…The horse is a tangental point I know (well, probably parallel since they never meet). Thanks for casting some more light on it Jett. I find it hard to watch. It's not a nice death no matter the circumstances and I'd much prefer the movie if that scene wasn't in it. I'll leave it at that.

…The horse is a tangental point I know (well, probably parallel since they never meet). Thanks for casting some more light on it Jett. I find it hard to watch. It's not a nice death no matter the circumstances and I'd much prefer the movie if that scene wasn't in it. I'll leave it at that.

In fact, I had almost completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

So in that regard, my view falls somewhere between the two 'poles' of interpreting movie violence. One says that it's just a movie and has no impact; the other that copycat violence is rife. I think both of these positions have some credibility; but it's not so much particular and specific acts of violence in a film being repeated in the world as it is the contours of human expectation that are outlined in story. I'm open to the possibility that watching entertainment violence might be cathartic for some people and actually reduce the potential for real world violence; there are some interesting studies on this.

But to my original point: I think it's possible that an audience dedicated to gratifying its quick-satisfaction synapses by watching spectacular violence on screen may, at the very least, be de-sensitised to violence in the real world, and beyond that, be deeply complicit in such violence. And I am a member of that audience.

1. What does “that when we watch violence as entertainment, we may be complicit in its real world analogue” mean?

2. How come nobody ever mentions (or else leaps over like a group of artistes at a Polanski party) the despicably cruel treatment of at least one horse (a beautiful horse even) in Andrei Rublev?
I saw AR twice, but not for over 5 years now. I'm not an over-sensitive animal rights lover by any means. I don't value the life of an animal over the life of any human, but (from memory) it didn't look possible that that horse was acting when he tumbled down the stairs arse over elbow. It tainted my whole viewing of the movie, so much so that I refused to watch it again until over a year later when I watched it with the (boring) commentary on the dvd in the hope of making some sense of -or having some explanation if not outright apology for- that scene. I didn't.
Sure it captures the brutality of the era, but even moreso it captures the brutality of “The Artist” in achieving his vision. Maybe that's part of the theme too, but it's not an excuse in my book.
One might almost expect it of someone like Peckinpah, but it's somehow more unforgivable in Tarkovsky.
Could be it was an amazing backward-flipping circus horse in an invisible harnass and/or soviet-era CGI. If so, I'd love to hear that was the case too.
I don't expect it to taint everyone's opinion of the movie, but I would like it to be highlighted _somewhere_ and not skipped over just because this is “a serious high-brow film, man”.