Andrei Tarkovsky

The Winding Quest

Peter Green

M

©Peter Green 1993

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claims for damages.

First published 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hamps�re RG21 2XS and London

Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 0-333-53846-3

For Walda

Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest. And passage through these looms

God ordered motion, but ordain'd no rest.

Henry Vaughan, Man

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Contents

List of Plates

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Steamroller and the Violin

Ivan's Childhood

Andrei Rublyov

Solaris

The Mirror

Stalker

Nostalgia

The Sacrifice

Epilogue

Notes

Filmography

Index

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viii

ix

1

16

24

39

63

78

93

107

120

136

138

152

158

List of Plates

Andrei Tarkovsky during the shooting of The Mirror (Archiv 1 .

Igor Jassenjawsky, Munich) . Andrei Tarkovsky during the shooting of Stalker (Archzv Igor

2. Jassenjawsky, Munich) . I ' Childhood - the close of the film: Ivan and the d�ad,

3" c�::ed tree by the river (Archiv Igor Jas�enjawsky, Munzch)

Andrei Rublyov - prologue: t�e launching of the balloon 4"

(Archiv Igor Jassenjawsky, Munzch)

A d · Rublyov-Kyrill (Ivan Lapikov), the literate man _whose

S. i�e��ct stands in the way of his vision (Archzv Igor

Jassenjawsky, Munich) . . Solaris _Chris Kelvin watching the film of the dead

_ Gtbanan

6" (Archiv Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V., Berlzn) . The Mirror- the father (Oleg Yankovsky� returns home dunng

7" the war (Archiv Igor Jassenjawsky, Munzch) . The Mirror _ Maria Ivanovna, Tarkovsky's mother (Archzv

& ) Igor Jassenjawsky, Munich . The Mirror_ the boy with the bird (Archiv Igor JassenJawsky,

9. M�� · I

10_ Tarkovsky during the shooting of Stalker (Archzv gar

Jassenjawsky, Munich) . Stalker_ the stalker and the writer (Archiv Igor Jassen]awsky,

11 . M�� . Stalker_ the stalker (Aleksander Kaidano_vsky) and �e wnter

12· (Anatoly Solonitsyn) (Archiv Igor Jassen]awsky, Mu�zch)

Stalker_ in the Zone (Archiv Freunde der Deutschen Kznemathek 13.

e V., Berlin) . ky S.talker _ the stalker's daughter (Archiv Igor JassenJaWs ,

14. Munich)

15-17. Tarkovsky's grave near Paris (Peter Green)

viii

r· I

Introduction

A successor to his own Rublyov, an icon painter in film, a commen­tator on our modern condition, Tarkovsky sought a state of harmony between the inward, spiritual life and the outward material world in which man lives. He perceived the potential of film for charting the modern space-time dimension we inhabit.

Childhood and war, the quest for belief, nostalgia as a yearning for horne, as a sickness unto death, sacrifice, and hope for the future are not merely the epic and universal themes of his films; they are stations in his own life. There is a rare congruence between subject and object that goes beyond the usual autobiographical parallels artists draw in their work.

Andrei Arsenievich Tarkovsky was born on 4 April 1932 in Zavrazhie in the district of Ivanov on the Volga. His father, Arseniy Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (1907-89), was a poet whose work met with considerable acclaim in later years and who, like Andrei's mother, Maya lvanovna Vishnyakova, had studied at the Moscow Literary Institute. By 1935 the family had moved to the outskirts of Moscow, where Andrei went to school in 1939 and where he was to spenJ much of his yonth. For two yea.rs during the Second World War he, his mother and his younger sister, Marina, were evacuated to relatives in the small town ofYu:::ycvetz where TarKovsky's grand·· parents had lived opposite Zavrazhie. The places and images of Tarkovsky's early years made an indelible impression on him and were to have a lasting influence on his work. In this world of child­hood, in the house of his grandfather, as he was to describe in The Mirror, happiness lay before him; everything was still possible.

As early as 1935, when the family moved to Moscow, strains were beginning to show in the parents' marital relationship that were later to lead to Arseniy's separation from his wife and children. In 1941, with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, the father volun­teered for service in the army, in the course of which he lost a leg.

In 1943 the family returned to Moscow and Andrei went back to his old school. The war years were filled with two main preoccupa­tions for him: the question of survival, and the return of his father from the front. When Arseniy Tarkovsky did finally come horne, however, highly decorated with the Order of the Red Star, he did not rejoin the family. Left alone to bring up her two children, Andrei's

1

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Alf Bold (Freunde der Deutschen I<inemathek, Berlin), Jutta M. Brandstaedter, Penelope Houston, Igor Jassenjawsky and Maya Turovskaya, without whose help this book would not have been realised at the present time or in the present form.

PG

ix

2 Andrei Tarkovsky

mother worked until retirement as a proofreader in a printing firm. Tarkovsky grew up with his mother, grandmother and sister.

He was evidently not a conspicuously clever or industrious pupil at school. He received a traditional musical education at a local institute of music and also studied drawing at art school. His mother wanted her son to work in a creative field, and Tarkovsky himself later remarked that his work as a film director would not have been conceivable without the basic education he had received in art and music.1

On leaving school, however, he initially enrolled in 1951 at the Institute for Oriental Studies. His course there was interrupted by a sports injury. Instead o£ resuming his studies on his recovery, Tarkovsky joined a geological research group on an expedition to the eastern Soviet Union, where he remained for nearly a year, producing a whole series of sketches and drawings. These experi­ences in the taiga apparently strengthened his resolve to become a film director.2 In 1954 he successfully applied for a place at the Moscow film school, where he was to study for six years.

This phase of Tarkovsky's career under Mikhail Romm at the school for film coincided with a certain renaissance in the Soviet cinema.3 Exposed to many new ideas and impulses at this time, Tarkovsky's own personality experienced a rapid development. He completed his studies at the film school with honours in 1960 with his diploma submission and first feature film, The Steamroller and the Violin, in which many typically Tarkovskian motifs are already evi­dent. Although certain reservations were voiced within the Mosfilm studios, where the film was produced, it received general acclaim from the press, a fact that certainly stood him in good stead for the immediate future.

In 1961 he was appointed by the director-general of Mosfilm to salvage a film, the shooting of which by E. Abalov had been termin­a�ed �ue to the unsatisfactory quality of the work. Tarkovsky's drrection not merely rescued the production and remained within the budget; Ivan's Childhood proved to be an international success and won a Golden Lion at Venice. Despite reservations towards the film in Russia, the circumstances scarcely suggest the difficulties Tarkovsky was to experience with Soviet authorities in his future career. These began with his next film, Andrei Rublyov, and were to encumber his creative work for the rest of his life in Russia. The objections to his Andrei Rublyov project, which took five years to

Introduction 3

realise and which had to wait a further three years for a showing in the West, were initially of a financial and later of an ideological nature. But the difficulties Tarkovsky was to encounter throughout his life were certainly also attributable to his own uncompromising and often stubborn character.

Tarkovsky's first marriage was to Irma Raush, an actress who appeared in his early films and by whom he had a son. In 1970 Tarkovsky married the actress Larissa Pavlovna, who also assisted him in the direction of many of his later films. Their son Andrei was born in the same year.

If his next work, Solaris (1972), proved less problematic in terms of its realisation and distribution, The Min:or (1974-5) again brought him into conflict with the authorities on account of its subjective, autobiographical nature. Four years were to pass before he was able to direct another film, Stalker (1979). Tarkovsky's own demanding standards, the loss of film material and the reshooting of the work played a decisive role in this. At all events, weary of the obstacles placed in his path as a director, Tarkovsky applied to make his next film abroad. Nostalgia (1983), shot in Italy, was a Russian co­production with RAL

The letters Tarkovsky wrote in 1983 to F. P. Yermash,4chairman of Goskino, and to Yuri Andropov,S General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, sum up the director's frustra­tion and at the same time allow one an insight into his plans. With the refusal of the Soviet authorities to issue him with a normal passport, Tarkovsky decided in 1984 to remain in exile in the West and established a new home in Tuscany. (At one point he is reported to have sought asylum in the USA, although Tarkovsky stressed at the time that his exile was that of a patriot and not of a dissident.6) His wife Larissa remained with him in the West. His son Andrei (Andryusha) was allowed out only in 1986, when Tarkovsky was seriously ill, following appeals and interventions by various persons and institutions in the West.

By December 1985 Tarkovsky knew he had cancer. Not knowing how to break the news to his wife, he returned to spend Christmas with her in Italy, where the mayor of Florence had given them a home. But Tarkovsky was not to remain out of hospital for long, ��turning to Paris and later to an anthroposophical clinic in Oschelbronn near Baden Baden. Although the bulk of the work on The Sacrifice had already been completed in Sweden, Tarkovsky gave

4 Andrei Tarkovsky

his final instructions concerning the soundtrack from a hospital bed.7 The film was completed in 1986 and awarded th� Special Prize of the Jury at Cannes in the same year.

At the end a number of projects remained unfinished or unrealised. In the winter of 1984-5 Tarkovsky had drawn up plans with the German director Alexander Kluge for a joint film about the writings of the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner. The film was to have been made after Tarkovsky had completed work on The Sacrifice. Other long-term plans included his Thomas Mann and Dostoevsky projects, works on St Anthony and the lives of the saints, as well as a film version of Hamlet, a play he had already directed on the stage in Moscow and London. His other work for the stage included a not­able production of Boris Godunov, which he was invited to mount for Covent Garden in 1983 under the musical direction of Claudio Abbado.

Undoubtedly the most important of his unfinished projects was 'Hoffmanniana', which was to deal with the life and work of the German Romantic poet E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Tarkovsky had published a screenplay on this subject as early as 19768 and received a promise of financial assistance for its further develop­ment within the Bavarian film support programme in ]986. He had even determined some of the locations in Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin. The screenplay, written after work on The Mirror was com­pleted, contains many of Tarkovsky' s familiar motifs. During the last year of his life, in the summer of 1986, after receiving treatment in Germany and in a moment of respite from cancer, he took up this project again, planning to start work in the autumn. At the same time he was also working on the Hamlet script9 and had a documen­tary in mind describing the problems of the artist in exile. But this period of optimism and renewed activity proved illusory and short­lived. Although he was in no real state to be moved, he went back briefly to Italy in 1986, where he made plans with his son Andryusha to build a house. Before long the pains grew worse and he was forced to return to Paris for further treatment. There he died of lung cancer in the night of 28--9 December 1986.

The sad irony of his death in emigration was that it came at a time when a new, more tolerant spirit was emerging in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. The Soviet cinema seemed a particular beneficiary of the new policies. Having studiously avoided any cel­ebration of Tarkovsky's fiftieth birthday in 1982, having placed ob­stacles in his path as a film maker for much of his life and hindered

Introduction 5

access to his films, the Soviet authorities now laid a wreath on his grave in the Russian cemetery of Ste Genevieve des Bois outside Paris. 10 The first complete retrospective of his works in the USSR was shown during the Moscow Film Festival in 1987.U

TARKOVSKY'S THEMATIC WORLD

Tarkovsky described art as a yearning for the ideal,l2 the creation of an alternative reality. He saw the act of creation itself as an essential moment of art, the artist as a god-like creature; and yet art was not an end in itself. If, as a man of profound belief, he was to draw the old parallel between God and the artist, he saw the act of creation as one of self-sacrifice and not of self-expression or self-realisation.13 Andrei Rublyov, as an examination of the role of the artist and the individual in society, again reveals a number of parallels to Tarkovsky's own situation. Rublyov's return to painting at the end of the film is in the service of and to the glory of God, not in any Promethean demonstration of his own powers. In Tarkovsky's eyes the artist's strength is derived from and returns to God. 'The aim of art is to prepare a person for death.'14

In 1984 Tarkovsky spoke about the Apocalypse and the Revela­tion of St John at St James's Church, Piccadilly, London. Questioned on the source of his own strength, he replied that he derived it from the things about him. It was not a personal, inner strength, but something outside him; something one could only attain by forget­ting oneself.15 Tarkovsky once described the role of the artist as that of an intermediary who receives messages and passes them on. In other words, like Alexander in The Sacrifice, he is the servant, not the master of his fate.

Tarkovsky's belief, his dedication of art to the service of G od, did not preclude a profound humanism. He himself would probably have seen no conflict in that, regarding the love of man and God as something indivisible. His belief, his moral conviction were extremely personal, a curious mixture of orthodox Christianity, fundamental­ism, Messianic vision and freethinking. His art and his belief can both be seen as a lifelong preparation for death. With the shadow of his own fatal illness upon him, Tarkovsky, in his final film The Sacrifice, has Alexander speak the words: 'There is no death, only the fear of death.' In his hospital bed in Germany in the summer of 1986,

6 Andrei Tarkovsky

less than six months before the end, when for a moment there seemed a possibility of overcoming the disease, he was studying passages from Ecclesiastes on the vanity of all things. Like the vanitas motifs from Renaissance paintings he quoted in his works, he was con­cerned with the final things of life. A preoccupation with the Apoca­lypse can be traced throughout his work, from the Diirer engravings of Ivan's Childhood to the dark vision of The Sacrifice. Indeed, many passages of Revelation might have served as scenarios for Tarkovsky films.

So, too, the concepts of sacrifice and redemption that he articu­lated in such concentrated form in his final work are to be found throughout his reuvre. They underlie the actions of Ivan. They repre­sent a central idea in Andrei Rublyov and are the motivation of Domenico's actions (and indeed Gorchakov's) in Nostalgia . Domenico's self-immolation in Rome is on behalf of mankind and a better world: Gorchakov sacrifices himself in the execution of a religious mission he had promised Domenico to perform; and Gorchakov dies in exile. The strands invariably lead back to Tarkov­sky himself, creating a remarkable and often prophetic state of identity between his work, his belief and his own life.

A counterpart to this dark vision is the quest for paradise that runs through his films. It is the realm of the childhood dreams, the sunlight and innocence of Ivan. It is the motivation of Stalker, and it lies at the heart of Chris's venture into space in Solaris. But it also underlies the visions of Nostalgia and The Sacrifice: the idea of sacri­fice on behalf of a better world, the recovery of innocence and meaning.

The state of disharmony in which man lives, the imbalance be­tween his material and spiritual development, which Alexander describes in The Sacrifice, is another aspect of this. The loss of inno­cence, the triumph of materialism and man's spiritual plight are perhaps modern manifestations of what Alexander refers to as 'sin'. This he sets out to redeem on behalf of the world - not with words, but with deeds. Words and prevarication had ultimately prevented the scientist and the writer from entering the room of fulfilment in Stalker. The emptiness of words and the sacrifice implied by silence are ideas that recur in Andrei Rublyov, Nostalgia and The Sacrifice.

