Andrei Tarkovsky

Because this is the movie-forums , i thought there might be at least some reviews
of Tarkovsky's films such as Stalker , Solyaris , Zerkalo etc.
But i was surprised to find nothing about him in the reviews section.
Well , i thought that there might be some discussion about him in the forums ,
but the result was the same.
So i wonder , are there any Tarkovsky fans here?

Yes.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Moved to Actors, Awards, & Directors. Please take the time to place threads in the correct forum.

If you use advanced search and choose 'Search Entire Posts' you should turn up plenty of musings

For myself, I find him fairly impenetrable, along with much of the world it seems, but something of a master when it comes infusing his flicks with sustained tone and the like. Stalker was visually absorbing and marvelously reflective, but its path lead to a place of condensed spiritual vaguery that i found a pretty annoying at the time. (I had a similar reaction to the deus-ex-machina machinations of Solaris, altho i've only seen the remake)

I've seen The Mirror, and without being versed in Soviet history, I had scant idea as to what was going on. Again it was 'artfully' shot and paced in its own way, but a particularly frustrating watch most of the time.

Mark F has just stuck up a mini-review of Andrey Rublyov on the 'Movie Tab' thread that has me intrigued to see it tho

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Big fan.

Stalker is probably my favourite of his films. But I am a huge fan of all of his other work.

All his films are feasts for the eye. Can't say that I "get" everything in them though, and they can be pretty slow - but never bad. And every film I've seen with him has had at least a couple of breathtaking scenes - both visually and as brain ticklers.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

The difficult thing about Tarkovsky is that his films are generally long, slow and usually take a completely untraditional way in telling a "story". Unless you've seen his films numerous times each it's very difficult to try to get at what the point of the film is, but there do seem to be some recurring themes. Man's quest to find some meaning of life is often contrasted with his apparent inability to understand how to get along with his fellow man as well as the Earth itself. The visual presentation is often static, almost that of a tableau (which is often appropriate in something such as Andrei Rublev), but he also uses some slow tracking shots which enable the viewer to take in more of what may be happening outside the "edges of the tableau". Then he'll include some visceral scene (such as the freeway driving scene in Solaris or the Tartar attacks in Andrei Rublev) which seem to have been done by a completely different filmmaker. Another thing which makes Tarkovsky difficult to grasp initially is that it's often unclear who the main character is and what his relationship is to all the events happening within the film. Tarkovsky also tends to use dreams and ghosts in his films, but he uses them rather sparingly and with different purposes (even though I haven't seen some of his films enough times to be sure what the purpose actually may be .) The bottom line seems to be that Tarkovsky wants you to enjoy his films on an artistic level but at something much deeper than most films ever attempt. As with most true art, people's interpretations will be different, but Tarkovsky obviously hopes that you make it to the end because his films tend to lead up to some spiritual conclusion where Man can at least come to find Peace if not exactly true Understanding.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

The nice thing about his "difficult" style is that he ALWAYS has a payoff at the end of a particularly "difficult" sequence and ALWAYS at the end of the film itself. He ALWAYS "wows you in the end" as they say. You don't ever leave his films feeling empty even if you sometimes feel a little in the middle. He doesn't pull a Cache so to speak. Also, the compositions in his films are unparalleled as is the allegorical content and atmosphere.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers. I've seen his entire filmography many times and each viewing makes me like him a lot more. I usually understand for the most part what he's going for the first time through... but what's different about him as opposed to other unconventional film makers out there is that he provides "layers" of understanding. So watching Ivan's Childhood for the first time for example, (a film in my top 10 films list), is like being given a clue... second time, it unfolds a little more... then the next viewing it unfolds even further. Like a cinematic onion... except it's sweet on the inside. Actually I may report back here or on my Reviews page about a film of his or so. It seems only right.

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

I admire him but can't lie, watched Solaris and Stalker..couldn't finish them. And i've tried HARD. They were too much for me, man. I did find the latter more intriguing, but it was still too much.

Loved Solaris.

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"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

I'll rank his works:

1. The Mirror (obviously)
2. Stalker
3. Solaris
4. Andrei Rublev
5. Ivan's Childhood

So I just Watched my first Andrey Tarkovsky film The Mirror (Zerkalo) 1975 and I have to say that I was really Impressed.I couldn't believe the stunning imagery I was amazed.The cinematography had a surreal dreamlike feel to it.

In The Mirror I think that "Man can at least come to find Peace if not exactly truly understanding" is exactly what the film is about.In the next week I will be checking out alot more of Tarkovskiy's work.

Forgive me Tarkovsky, but hey Holly, did you ever watch How to Steal a Million?

Not yet,Thats funny you said that because I was gonna watch it tonight but I watched Tootsie instead but i just got the DVD so I'm probably gonna check it out tomorrow.

I love Tootsie but I noticed you voted against it. I don't care any which way though.

Ain't that just like old Marky? Coming into a "foreign" filmmaker's thread and spamming it with an off-topic promotion of a Hollywood film. Has it really come to this?

This is a pretty weak thread, and what do you know, it seems Mark has written the most so far.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Tarkovsky is salvation from mainstream cinema!

Thought this might be of interest for anyone who can play a R2 disc.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...pf_rd_i=501976

Ivan's Childhood (1962) Andrei Rublev (1966) Solaris (1972) The Mirror (1975) Stalker (1979) Nostalgia (1983) The Sacrifice (1986) for £34.49.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Wow is all I can say. I wish discs weren't coded. Makes no sense.