .', Kolum11a, no. 7 (1990)

Hcrlingh:urs, Hermann, 'V bcscdc s Gcrmanom Khcrlingkhauzom', Kiuoznvedcbeskie zapiski, no. 14 (1992.), pp. 34-48 'Ia nikogda ne stremilsia byt' :rktual'nym', Forum, no. 10 (r985), pp. 227-36 Kozlm> Leonid, 'Beseda o rsverc', in Leonid Kozlov, Proizvedeuie vo uremeui (Moscow,

2.005). pp. 4Jo-J6

(l'vloscow, r964), pp. 1 37-7 1

'M. I. Rommu ;o ler', So11erskii ekrnn, no. 2 ( 197 1 ), p. 5 'Mczhdu dvumia fil'mami', lskussrvo kino, no. t t ( 1962), pp. 82-4 ·,\1)• dclaem fil'my', Kino (Vilnius], no. 10 (1981), pp. 16-18 '0 kinoobrazc', lslwssriiQ kino, no. 3 (1979), pp. 80-93 'On vyrazil vrcmia, kak nikto' [on Vladimir Vysorsky], V. Vysotskii: Vse ne rnk (Moscow,

Kublanovskii, lmii, 'lnspiratsiia vd okhnoven ii a: Andr·ci Tarkovskii pcrcd

"Zhcrrvoprinoshcnicm"', Ncznvisimain gazeta (2.9 December 1992), p. 7 Lipkov, Alcksandr, 'Strasti po Andrciu', Litemturnoe obozrenie, 9 (1988), pp. 74-80 Loisha, V., 'lskussn·o soz.dactsia narodom', Kiuo [Riga], no. 1 1 ( 1979), pp. 20-22 Lopukhin, Alcksandr, 'Nel'zi:r \'Crit' '' budushchcc, esli nc vcrish' v scbia', Moskovskic IIOI'Osti ( 1 5 February 1987), p. 1 1

komsomolets (3 june 1 965)

Nikirin, N., 'Diia mcnia kino - cto sposob dostich' kakoi-ro isriny' , Sovetskain Rossiin (3 April •988), p. 4 Podgorcc, Zbignicw, 'Ziemska mor:rlnosc w kosmosic, czyli "Solaris" na ekrnnc', Tygodnik l'owseclmy, no. 42. (1972) Raush, lrm:r, cd., 'Andrei Tarkovsky: Odin god zhizni', Ki11ostsrnnrii, no. 4 (1991), pp. 169-78 'Srrcmlius' k maksimal'noi pra,·divosti' , Kiuossteuarii, no. 5 (:1.001), p. 124 . Verina, T.·unara, 'Tarkovskii o T 1rkovskom: pochri scmcill)'i r:rzgovor', Kul'tura i zb;zn·,

pp. 95-100

nO.IO (1979). p. 23 Zorkaia, Ncia, 'Vozvrashchcnic v budushchee', Soverskii (il'm, no. 4 ( 1977), pp. :1.1o-:!.J

1991), p. 19 'Opyr na budushchcc', Voprosy literntury, no. 1 (1973), p. 101 'Pcrcd 110vymi zadachami', cd. 0. Surkova, lskusstvo kino, no. 7 (l977), p. 1 1 6- rS 'l'o doroge k fil'mu Solitlfis', So11etskii ekrn11, no. 3 (1971), p. 6 'Rczhisser i zrircl': problema konrakta', cd. 0. Surkova, Molodoi komn11mist, no. 6 (1974) pp. 86""91 'Skoro nachnursia s�cmki . . . Rasskaz o r:rbotc nad fil'mom Audrei Rubliiv', Moskovskii 'Slovo ob Apoblipsisc', cd. V. lshimov and R. Shciko, lskusstvo kiuo, no. 2 (1989), 'Spor o gcroia kh', Komsomol'skaia pravda ( r 3 September 1962), p. 4

'Tam nas zhder nci zvcstnnc', Trud (9 Scprcmbcr 1971)

'Tancrs: ego nastoiashchcc i budushchee', Klu!J i klmdovJcstvemwia deiatel'uosr ·, no.

.1

2.