Tarkovsky describes an essential aesthetic principle of film as its ability to capture and reproduce time, to retain time 'in metal boxes', so to speak.16 He extended this idea by suggesting that auteur film allowed a director to impose a certain form on time. 'Time and

Introduction 7

memory merge into each other'; they are two sides of the same c . 17 M . rt f ' 1 om. emory lS pa o man s marta equipment, Tarkovsky ar-gued, since life is no more than a finite period given to man in which to

_shape his spirit in accordance with his own conception of human

eXIStence. Although time is irretrievable, Tarkovsky saw the past as far more real or permanent than the present. The present passes away, slips through out fingers like sand. It acquires its material weight only in the memory. But time cannot disappear without trace.

Tarkovsky developed this aesthetic idea of film with increasing subtlety, cutting between past, present and future, and between memory, dream and vision, creating time within time in a complex system of subjective cross-references. There is an evident affinity to Proust in this, and Tarkovsky's interest in him as a theme for a film is not surprising.18Tarkovsky's concept of time as finite and 'clo�ed' and his view of the film maker's ability to recreate it, in a sense, to impose his form on it, are reflected in the titles of the German and English translations of his book Sapechatlyonnoye Vremya - 'sealed time' and 'sculpting in time'.19

Solaris and The Mirror went furthest in Tarkovsky's investigation of time in film. The former explored the idea of the materialisation of �reams and memories. The latter, a complex autobiographical timescape, was an essay in the rediscovery of lost time, in which beginning and end seem part of an endless spiral. .

A direct adjunct of Tarkovsky's shifting patterns of time is his fondness for merging identities (echoed by his preference for the same actors in many of his films). In the autobiographical context of The Min•or, for example, this creates a continuing sense of identity from one generation to another; father and son are ultimately one, an idea that recurs in The Sacrifice, albeit in different form. Two exam­ples will suffice to illustrate this technique here. In Nostalgia Andrei comes across a wardrobe standing in a deserted street and opens the mirrored door, only to encounter the reflection of Domenico. In The Sacrifice, after the second vision of panic in the streets, the scene changes to a flat landscape with pine trees. One sees Alexander lying in the grass, with what appears to be his wife Adelaide seated at his side, her back to the camera. As she turns, however, one sees that it is in fact Maria, wearing the same dress and with the same hairstyle as Adelaide.

Tarkovsky was concerned with other themes as well, of course: with childhood and war; with the history of Russia and its situation

8 Andrei Tarkovsky

between East and West, between the 'heathen' Orient and Christian­ity; with Renaissance painting and ideas. In many cases the expres­sion of these preoccupations emerges as strongly through the images he created as through the dialogue. Another aspect of the material­ism he criticised was his concern about environmental destruction. The apocalyptic aesthetic of ruin that he developed can be seen as one manifestation of this. Again, it was one of those prescient coincidences that seemed to recur in his life that the background to Stalker, made in 1979, anticipated the nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl in 1986, around which a prohibited zone was subsequently drawn. Almost all Tarkovsky's themes, however, derive ultimately from his central ontological preoccupations. Often even asides, such as the repeated references to smoking in his films, are centrally related to questions of his own existence. In the light of this, The Sacrifice appears as a premonition of his own death.

MOTIFS AND POETRY

Certain visual motifs recur in nearly all Tarkovsky's films: horses, dogs, rain, spilt milk, mirrors, manifestations of flying or levitation, parapsychological phenomena. The list is long and varied. His work abounds in autobiographical quotations of scenes or memories from childhood: the family constellation of mother, son, daughter and absent father that occurs in Ivan and The Mirror, for example, or the collage of home in Nostalgia, with the timber house, the field, the lake and the telegraph pole, a topography of his early years. Tarkovsky used these motifs in a variety of ways to create a network of familiar landmarks and cross-references, interweaving personal experience with the themes he was treating.

The summer idyll with the cuckoo's call and the butterfly help paint a picture of childhood innocence. The bell is used as the herald of triumph over artistic or moral obstacles. Some of his motifs occur with almost obsessive regularity, and where they are not present in the final film, they have sometimes disappeared along the way in the process of rewriting the screenplay or during shooting or editing.20

Tarkovsky's dense imagery should not spark off a search for ambiguities and shades of meaning in every picture he created. That would lead to a situation he himself feared, where the images ac­quire an existence of their own, where cinema is removed from life,

�Introduction 9

and symbols degenerate to an empty puzzle.21 He rightly saw the danger of dividing the whole into a number of discrete parts, re­moved from the natural flow of time.22 His films and the images that go to make them up are more than just an accumulation of in­dividual elements.

The matter might be dismissed as one of definition - and he himself quotes the symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov in this con­texP- if it were not for the fact that Tarkovsky rejected any sugges­tion not merely of symbolism but of metaphor, simile, allegory and parable as well. Furthermore, there are evident inconsistencies in his arguments and between his theory and practice. Tarkovsky claimed

- that in none of his films is anything symbolised. The Zone in Stalker is simply a zone, he writes.24 But he goes on to describe the Zone as life itself, through which man must pass; and elsewhere he writes, 'Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.'25 Persistently ques­tioned about the meaning of the rain and water in his films, he replied that they were merely a depiction of the heavy rainfall of his home and a direct representation of nature, albeit used to create an aesthetic setting.26 In other words, he recognised that rain or sun­shine can lend additional atmosphere to a scene. Elsewhere he de­scribes the cinegenic qualities of water.27

Tarkovsky is telling only part of the story, however. His use of water and other images is not merely a wilful manipulation of at­mosphere and cinegenic effects. The painterly quality and composi­tion of his pictures is no mere coincidence. Tarkovsky' s art studies in his youth found their continuation in his later drawings and sketches; and his lifelong preoccupation with Renaissance and earlier painting was a source of inspiration from which he borrowed many icono­graphic codes and conventions. The system of attributes and sym­bolism, the lighting and coloration that formed part of a familiar language used by the old masters are explored in Tarkovsky' s films too consistently for his images to be chance arrangements with no more than an aesthetic function. The mirrors and other tokens of decay that are a major feature of nearly all his works are closely related to the vanitas objects and ideas central to the tradition of still­life painting. Similar parallels between the films and painting can be seen in the quotation of the four elements (nor should one overlook the important role they play in the Russian Orthodox liturgy). Water and its allied symbols - bowls, jugs, towels, fish - were tokens of purity and purification (cf. the hand-washing scene in Maria's house in The Sacrifice and the complex Marian reflections of that film). The

10 Andrei Tarkovsky

many manifestations of water, particularly in Tarkovsky' s later �orks, cannot be attributed solely to his nostalgia for the inclement climate of his home, nor to the needs of cinematographic atmosphere.

Tarkovsky's fear of unwanted interpretations that might distract attention from the central statement of his films is justified. Why indeed should the artist volunteer to dissect a work he has taken such pains to put together? It stands as a whole, and it would be unwise to sift out layers of meaning if in the process one were to lose sight of its unity. Nevertheless, as Maya Tur�vskaya

. observed,

Tarkovsky's films do not exist on a level of pure mformation, but on a level of signification as well.28 He himself acknowledged the need for the viewer to make his own interpretative contribution.29 Fur­thermore, a deeper, more enduring appreciation of his films is more likely to be found in an analytical approach than in vague evocations of their 'poetic' qualities. Tarkovsky himself used the word repeat­edly and attempted a definition, although he came to see the dangers implicit in it.

In discussions of Tarkovsky' s films the word 'poetic' all too often seems to stand for some undefined and effusive notion of beauty. His films are undoubtedly poetic, but not for any vague emotional or mystical qualities. Their true poetry lies in the �oncen�ation

.of im­

ages, sometimes allusive or associative, s�me.times reinfor�g an

idea, compressing further layers of meanmg mto a scene Without extending its length- a distillation of cinematographic

.expre�sio

.n:

The need to understand this process provides the ultimate JUStifi­cation for an analysis and interpretation of his works, notwithstand­ing Tarkovsky's reservations. If the ruined churches of Ivan's Child­hofJd, Andrei Rublyov or Nostalgia, seen in the context in which they occur, were really no more than ruined buildings or local colour, then Tarkovsky's vision is denied much of its intensity. If one may not associate the idea of the tree of life with the verdant and the crippled examples of trees in his first and last films, then his argu­ments are robbed of their persuasion. If the cuckoo's call of Stalker does not recall the idyllic realm of Ivan's youth and Tarkovsky's own childhood in The Mirror, our perception of the loss of paradise is less intense.

Introduction 11

IRRATIONALISM AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN

In his criticism of the "Tarkovsky cult' Thomas Rothschild provides a rare polemic against the director.30 But even if the reception of Tarkovsky's films has not always been intellectually reasoned, as this criticism asserts, an intuitive awareness of their significance hardly invalidates them. The world of film is not so richly endowed that one can afford to dismiss this body of work as the product of 'militant irrationalism'.

Despite the metaphysical dimension of his work, despite the fact that Tarkovsky's ultimate argument and source of inspiration was his belief, he scrupulously sought to observe the physical laws of this world. During the expedition in Stalker, for example, the writer hears a voice warning him not to proceed further. At first it seems to be the voice of some invisible presence, of God Himself perhaps; but the stalker promptly provides an explanation by suggesting that his companion is inwardly afraid to go on and has uttered the warning to himself, in order to create a way out of his dilemma. In all the later films there are examples of this phenomenon. The whole structure of The Sacrifice is indeed built upon just such a device.

That there are many allusions to myth and parapsychological phenomena cannot be denied; but here too Tarkovsky either leaves the issue open by introducing an element of ambiguity/1 or he translates the action to the world of dreams. The resurrection of Chris's dead wife Harey in Solaris, for example, explores the idea of the materialisation of memories and dreams. That these other planes of consciousness are ultimately less real or rational than our tan­gible, waking world is something Tarkovsky denied.

Our age is becoming increasingly mistrustful of processes that, though seemingly entire in their logic and reason, finally prove to be one-sided. Concepts of progress and feasibility alone are no longer adequate in themselves. There is widespread disappointment in the seemingly unlimited but inhuman potential of technology, causing people to turn to non-rational alternatives. Tarkovsky's use of super­natural and mystical elements should not be seen as a flight from rationalism, but as part of his attempt to redress the imbalance between the material and spiritual worlds. He described the devalu­ation of words, observing that modern man suffocates in informa­tion; but that the messages that might change his life do not reach him; that he is no longer receptive to possible rniracles.32

12 Andrei Tarkovsky

In her essay on German Romanticism and Tarkovsky's fihns, Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz describes a tendency to mystification and an interest in exploring the unconscious that Tarkovsky shared with writers such as Novalis, E. T. A. Hoffmann and others, who exerted a strong influence on Russian literature in the nineteenth century.33 A direct line can be traced from the German Romantics via Dostoevsky to Tarkovsky. Dostoevsky, and in particular The Idiot, were of great importance to Tarkovsky' s thinking and provided a number of themes he hoped to film in the course of his career. The figure of the divine fool is reflected in many of the central characters of his fihns.

More to the point than Rothschild's accusation of irrationalism is his criticism of Tarkovsky's attitude towards women. One knows that, after the departure of his father, he was brought up by the women of his family and that his subsequent attitudes towards women were not unproblematic. This also emerges from an inter­view he granted, in which he is alleged to have said that the inner world of a woman is necessarily dependent on her feelings towards a man; or that women who spoke of their own self-dignity did not realise that, in terms of male-female relationships, the only adequate expression of this dignity was to be found in their 'utter devotion to the male'.34 How, Rothschild asks, can a person with such opinions be regarded as one of the great humanists among fihn makers?

In the films themselves Tarkovsky's attitude towards women is ambivalent. The female characters represent mother, wife, lover, witch, Virgin Mary, eternal womanhood, all in one or in varying combinations. The best example of this is perhaps to be found in The Sacrifice, where the two leading female roles- Adelaide and Maria -not merely embrace all these aspects of womanhood but seem to merge in identity at one point. On the whole the women in his fihns play a subordinate role. In Ivan's Childhood there is no doubt about his compassion for the mother, whereas the development of the character of the nurse Masha and her relationship with the men is indecisive, in a similar way perhaps to the later figure of Eugenia in Nostalgia. In Andrei Rublyov women play an even more peripheral role: as a naked peasant girl in a nocturnal heathen celebration, or as the deaf-mute for whom Rublyov feels compassion and whom he saves from violation. The female roles in Solaris are more developed. Significantly enough, however, they involve Chris's mother and his deceased wife Harey, who materialises from his memory on the

Introduction 13

planet Solaris, yet remains ultimately unattainable (a depiction of idealised, eternal womanhood).

. Inevitably, The M

_irr_or is the film in which women play the most

rmportant role, f�r It IS the most autobiographical of Tarkovsky's w?rks. J:Iere agam, ho�ever, it is interesting to see the strength wxth which the mother IS portrayed, the problematic nature of the husband-wife relationships, and the idealised depiction of the ado­lescent girl with the bleeding lips. In Stalker the main female roles are those of the much-suffering wife and of the crippled daughter. One sees that whe�e Tarko:�ky is concerned with describing the mater­nal or redeemmg qualities of womanhood (the Marian figure, so to speak) he a�iculates his c�aracters far more fully and sympatheti­c�lly. The �e or partner IS often either a hysterical, quarrelsome figure (Adelaxde and Eugenia) or a suffering creature (the stalker's wife). Women in Tarkovsky's world have to be either divine or dependent; there is no equality.

TARKOVSKY'S TECHNIQUE

Although Tarkovsky rejected Eisenstein's concept of a 'montage of attractions', the two Soviet directors had much in common in their theory and practice. Both believed in the importance of the creative role of the spectator.35 Both used the surprise effect of the cut and the juxtaposition of unexpected elements to stimulate the imagination of the VIewer. Tarkovsky criticised Eisenstein's use of rapid cutting and the rhetorical, propagandistic content of his later films;36 but one should not forget that Eisenstein's theories were originally devel­oped for the stage and subsequently applied to silent film. What is more, they were formulated in the early years of the Revolution,37 during a period of expressionistic upheaval and innovation in the arts. By the 1960s, when Tarkovsky's first films appeared, Russia was just beginning to emerge from the numbing trauma of Stalinism. The pioneering ideas of the 1920s had, nevertheless, gone round the world in the meantime, and Tarkovsky was able to address a quite different generation of cinema-goers with a far more sophisticated visual understanding. Certain techniques for which he criticised Eisenstein would seem to be evident in his own films.

14 Andrei Tarkovsky

Without necessarily constructing a direct line of descent� one _c�n s�e

Tarkovsky as part of a tradition of Soviet film tha_t �ad Its �ngms �

the work of directors as different in style and conVIction as Eisenstem and Pudovkin, Vertov, Kuleshov and Dovzheriko. What they all had in common was an awareness of the significance of montage.

