Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’, anointed weekly by Jett as the ‘best film ever made’ seems to me to be one of the few films guaranteed to be watched centuries from now, if the art form that captured my heart (and so often betrays it – which means that movies are, in the end, very much like us. Humans, I mean, not Jett and I per se) lasts past the point when our brains will have been made half synthetic by the friends of Ray Kurzweil. (To those who may now be complaining at how long that first sentence was, all I can say is, wait til you see ‘Andrei Rublev’.) I finally got to see the film at the weekend; I wanted to wait to see it in a cinema, cued by my old friend the wonderful film critic and art historian Mike Catto who says that watching movies on television is like going to the British Museum to see a mummy rather than visiting the pyramids. I’m grateful for DVD letting me see films that otherwise would only be evocative titles in my head, but when opportunity arises to get into a theatre, I take it.
And so, ‘Andrei Rublev’.
It’s a film about resurrection – the central character (who certainly isn’t a protagonist in the traditional sense – he responds to circumstances, but doesn’t exactly drive the story) is acted upon by the tragic and awful events that can occur when political power and religious law get too tightly bound together; he changes his mind about some things; he loses the comfort to paint the icons that the world knows him for; he fails to intervene to save someone beautiful; he tries to save someone beautiful; he seems ultimately resigned to the world being broken, and to the medieval Russian church being utterly corrupt, but he eventually finds faith that there is a way to let his gift use him. And, five hundred years later, in the film’s coda, it does.
Now, I want you to forget what you just read: because it implies that ‘Andrei Rublev’ is nothing more than an epic adventure story, comparable to those other two-named eponymous behemoths ‘Ben-Hur’ and ‘El Cid’. Certainly it tells a story – although the fact that the story seems to include every psychological motivation and consequence known to humanity makes that an understatement so flimsy it might as well be gibberish. I can’t convey how the visual shock of this film affected me – my friend who loves it deeply is right when he says that it’s as if Tarkovsky took a time machine back to the fifteenth century and unobtrusively filmed people suffering and praying and living.
It looks that authentic.
And it feels alive. It has some of the most striking images I’ve ever seen – the horse rolling over and up at the beginning (which seems to me to be a direct reference to Robert Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthasar’, inverting that film’s ending, and an explicit reference to the third day after the Crucifixion), the running of the monks in the rain, the girl frightened and angered by the paint smeared on the wall, the astonishing sequence of horrific pillage, in which one of the most terrifying things in cinema occurs (no more unpleasant than what happens to the bad guys at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, but the tone is so…real?…that you have to look away, and can’t ignore what this film is saying about the misuse of power), the tension of waiting for the bell to chime, and the very last image: four horses, alive and representing life itself, a quantum leap beyond the film’s earlier equine resurrection.
Like I said, it’s a film about life after death, and resurrection of all kinds – the kind that billions of people imagine for the human race, the kind that’s necessary to get up every morning, the kind that the medium in which Tarkovsky worked needs with a kind of desperation I’m not sure it has known before. Cinema’s a miracle, but has forgotten it. Does anyone know how to bring Tarkovsky back from the dead?
For more on Tarkovsky have a look at our friend Dmitry Trakovsky’s lovely documentary. Meantime? Life.
[Images above from the wonderful DVD Beaver site - check it out here.]
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well, i have not yet seen ‘Andrei Rublev’, and thus i did not yet read your post – simply because i like to have the purest experience possible, knowing as little as possible about a film before i see it. that being said…
i watched Tarkovsky's “Solyaris” twice this week (that's an award winning achievement for a dude with a full time job, a wife, and three children under the age of five), and believe it to be transcendent of what i think i know to be the science fiction genre of film, and maybe even transcendent of film itself, though i don't really know what i mean by saying that – but it does sound quite intelligent, none-the-less.
point being, the fact that a filmmaker has the audacity to suggest that mankind's greatest achievements and notion of progress is not much more than a defense mechanism for our unreconciled loneliness and broken relationships – and that conquering the “final frontier” looks more like “becoming human”, embracing shame, and going home to be reconciled with, and in submission to, our father.
simply contemplating the manifestation of our conscience…Brilliant!
maybe this is a new genre – conscience-fiction? and maybe i am trying to sound intelligent again.
sorry for a comment about a different film than the one blogged about. i hope it relates.
peace out.
love reading this thoughts, kyle.