Selected studies on Andrei Tarkovsky

( t98o), pp. 1 5-17

( Vsesoiuwaia pcrcklichk:t kincm:uografistovj, lskuss/1'0 kino no. 4 ( 1971 ), p. 51 ·z:rchcm proshloc vstrL'Chactsia s budushchim?', lskusstvo kiuo, no. 1 1 (1971), pp. 96-101 'Zapcch:rrlcnnoc vrcmia', Vofnosy ki11oiskusstva. lstoriko-teoreticheskii sbornik, no. 10 (Moscow, 1967), pp. 79-102

'Zhguchii realizm', l.uis l)ulliuel': Sbomik (Moscow, 1979). pp. 69-75

Selected interviews Abramov, N., 'Dialog s i\. Tarkovskim o n:lllchnoi fant:tstikc na ckranc', /!Jmm. '97o-1971. O!Jo:.rc11ie kinogoda (Moscow, 1971), pp. 162.-5. [Also in J.ittmllunrain gateta, 4 No,•cmbcr 1970, p. 8] All(/rei Tarkovsky l11rerviews, cd. John Gianviro Uackson, MS, 2006) Andrci Ta rkovskl' on rhc film Roublcv'", Young C:int•ma ir Tbeatreljeune Ciucma c.! r Tbeatre, 8 ( 1 965), pp. 16-13. "

'

q6 I bibliography

Bcaslcy-Murra)•. Jon, 'Whatever Happcnt'
De B:rccquc, Amoine, Andrei Tarkovski (Paris, 1989)

2004)

Evlampicv, Igor', Klmdozbest11emraia (iloso(iia Andreia Tarkovskogo (St· Peters burg, 1991)

Green, Pcrcr, Andrei Tnrkovsky: Tbe Wli11diug Quest (London, 1993) Johnson, Vida T. and Graham Petrie, T/1e Films of A11drei Tarkovsky: A Visunl l'ugut' (Bloomington, IN, '994) Lc Farm, M:rrk. Tbe Ci11emn of Andrei Tarkovsky (London, 1987)

Macgillivr:t)', James, 'Andrei Tarkovsky's Madon11a del f'arto', l�evue cmradie1111C d'titudcs cinemntogmphiques xrh (Fall 2002.) , pp. 82.-99.

Masoni, Tullio :tnd Paolo Vecch i, ll11drc; Tarkovskii, wd cdn (Milan, 2005) Sandler, i\. M

.•

cd., Mir i {il'my A11drl'it1 Tt�rko11skogo: Rnvnysblcuiia, issiedovaniitr, bibliography I

2.47

vospomilwniia, pis ma (Moscow, 1991) '

Surkova, Ol'g, S Tarkovskim i o T"rkovskom, wd edn (M�oscow, 2005) Synessios, Nar:tsh:t, Mirror

(London, 2001)

Tarkovskaya, M:trin:t, cd., About A11drei Tarkovsky (Moscow, I990) , Oskolki urkala, z.nd cdn

--

(Moscow, z.oo6)

, cd., 0 Tarko11skom. Vospomi11aniia v dvukb lwigakh (Moscow, 2002)

--

Turovskaia, M:ti:t, 7'/: iii {i f'my A11dreia Tarko11skogo (Moscow, 1991)

Turovskay:t, J'vl:ty:t, Tarkovsky: Cille/1111 as l'oetry, cd. and trans. Namsha Ward, with an inrroducrion by ian Christie (London :tnd Boston,

MA,

1989)

Zizek, SI:I\'Oj, 'Titc Titing from Inner Space', Sexuation, ed. Renata Saled (Durham,

Acknowledgements

NC,

and London, 2.000) pp. u6-59

Selected documentaries Andrei Tarko11sky: A Poet of tbe Ciuema, dir. Donarclla Baglivo (1984) Directed by Andrei Tarko11sky, dir. Michat Leszczy�owski ( 1988)

Moscow Elegy, dir. Alcks:tndr Sokurov ( 1987)

One Day i11 tbe Life of Audrei Arselll!llicb, dir. Chris Ma rker (woo)

Throughout the writing of this book I have en joyed the valued assistance of Kian Bergstrom, Karhryn Duda, Andriy Dyachenko and Katherine Hill; the staff at numerous Moscow archives, especially Lena Kolikova and Rima Karpova; and Trond Trondsen. I am grateful to the followi ng sources for perm ission ro use i m ages: David Bmc, Andrei Tarkovsky Jr., Grigorii Vcrkhovsky. This book has been generously suppol tcd by the Rockefeller Foundation and rhc University of Chicago. '

