Life as a reflection, life as a dream
Andrei Arsenevich Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was a Soviet film director, writer, and theorist. His family had a literary background, and he studied art, music and language at school.
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) directed seven feature films and three student shorts over a 24-year period. Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan’s Childhood, 1962), Andrei Rublev (1966) and Solaris (1972); Zerkalo (Mirror) (1975)after it, will come Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983) and Offret (The Sacrifice, 1986). The last two – shot in Italy and Sweden, respectively – were made in exile from the Soviet Union. "Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." - Ingmar Bergman
The great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman excellently intoned in his 1987 autobiography, “The Magic Lantern,” that discovering Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s work was, “A miracle. Tarkovsky for me is the greatest director, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”
In 1987, a couple of months after Tarkovsky's passing Akira Kurosawa would praise his “unusual sensitivity as both overwhelming and astounding. It almost reaches a pathological intensity. Probably there is no equal among film directors alive now.” And trial movie producer Stan Brakhage was essentially stricken, pursuing him down at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983 to screen his work and calling him, “the greatest living narrative filmmaker.”
Awards for Tarkovsky, one of Russia's most persuasive filmmakers are for the most part gleaming praises, motivating a zest that would discover the faction chief's work inspected and contemplated for quite a long time. In any case, similarly passionate are his spoilers; gatherings of people and faultfinders who locate his moderate, sluggish, mysterious work exhausting and invulnerable. Such uncontrollably dissimilar venerate him-or-despise him sentiments must mean a certain something: that Tarkovsky's movies speak to the apotheosis of a specific sort of filmmaking and eventually your inclination to like that sort of film conditions your response to Tarkovsky. Indeed, even the individuals who loathe moderate, thoughtful, dreamlike movies can't prevent Tarkovsky's authority from claiming the frame. Furthermore, with film history continually in a condition of modification, Tarkovsky's work, such as streaming water searching for an exit, dependably discovers roads for re-appreciation. This week, Kino International discharges his last picture, "The Sacrifice" on Blu-Ray, and prior this year in May, the Criterion Collection — which has three of his movies in their list — released his science fiction great, "Solaris" onto the Blu-design.
Interminably intrigued by the spiritual, the metaphysical, the texture of dreams and memory, Tarkovsky shunned customary account and plot, and rather looked to light up the pith of the oblivious through a patient, puzzling and intelligent silver screen that for some outskirts on lovely heavenliness.
While their methods and aesthetics are unmistakably unique, one marvels why Terrence Malick's movies and comparative huge picture reflections seldom come up in discussions about Tarkovsky. There seems to be a sure family relationship between their work, however it's impossible the Russian filmmaker could ever have condescended to incorporate a voiceover that actually asks each mystical question out loud; it was more his style to represent these regularly existential conundrums verifiably, letting the imagery do the work, quietly, dreamily.
Making just seven features in twenty-four years, Tarkovsky permitted his movies to inhale, to say the least — they are frequently portrayed by their extreme length ("Andrei Rublev" is 3 hours and 25 minutes), their unhurried pace and the utilization of amplified following shots that could last from 7-10 minutes, all of which continually loaned his photos a lethargic, hallucinatory, sleep inducing environment. Tarkovsky trusted silver screen was the main artistic expression that could genuinely save the stream of time — which maybe clarifies the length of his movies to some degree — and keeping in mind that his mesmeric dream tenor and narcotic pacing can send the normal moviegoer off to rest, his "chiseling of time" ethos (the name of his posthumous 1989 book) for the most part motivates stunningness, ponder and a feeling of lovely equivocalness in those with persistence and interest enough to give themselves over to the experience.
As John Gianvito place it in his 2006 Tarkovsky Interviews book, the corpus of his work is the “near-messianic pursuit of nothing less than the redemption of the soul of man.”
1 Comment
11/27/2017 11:22:55 am
For the first time in my life I have seen such a great miracle and it sure was something interesting to know. Precisely there are many incredible things in life which we are not even aware with.
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