One of Tarkovsky's lasting contributions to cinema wa: in e�­tending the grammar of film and the perceptive range of � audi­ence. This was achieved paradoxically enough by what m many cases amounted to a progressive reduction or refinemen� of mea�. The process can be observed in the camerawork and cutting, and m Tarkovsky' s use of music. After The Mirror, for exa�ple, th� n�mber of cuts in his films fell dramatically.38 In The Sacrifice, which IS 145 minutes long, there are only 120 takes.39 This demanded not �er�ly a careful consideration of the cutting itself, but the co-ordmatlon of complex patterns of movement and camerawork. The opening sequence of The Sacrifice by the sea shore is a well-kn?wn exa�J?le of this. Tarkovsky's later films, and notably Nostalgza, are distin­guished by their imperceptibly slow zooms and d?lly shots, and an absence of rapid movement. Nevertheless, the action does not stag­nate. It maintains its tension by a variety of other means: ?Y. the visual fascination of the pictures themselves and the associations they evoke; by the quality of the cuts and changes of scene a�d the sense of rhythm engendered by this; by the element of surpnse; by changing perspectives and the fluid quality of space; by changes of light within individual scenes; by the choreography of t�e actors �nd by other sources of movement such as water, billowmg �rtam

_s,

opening doors and so on. Movement is made more meanmgful m the context of stillness.

A further example of this process of reduction is Ta�kovsky's progressive restraint in the use of music. Only in the early films does it serve as background colouring. The idyllic atmo��here of t�e dream sequence in Ivan's Childhood is underlined sensitively, but m conventional manner, by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov's scor�.

_Ovch­

innikov also wrote the music to The Steamroller and the Vwlm and Andrei Rublyov. Thereafter Tarkovsky turned to the el�ctronic music of Eduard Artemiev for his remaining films in Russia, and to folk music and works by classical composers. He used music less-and less as a background, until in The Sacrifice, apart from the Bach accompa­niment to the opening credits and at the close, the�e are �o sounds extraneous to the action. The sole music in this last film spnngs from

Introduction 15

the actual events (played by Alexander himself on an organ or on a tape recorder that he starts and stops within the action of the film). Parallel to this gradual elimination of music from his films, Tarkovsky places increasing emphasis on a score of natural background sounds - dogs barking, motor-driven saws, bird calls, fog horns, the sounds of the sea and so on, counterpointing the action of the film.40

Just as he pleaded for the elimination of extraneous music, Tarkovsky regarded colour in the cinema as a mistake, and black and white as 'more expressive and realistic' Y He described colour in film as above all a commercial consideration and pleaded for its 'neutralization', to prevent it assuming all too great a dominance. At the same time he argued against the adoption of ideas of coloration from painting, which, in some respects, contradicts the obvious visual kinship of film and painting and the inspiration Tarkovsky evi-dently drew from the latter.

· His way out of the paradox of the false realism of colour in film

was to use it as a means of differentiation. Andrei Rublyov was the first full-length film in which he used colour at all - if only for the final sequences. The idea of differentiation had already appeared in Ivan's Childhood, however, where Tarkovsky shows the two children on a lorry-load of apples in a negative image. Thereafter he was to develop the idea with increasing subtlety as an expressive element of his work, using black and white, sepia tones, colour film and archive material to distinguish between different times and places, different states of reality and consciousness. The range and potential offered by film were ideally suited to Tarkovsky's complex world of changing times and identities, his shifts from past or present reality to vision and dream.

He perfected this technique to the point where it became a system of signification in itself in his later works. In his final film, The Sacrifice, the pale northern light of Scandinavia minimises the colour contrast to such an extent that the difference between the various tonal planes are sometimes scarcely perceptible.

Aesthetic and technique, themes and motifs were unified in his work. It is not the intention of this book to dismember the films, nor to translate Tarkovsky's images into simple sets of meanings. That would merely do them a disservice; for each film as a whole is more than just the sum of its parts. It is the aim of this work to facilitate access to Tarkovsky's richly structured world of time and space and to help provide a deeper understanding of his own lifelong quest.

1 The Steamroller and

the Violin [Katok i skripka]

I only need my immortality For my blood to go on flowing from age to age.

Arseniy Tarkovsky

With something of the expressive power of a hammer and a sic\<].e, the steamroller and the violin are brought together in what may be seen as an ideal union between physical and creative strength. In his final work at the Moscow film school (produced within the Mosfilm studios) Tarkovsky describes a simple episode- the adventures of a single day that befall the seven-year-old boy Sasha on his way to and from a violin lesson. At the centre of these experiences is his encoun­ter and friendship with Sergei, the driver of a red steamroller.

Tarkovsky wrote the screenplay jointly with Andrei Mikhalkov­Konchalovsky, a fellow-student in the class of Mikhail Romm at the film school.1 The story was a modest vehicle for Tarkovsky to dem­onstrate his abilities as a film maker and gain his diploma. His real achievement lay in infusing it with life and in the observation of details with which he lends it wit and charm.

As in some of his later films - Ivan's Childhood, The Mirror and, in part, The Sacrifice- The Steamroller and the Violin presents a child's view of the world, the camera itself assuming the perspective of the seven-year-old boy on many occasions, affording a glimpse of events from Sasha's eye-level and communicating his sense of wonder at the things about him.

The feeling of trepidation with which the young violinist encoun­ters the tough boys on the stairs of his house or in the street, the hierarchies of power existing among them, and the resource Sasha shows in living with them on an uneasy footing in the same neigh­bourhood are sensitively expressed in the film. Tauntingly referred

16

The Steamroller and the Violin 17

to as the 'musician' by his contemporaries, he feels out of place in their world and seeks to escape or circumvent it as far as possible, at the same time, like all boys, longing to be accepted as part of it.

Despite its outward show of toughness, however, this hard world of street youth is also a world of bluff, as Sasha himself demonstrates in one of the most humorous sequences in the film. He observes a youth who is bullying a smaller boy in stockings by bouncing a large ball on the latter's head. Sasha himself is scarcely much taller than the little boy but, hands stuck jauntily in his pockets, he orders the older boy to pick on someone his own size. The youth is unsure of himself at Sasha's impressive display of confidence and retreats into a nearby house. Sasha, perhaps intoxicated with his success, makes the mistake of following the boy into the dark entrance and is there given a good hiding. (One hears the fight, but does not see it, the view of the camera remaining fixed all the time on the road outside, beyond the half-open door.) The older boy again beats a hasty retreat when he sees Sergei approaching. Sasha is at least able to enjoy a final triumph, despite the beating he has suffered. Magnanimously he hands the little stockinged boy the ball on a string that the other has left behind.

The film abounds in amusing details or comic scenes of this kind, which compensate for any moments of false pathos it might contain. Tarkovsky describes these scenes in visual terms, with a minimum of dialogue. A particular example of this is the episode in the music school, where Sasha and a little girl exchange glances while awaiting their turns for a lesson. Sasha polishes a large apple, which he eventually places on the chair next to the girl before he goes in for his lesson. She looks furtively round to see that no one is watching, but she is startled by a noise. The tabby cat, which the camera has already observed cleaning itself when Sasha entered, jumps down from the chair. The little girl now demonstratively moves the apple even further away from herself, as if placing it beyond the reach of temptation. One sees the apple in close-up on the chair. In the back­ground Sasha' s remarkable performance on the violin can be heard. The scene cuts to the next room where he is playing and where his teacher reprimands him for day-dreaming and not keeping to the beat of the metronome. After his lesson Sasha leaves the room with his head bowed in dejection, completely forgetting the little girl. She stares after him as he goes. The camera pans down to the apple again - but all that is left of it is the brown core on the chair. The episode extends over a number of takes. Tarkovsky develops

18 Andrei Tarkovsky

two parallel strands, returning to details that one has perhaps already forgotten, heightening the humour through the element of surprise.

Another example of this purely visual wit occurs when Sasha, on his way home, is allowed to drive the red steamroller on his own. The other boys stand on the kerb with expressions of envy or in­credulity written on their faces. One of the bigger boys rides round the steamroller on a bicycle to demonstrate his own prowess. Sud­denly there is a crash. The boy has evidently fallen from the bicycle - one merely hears the noise. All one sees is the bell of his bicycle rolling under the steamroller and crushed into the asphalt. The scene cuts to a picture of the boy himself, limping away with his bicycle over his shoulder and a wheel in his hand. The humour is simple, almost slapstick in nature but, in its timing and in terms of what Tarkovsky shows and does not show, it possesses genuine wit. Above all, these scenes demonstrate Tarkovsky's early exploration of the essentially visual elements of film, the use of background sounds and the economy of dialogue.2

ART AND LABOUR

Central to the story is Sasha' s relationship with Sergei, the steam­roller driver. Sergei makes Sasha's acquaintance at the very begin­ning, intervening to help the young boy escape the clutches of the local youths and regain his violin. On his way home from his music lesson Sasha meets Sergei in the street again and the two become firm friends. Sasha is only too willing to assist the driver by handing him the tools he needs to adjust the motor. Sergei allows his new friend to ride on the steamroller, to try the mechanism and finally to drive it on his own. They fetch Sergei's lunch together- a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread; and finally they agree to go to the cinema in the evening.

In this relationship the world of the working man and that of the child musician are contrasted. Sasha himself lives in a world that seems outwardly hostile to his artistic ambitions. Maya Turovskaya sees in this an initial attempt on the part of Tarkovsky to explore the role of the artist in socieif- a theme that was central to the director's work. It is true that Sergei displays a sense of awe at the sight of the violin (as indeed do the street urchins on opening the instrument

The Steamroller and the Violin 19

case) and at Sasha's impromptu performance over lunch; that he seems impressed by Sasha' s eloquence on the subject of resonance and acoustics. In the hard street context the fragile, polished instru­ment, seen in close-up, does radiate a sense of magic. Sasha's per­formance is indeed awe-inspiring; and his sudden volubility on a subject close to his heart commands respect.

Sergei's expression of disappointment at the end, when Sasha is lo�ked in his

. room by his mother and prevented from joining his

friend at the cmema seems exaggerated, especially as Sasha's place is soon taken by the attractive young woman who drives the yellow steamroller and who has been trying to date Sergei all day.4 The actions of the adults might, of course, be seen as a projection of the fantasies of the child, which would certainly provide an explanation for the many seemingly exaggerated or unlikely moments in the film. Tarkovsky himself described this particular scene outside the cinema as a 'tragedy'. Sergei is disappointed not merely that the boy has not appeared, but that the child's world has therewith closed itself to him again.5 The perspective of the child and the adult's desire for access to it are set off against each other in the film. Sergei's disappointment and Sasha's frustration are two faces of the same coin.

Sergei's behaviour towards Sasha is otherwise that of an under­standing adult who smilingly comprehends the situation of the child in his own world and who has the patience to exchange experiences with him as an equal. When Sasha washes the grime from his face after his encounter with the bully in the house entrance, Sergei tells him that he is not a worker but a 'musician'. There is a hint of mockery in the word. It is the same expression with which the gang of boys from the neighbourhood had cajoled Sasha at the beginning. No wo�der that, after all the enthusiasm he has shown to help Sergei and dnve the steamroller, having identified himself with his friend's work, Sasha is now hurt and throws the loaf of bread they have bought for their lunch to the ground in anger. Sergei reproves him for this. Their differences are soon forgotten. But Sergei's words are not merely the rebuke of an adult. They express the experience of one who has known the privations of war and its aftermath- and at this time they carry more weight than the spleen of an artist. One recalls the crippled boy on the stairs holding a hunk of bread in his hand when Sasha sets out for his music lesson at the beginning of the film.

Although Tarkovsky was certainly concerned with the role of the

20 Andrei Tarkovsky

artist in society, his treatment of the character of Sasha can scarcely be seen as a serious examination of that subject. The marks on the boy's chin from the rubbing of his instrument can perhaps be com­pared with the weals on the worker's hands. Far from defining the special position of the artist, they are more a token of the unity of labour. Tarkovs]c<y underlines this idea of unity or equality in labour in the sequence where one sees Sasha practising his violin at home, intercut with scenes of Sergei driving his steamroller, with the two layers of sound superimposed. Any doubt about Sasha' s solidarity with his new friend and the steamroller are dispelled when the boy explains to his mother, with a hint of pride, that he has machine grease on his hands.

It is important to remember that the period when the film was made was one of new hope and reconstruction in the Soviet Union. The Steamroller and the Violin makes a topical reference to the large­scale building developments that were going on in Moscow at the time. Parallel to this the younger generation of film makers enter­tained certain hopes for an artistic renaissance.6 It is unlikely that a young man, not yet 30 years of age, who, like his own hero Sergei, had personally experienced the privations of war and Stalinism in Russia, should remain uninfluenced by these emotions. Nor is it surprising that Tarkovsky's first film, made while still studying, should reveal some of the pathos of more ideological works, in which Soviet heroes of labour engineer a brave new world. In the demolition scenes in The Steamroller and the Violin an old fa<;ade collapses to reveal the gleaming white towers of a palace of the people (though Stalinist in spirit) as an expression of this faith in the future. Part of this was the old belief in the indivisibility of labour, whether intellectual or manual, industrial or agricultural; and what greater symbolic extremes could one attempt to unite than a violin on the one hand and a steamroller on the other?

EARLY TOKENS OF STYLE

Had it not been made by Tarkovsky, The Steamroller and the Violin would probably be of little consequence in the history of film. Along­side the diploma works of most other film students it may stand out as a work of genius; but its length alone (46 minutes) makes it difficult to place in most modern commercial cinema programmes.

r i

The Steamroller and the Violin 21

Despite its authorship, showings are rare and international copies are limited in number. As a children's film it might arguably hold its own;7 but although it has wit, charm and invention, the story is probably too slight to stand up in any other context.

It is as a forerunner of the later films and a point of reference for Tarkovsky's stylistic development that The Steamroller and the Violin is of interest, as an early essay exploring some of the ideas that were to have a profound influence on cinema in the following two and a half decades.8 But to what extent were these ideas already present in this work?

It is the only film Tarkovsky made in a single colour process. Even in the works after Andrei Rublyov, when he turned more and more to colour, he used it in various forms as an element of contrast, side by side with black and white, sepia film and so on. Tarkovsky himself saw colour in the cinema as a 'great mistake', a 'blind alley'.9 As a graduating student, of course, he had to demonstrate in this work his ability to handle the various aspects of film - which he does to considerable effect. Although working in colour here, he uses it in a restrained manner, complementing the basic blue and grey tones of sky, background buildings and clothing with splashes of red and yellow. Green occurs relatively rarely; and even the reds and yel­lows are used sparingly, though all the more strikingly, as in the case of the two steamrollers, the red apples or the figure of the red animal in the shop window.

At the outset Tarkovsky establishes the basic colour tone of the whole film in the staircase of the block of flats in which Sasha lives. The play of light and shade and colour on the staircase walls, the red window panes and the dusty sunlight are used to create a sense of . atmosphere. The balloons, the apples, the brightly coloured steam­rollers, the pink dress of the little girl awaiting her music lesson are contrasted with Sasha' s blue clothes and the blue-grey overalls worn by Sergei, or set against the grey streets of Moscow.

