Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Rublev

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Anatoliy Sononitsyn as Andrei Rublev

A film about an icon maker called Andrei made by a film maker called Andrei. Any read across from 15th century painter Andrei Rublev to 20th century auteur Andrei Tarkovsky is entirely deliberate, though the surprise of watching what’s often described as Tarkovsky’s master work is how little Andrei Rublev actually features in it. He’s the bystander, the observer, in his own story, which is actually more the story of the times Rublev lived in, as recreated by Tarkovksy in, remarkably, only his second film. How at this stage in his career Tarkovsky got the funding from an avowedly anti-God communist regime to make a film about a man of God is one … Read more

Mirror

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A burning barn

The 2012 Greatest Films of All Time poll, conducted every decade by Sight and Sound magazine, has Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror at number 19. On the Critics’ Poll, at any rate. The poll of directors places it even higher, at number 9. So directors like it more than critics, who like it more than the general public, I’m guessing. Because Mirror is a non-linear, plotless affair, a ruminative, nostalgic bask in the past, autobiographical to a large extent, tracing, hopscotch style, Tarkovsky’s early life with a young mother and an absent father – the war was on and dad was fighting the Nazis. The word “oneiric” (dreamlike) is often wheeled out. It’s been called … Read more

Stalker

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Stalker and companions in the Zone

Time to rewatch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, I thought, having recently seen Abel Ferrara’s Siberia (2019) and Gan Bi’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), and noticed how influenced both were by the 1979 film. As so many films are. Going backwards in time, just grabbing almost at random, there’s Stephen Fingleton’s amazing The Survivalist (2015), Alexey German’s Hard to Be a God (2015), Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) and Andrey Zvyangintsev’s The Return (2003). Almost all of Terrence Malick’s films owe a lot to Tarkovsky in general and Stalker in particular. Seminal, an overused term, is appropriate here. Let’s also mention Blade Runner, which appeared in 1982, three years after Stalker. While there … Read more

Solaris

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Natalya Bondarchuk in Solaris

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 April Yuri’s Night Today marks the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight by a human –a “man” back then –  into space and the first orbital flight of a manned (humanned?) vehicle, on 12 April 1961, on board the Soviet spaceship Vostok 1. It is celebrated across the world as Yuri’s Night, in the astronaut’s honour. It’s also used to applaud similarly momentous space exploration milestones. Yuri’s Night was first held in 2001, on the 40th anniversary of human spaceflight, though the Soviet Union had been honouring Cosmonautics Day since 1962, which since 2011 has been called the International Day … Read more