Great response to Solyaris! Wait till you see Rublev!
well, i have not yet seen ‘Andrei Rublev’, and thus i did not yet read your post – simply because i like to have the purest experience possible, knowing as little as possible about a film before i see it. that being said…
i watched Tarkovsky's “Solyaris” twice this week (that's an award winning achievement for a dude with a full time job, a wife, and three children under the age of five), and believe it to be transcendent of what i think i know to be the science fiction genre of film, and maybe even transcendent of film itself, though i don't really know what i mean by saying that – but it does sound quite intelligent, none-the-less.
point being, the fact that a filmmaker has the audacity to suggest that mankind's greatest achievements and notion of progress is not much more than a defense mechanism for our unreconciled loneliness and broken relationships – and that conquering the “final frontier” looks more like “becoming human”, embracing shame, and going home to be reconciled with, and in submission to, our father.
simply contemplating the manifestation of our conscience…Brilliant!
maybe this is a new genre – conscience-fiction? and maybe i am trying to sound intelligent again.
sorry for a comment about a different film than the one blogged about. i hope it relates.
peace out.
love reading this thoughts, kyle.
Great response to Solyaris! Wait till you see Rublev!
[...] The Film Talk » The Only Film That Has Everything? [...]
[...] sense of fun’ gets more disturbing each time I see it; my virginal encounter with ‘Andrei Rublev‘, whose scene of medieval town-sacking is one of about seven hundred reasons why Jett’s [...]
[...] sense of fun’ gets more disturbing each time I see it; my virginal encounter with ‘Andrei Rublev‘, whose scene of medieval town-sacking is one of about seven hundred reasons why Jett’s [...]
[...] seem to be enough – meaning that right now I’m either into seeing films that are masterpieces, (those that transcend their genre to become lasting works of art), or pics that are absolute [...]
Jett and Gareth,
I discovered your site yesterday, and it's a veritable treasure chest of goodies that I've scarcely begun to explore. My “entry point” into your site was your podcast 74 on Andrei Tarkovsky. And then I found this blog entry.
Like Jett, I regard Andrei Rublev as the “film of films.” I've seen, and own copies of, all seven of Tarkovsky's feature-length films (I also very much like films by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson). Of course, all seven are strikingly original and memorable, but I think that in Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky has created an inexhaustible source of wonder that deserves to be placed a bit higher than his other works. It will still be watched five hundred or a thousand years from now because one could talk about the film from now until then, and still not say all there is to say about it.
I think Andrei Rublev is above all about vision. It's about developing the kind of vision that is needed to paint something as marvelous as the Trinity icon, when all around you life and beauty seem inextricably mixed with death and destruction. I love that you included in your blog entry that image of the shirtless jester standing outside the hut in the rain. This scene in the hut occurs near the beginning of the movie, just after the three monks (Kirill, Danil, and Andrei) have left Trinity Monastery, against the abbot's wishes. And right away we see the critical difference between Andrei and his fellow monks: Kirill, offended by the jester's impiety, stealthily leaves the hut in order to “turn in” the jester to some nearby guards; Danil puts his nose in a book he has brought with him, and promptly dozes off; only Andrei truly “sees” what is going on around him in the hut, only Andrei takes in the humanity there, and only Andrei sees the jester standing there half-naked in the rain. For me, seeing the jester like this calls to mind these words by Shakespeare from King Lear:
“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?”
It marks the beginning of Andrei's development in “seeing.”
Earlier this month I started a blog, where I am writing about Tarkovsky, and Russian philosophy, and the like. Perhaps you might want to take a look: http://extravagantcreation.wordpress.com. I haven't yet gotten to an in-depth interpretation of Tarkovsky's films (which will be based on Tarkovsky's worldview, as mediated by the Russian religious philosophers of the Silver Age) — I'm still in the groundwork-laying phase — but I intend to get there as soon as I can.
Like you guys, I've gotten a tremendous lot out of experiencing Tarkovsky's films, and thinking about them, and I believe many other people could too, if only they would try him. I suppose most of us who feel this way about Tarkovsky have this desire to spread the word about him. Yes, he's not “easy.” Yes, his films are “slow.” But worthwhile things usually do take effort and time. Life's not all skittles and beer…
Take care,
Michael McIntyre
I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I have finally read the above post and recent comment – today – because we watched “Andrei Rublev” last night as the seventh film in our Lenten film series. fascinating film, but all i am left with are heavy images, feeling as though I just watched Bergman's “Procession of the Flagellants” (Seventh Seal) for three hours. all very abstract, much like an icon painting is, without knowing the context of the period, painter, or saint. although, that same abstractness seemed to point in a direction with Solaris, providing a narrative. I am not sure i know what the narrative is in “Rublev”, if there is one at all. but i am hoping to watch it again, Palm Sunday – dig in a little deeper.