Tarkovsky shows an early understanding of the use of light and shade and the effects of sunlight reflected in water. It flickers repeat­edly in Sasha's face, for example. The exploration of reflections in water and mirrors plays an important role in this film: the sunshine glinting in the sheet of water; the ripples that break its smooth surface; the street urchin trying to catch the dazzle of the sunlight in his mirror while Sasha is driving the steamroller; or the multiple images of faces and apples and clocks reflected in the mirrors in the shop window. More subtle is the use of the dressing-table mirror in

22 Andrei Tarkovsky

which Sasha' s mother interviews her son in the evening. The mother is scarcely seen. Our attention is captured by Sasha himself and the objects on the table in front of the mirror. The apples, the bread and milk, the mirrors, the fascination for water in its many manifesta­tions and the way it moves and catches light are all ideas or phenom­ena, the iconography of which Tarkovsky was to develop in his later films.

The delightful episode between boy and girl with the pregnant symbolism of the apple anticipates the scene on the lorry-load of apples in Ivan's Childhood; but it does not have the weight in this earlier film that similar ideas attain later. Here Tarkovsky merely quotes the objects, in a sense, holding them up to the camera, as if not yet knowing what lies within them, not fully aware of their allusive, ambiguous powers.

The thunder and lightning of the sudden storm (after the differ­ence between Sergei and Sasha over the loaf of bread) are echoed by the sunlight glinting in an opening window, by the flashes of a cutting torch and the crash of a bulldozer demolishing old buildings. Tarkovsky reveals his ability to create simple striking parallels of this kind, but without achieving the density of expression to be found even in Ivan's Childhood.

In addition to the ideas explored in The Steamroller and the Violin there are all kinds of minor references (to the harmfulness of smok­ing,10 for example) or autobiographical parallels to Tarkovsky's own life that return in the later works.11 Many of these details are drawn here in outline and exist in only rudimentary form.

Probably the most significant foretaste of his later style is his use of dream-like sequences. As Sasha's music teacher observes, the young musician allows his imagination to run away with him. His day-dream at the beginning of the film, when he gazes into the mirrors in the shop window on his way to his music lesson, is more a demonstration of what an ambitious film student can do - a clever visual game - than a moment upon which the action hinges. The dream sequence at the end of the film is quite another matter. Sasha, locked in his room at home and unable to join Sergei waiting in the yard below, writes a message ('not my fault') on a sheet of music paper, folds it into the form of an airplane and lets it float down from the balcony to the courtyard. It lands behind Sergei as he goes off in disappointment; but he fails to see the message. Sasha looks sadly out of the window; in his imagination he escapes from the flat and flees. Tarkovsky does not film the little boy running down the

The Steamroller and the Violin 23

stairs. One sees the staircase through the lens of the camera, as if through the eyes of the child once more as he descends. The scene cuts to a long view of the courtyard from above. The red steamroller drives slowly off. Now one sees the tiny figure of Sasha (in his own mind's eye) far below, dashing after the steamroller and climbing on at the back. Here, in simple form, in the enactment of Sasha' s day­dream Tarkovsky creates the first of the visionary sequences that later come to play such a central role in his work. Tarkovsky's key to the world of childhood is also the means of access to the world of his films.

2 Ivan's Childhood

[Iva novo detstvo 1

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

An 'Ivan' project, based on the story by Vladimir Bogomolov,l was begun in 1960 by an artistic collective under the direction of E. Abalov. Work had been abandoned by the end of the same year, however, due to the unsatisfactory quality of the scenes filmed, and the costs incurred had been written off. This decision was evidently reconsidered a few months later, for steps were taken to salvage some of the loss. A further directive from Mosfilm dated 16 June 1961 ordered the resubmission of the screenplay by the end of the month and named Tarkovsky as the director responsible for the completion of the project (together with Vadim Yusov, photogra­phy, and Yevgeniy Chemyaev, art direction).2

The funds available for the resumption of work were inevitably limited, in view of the previous expenses incurred on this project. In addition, the time allowed for shooting the film was extremely tight.3 The situation was certainly not improved by Tarkovsky's desire to reshape the screenplay in accordance with his own ideas, by the introduction of a new leading actor, and the abandonment of all the material previously filmed by Abalov. Although, from the po�t of view of Mosfilm, the work in hand represented the completion of an existing project, in fact Tarkovsky reworked and extended the screen­play in collaboration with the author and shot the entire material anew.

Even at this early date Tarkovsky's personal theory of film was relatively well articulated. He was convinced of the overriding im­portance of author-directorship: that direction should not merely comprise the realisation of a screenplay written by others. In order to

24

Ivan's Childhood 25

avoid a conventional film treatment of a work of literature, he claimed the right for himself to change the 'literary' version of the screen­play, giving it a new structure, and turning it into something more suited to the needs of his own film direction.4

Work on the screenplay had begun in 1960. In his initial treatment of the material, Mikhail Papava had made significant alterations to the original story, changing the whole balance and structure by allowing Ivan to survive the war and reappear in a chance encounter with Galtsev in later life. Significantly enough, this version of the screenplay was given the title 'A Second Life'. It defied all authentic­ity, however, since Bogomolov's own wartime experiences and his subsequent enquiries had shown that of those young scouts on whom the character of Ivan was based, few if any had survived.5 At Bogomolov's insistence and with his collaboration· on the screen­play, these early changes were largely removed.

When Tarkovsky took on the assignment of filming Ivan he was therefore confronted with a complete scenario, which had served as a basis for the previous abortive film work and in which consider­able thought and effort had already been invested. In the person of Bogomolov he was also confronted with a writer who was equally sure of what he wanted and who had helped create the existing version of the screenplay. Bogomolov was a well-known author whose story Ivan was an established work of postwar Russian liter­ature. What is more, he had been a reconnaissance scout himself in his youth and had first-hand experience of the subject. Bogomolov was obsessed with accuracy of depiction and insisted on authentic­ity in the war scenes. This was an aspect that did not particularly interest Tarkovsky, who described the narrative style of the book as detached, detailed and leisurely, with 'lyrical digressions' to portray the character of Galtsev.6 The elements that appealed to Tarkovsky were the final, conclusive death of the young boy, the absence of dangerous clashes or elaborate military operations, and the person of Ivan himself. Whereas Bogomolov tells his story from the point of view of the young Lieutenant Galtsev and portrays Ivan's deeds in a heroic light, Tarkovsky sees the world through the eyes of the child, removing any hint of heroism from his leading figure.

Bogomolov accepted Tarkovsky's suggestion to insert the dream sequences, which the director had visualised at an early stage and which introduced a wholly new dimension and structure to the work. Tarkovsky also managed to persuade Bogomolov at the outset to accept the new title, Ivan's Childhood. But Tarkovsky's assertion of

26 Andrei Tarkovsky

his own claims as an author-director of equal standing met with considerable opposition in other areas, in particular where Bo�omolov was concerned with outward veracity and accuracy of detail.

In view of the tight budgetary constraints and the time-limit set for the production, Tarkovsky's achievement was quite remarkable. Shooting was completed by 18 January 1962, the film even showing a saving on the budget. His facility in dealing with production difficulties, his purposeful direction and the economic advantages accruing from this stood him in good stead with the Soviet authori­ties, who were, on the other hand, more critical of the film's aesthetics.

The film was awarded the Grand Prix, the Golden Lion, jointly with Valerio Zurlini's Cronaca Familiare, at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, thus establishing Tarkovsky's international reputation. In view of the problematic realisation of Ivan's Childhood and the inte�­national acclaim it won, it is extraordinary that Tarkovsky' s cred1t was so quickly dissipated, and that only four years later his next film, Andrei Rublyov, was to cause its author so many difficulties in his own country.

A STALKER IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD

Ivan's Childhood describes the fate of a 12-year-old Russian recon­naissance scout during the Second World War. For Tarkovsky, Ivan's fate was that of a childhood devoured by war. On Bogomolov's insistence, the episode was set in 1943.7 Ivan would therefore have been born in 1931. Tarkovsky himself was born a year later and obviously shared many of that generation's experiences of child­hood and war. In changing the narrative viewpoint of the story from that of Galtsev to Ivan, Tarkovsky inevitably invested the figure in part with his own view of history. Turovskaya sees Ivan as the 'lyrical self of the director.8 Although one can trace certain parallels between their lives, Tarkovsky himself denied any closer identity with the boy. He described his main preoccupations as a child dur­ing the war as the lack of food and the return of his father from the front.9

Ivan's Childhood is both a document of the senseless destruction of war and a statement of alternative values. Ivan has lost his entire family and his roots. He is a solitary creature, carrying out his work

Ivan's Childhood 27

alone. His only relationships are those he has established through the war with the Russian officers to whom he reports from time to time. One of the most remarkable aspects of the film, however, is the absence, in any direct form, of either childhood or war. Ivan is a person prematurely aged, a stalker in the land of the dead. In the present time of the film, childhood is already past. It exists only in reconstructed form in the 'dreams', the visionary sequences with which Tarkovsky punctuated the work. In accordance with the dir­ector's own conception of the story, scenes of combat do not occur. The action of the film is set almost entirely in the interval between two of Ivan's reconnaissance operations. The battlefield is a waste land, a horrific vision rather than a real scene of war, a symbolic, apocalyptic landscape of destruction that anticipates some of the settings of the later films. Light-flares shoot up, illuminate the scene and fade. Reconnaissance parties go out and pass each other in the night without establishing contact. The events of war lie uncannily removed from sight. The landscape is littered with the tokens of its horror - the hanged partisans, the crashed aeroplane, ruined build­ings, broken equipment, barren, treeless fields. Only in the sporadic sounds of shelling or machine-gun fire is its presence documented.

Tarkovsky contrasts two worlds: the sunlit realm of childhood and peacetime in the dreams; and the grey waste landscape of war, in which Ivan is neither adult nor child. Between waking and sleep­ing there is no transition, merely a hard cut that juxtaposes the serene and the sinister. It is scarcely conceivable that the fertile, sunlit riverside of Ivan's childhood and the barren ravaged theatre of war are one and the same setting. These two irreconcilable worlds exist in different times, in different states, but in the same place - on the banks of the Dnieper. As Tarkovsky himself points out, 'hideous­ness and beauty are contained within each other'.10 In this trans­formation of a landscape the whole destructive process of war and Ivan's loss of innocence are signified.

The absence of spectacular battle scenes is mainly attributable to Tarkovsky's determination to strip his leading character and war itself of any heroism or false glory. Although many so-called anti­war films indulge in spectacles of destruction, it is questionable whether the senselessness of war can really be conveyed by a be­numbing yet possibly fascinating heaping up of violence and death. Tarkovsky pursues a different path. The war is ubiquitous and yet nowhere. At the beginning Ivan returns from a mission, and at the end he sets out on a new one. His actual involvement in the war is

28 Andrei Tarkovsky

not shown. If one is moved by his death, it is not by that of a hero with whom one identifies. Ivan embodies a kind of nihilism of which his own death is an inevitable part. He has no thought of survival. His commitment to1his cause is total. On his arrival at headquarters he fights against exhaustion, and he has only one aim in mind: to deliver his rep�rt. He refuses food and refreshment before he has drawn up his chart, and even afterwards he has little hunger. It is he who is devoured by the war, and therefore cannot logically survive it. Ivan's significance lies not in his military exploits, not in a heroic struggle against the foe, but in the contrast of his childhood with the grim world of destruction.

A critic remarked at the time that there are too many taboos still preventing the portrayal in film of the true causes of war.11 It is indeed an aspect that scarcely forms part of Tarkovsky's analysis. Ivan himself voices a number of more or less conventional anti­Fascist sentiments. His hatred, which is the driving force within him, is understandable, in view of the death of his mother, which he has witnessed, and the loss of all family ties as a result of the war. When confronted with a Diirer woodcut of a German poet, he expresses his surprise that the Germans have any poets, since he had heard that they burn their books; and the horrors of Diirer' s depiction of the Apocalypse, with the four horsemen trampling bodies underfoot, suggest to him the sufferings inflicted by the German troops.12 Des­pite these occasional references to the enemy and the final defeat of Hitler's armies, despite the documentary scenes of the overthrow of the Third Reich, for much of its length the film occupies strangely neutral ground. It is perhaps an early example of Tarkovsky's uni­versal perspective. The image of resistance functions on three levels: representing the personal fate of Ivan, the immediate fate of Russia in the Second World War, and the fate of mankind in war generally.

One of the main points of criticism of the film has been the lack of character development. This is most noticeable in the figures of the officers, whose relationships to each other are articulated in little more than outline. One of the few occasions when they really inter­act with each other is in the tentative triangular love affair between Galtsev, Masha and Kholin; but even here Tarkovsky presents a strangely unresolved set of relationships. Although the film dwells upon these at great length in the sequences in the birch wood, they / remain little more than sketches, not entirely motivated and lacking a certain conviction. At this point Tarkovsky indulges in a series of swinging, waltzing, subjective camera movements underlined by

Ivan's Childhood 29

lyrical music that is quite at odds with his later style of filming. The development of a possible rivalry between Kholin and Galtsev is indecisive, and when the latter finally posts Masha away from the front, any tension that might have arisen from the situation is aban­doned rather than resolved.

Perhaps the love affair is rendered impossible by the very circum­stances of war. The scene where Kholin catches Masha in mid-air over the trench and kisses her, with its associations of a kiss by the grave, would seem to confirm this. Masha also radiates a similar kind of nai:vety and innocence to that of Ivan in his childhood. In the context of war it is strangely incongruous. Masha' s weakness is the weakness of many female characters in Tarkovsky's films. The inde­cisive interludes in the birch grove are also rendered superfluous by the lyrical contrast of Ivan's dreams. At all events these interludes lack the intensity of the dreams and reveal a certain dramaturgical indecision.13

In the person of Ivan there is little character development either, other than the contrast between the carefree days of childhood and the premature ageing of wartime, which one can read in his face. Although his childhood lies behind him, he has scarcely grown up. He is like an aged youth. The commanding tone he adopts, his manner of equality with the officers, can only come from his own readiness to sacrifice himself totally, from the sense of the futility of his personal existence, and from the indulgence the adults are pre­pared to show towards a person of such tender years. Occasionally the youthful limits of his toughness are revealed: when he begs Galtsev to give him the knife, for example, or when weariness over­comes him and he is carried to bed. Otherwise he observes his own rules of war. There is a certain danger that Ivan's role may still awaken false sympathies, a sense of approval for his behaviour. Only if understood from Bogomolov's point of view, as part of the logic of the Second World War, can I van's actions be regarded as not entirely futile.14 Only if seen in conjunction with the ideal world of the dreams does the question whether or not Ivan is a hero become superfluous.

The whole moral issue of using children to fight a war - a most unheroic aspect of the story - is not discussed in the film. Its discus­sion was only indirectly and inadvertently raised by those who wished to reduce the work to the level of a questionable propaganda display of Soviet resistance. Tarkovsky wisely avoids any implica­tion of this false heroism by placing the motivation for Ivan's deeds

30 Andrei Tarkovsky

in the boys own fanatical sense of dedication and revenge. The officers who are his friends show a paternal care for him and wish to remove him from the forefront of the war.