Website hrrp://www.110S!aIghia.co111

248

I references

249

Photo Acknowledgements

Index

Page mtmbers in italics refer to illustrations

The aurhor and publishers wish to exp ress their rhanks ro the below sources of illustrative material and/or permissio n ro reproduce it. (Locations o f so1ue a rtworks are also given

Abalov, Eduard 37 Abbado, Claudio r82, r87

below.)

acting 74-5,

wo,

172, r83-4

Akhmatova, Anna 74

Umwmable, The T6:z.

B eethoven Ludwig van 145, 159 Bcliacv, Aleksandr 42. ,

Ariel 131-2

A Ire Narionalgalerie, Berlin: p. 67 (top) ; © A ndrey Tarkovsky lmernarional lnsrirure

Alov, Aleksandr 40, 128

Beloborodoa , Andreff 6 .r

pp. 5o, 52; Ashmolean Museum, Oxfo1·d: p. 63; phot os courtesy of rhe aut hor: pp. 68,

Andrei Rublcv 1 5 1

Bcl lour, lbym ond 6S

69; photos Clive Barda, counesy Irina Brown: pp. 185, r86, 1.87; cou rt esy of the artist (David Bare ) , © 200t: p. 17; Gerry Im ag es: p. 38; pho ros courtesy Lcnkom Theatre, Moscow: pp. r8J, 182, 183; National Gallery o f An, Washington, oc: p. t 26; phoro courresv the Nicholas Rocrich M.useum, New York : p. 176; State Hermitage Museum, Sr Peters burg. p. 12.0 (foot); photos Grigori)' Verkhovskiy (courrcsy Grigoriy Verkhovskiy) pp. 2, u, 148, :16o; courtesy rhc Viacheslav Ivanov Family Archive (Rome) p. 6t.

Old Testament Trinity 41, 78, 83, 87,

Bclyi, Andrei 79

95, 162, 172, r85-6

Benjamin, Walter 154, uo-2 1 Bc1·gman, lngmar 75, 1 5 9

Last judgment, The 63, 82, 2. 1 Antonioni, M ichelangelo L'Avventura 74

Cries and Whispers I5J Wild Strawberries 12.7

A ronson, Olcg 145

Bergson, Henri 15, 79, 202.

A rnshmm, Lev u8

Bogdanov, Alcksandr I30 Bogomolov, Vladimir 36-7, 1 1 3 Bonda rev, luri i 40

Arrrcm'cv, Eduard r 42., 152, •58, <59-60,

r 82., 190 a

t mosphere

10,

LJ-q, 23, ll7, 186, 197-8,

199, 201, 2.0j)-2.3

Bach, johann Sebastian 65, ·1o3, .r 2S, r F , l5l, (61, 210,2.12

Bresson, Robert 48, 49, 73-4

Bruegel, Pierer 65, 97, 144, 1 6 1 Brya n , Roberr 185 Buiiucl, Luis Nnznrin 2 1 2

Baglivo, Domarella Andrei Tarkovsky: Poet in the Cinema

Carpaccio, Vinorio 84

10

Cassaveres, John Shadows . u o

Bakhmcr cva , S. Ia. 30, p , 22Sn6 '

Bakshy, Alexander 15, 79-So, 8 1 Bal:isz, Bela 7o-7r

Chapaev (Sergei Vas i l cv and Georgi i

13anionis, Donar:ts 74-5, rol

Chcsrcrron, G. K.

Bare, David Zone 17-18, 17 Bazin, Andre 72., 2.01-2

Beckelt, Samucl '-)· o

'

Vasil'cv) 36 'Invisible tvl:ln, The' 214

Chiaurcli, Mikhail

Fall of 13erlin 136

Chukhrai , Gcorgii 45 25 !