Kyle,
Tarkovsky's nontraditional approach to film narrative can be unsettling and off-putting until you get used to it (I realize you've also seen Solaris). In “Andrei Rublev” we don't even know which monk is the main character until a good ways into the movie. Throughout the film, subsidiary characters like Kirill, Foma, the “Lesser” Prince, and Boriska cycle to the forefront, providing alternate points of view in the narrative. But Andrei is always around, always observing, and by the end of the movie there's no question that his character is the thread that connects everything.
Here is the arc of the narrative, as I see it:
The ascetic severity of Byzantine spirituality is certainly an integral part of the film (and it probably does help to understand the historical and theological context for it), but I think it's clear that Andrei himself is consistently at odds with it. He argues against his mentor, Theophanes the Greek, when the latter rails against the stupidity and baseness of the Russian people and declares “We'll burn like candles.” He frustrates his friend and fellow monk-painter, Danil, when he agonizes over the commission to paint a fresco of the Last Judgment, because he can't figure out how do it without the usual terrifying images. Even though Andrei has witnessed horrifying cruelty, like the Grand Prince's blinding of the stone masons, he can't bring himself to accept the “black” Byzantine view of things. There is a tenderness in his heart that is simply incompatible with it.
At a crucial moment near the middle of the film, in the midst of his painter's block over the Last Judgment, and which also corresponds to the arrival of the “holy fool,” Andrei remembers how he, Kirill, and Danil sheltered from the rain by standing under a young oak tree in the middle of a field (I posted a brief discussion about, and some images from, this sequence at my blog). Emerging from his reverie, Andrei confidently states that she (the holy fool) is not a sinner, even if she doesn't keep her head covered (Sergei, the assistant had been reading from I Corinthians). And then he declares that his Last Judgment will depict a feast!
But Andrei's development suffers a grievous setback, in the terrible raid by the Mongol-Tatars on the town of Vladimir. In defense of the holy fool, Andrei kills a man. Mortified by his own act, and horrified by the death and destruction of the raid, as well as the treachery of the “Lesser” Prince that abetted it, he declares his intention to never paint again, before lapsing into a vow of silence. Years pass. It seems that Andrei will take his prodigious talent to the grave without producing any more works of art. Then, after years in the secular world, Kirill returns to Andronikov Monastery, where Andrei is, and he begs Andrei to “paint, paint, paint” (the Russian word for it sounds better). Andrei appears to be unmoved, but in the final episode of the film, when Andrei sees the bellfounder's son, Boriska, create the magnificent bell, he speaks again and vows to paint icons again. And then we get to see Andrei Rublev's glorious icons — the centerpiece being the Trinity icon — in the film's epilogue.
I'm a little confused by your description of the film as “all very abstract.” I think of Andrei Rublev as packed with unforgettably concrete images — the making of bell, for example. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit further? Abstract in what way?
Also, and I may be in the minority with this opinion, but if circumstances permit it, I think it's better not to watch “Andrei Rublev” for the first time all in one sitting. I'd recommend watching about half of it, and then taking a break, before watching the rest of it. In fact, after having seen it now multiple times, I usually watch no more than one or two episodes (out of the seven total, not counting the prologue and the epilogue) at a time. The episodic structure lends itself well to this, I think.
All the best,
Michael McIntyre
[...] Tarkovsky, and #90 includes some discussion about Andrei Rublev. And here’s one of their blog posts about Andrei Rublev, in which I’ve left three comments so far. Possibly related posts: [...]
Michael. Thanks very much. I have been over to your blog, and I plan to specifically read about the oak tree sequence sometime today.
“Such long, sinuous takes are like expressionist brush strokes; the result is a kind of narrative impasto.” J. HOBERMAN
Abstract. An abstract painting may have concrete images in it, but the meaning of those concrete images is not known, leaving them open to interpretation. A painting that a friend and artist gave to us (at which i am now looking at) is nothing but layers of color with an etching of a handgun. the handgun is concrete, but what does it mean? what does it mean for me, and what does it mean for the artist? that is very much how i felt when watching Rublev for the first time.
so “abstract” was not a way of criticizing the film, but rather admitting that this is a film with an extraordinary amount of layers to consider, possibly for the rest of my life.