Ivan's character is portrayed, therefore, not thl-ough a process of development, but in terms of two contrasted states: war and peace. In both, the role is performed by the same young actor, Kolya Burlyaev, with the result that there is scarcely any perceptible dif!er­ence in Ivan's age between his peacetime youth and the wartime episode leading to his death. A mere two years separate the outbreak of war for the Russians and the events depicted in the film anyway. But the boys features have undergone one change in the meantime. They have lost the joy and spontaneity of youth and have grown gaunt and hardened. . . , What moved Tarkovsky in the book was the finality of Ivan s death and its particular meaning. There are no heroic deeds, no redeeming features. The whole content and 'tragic pathos' of his life are concentrated in his death. It is literally the end. Having said this, Tarkovsky proceeds to add a coda of his own to the film - the final 'dream' of childhood. The significance of the change of title from 'My Name Is Ivan' to Ivan's Childhood and the subtle shift of empha­sis that has taken place between story and film become apparent. Ivan's childhood is past. The dream-like interludes in which it is recaptured, however, are not merely a structuring device; they are the essential dimension of the film. They reveal Tarkovskys attempt to create a positive world in which that of the war would be mir­rored as a negative image.

THE DREAM OF IV AN'S CIDLDHOOD

Tarkovsky observes a unity of time and place in this film. As in many of his works, however, he was able to extend the boundaries of his finite world by inserting other planes of consciousness and other times in the form of memories, dreams and documentary material. Ivan's Childhood was shot entirely in black and white, so that there was only limited scope for the use of the film techniques he was later to develop to differentiate between these various planes. The negative background image in the third dream is perhaps the only real example of the use of alternative processes. Nevertheless,

Ivan's Childhood 31

the worlds of war and childhood memory he creates are quite dis­tinct in quality.

Tarkovsky referred to only four dreams15 in Ivan's Childhood, but the film contains a number of other visionary interludes, at least two of which stand in clear contrast to the everyday background of war, even if they do not share the same serene mood as the dreams. The first of these interludes hovers between reality and dream, scarcely distinguished from the main narrative strand of the film. Ivan, hav­ing been compulsorily withdrawn from the front and sent to a mili­tary academy behind the lines, absconds and stumbles upon the God-like figure of an old man in the ruins of his house. On the run from his pursuers, Ivan lies down to rest in a hut that resembles the broken shed in which he had woken after the first dream. He is suddenly startled by a white cockerel attached to a rope. It flutters up to the top of a post. The scenes of his encounter with the old man have a strange surrealistic quality. The man appears amidst the ruins of his home with a picture under his arm, searching for a misplaced nail. He tells Ivan he has a long journey ahead of him and that he should help him find the nail, which Ivan duly does. The old man tries to hang the picture on the wall and points to the irony of the fact that only the chimney has not been destroyed by fire. When the officers finally arrive to take Ivan away, the old man hides. Ivan leans out of the car window to leave a tin of food and a loaf of bread that he no longer needs; and as the car drives away the old mari, left on his own once more, with the cockerel under his arm, exclaims to God, When will there be an end to all this?' Despite Tarkovsky's dissatisfaction with this encounter, its metaphysical dimension and the iconography it employs anticipate many moments of the later works.16

The second visionary sequence occurs when Ivan has been left behind by the officers, who have gone on an expedition across the river. Ivan's hallucination begins with the church bell lying on the floor. He hoists it to the ceiling with a rope and begins to crawl about the room with the dagger Galtsev has left in his care, talking to himself, indulging in his own fantasies of war, and throwing a bottle at an invisible foe. One hears scraps of spoken German and sees messages scrawled in Russian on the wall.17 Sounds from a radio are heard; a face appears against the wall, resembling that of his mother. Ivan rings the bell; the camera movements are agitated. The bell comes to rest, but its ringing has been superseded by that of another

32 Andrei Tarkovsky

bell; and one hears the sounds of shouting crowds. Ivan overturns the table in his continuing vision of war. On the wall where he had

seen the woman standing hangs an old coat. He cries out in despair.

A shell crashes nearby. A series of brief intercut images follows: an

icon painted on a ruined wall; the leaning iron cross of a �ave; a

shell exploding in sunlit water. The vision ends and the sc�ne llllD:'e­

diately changes to the real war going on outside. In this fevensh

hallucination, in which Ivan is confronted with his own death in the

fate of the Russian captives who had been imprisoned there before

him, and in which the end of the war is foreseen, past, present and

future are mingled. . It is an early example of the traumatic interludes that occur m the

later works - in the scenes in which Domenico's family is liberated in

Nostalgia, for example, or in the apocalyptic visions of The Sacrifi_ce.

Other iconographic devices Tarkovsky was to use sub�equently m­

clude the evocation of the mother, or the bell as an rmage of the triumph of faith. The bell heralds not merely the end of the war

for the Russians in the final passages of the film; it also anticipates the far more extensive bell-casting sequence in Andrei Rublyov, which is the signal of new-found belief and Rublyov's return to painting.18

The third and final visionary sequence occurs towards the end of Ivan's Childhood and leads into the last of the actual 'dreams'. To the sounds of cheering crowds the bell rings a "kind of epitaph to the foregoing events. The war is finally over. A series of documentary scenes introduce Galtsev's vision of Ivan's death. Having leafed

through countless Gestapo files of partisans who have been liqui­

dated, the young lieutenant sees Ivan's photograph, a counter­

portrait to the face at the beginning of the film, now heavy-eyed and with traces of his suffering prior to execution. The photo falls from

Galtsev's grasp and he jumps to retrieve it, as if through the floor, down to a lower level. The scene changes to a series of half-lit rooms in an abandoned, ruined basement. One hears the sounds of German

voices from the past, evidently searching for a partisan. Galtsev appears again, exploring the rooms of the building as if in his ima­gination. He opens a steel door and sees a row of empty nooses hanging from the ceiling; a dirty guillotine; and then the head of Ivan rolling on the floor. The vision dissolves and Ivan's mother

reappears, as the boy might have seen her in his earlier dreams.

Although Galtsev' s vision leads directly into this final sunlit 'dream',

it can scarcely be regarded as part of it. Contrasted in mood and

Ivan's Childhood 33

lighting, Galtsev's visualisation of Ivan's death is seen from a differ­ent viewpoint; and although it too is a recollection of past time, it is a time after Ivan's death.

The four dreams themselves present a cohesive whole and inhabit a world that is quite distinct from that of the war and the other visions. The first and last dreams form a framing structure to the film and are also linked in content. There is a serenity about all these scenes that is troubled only at the end. Even the thunderstorm of the third dream has nothing ominous about it. The pouring rain may be seen as an expression of the fruitfulness of the earth; and ultimately even here the sun appears. The landscapes of the dreams are filled with trees and tokens of fulness and fertility.

The scenes of war, in contrast, are almost entirely bleak and sunless. The earth is barren and wasted, littered with ruined objects. With the exception of the lyrical love scenes, the earth is devoid of trees or, where trees do appear, as in the swamps, they are broken and lifeless. Even the organic objects Ivan uses as a prop for his memory when drawing up his chart of enemy troop deployments or military installations - the berries, catkins, nuts and pine needles -are dead and dry; and the headquarters of the Russian reconnais­sance troops are located in the cellar of a ruined church - an image to which Tarkovsky was to return in his later work.

The first dream, with which the film opens and which precedes the credits, was described by Tarkovsky as representing from begin­ning to end one of his earliest memories of childhood, when he was four years of age. Ivan is introduced at the outset in an idyllic sunlit landscape with animals and insects. A butterfly flutters over the grass, leading into a sequence in which one has the impression of flying, the camera floating through the air, down a hillside towards a track and a beach below. A cuckoo is heard. Ivan turns and runs towards his mother, who is carrying a bucket of water.19 The vision breaks off abruptly. Ivan is wrenched from his dream and wakes to find himself in the ruins of a hut. Sounds of machine-gun fire are heard. One sees a ruined windmill and the film suddenly plunges into the reality of war. In the semi-darkness of dawn or dusk light­flares sporadically illuminate the sky. Ivan is seen making his way through the swamp, returning from his reconnaissance expedition.

The second dream occurs in the headquarters of the Russian reconnaissance troops. Ivan, exhausted from his expedition, having made his report, washed and eaten a little, falls asleep and is carried by Galtsev to bed. A fire bums in the brazier; one sees water drip-

34 Andrei Tarkovsky

ping and Ivan asleep. With these three Tarkovskian images, the scene changes to the deep shaft of a well. The camera is situated initially at the bottom, but in the course of the scene the viewpoint changes backwards and forwards from bottom to top. Far above, Ivan and his mother are seen looking down. She tells him that in very deep wells one can see stars at the bottom, even on a bright sunlit day. The boy reaches down to touch the light beneath the surface of the water and suddenly finds himself at the bottom of the well. Apove, one hears voices and sees men drawing up the bucket. A sound of machine-gun fire follows, and Ivan cries out: 'Mama!' His mother lies dead beside the well. The bucket plunges back down towards the bottom, hitting the surface of the water near Ivan. Water splashes out over the body of his mother. The boy wakes and asks whether he has spoken in his sleep.

The third dream follows the scene in the army headquarters when Ivan tells Kholin not to smoke. Lying on his back looking at the ceiling, the boy dozes off. The dream sequence opens with a thun­derstorm and a heavy fall of rain. A lorry loaded with apples is driving along a tree-lined road. Apples fall off the back of the lorry. The picture is illuminated by a flash of lightning, and at the same time the screen of trees that forms a background to the two children seated on the lorry is reversed into a negative image. In the pouring rain one sees Ivan sitting on the heap of apples with a little girl. She is shown in three successive close-up images holding up an apple to him. The rain does nothing to dampen their joy. The music under­lines the happy mood of this scene. The negative image of the back­ground of trees dissolves and the rain ceases when the lorry reaches a sahdy beach by the river. The sun emerges and, as the lorry recedes from the camera, the apples tumble off the back on to the sand, where grazing horses eat them. This is the only dream in which Ivan's mother does not appear. The mellow sunlit images of sand and water, horses and apples - a homage to Dovzhenko's Earth20 -give way to the waking reality of Kholin packing provisions for another expedition - bread, eggs and cheese, tokens of fruitfulness in themselves, yet now in a quite different context.

The fourth and final dream, with which the film ends, might be seen as a continuation of the previous one. It is set on the sandy shores of the river; and the little girl is again present. The dream follows Galtsev's own vision of the death of Ivan. One sees the mother with the bucket she had been carrying at the beginning of the film. Ivan drinks from it. A group of children stand in a circle about

Ivan's Childhood 35

�· He counts them out for a game of hide-and-seek. They run off, while he closes his eyes and waits until they have hidden them­selves. The little girl's face appears from behind a pile of driftwood by the water. Ivan goes in search of the children. The image of the dead, charred tree appears.21 In the sunlight and to the sounds of serene music, Ivan runs after the little girl along the beach, the water �appin� gently <:>n the sandy shore. But the music gives way to an mcreasmgly onunous drum beat. Ivan overtakes the girl but, instead of stopping, he races on and on into the shallow waters, as if im­�elled by some unseen force. Slowly the waters become deeper, until �ally the scene of the sunlit beach is superseded by the image of the Withered tree. The contents of this dream might well have stood at the beginning of the film, for they are a parable of Ivan's whole life and bring the film full circle in time and place.

Although the overall impression conveyed by the dreams is one of serenity and happiness, in two of them the shadow of war is already present. The second dream portrays the death of Ivan's mother; the fourth ends with the ominous drum beat accompanying his unending race into the waters of the Dnieper. The final picture of the blasted tree serves as a memorial and monitory sign against war. Furthermore, although the first dream is a paean to nature, it is b .. oug�t to an abrupt end with the sudden cut to the reality of the battlefield and the ruined hut in which Ivan is sheltering. Like Galtsev' s vision, which leads into it, the final dream is a remem­brance of time past - within the chronology of the film, a posthum­ous d�eam, if that is possible. How could Ivan dream it when, strictly �peaking, ?e was already dead? This indeed once prompted the mterpretation of this dream as an epilogue added by Tarkovsky,22 although it is of the same nature as the first three. . Assuming that the world of the dreams is not present time in the

film and the war not just a terrible vision (that is, an inversion of the g.en�rally accepted reading), what are the dreams and what do they Signify? Are they Ivan's own dreams, recollections of the past, of his own lost childhood, recalled on his behalf by the author of the film? Apart from certain points of congruence, they are apparently not Tarkovsky's own childhood memories. Are they Galtsev's visualisa­tion of Ivan's youth? Or are they the product of that merging of identities that was later to become a central feature of Tarkovsky's work? If these visions are meant to be, in an immediate sense, Ivan's own dreams, there are evident inconsistencies of time and state.

The difficulty would seem in part to lie in the use of the word

36 Andrei Tarkovsky

'dream', which is how Tarkovsky referred to them. All four of them can probably more accurately be described as the dire�or' s visi�n­ary reconstruction of moments of (Ivan's) childhood mmgled _"'lth his own experiences. Essentially they are an evocation of an 1deal state, a search for a time lost, the creation of a counter-world to the one in which we live. That was Tarkovsky's life-long aim and what he saw as the function of the artist, the struggle of Rublyov. In that sense, too, the conjuring up of Dovzhenko-like images of the fulness of the earth are not merely an affectionate homage but an essay at paradise. The naive image of the little girl presenting Ivan with the apples may also be understood in part in this context. Conver�ely, the scenes of war are characterised by waste, barren earth, by rumed windmills and broken agricultural equipment. Tarkovsky sees the artist not merely as an explorer of life but as a cr�ator.23 I� was through the eyes of a child that he sought access to this world m The Mirror; and a similar perspective is adopted in many of the la�er films - in the child-like vision of the stalker, for example, of Domeruco in Nostalgia or Alexander in The Sacrifice. The sleeping, drealriing child is a recurring image in his films, the starting point and end of many of his interior journeys.

The protest of the Soviet film authorities over these dream se­quences betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of the film and Tarkovsky' s intentions, an inability to recognise the alternative wo

_rld

he created - this 'Utopia of freedom and abundance'.24 The l�ft-�g reactions to Ivan's Childhood after its showing at the Veruce Film Festival in 1962 were full of the same misunderstandings, accusing it of formalism and a lack of realism. The film was defended by Jean­Paul Sartre, however, in an open letter to the Italian Communist newspaper L'Unita, in which he spoke of an original work of 'Social­ist surrealism'.25

IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END

At the outset of the film Tarkovsky presents a portrait of Ivan, his face behind a cobweb in a tree. The camera rises up the tall, slender stem of the tree, unfolding a view of a grassy, wooded, sunlit land­scape. At the end of the film this opening sequence is recalled in the warning image of the charred and withered tree. This motif forms

Ivan's Childhood 37

the frame and point of reference not merely of Ivan's Childhood, Tarkovsky's first full-length film. It spans his entire creative life, reappearing in his final work, The Sacrifice. Here, again, at the very outset the camera rises up the tree of life in Leonardo's picture of the Adoration of the Magi, leading into the story of the monk that Alexander tells his son and into the parallel image of the planting of the withered stem. At the close of the film, in the final sequence of Tarkovsky's ceuvre, the motif returns, the camera again rising up the stem of the tree that father and son have planted and that, although still bare, may with patience and hope be summoned to life.