Kochncv, 1VI. Kh. JO, 3 1

Friedrich, Caspar David

Bnllnd of n Soldier, The 7

Konch:tlovsky, Andron :z.S, 29, 3·h 40, 41,

Ruin nt Eldenn 66, 67

Cl:tir, Rene 7-1

43, 1 1 3, •57· u8n6

Clouzot, Henri-Georges

I7 I,

Alone 1 75

Glazkol) Nikolai 74, 101

colour •6, 18, 30, 3-h 43, 78, 81, Ss-6,

1 1 9, l.p ., 1-19, T)-1-6, lj�I, 163, 1 6-j

Kozimsev, Grigorii q, •9-1

German, Aleksei 13, 56

Wnges of Fear 1.9

,

177., 210, 2. 1 6, l.L?, 2Z.O

Consrahlc, john 55 Coururicr, Fran�ois 17

Gordon, Douglas

I Stroll around JV!oscozv 130 Dclcuzc, Gilles 15, 81, I)l. Dclluc, Louis '-I

24 Hour l'sycho 19-20

G orenshrei n, Fridrikh o6, Cork), Maxim 33, 79

Tln·o11e of Blood 163-4 n7, 124, 1 3 1

Crime mzd Punishment n6 Idiot, The 48, 1 1 1 , 173

Lcm, Sranislaw 18, 44, 65, 1 14-r5, u6-.17, 1 19, 1 2 1 , •J3, 161

Griffiths, Pa ul 1 87

Leonardo d:r Vinci 73· 104, 11.5-1.6, 145,

Grossman, Vasilii Life nnd Fate 135, 168

'57. 21 1

Guera, r Tonino 74, 104, 173-4

Dovzhcnko, Alcksandr 2 1 1

,

Adomtion of the Magi, The 56, q5, ,

Ginei'T
Hansen, Mark 1.9 l lcmingway, Ernesr ' 3 ' • '57 Killers, The' 29

Hitchcock, A l fred

1.9-1.0

Mado1111t1 del l'arto 173 , 176. 21 5 M agrittc, Rene

lusov, Vadim 1 2, 29, J L , ).j, 57· 63, 64, 66, 76, 78, 81, 82, Sj, IJO, 1p, 160,

Signaturt• in JJ/mzk 63

J' l:tlevich , Kazimir

Ivanov, Viacheslav i9

Frankenhcimer) 195 JVI:mn, Thomas 1 1 1

Eisenstein, Sergei 8, 28, s�s r' •98-:wI'

Marker, Chris 17, 55

201.

Jameson, Fredric 1 1.

11/exmuler Neusky 199

J aner, Juri 102

A Day i11 tin· Life of Andrei

Ivan the Terrible 187, '99

josephson, Erland 74, 102

Arseniel'iciJ 10-12

·

Strike 70 Kalarozov, Mikhail

Eyck, Jau van 1 5 1

U11sent Letter, The 29, 130

Mi sharin, Aleks:111dr 124, " '·9· 134, 1 57

montage 1 5 , 1.1.4, 1 73 , 189, 194, 198-201.,

K:rrmen, Roman 137-8

J'.lor:tvia, Alhcrto 18, 1 3 1

K:twalerowicz, Jcrt.y 73

Mozart, Wolfgang Am:tdcus 172

Khutsicv, Marlen 28, 127

music JO, H-;6. -13· 82. 105. 109, 128,

137, •-12, '-15· •s •-2, 158-6o, 169, 172.

1 3 5-6

��h., ,sr,-7,

8'1:, 109, 1 27

Two Fedors, The 1.9, 1 36

see olso sound

Florcnsky, Pavel 95 F1·eud, Signnmd • 35 251. I

index

149

!loris Godunou 1 8 5 , 186

120, 1 2 1 , 1 65, 165 149

Rocrich, Nikolai 166-7, 167 Romm, Mikhail JO, 3 1 , l:1'eryday Fascism 136 Rc>sscllini, Roberto Cnmany, Yetzr Zero 67

2.1 1 , 2.12� 218, 2.20;

13m·is Godu11011 2 1 , 48, 185, 186, 187

Camera lluff 7 '

K 11iazhinsky, i\leksa nd r

J.ro.