Kyle,
Something else I wanted to mention, that is not apparent without some study of the historical context, is that at this late date we can know very little about the specifics of Andrei Rublev's life, or what he thought — these things simply weren't recorded. Tarkovsky was therefore free, in effect, to “invent” the details of Rublev's life. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this could have been license for rank melodrama or patriotic puffery, especially given the (Soviet) film system that Tarkovsky was working within. But no, here we have one supreme artist who is able to brilliantly intuit, across the centuries, the mind of another supreme artist. It is not a question of whether the details of Rublev's life are accurate in some strict historical sense (without a record, how can we know?). What matters is whether the details, as portrayed in the film, are true to the shaping intuition or vision, and whether this vision is commensurate with the only historical residue that Rublev has left us — his matchless icons. I believe that Tarkovsky's vision of the life of Rublev fully measures up on both counts.
In a general historical sense, the “pagan holiday” episode has rightly been faulted as anachronistic. Historians tell us that pagan enclaves like the one depicted by Tarkovsky are extremely unlikely in fifteenth-century Russia. But I think that including this episode was a stroke of genius, and bespeaks the deeply rooted conflict in Rublev's soul (and, I would argue, in Tarkovsky's too) between choosing an ascetic, world-denying path, and choosing a bounteous, world-affirming path. Despite what I said in my previous comment, about Rublev being at odds with “black” Byzantine spirituality, it's important to remember that he always remained — sometimes more, sometimes less — within this tradition. In my view, his masterpiece, the Trinity icon, is his eloquent attempt to “reform” the tradition. Working within an incredibly prescribed art form — icon painting — Rublev has achieved, in the Trinity icon, the seemingly impossible. He has created something completely new, yet completely recognizable as belonging to the thousand-year-old tradition. Rublev has chosen the world-affirming path, but yet has not renounced the world-denying path. This will appear to be an intolerable paradox for those who worship logic. But for those who worship the living God, all things are possible, even “illogical” things. The Last Judgment is a feast (or holiday)!
Marfa, the pagan temptress of Andrei, says something very important to Andrei, in terms of his development in “seeing.” When Andrei tries to tell her that there is carnal love and then there is brotherly love (i.e. that they are different things), she gently reproves him, “Isn't all love the same? It's just love.” Marfa's words recall to my mind the profound and beautiful essay on love, written in the form of a letter, by Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580 – 662). It is significant, in this context, that besides being the greatest of the Byzantine theologians, the one who “got it all right” in the words of one modern interpreter, Maximus is also the most world-affirming one (while remaining an ascetic monk!). He is an important “subterranean” influence behind the great Russian religious philosophers of the Silver Age (roughly 1890 to 1917) who were so important in the formation of Tarkovsky's worldview. Here is the part of Maximus' letter, “On Love,” that Marfa's words bring to mind:
“Love is therefore a great good, and of goods the first and most excellent good, since through it God and man are drawn together in a single embrace, and the creator of humankind appears as human, through the undeviating likeness of the deified to God in the good so far as is possible to humankind. And the interpretation of love is: to love the Lord God with all the heart and soul and power, and the neighbor as oneself. Which is, if I might express it in a definition, the inward universal relationship to the first good connected with the universal purpose of our natural kind. Other than this there is nothing that can make the human being who loves God ascend any higher, for all other ways of true religion are subordinate to it. This we know as love and so we call it, not divisively assigning one form of love to God and another to human beings, for it is one and the same and universal: owed to God and attaching human beings one to another.”
Take care,
Michael McIntyre
Kyle,
Okay, thanks. I understand what you mean now, and I certainly agree that Tarkovsky's films are richly layered. When I hear the phrase “all very abstract” I tend to think of certain films by Stan Brakhage, for example. The whole abstract versus figurative debate in art is probably an endless one, and there's obviously overlap. I guess my own (perhaps simple-minded) barometer is that if I'm looking at an artistic image, and what's being portrayed isn't recognizable as a particular “something” straight away, then I'd consider it abstract. And here I'm talking about on an immediate, visceral level; “meaning” operates on a slower, more constructed level. I rarely have the sense while watching a Tarkovsky film that I'm seeing “abstract” images, in the sense that I'm using the word here. (An exception might be the images in “Solaris” of Solaris itself.) Rather like how a religious icon is supposed to function in the mind and heart of a believer, i.e. as a window into the transcendent, Tarkovskian images draw the viewer into, and through, the literal object(s) in the frame into other, “higher” planes. But I use the scare quotes around the word higher, because I don't think that Tarkovsky means for us to take the concrete objects he portrays to be simply “containers” of spiritual content, to be discarded as empty husks once their “marrow” has been consumed (the way I sometimes feel to be the case in Bresson's films).
Thanks for the discussion, by the way. It's always nice to meet another person who knows and likes Tarkovsky — I know so few, personally, who do.
Michael McIntyre