Tarkovsky's theory of film and the stylistic features that came to be identified with him over the years were clearly formulated in Ivan's Childhood. Many of his familiar iconographic images - horses, apples, water, (the four elements), the sensation of flying - are al­ready present. At the beginning of his career, this film signalled his extraordinary artistic and technical mastery.

Tarkovsky's use of music and sound in film was ultimately to become one of his most personal contributions to the cinema. Throughout his work a gradual process of refinement occurs: the use of conventional background music recedes and a complex layer of sounds comes to assume a significance rivalling that of the pictures. In The Sacrifice the occasional use of music is generated from within the film, out of the action. In the same way Tarkovsky uses the gramophone record in Ivan's Childhood: Chaliapin singing an old Russian song, 'Masha may not cross the river', a song that antici­pates the melancholy strains of Nostalgia. In Ivan's Childhood the song is played on three occasions, twice before the soldiers set out on expeditions across the river (the second of which is to be Ivan's final journey); and on the third occasion, when Masha herself enters to bid the men farewell and the needle sticks in the groove of the record. Tarkovsky does not achieve the rigorous aesthetic of his later films here. Conventional background music provides a commentary to a number of the scenes, and in particular to the idyllic dream sequences. But the use of music is restrained, and Tarkovsky's uni­verse of sounds is already present in an embryonic form.

The use of lighting as an atmospheric medium is also evident - in the expressionistic chiaroscuro effects of the church cellar or the sunlit scenes of childhood. Tarkovsky employs documentary mater­ial as a further layer of reality in his film, as he was later to do in The Mirror. There is indeed an obvious relationship between the

38 Andrei Tarkovsky

landscapes of war in the Dnieper swamps of Ivan's Childhood and �e waters of Lake Sivash through which the Russian troops march m The Mirror.

In the microcosm that was Ivan's world lies the macrocosm of the world at large. A master of detail, Tarkovsky's vision was uni':ersal. It embraced man's understanding of himself and his place m the cosmos, the physical and the metaphysical. Ivan's Childhood, his fir�t major work, was an anti-war film; and so in certain respects was his final work, The Sacrifice. Both Ivan and Alexander make great per­sonal sacrifices in a context of war and on behalf of a better world. Probably not conscious of this himself, Ivan is the expression of an idea. Alexander, on the other hand, has reached a state of awareness of his personal responsibility. Galtsev's words at the end of Ivan's Childhood, Was that the last war on this earth?' - half question, half exhortation - are answered in The Sacrifice when the next world war breaks out. Alexander's renunciation of all that is precious to him, his expression of hope in his son and the future, contains a similar vision to that of Ivan's Childhood. With the tree of life Tarkovsky's work comes full circle.

3 Andrei Rublyov

We have had our own mission . . . . The Tartars did not dare cross our western frontiers and so leave us in their rear. They retreated

towards their deserts and Christian civilisation was saved . . .

Alexander Pushkin

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the early fifteenth century - the period in which the film is set -the Russian principalities lay on the very edge of Europe. Divided by rivalry and feuds between the various rulers, these principalities were open to attack from the Tartar hordes from the south and east. To the west, the dominant East European power was Poland­Lithuania. It was a time of political and cultural upheaval. The late Middle Ages were witnessing the first stirrings of the Renaissance and new ideas of political unity, which were ultimately to lead to the formation of a modem Russian state that would come to challenge the supremacy of its western neighbour in the fifteenth century.

A united Principality of Russia had last existed in the twelfth century.1 It finally collapsed in 1 139. Among the smaller principal­ities into which it disintegrated, Kiev continued to enjoy a certain pre-eminence for a time. But after 1169 any claims to !lational lead­ership passed to the Prince of Suzdal, who sacked Kiev in that year and built himself a new capital in Vladimir. The continuing feuds between the ruling princes not merely prevented any move towards unity; they exposed the land to Mongol attacks. In 1223 the Mongols defeated the south Russian princes and established the Khanate of the Golden Horde in the Volga basin. From here, under the leader­ship of Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, the Mongols, or Tartars as they were generally known in Europe, proceeded to over­run the Principality of Vladimir to the north in 1238 and Kiev and the south Russian principalities in 1240. Although the city of Vladimir

39

40 Andrei Tarkovsky

never really recovered from its sack by the Mongols in 1��7, �he Principality of Vladimir was to become the focus o� r�urufic�tion and Russian identity. The title Grand Prince of Vladurur remamed the seal of leadership in north-east Russia/ and the princes of Mos­cow and Tver vied for this title for a long time.

Moscow, first mention of which was made in 1 147, ultimately established itself as the capital of the principality by the end of the fourteenth century. From here Ivan I (1328-41) began to draw to­gether the various territories that would come to form a future Russia (a process known as 'the gathering of the Russian lands'). � 1326 the metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church moved his seat from Vladimir to Moscow, lending further weight to the claims of that city.

In the course of the fourteenth century areas to the west (Belorussia) and to the south-west (Kiev and the Ukraine) managed to free them­selves from Tartar rule and joined forces with the Principality of Lithuania. Internal feuds among the Tartars and their defeat in 1380 by Demetrius Donskoi on the Kulikovo Polye (Field of Snipes)3 on the Don signalled the limits rather than the end of their powers at that time, however. (In 1381 they succeeded in capturing Moscow itself, although this did not diminish the leading role that city play�d in the development of a national identity.) On Donskoi's death m 1389, his eldest son Vassili I (1389-1425) became Grand Prince of Moscow and Vladimir.

It was on these foundations that the state of Russia was built in the later fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Under Ivan lli (1462-1505) and his successor Vassili III (1505-33) political unifi­cation was achieved.4 Novgorod was conquered by Russian forces between 1471 and 1478, Tver in 1485, Pskov in 1510 and Ryazan in 1520. In 1480 the domination of the Tartars was finally broken. In 1494 the struggle with Poland-Lithuania began for the Russian areas to the west. These territorial conquests and ambitions were consoli­dated by dynastic marriages and the Grand Prince of Moscow's claims to be sole protector of orthodoxy of belief and heir to the Byzantine Empire.5

Despite their long period of domination, the Tartars left relatively few traces in Russia. They remained foreign invaders, even though many of them were Shamanists or Christians and only turned to Islam in the early fourteenth century. Their most lasting influence on modern Russia lay in their economic and military policies and per­haps in the autocratic form of government to which the Muscovite

Andrei Rublyov 41

princes resorted; although this might equally be attributed to the Byzantine conception of imperial authority.

INTRODUCTION

The outline story of Andrei Rublyov was written and first submitted to the Soviet authorities in 1961, before Tarkovsky had filmed Ivan's Childhood, in which he salvaged a fellow director's project. Andrei Rublyov can therefore be regarded, in concept at least, as a maiden work and Tarkovsky's first independent film. It was completed in 1966, in which year the director was only 34. The film is the quite astonishing achievement of a young man still at the beginning of his career, a work full of youthful impulse and vigour, and an undis-puted masterpiece. ·

The film can be viewed on a number of levels: as a depiction of a period of Russian history in which the foundations of a united state were laid and a sense of national identity was beginning to emerge; as a portrait of the icon painter Andrei Rublyov in his times; as the chronicle of a search for belief and a universal brotherhood of man in God through the idea of the Trinity; and as an examination of the role of the artist in society.

Andrei Rublyov is divided into two parts, narrated in eight largely self-contained episodes or chapters that take place at various inter­vals of time over a quarter of a century. Often only loosely related to each other in content, these chapters are linked mainly by the con­tinuing presence of Rublyov himself. Filmed in black and white, they are framed by a prologue and an epilogue, the latter in colour, showing details of Rublyov' s icons and frescos.

Prologue The flight of a peasant in a balloon.

Part 1 The Mummers, 1400 The three monks and icon painters (Rublyov, Kyrill and Daniil) set out on their journey. They take refuge from the rain in a bam, where a peasant is entertaining the people with his foolery. He is beaten unconscious and taken off by horsemen of the Grand Prince.

Theophanes the Greek, 1405 Kyrill meets the famous Greek icon painter Theophanes. Kyrill's vanity and his envy of

42

Part 2

Andrei Tarkovsky

Rublyov, whom Theophanes finally invites to become his assistant.

The Passion according to Andrei, . 1406 The moral dia­logue of Rublyov and Theophanes. A Russian Passion of Christ on the Cross in the snow.

The Feast, 1408 Rublyov stumbles upon a heathen Mid­summer Night's celebration.

The Last Judgement, Summer 1408 Rublyov's reluctance to depict the Last Judgement on the walls of the cathe­dral. The blinding of the masons.

The Assault, 1408 The sacking of the city of Vladimir by the Tartars and the brother of the Grand Prince.

The Silence, 1412 Rublyov's years of silence. Famine in

Russia.

The Bell, 1423 The casting of the great bell.

Epilogue Rublyov' s frescos and icons.

A PORTRAIT OF ANDREI RUBL YOV AND HIS TIMES

Facts relating to the life and work of Andrei Rublyov are relatively few. He was born probably between 1360 and 1370. He died c.1430. He became a monk relatively late in life, serving first at the mo;na�­tery of the Trinity St Sergi us in Zagorsk and later at the Androniko:' Monastery on the outskirts of Moscow.6 One of the few auth�nti­cated facts about his life is that he was an assistant to the famous 1con painter Theophanes the Greek - a relatio�ship th�t

. plays an import­

ant role in the film. Trained in the Byzantine trad1t1on, Rublyov was one of the great masters of Russian painting. He ca�e to devel�p �n identifiably Russian style, infused with a humamsm that distin-guishes his work from that of earlier masters?

. The film takes up Rublyov's life in 1400. Desp1te the lack of biographical data, Tarkovsky managed to �ind � co�vincing �alance between documentary reconstruction and 1magmat1ve scenano. The authors - Tarkovsky himself and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky

Andrei Rublyov 43

- went to great lengths to study source material and paint a convinc­ing picture of early fifteenth-century Russia. On the other hand, Tarkovsky was anxious to avoid all trace of antiquated exoticism, whether in the form of costume, manner of speech or general milieu. His aim was to explore the psychology of creative activity through the person of Rublyov and to show how Rublyov's 'Trinity' was inspired by an ideal of brotherhood and love in times of dissension.8 He wished to achieve a 'physiological' truth that went beyond mere archaeological or ethnographic authenticity.9 This he achieved by relatively simple means; a timeless, minimal design, so to speak, in the form of the plain white walls of a cathedral, the rough timber interiors of log huts, or the monks' simple habits. For the outdoor scenes, the endless plains of Russia provided scope enough for such a panorama. The face of the land may indeed be seen to play one of the leading roles in the film.

Tarkovsky's historical epic describes the birth of a nation. Still on the border between heathenism and Christianity, the Russian principalities witness the emergence of new national goals: the ter­mination of internecine feuding between the princes; the end of subjection to the Tartar invaders; and the consolidation of territories.

Numerous references and appeals occur in the film to a Russian awareness, from the simple solidarity of the peasants in 'The Mum­mers' chapter at the beginning, to the proud consecration of the bell before the foreign guests. 'Brother, what are you doing? We're Rus­sians too,' a defender of Vladimir cries to a Russian-Tartar invader. After Rublyov has killed a man in defence of the deaf-mute girl, he confesses to a vision of Theophanes: 'I killed a man - a Russian'; and later: 'I have nothing more to say to man. Our Russia - it has to endure everything', to which the spectre of the Greek replies that it will probably always have to suffer.

One recalls the reference in The Mirror to Pushkin's letter, in which the poet described how Russia had formed a barrier for Christian Europe against the Tartar hordes. Here, in the early fifteenth century, the Russian idea is still betrayed by feuding princes. Here are all the circles of Dante's hell in terms of torture and cruelty. Whereas in Ivan's Childhood Tarkovsky was not interested in portray­ing actual scenes of combat or complicated front operations, in Andrei Rublyov his ideas for the direction of the Tartar attack were devel­oped in great detail.

In describing this phase of the emergence of modem Russia, Tarkovsky also drew a number of parallels to our own age, particu-

44 Andrei Tarkovsky

larly in the sufferings of the people under foreign occupation and domestic autocracy. For Tarkovsky, historic events and personal experience had little validity on their own. Throughout his work he drew comparisons between the past and our own times and sought the universal in the particular.10 The viewer is constantly stimulated to contribute his or her own interpretation of events, whether in seeking analogies across time between the medieval Mongol inva­sions and German aggression in the twentieth century, between the violence with which the feuding Russian princes ruled and the ex­cesses of Stalinism, or between the vision of the Last Judgement and the havoc wrought by the Tartar hordes. Boriska's final triumph is a celebration of a new spirit and signals the end of foreign oppression in Russia - in the symbolic relief of St George, one of the great martyrs of the Eastern Church, cast in the wall of the bell.

THE IDEA OF THE TRINITY

Andrei Rublyov begins with a prologue 'in the heavens'11 and ends among the angels and the heavenly host of Rublyov's paintings.12 The film describes a path from dissension to unity, from the fall of man to the Last Judgement and ultimate resurrection. It points to a unity beyond that of mere national, political interests, to the unity of the Holy Trinity and the brotherhood of man. The Holy Trinity, the basic mystery of Christianity, in which three beings (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) are united in a single nature (God), is a recurring theme in Andrei Rublyov. Harmony between man (faith, hope, char­ity) was one of Tarkovsky's central preoccupations. Direct reference to this is made in the scene of Rublyov' s interview with the Grand Prince, for example,13 and in the epilogue to the film one sees details of Rublyov's masterpiece, the 'Old Testament Trinity'/4 with the three angels.15

In its content this icon conforms to the typical treatment of the theme, which usually contained a depiction of three angels seated about a table beneath an oak tree with the house of Abraham in the background (often with depictions of Abraham and Sarah as well, although Rublyov did not paint them in his work).16 The cosmic unity implicit in this idea of a Holy Trinity transcending time and belief is echoed by Tarkovsky's own search for universality in spe­cific details and by the various aspects of the theme of unity he

Andrei Rublyov 45

attempts to link in this film. He parallels the idea of the Trinity, for example, in the loose outward constellation of the three monks who set out from the Andronikov Monastery at the beginning.

The same triadic constellation is to be found in other works by Tarkovsky, too in Solaris (the three men in the space station) and even more notably in Stalker, where the stalker himself, the scientist and the writer set out on their quest into the Zone. The parallels between Andrei Rublyov and Stalker are striking, for ultimately the search in the later film is also a quest for belief. The three men stop on the threshold of the mystery, the room in which one's inmost wishes are fulfilled. The intellectuals are unwilling to believe or to put their belief to the test. They lose themselves in indecision - to which Rublyov himself also succumbs for a time in his despair. The three monks in Andrei Rublyov, in contrast, are not so tightly bound to each other. They separate and go their own ways; two of them disappear from sight for much of the film.