Mussorg,sky, Modcsr

Kidluwski, KrZ)'SZtof

Pnshkin, Alcksandr l ll)-21, 2 1 2

Romadin, Mikhail 55

205

CasaiiOI'Il 55 Flamm:uion, Camille 221, 222

Proust, M ared • 35

Rembrandt v:111 Rij n Renoir, .Jcnn 7 1 , 202 Rerhcrg, Ccoq.di 46,

I tlln Cubn 57

Gate of 1/'icb, The (I nm Tlvt•nty) 48,

1it'O Men tmd" Wardrobe 179

Mcyc.-llold, Vscvolod 79-So

Ermash, Filipp 45, 46

Fcllini, Federico

Polanski, Roman

Rancicre, .Jacques 205

Mikh:rlkov, Nikim • 57

F:tulkncr, \XIilliam 1 3 1 ·Turnabout· 47, '57

:n 1-222

Medvedk in, Alcksandr 139-40 Crnne$ tzre Flying 7, 57, 136

K:rnr, Immanuel 95

/)z.fum

15

1 97

Mnnchuritm Cmzdidate. The Uohn

'J-\ncicru Terror' r 21

Piot Tovsky, Adrian Plamnov, And rei

pocri c cincm:1 1 3- 1 6, 2.0, 2.1, 75, 1 1 3, 12.8,

v

Black Square 20

202-J, 1.1 1

Ghen1 Ahar 164

l':tstcrnak, Boris 7, 8, 14, 79, 184

Piero della Fr:1ncesca

lurcncv, Rosrislav 44

l'n/1 of the /-louse of Usher, Tbe 1 4

Paradj:111ov, Sergei 169

Liubimov, lurii 18::.

llltln 37

Epsrcin, je:1 11 l.j, 73

P:tpav:t, Mikh:til ;6, 113

phorogenic 14; see also poeric cincmn

M acgi llivray, .James 53

Eikhcnbaurn, Boris q-15

t6l.

Lippit, Akir:1 70

l:tnkovsky, Oleg i4, 192

Egorova, T:triana 161

•58,

Pcrgolcsi, Giovanni Barrisra 142., 1 5 1

l'.tzrtIJ 1 5, 84

Dvigubsk)•, Nikobi 55, 171, 185

Quiet l.i{e l7 Ogorodnikova, Ta mara i4 Ovchin11ikov, Viachcslav 29, 34, •57,

lighting 177, •8 5, '9'

llrsenal 1 5

Diircr, Albrcchr ;8, 94, 95-6, 98

Oc, Kem.aburO

1. 1 7

2. 10, 214- 15 2.2.0

'

Nyquisr, Svcn '7'

II

Don Quixote (Cerv:tnres) 119, 11.1 Dosroevsk» Fedor 1 1 1 , LLJ, 119, 1.11.

HJ

Kurosawa, Akira 64

•

Dancli:t, Gcorgii

1 18-19, 1 27, t6:!., 171, 1 94-8, 21 , , 219,

Nazaro1•, lurii 1or

2001: II Spnce Odyssey 117

Gordon, Alcksandr 29, -18

78, 9:1., 95-6, 98, 1o8-1o, 1 12, 1 1 3-''"

N:tumov, Vladimir 40

Kubrick. St:tniC)'

Godard, jean·Luc 1 10, 152

n:urarive 8, 14-r5, 16, T!)-20, 3 1 , 49, 75,

Sarrrc, Jean-l'aul 38 Shakespeare, Wi lliam 2 1 2 llamlct 48, 1 1 1 , 184, 2 1 3 MadJeth 2 1 3

index I

2.5 3

Shali api n, Fedor 6o, 93 Shub, Esfir

TQ9, 145, 156, 159, 171, 175, 209-:!.Tj

Solaris 8, 18-r9, H , 44-5, 55, 64-6, 73,

S{Jain 137

Welles, Orson 1.02

1 24,

Zakharov, Mark r82.

190,

Vladimir Zeffirelli, Franco

u6-8, IJl, 133-4, 150, 1 5 1 , 152, 154, 15)-6, Ij8, 159-62, f7I, f72 175>

128

Snowberry Red ro8 Tbere is Sucb a Guy .p

203, 216; Stalker 8, n, T7""18,

.1.2.-j, 46, 48, 66-9, 8 f, IQ9, I I f, 124,

Sizov, Nikolai 45-6, 149 Sobchack, Vivian 71-2, 175 Soderbergh, Steven

LJO, 134• 145, 149-50, 151, 152-3,

Zamansk)•,

jesus

102.

of Nawreth 20

•

Zizek, Sl:l\'oj r2, rJ, 65, 68, 1 16, 204

158-9, 162-8, r69, 1 7 1 , q2, 175-6, 189, 190, :!.II, 213; Steamroller and Violin