Tarkovsky's essay at a human trinity in these three figures re­mains sketchy. But his concern for the ideal of 'brotherhood, love and reconciling faith'17 is clearly stated, and Andrei Rublyov is an ambitious attempt to comprehend the theme at a number of levels. Unity remains a central idea of the film rather than its structural principle - the unity of Russia and the unity of man through the Holy Trinity.

THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST IN SOCIETY

The prologue to the film opens with an image of a cathedral and the preparations of a peasant who is about to launch himself from the roof, slung in a harness beneath an improvised balloon of skins. Harassed by people on the ground who want to cut the balloon loose prematurely or prevent his flight altogether, the peasant sails away precipitately over a broad landscape of medieval Russia. A pan­orama of fields and rivers and settlements unfolds beneath him. Scarcely in a position to take it all in, in his precarious state, he is nevertheless conscious of one supreme fact - he is flying. The flight comes to a sudden, violent end. The balloon lies smoking on the ground, its vapour expiring into the water.

This passage does not merely set the scene and introduce the Russian land and the cathedraP8 - two major locations of the film.

46 Andrei Tarkovsky

Like Boriska' s bell or Rublyov' s frescos at the end, like the act of artistic creation itself, the flight of the peasant is both a striving for the unattainable and an act of belief. In attempting to fly, he sets himself above man and reaches up to God. The camera follows the ascent of the balloon from above the roof of the cathedral, adopting a God-like vantage point ('in the heavens'). Tarkovsky enables the viewer to share the sensual experience of flying by means of a subjective camera flight. Instead of seeing the man in the air from a camera on the ground, the sensation of flight is described through the eyes of the peasant (the cine eye), the camera itself gliding over � and dale and coming to the same sudden stop as the balloon Itself at the end. Despite the violent and probably fatal outcome of �his flight, the momentary sense of elation is underlined by the rmage of a horse rolling on its back in joy at the end of this sequence .

. The phenomenon of flight is a common motif of Tarkovskys films. It occurs in many forms, from the free, idyllic camera flight at the beginning of Ivan's Childhood to the acts of levitation in many of the later films. The balloon episode in Andrei Rublyov is taken up again in the documentary scenes of The Mirror and in the pictures of balloons hanging on the wall in Solaris. In Andrei Rublyov, however, the act of flying, as well as suggesting a liberation from the force of gravity and earthly oppression, has an ideal, heavenly aspect. The God-like view of the world (often achieved after a pull-back of the c_amera) can be seen as a specific feature of the camerawork in this

f�. The camera assumes a position above events on many occa­Sions: not only in the opening balloon sequence, but at the close of t�e midsummer revels; during the 'Last Judgement' chapter (the field of flowers, the blinding of the workmen); during the sack of Vladimir, when two white birds flutter down from the church roof; and on a number of occasions during the bell-casting chapter. Tarkovsky used this view from above to reveal a vast prospect and set details in perspective, much as painters used the panorama in the past. The God-like view is perhaps also that of the artist.

The idea of the God-like status of the artist is nothing new. Through the act of creation God and the artist have certain things in common, the artist creating an alternative reality, a counter-design to the existing reality of this world. Tarkovsky saw art as an instrument against materialism, as the embodiment of the ideal. For him, artistic /

discovery (insight) took the form of a new and unique image of the world, 'a hieroglyphic of absolute truth', manifesting itself as a 'rev­elation, a momentary, passionate wish to grasp intuitively and at a

Andrei Rublyov 47

stroke all the laws of this world'. He went on to describe art as a symbol of this world.19

In order to understand a work of art, one must be prepared to trust the artist, to believe (in) him. Just as faith in God demands a special spiritual disposition so a belief in the artist demands a special state of mind. But it was not enough simply for an audience to believe in an artist to gain access to his world. Above all, the artist had to believe in himself to be able to create this world in the first place. Tarkovsky saw artistic creation as the only selfless activity of man and speculated whether our ability to create was not in itself evidence of our being created in 'the image and likeness of God' .20

For Tarkovsky, the artist's belief in himself was only conceivable in the context of his faith in God; the act of creation as part of God's Creation. There could be no sense of rivalry between the two. In that respect Tarkovsky probably had more in common with the monk Rublyov than with the modem image of the artist as personified by Boriska.

The central idea of Andrei Rublyov is that an artist can only give expression to the moral ideal of his age if he is prepared to share the sufferings of that age himself.21 That is why it was important for the monk to set out from the protection of the monastery at the begin­ning of the film, to go out into the world of his fellow men, the Russian people. For most of the film Rublyov remains a passive observer, characterised more by non-participation and procrastina­tion than a readiness to intervene. In fact, his doubt and despair at the cruelty of the world around him drive him to ever greater with­drawal. On the one occasion when he does actively intervene - to save the deaf-mute girl from the raiders in the church - he kills a man, a circumstance that merely serves to intensify his despair. He thereupon retreats into silence and the total rejection of creative work.

Although his experience of the everyday cruelty of the outside world is in itself benumbing, part of Rublyov's dilemma is that, unlike Theophanes, he is not merely an artist but a monk. The silence and withdrawal that may be appropriate to his religious office represent a denial of his artistic powers. This conflict is, of course, a modem preoccupation of the film and not the situation in which Rublyov would have found himself so distinctly in the fif­teenth century. Although he took religious orders relatively late in life, the concept of the artist as such was to emerge fully only later with the coming of the Renaissance and Humanism. The medieval

48 Andrei Tarkovsky

artist worked in a workshop with assistants and apprentices and saw himself perhaps more accurately as a master craftsman working at a trade.

Although Tarkovsky takes Rublyov as the central figure of his film, the monk is not the only character through which the role and the fate of the artist in his times are depicted. In their own ways the entertaining buffoon and the masons are more directly caught up in events, to which Rublyov is merely a witness.

Three generations of artists are encountered here: the patriarchal figure of Theophanes who represents the old order; Rublyov, t�e representative of a new humanist spirit and t?e dawning Ren�ls­sance; and Boriska, the embodiment of a quite d1fferent type of artist, the modem young man of wild, impulsive energy. Theophanes' view of the world is that of an Old Testament prophet, inspired by a God of wrath and retribution. He is convinced of man's weakness, his guilt and stupidity, and his inability to change himself. If Christ were to return to earth, he remarks, He would be crucified again. Rublyov and his work reveal a new sense of compassion with the people and an awareness of their sufferings and the injustice done to them. His vision finds immediate expression in Tarkovsky's re­creation of a Russian Passion in the snow. Only after the sack of Vladimir does Rublyov abandon his ideas in despair, telling the ghost of Theophanes of his disappointment and admitting that the Greek had been right in his judgement. 'I have nothing more to say to man.' But Theophanes has modified his own views (posthumously) and now admires the qualities of Rublyov' s charred paintings on the walls of the cathedral.

The relationship between Rublyov and Boriska might be com­pared with that between Alexander and Little Man in The Sacrifice. One generation hands on its responsibilities to the next. In Boriska lies the hope for the future. Just as Theophanes had taken Rublyov as his assistant and come to recognise the personal genius of his succes­sor, so Rublyov is moved by the youthful spirit of the bell caster. 'Together we shall go to the Troiza monastery - you to cast bells; I to paint icons', Rublyov says at the close. It is Boriska who sho_ws Rublyov that silence and withdrawal are not the tools of the creative being. Above all, Boriska's belief in himself triumphs over all doubt - his own and that of those about him. Rublyov comes to see that the artist's only response to the abjection of the human condition is the creative act, the creation of ideals and an alternative reality, towards

Andrei Rublyov 49

which man may strive. Boriska demonstrates that knowledge or artistic insight - even feigned knowledge, which through fortune or faith may become real knowledge - is power. The secrets of the artist bestow on him a power even over the authorities he serves; but this power also imposes on him a burden of responsibility towards his fellow men.

Boriska's bell, like the bell motif in Ivan's Childhood,22 is a token of the triumph of belief - here, the artist's belief in his idea, in himself (and ultimately belief in God) - which is awakened in Rublyov like a phoenix from the ashes. Significantly, the transitional image link­ing Boriska's deeds with the resurgence of Rublyov's creative will, linking the scenes of the blasted Russian land and the final colour sequences of Rublyov' s paintings, are the still-smouldering embers of a fire on which the camera focuses.

At the time Tarkovsky made the film, his own artistic position, although scarcely in doubt, was still in a process of formulation. But the difficulties he was to encounter, and that ultimately led to his voluntary exile, have their beginnings in this film.

PAINTING IN FILM

'I have never understood . . . attempts to construct mise en scene from a painting', Tarkovsky wrote.23 Despite his rejection of parallels be­tween painting and cinema, his films abound in images and conven­tions derived from the visual arts, and Andrei Rublyov is certainly no exception. As one might expect in a film about at artist, there is a discussion of painting, of the use of colour and perspective, particu­larly in the dialogues between Rublyov and Theophanes, which reflect their individual preoccupations at the waning of the Middle Ages and the dawning of the Renaissance in Russia. In most of his films Tarkovsky used a palette of familiar motifs, many of which were borrowed from painting. Frequent reference is made, for exam­ple, to the four elements - related to the four temperaments of man and, as a token of the source of all life and the form to which it will return, a common vanitas theme.

Ruined churches and reconstruction, part of the iconographic tradition of painting denoting the destruction of the Old Temple and the building of the new, are as common a feature of Andrei Rublyov

50 Andrei Tarkovsky

as they are of most Tarkovsky films. But Andrei Rublyov is centrally concerned with these ultimate matters - with the Last Judgement and the Resurrection.

That the film should exhibit a high visual quality and picture composition inspired by painting is nothing remarkable; nor is the fact that many of the scenes seem to be directly inspired by the paintings of Rublyov himself, of Pieter Bruegel and others. Associa­tions of this kind exist in the other films as well.24 In the epilogue Rublyov's own works are allowed to speak for themselves. Their inclusion, however, illustrates two other aspects of Tarkovsky's cin­ema that are to be found in the tradition of old master painting: the concept of the synchronism of time, and the related idea of biblical prefiguration. Tarkovsky not merely paralleled the events of one age with those of another or made allusions across time. In best painting tradition he uses shifting chronologies or juxtaposes simultaneously within a common context events that take place at different times. By prefiguration is meant the anticipation in the Old Testament of events that take place in the New Testament.25 Here it may be seen in the idea of pendant Old and New Testament Trinities, for example.

One of the main preoccupations of the film is the transience of life and the futility or vanity of human endeavour. The vanitas idea was a central theme of the old masters and gave rise to a whole genre of painting. It derived its name from the Vanitas Vanitatum passage in Ecclesiastes. 26 The film abounds in vanitas motifs, tokens of death in the midst of life - from the abortive attempt of the peasant to fly and steal the fire of the gods, to the sack of Vladimir, and the recurring acts of senseless cruelty inflicted on the people. Tarkovsky also used the specific visual code of vanitas painting in this film. Here are the same tokens of decay in freshness, the return of all matter to earth and the four elements. The burnt-down candles, the books on the wall, the quenched flame, in the scenes in which Rublyov takes his leave of Kyrill and Daniil; the tree roots, the saturated earth, the snake in the water, the ants swarming over Theophanes's legs, and the dead white bird with the beetle that Foma finds in the mud in the scenes with the Greek in the wood; and the rotten apples in 'The Silence' chapter are all memento mori motifs commonly used in painting.

Tarkovsky parallels these motifs in the dialogue. In a crucial scene after Theophanes has sent to invite Rublyov and not Kyrill to join him, one sees the latter alone in a workshop musing over icons. In a long monologue, spoken off, as if expressing K yrill' s thoughts aloud,

Andrei Rublyov 51

the words ' all is vanity . . . ' are heard. K yrill has insight, but not the power to overcome his own weakness of character. Instead of admit­ting his failings, he attributes them to mankind in general. At the close of the scene he wets his hand and extinguishes the flame of a torch with it.

In the scenes in the wood, too, the visual motifs are echoed in the dialogue between Theophanes and Rublyov, when the latter re­marks that 'all is vanity and transience'. Similarly, in the cathedral after the Tartar assault, Rublyov in his delirium encounters the ghost of Theophanes. Rublyov capitulates in the face of the destruction about him and swears that he will never paint again. No one needs his work, he says. But Theophanes pertinently asks, admiring Rublyov's paintings on the walls of the cathedral, whether this dis­�vowal of creative activity is not an act of pride and vanity in itself, JUSt because they burnt your paintings?'; and he goes on to tell

Rublyov that he is taking a great sin upon himself in not painting. For Rublyov the greater sin lies in the fact that he has killed a man.

Rublyov' s earlier reluctance to depict the horrors of the Last Judge­

�ent, to be a tool of boyar repression, seems to find its justification rn the desecrated cathedral. The smearing of the white wall with dirt is paralleled by the charred fragments of his paintings in the later s:ene - both vanitas motifs in themselves. Shocked by his own act of VIOlence as much as by that of the invaders, Rublyov has no wish to communicate with man, either verbally or through his pictures.

The fact that the vanitas images occur most frequently in the passages that have to do with the painter's view of the world through his work suggests that they are not there by chance. Tarkovsky takes his preoccupation with the process of painting a stage further, however, creating tableaux-like scenes in his own medium.

During the dialogue in the wood, when Theophanes insists that man is weak and incapable of change, as if to underline his argument he states that, if Christ were to return to earth, He would be crucified again. Almost without transition one sees this assertion enacted. The manner in which Tarkovsky stages this Passion scene suggests that it is a statement on a different plane from the basic narrative and historical time in which the story is set, a visualisation of a passion play projected from the discussion in the wood. One sees a strip of cloth floating in the water and then the figure of Christ drinking from the stream. A column of people walks single file in the snow, Christ bearing a wooden cross up a hill. At the same time the discus-

I

52 Andrei Tarkovsky

sion of the weakness of man continues off. Mary Magdalene clutches the leg of Christ in anguish. The cross is raised on the �· The viewer is not a witness to the Crucifixion itself (even Within the artificiality of film), but to a re-enactment of it in the form of a set piece staged with a deliberate gesture of pathos, a kind of Brechtian alienation. Even the nails, prominently displayed in the snow, are like painterly attributes found in traditional depictions of the �ruci­fixion. The scene has a tableaux-like quality, as Rublyov himself might have painted it, here created (on his behalf) by Ta�ko�sky. Transported to the everyday life and topograp�y of Russia,

.�t be­

comes a Russian Passion in the snow27 - 'accordmg to Andrei , the name the icon painter and the film director shared. The central 'Passion' of this chapter is set in a kind of parenthesis with evidently painterly allusions framing it off from the rest of the narrative. The episode opens with the picture of the flowing stream with a cloth floating in it.28 It closes with a shot of a weed-filled river in which Foma is washing brushes (brushes with which Rublyov might have painted this scene), the paint from them clouding the water.

TOWARDS A UNITY OF TIME AND PLACE

The motif of the stream clouded with paint appears on other occa­sions in the film. It occurs after the blinding of the masons, when Rublyov's apprentice Sergei dips his hand into the water and one sees a white liquid pouring from an overturned flask. It is used ag�in when Foma is killed and falls - in slow motion - into the stream. Like the single, feathery flakes of snow that fall into the cathedral, the motif of the stain in the water would seem to have a parenthetic purpose, framing off actions that take place on different planes or at different times.