Solaris 18-19

Sokurov, Alcksandr

Dolorosa 2.0

74, 75. 76, So-Sr, s5, 92, ro2, u4-23,

Shklovsky, Viktor 1 ·h 1 5

Shukshin, Vasilii 28, 29,

Via

22,2}, 27, 29-J6, 42, 54>57,59>7T, 17, 21

1 3 1 , 169, 22Sn6; There Will Be No

Solonitsyn, Anatolii 102, 182, 184 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 8, n. 100,

Leave Today 23, 29, 1 3 1 ; 106

SOund )4-j, 47, 77, l050 T07, 1.!40 I 56-6o,

Time of

Travel 23 54, 104, 145-6, 1.73-4; thco­ rerical works: 'Imprinted Time' 75-6,

16r-2, r6;, 167-8, 1 7 1 , 172, 173, 177,

91, T93> 194, t9;7-8, r99; Sculpting in

:uo, u7, 2.1!)-2.0; see also music

Time 9, 2·1,

Strugatsky, Arkadii and Uoris

r34, 201.; unrealized screen­

plays: 'Ariel' 1 31-2; 'Antarctic: Distant Land' 29, t } I ; Hamler 48;

124-5,

t:69-70

'

Svensson, Owe rs6, •59, 210

'

'l-loffmanni�lna't69, r8o, uo; 'The Idiot' 48, r T T , •73; work in other films:

Takcmitsu, Toru 17 Tarkovskaia, J'vlaria (mod1cr) 28, 87,

Beware, Snakes! 48, ro7; One Chance in 1

LO,

a Thousand 47, 107; Sergei Lazo 48

TMkovsky, Arsenii (farhcr)

'34 Tarkovskaia, Marina (sister) 28

z.8, 103, .:04,

128, L:!.9-JO, 137, 142-4, 157-8

Tarkovsk ); Andrei:

Thcopha nes rhc Greek 4 1

life of 28, 48-9

Tatosov, Vladimir 102

still photography JO, 174 works, dr:una1ic productions: /Joris

Terekhova, Ma rgarita 45, 47,

Codwtov 2.1, 48, 181-2, 184-8; 1-/amlet

Tolsro)•, Leo ' ' 9

47, 8 • , 1 1 1-12., 181-4; Tumabout 47,

Traubcrg, Leonid 1 4

110, 127,

18:!., •83

'57• 2.10; films: Andrei Rubli!118, 2.0, 2.1,

Alone 175

22,23, 28,4o-44•47, 52, 53-4· 58,

The Truman Show (Peter \'\lcir) 22.1

63-4• 70, 7Jo74o 7)-S, St-4, 87• 96-I02.,

Truppin, Andrea 105

l l j-q, 1 18, 1 3 1 , 142., 154-5• 157• 162.,

Tyni:mov, lurii

r6

170, 172 175, 187""8, 190, 19J-'7, :!.Oj,

204-5, 217; Ivan s Cbildl1ood 7, 1.1. 23,

Ucccllo, Paolo Hunt in tbe Forest 63, 63

28, ;6-9,44, 52, ss-6J, 64, 7 • , 72., 92-6, 98, 1 12.-IJ, ljl, lj6, 157, 172;

Uruscvsky, Sergei 57, 130

Killers, Tbe 29, 7 ' ; Mirror 8, 12, 1 ;, .z.;, 28, 45-6,47. 55, 65-8, 8 • , 8 5-7. to2-4, 108, 109, I 10, I 12., 12.4, I Z.j-8, IJO, I J I , •.14-5• , 5 , , • s7. '7'• 173, •75, 216.

no;

Vigo, Jean

L'Atalante 57 Vysorsky, Vladimir

uS,

129, 182

Nostalgbia 8, 48, 49, 53, 54, 6 1 , 66, 102, 104-5, 107, IJO, 145, 159, 1 7 1 , 173• '74-80, t!;6, 189, 19C>-<)J, 204, 210, 21 5i

Sacri/iCI! 9· 2 1 , 2J, 48, ·19· s<>-7, 66, 8 1 ' 254

I index

Wajda, Andrzej Ashes and Diamond r!\4 \XIallinger, Ma rk index I

255