The shifts of plane that were to become such a distinctive feature of Tarkovsky' s later style were an expression of his understanding of time and the way it is perceived, the contiguity of memory, dream, vision and actual experience in a person's mind. In Andrei Rublyov he already attempted to articulate this concept; but the director had not yet fully developed a cinematographic technique to differentiate the various times and states of consciousness between which he moves. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white, a remarkable concession on the part of the authorities for a work of such epic scale

Andrei Rublyov 53

and one for which Tarkovsky had to fight with his usual uncompro­mising determination. Although he was to remain convinced of the advantages of black and white photography all his life, by adhering to it here he deprived himself of one of the most direct means of differentiating visually between dream and reality and his different worlds and times.

Andrei Rublyov is not an ongoing historical narrative. Its already episodic form is broken by many further shifts of plane. There are passages where Tarkovsky evidently steps outside his panorama of Russian history to comment on it from another vantage point. In some cases these passages are distinguished by light-dark contrasts; in others he uses a framing device, as in the Passion scenes. On other occasions the edges are blurred and it is difficult to tell whether a particular episode should be read as part of the central chronological narrative or as removed to a different plane. The framing elements of prologue and epilogue themselves are evidently not part of the immediate historical continuity of the film. The fact that they are the only undated sections and that the epilogue switches to colour and present time are evidence of this. The prologue serves to set the scene.

In the chapter of the sack of Vladimir there are two clearly in­serted flashbacks, when the younger Russian prince recalls the oath of allegiance and concord he had been forced to swear to his brother, the Grand Prince, in the cathedral. In the first, one sees the two brothers as they meet and enter the church. In the second, the prince remembers how he was made to kiss the Cross before his brother and the metropolitan; and how his brother had trodden on his toes during their embrace of amity, as if to impress upon him in which of them power was really vested. Tarkovsky distinguishes both these scenes by filming them in an atmosphere of subdued, shadowy lighting.

The scenes of Rublyov' s interview with the Grand Prince, in con­trast, are almost over-exposed, with bright light flooding the white walls of the ruler's house. White predominates here. The chronology within this chapter of the film is ambiguous. Rublyov' s relaxed discussion of his commission seems more likely to have taken place prior to the opening scene, by which time Rublyov has been in Vladimir for two months and everyone is complaining of his inactiv­ity. Foma, his assistant, eventually gathers up his brushes and leaves to work on a commission elsewhere, and the representative of the metropolitan warns that the complaints about Rublyov's delay will

54 Andrei Tarkovsky

be taken to the Grand Prince. It is unlikely that the playful scenes between Rublyov and his patron's children or Rublyov' s interview with the Grand Prince himself take place during this period of art­istic crisis. The passage makes greater sense if it is read as a flashback to a happier time, when Rublyov had been awarded the commission.

The transition into these scenes is of bewildering simplicity. From the unpainted cathedral, where everyone is waiting for Rublyov to begin work, the camera simply pans into a different time - as if time and place were one - and Rublyov is seen playing with the Grand Prince's daughter. Although this sequence might seem to close with the shot of Rublyov seated in the doorway examining a panel icon, whilst single, feathery flakes of snow are falling, the chronology of events continues into the following scene. When the masons an­nounce their intention to go off to Zvenigorod to work for the brother of the Grand Prince, the latter issues instructions to his henchmen, whom one sees shortly afterwards in the wood. It is more likely, then, that this whole passage of Rublyov's meeting with the Grp.nd Prince ends after the blinding of the masons - with the white liquid staining the water and the cut back to Rublyov in the church.

The chapter describing the sack of Vladimir bears the date 1408. Theophanes the Greek, however, died in 1405. Rublyov's discussion with his former mentor in the cathedral must therefore take place in the monk's mind. (It is not a flashback, since the scene is set amidst the devastation left behind by the Tartars.) Theophanes appears as a vision or an expression of the delirium Rublyov experiences after witnessing the senseless carnage in the cathedral. Tarkovsky resur­rects the ghost of the Greek without differentiating him perceptibly from his earlier living form. 29 With a hint of reproach, Rublyov even says: 'You are dead; I'm still alive.' It is to Theophanes (his name means 'the appearance of God') that Rublyov confesses his sin of having killed a man and makes his vow of renunciation. This vision or hallucination is introduced, after Foma's death, by the stain in the water and a cut to the interior of the cathedral, where one sees a black cat, the deaf-mute girl plaiting the hair of a dead woman, and Theophanes poring over the charred leaves of a Bible. The scene is dissolved again at the end by single flakes of snow falling like white feathers in the church and by the neighing of the dark horse that has stumbled inside.

Even more ambivalent in the context of shifts in time or plane is the chapter of the heathen revels, set in the same year (1408) as 'The Last Judgement' and 'The Assault' sections, which it precedes in the

Andrei Rublyov 55

film . The historic date of this chapter is not important; its position in the film is, however. A pendant to the Passion, in a sense, it is a pagan celebration of Midsummer Night, preceding 'The Last Judge­ment'. In its nature it, too, is a visionary sequence, a nocturnal episode, about which Tarkovsky weaves a web of mystery - in the lighting, in the arcane ceremonies themselves and in Ovchinnikov' s atmospheric music. What really happens during this night of Rublyov' s temptation we do not know. Whether he succumbs or remains the observer he is, for most of the film, is uncertain. A strange air of unreality hangs over the entire events. Leaving Foma behind, Rublyov goes off on his own, drawn compulsively to these mysteries. One hears the song of nightingales and music in the distance, and sees fires and torches flickering in the woods in the northern half-light. Birds flutter down from the trees. A shadowy, stilt-like figure moves about in the dusk. Arrested by the heathens as a hated and hostile monk, Rublyov is threatened with death. A girl, naked but for a coat of skins, kisses him sensually. For a moment it seems as if Rublyov responds. The girl releases him from captivity and he flees. The film cuts to the following morning. Smoke rises from the burnt-out fires. Cocks crow. One sees slumbering figures everywhere, in a scene that might be from 'The Sleeping Beauty'. Only one old woman is awake, rocking apathetically on a wooden post and wiping a tear from her eye.

Rublyov himself seems not to know whether it has been dream or reality when he returns to his companions waiting by the riverside. They ask him where he has been, but he does not reply. Only his scratched face, the burnt-out effigy that drifts by in the boat and the pursuit of the naked heathens by the Grand Prince's horsemen testify to the reality of the previous night.

The film moves backwards and forwards between quasi-histor­ical documentation and the re-enactment of artistic creation. The parallels between the discussions of a Last Judgement painting on the one hand and the ensuing sack of Vladimir on the other - or the blinding of the masons, or the Passion on the hill - are examples of the way historic and artistic reality are contrasted. The final transi­tion to colour and Rublyov's paintings at the end of the film is a further example of this. As well as representing a jump in content and technique, it is also a jump in time. Here, the embers of the fire serve as the transitional motif on which the camera fixes. The paint­ings we see are amongst the few that have survived the centuries. The time here is the present, not the fifteenth century, for the paint-

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56 Andrei Tarkovsky

ings have peeled and faded, and they reveal the cracks and scars that nearly six centuries have brought.

MOTIFS

Andrei Rublyov opens with what is almost a catalogue of Tarkovskian motifs. The bell, the act of flying, earth, fire, water, air, the derelict church, the unbridled horses are all introduced in the prologue. If many of them were already present in Ivan's Childhood, in Andrei Rublyov Tarkovsky would seem to patent them for future use. In this film, too, the associations conjured by these images seem more ex­plicit than in his other works and provide a key to their use in his subsequent career. When the Grand Prince's daughter sprays Rublyov with milk, for example, he tells her it is a sin to spill milk30 and affectionately picks her up in his arms. The image of spilt milk recurs on many other occasions in Tarkovsky's reuvre, down to the final Sacrifice, when the jug falls from the cupboard and smashes on the floor during the passing of the low-flying aircraft, like a memory of childhood. Similarly, in the opening scenes the sequence of a horse rolling on its back in sheer pleasure at the end of the peasant's flight is more immediate here than the grazing horses in either Ivan's Childhood or in the later works.

A remarkable feature of Andrei Rublyov is the associative contrast between the unbridled horses that move freely about the landscape and the mounted ones that invariably appear as a token of feudal power, ridden either by the princes themselves or by their hench­men. In nearly every case their appearance heralds some act of repression or violence. The equestrian figure was always a symbol of wealth and power. What is interesting here, though, is the contrast­ing role played by unmounted horses, which almost always have some magical quality about them. They are wild, unbridled crea­tures of nature. Two of the most haunting scenes in the Vladimir chapter are when a horse falls from a flight of steps; and, at the very end, when - the cathedral littered with bodies, the raiders gone - a solitary horse enters, neighing and causing the deaf-mute girl to start. There are many other examples of this contrast between eques­trian power and unbridled nature. At the very close of the film, recalling the motif of the herd of horses and the animal rolling on its back in the prologue, Rublyov's frescos (with their own depictions of

Andrei Rublyov 57

horses) give way to scenes of real horses grazing by a river in the rain.

At the end of the film the bell motif takes up the same triumphant theme that it had in Ivan's Childhood. In Andrei Rublyov, too, it is an image of liberation and the triumph of artistic and religious belief. The significance of the motif in this film is indicated at the begin­�g, during the opening credits, when a bell can be heard ringing m the background over Ovchinnikov's31 subdued musical intro­duction. The link with the earlier film is underlined by a further musical reference in the final bell-casting episode, when Boriska (Kolya Burlyaev, who also played the part of Ivan) is borne away from the scene of his labours, sleeping in exhaustion. In a magical sequence one sees Kyrill and Andrei sheltering under the storm­tossed oak. As Boriska is carried past, a brief quotation of the gossa­mer-like music from the idyllic dream scenes of Ivan's Childhood can be heard.

In a similar manner, the motif of silence or broken speech that recurs in many of Tarkovsky's films represents not merely a means of escape from the vanity of words. Coupled with it is the notion of liberation through sacrifice, the overcoming of adverse circumstances. In The Sacrifice, which revolves about the conflict between words and deeds, Little Man is unable to speak after an operation on his vocal chords.32 But this silence is not a withdrawal. It leads to an act of faith - comparable to that of Boriska's in Andrei Rublyov - the planting and watering of a dead tree that should be wakened to life. In the prologue to The Mirror a young man is freed of a stutter. 'I can speak!' he exclaims on being cured, much like the peasant in the prolo311e of Andrei Rublyov, who cries 'I'm flying!' The process of liberation implicit in these examples represents not merely a return to words, but the gaining of a new articulacy (artistic, political and moral), a progression from words to expression. The special poign­ancy of Rublyov's vow of silence,33 however, lies in the fact that it is in part the outcome of his intercession on behalf of an innocent young woman. The demented girl, as she is sometimes regarded, is in fact a deaf-mute, a heavenly fool who excites his compassion.

The monk's withdrawal from the physical world leads ultimately to a form of communication beyond words. One recalls Rublyov's remark to Foma during the journey through the wood with Theophanes: 'Only through prayer can the soul pass from the visible to the invisible.'34 Rublyov's renunciation of word and image may be outwardly consistent with this striving for the invisible; but the

58 Andrei Tarkovsky

attainment of pure spirituality is not to be achieved by withdrawal from life, by passive observation of the horrors of this w:orld. �he final abandonment of his vow of silence marks the end of rmpassiv­ity in favour of active intervention and a new humanis�. Rublyov achieves spirituality most convincingly in the power of his work, to which he (and the film) return at the end.

CHARACTER AND CONTINUITY

In terms of the three unities, Tarkovsky later described Andrei Rublyov as 'disjointed and incoherent': 35 d�spite pursuing a tech­nique through which dream and reality, time an� pl�ce were

_ to

become one. The episodic structure of the work denves Its cohes10n and continuity largely from the person of Rublyov him�elf, from the historic context in which the events are set, and from Its measured but impelling rhythm. As a result of the loose structural fo� of

_ the

film and the often passive role played by Rublyov, there 15 little character development, not even in the title figure. The transforma­tion he does undergo - from a state of enquiry, to that of doubt, and to final affirmation - takes the form of a series of steps rather than a gradual process. Also responsible for this impression are the jumps in time that the film makes.

Kyrill, the literate man whose sche�g intellect stan�s in the way of his artistic and spiritual vision, IS tormented by bitterness. In many ways he is the counterpart of Rublyov. 'God �reat�d the priest, but the devil created the clown', he remarks acidly m the opening chapter and, as it transpires, goes out to denounce t�e peasant to the Grand Prince's henchmen. Later he attempts to gam Theophanes's favours with flattery at Rublyo_v's ex�ense;

_and when

this finally fails, he leaves the monastery With a bitter tirade. �he abbot openly reveals his hostility towards K yrill, who co�plau�s vehemently about the state of morals in the monas�ery, thro��g his sack of belongings back towards his fellow monks m rage, spitting at them and comparing the situation in the monastery to that of the Temple when Christ evicted the merchants

_and mone�lenders.36

Kyrill even beats his own dog to de�th when It f�llows h1m. Kyrill therewith disappears from sight for a penod of se�en y�ars.

He returns in 1412 in the penultimate chapter of the film, -::he Silence', reappearing at the monastery during a famine and beggmg

Andrei Rublyov 59

readmission. Older, broken now, he describes how, in these hard times, he has escaped a pack of wolves by standing all night up to his neck in icy water. Now he is 'stiff and suffering'. He goes on hands and knees before the abbot, but the latter mistrusts K yrill and orders him to make 15 transcriptions of the Holy Scriptures as a token of penance. Kyrill's lack of creativity as an icon painter is driven home by a copying task he will never live to complete. But broken as K yrill is, his irascible nature continues to erupt periodically, as one sees some time later, when he recognises Rublyov in the courtyard of the monastery.

In the final chapter of the film, 'The Bell, 1423', Kyrill appears with Rublyov again. One sees them sheltering from the wind and rain under a solitary oak tree, K yrill stroking a black bird held in his hand.37 Later, when the buffoon from the opening chapter reappears and threatens Rublyov with an axe for denouncing him all those years before and for being responsible for the ten years he has rotted in prison where half his tongue was cut off, Kyrill intervenes to defend his brother monk. He kneels on the ground and begs the peasant to desist. The latter is suddenly moved to silence, drops the axe and has no other thought but to end Kyrill's supplication by lifting him to his feet again. The monk subsequently confesses to Rublyov that it had been he, Kyrill, who had betrayed the man and that in his heart he had envied Rublyov' s powers. That was why he had gone away. Now he urges Rublyov not to waste his gifts any longer. There is not much time left.

Perhaps Kyrill's entreaties have their effect after all. These and the pathetic figure of Boriska, exhausted after his own demonstration of belief in casting the bell, move Rublyov to words - and not merely to words, but to deeds. The third of the trio of monks, Daniil Chorniy (the Black), plays a subordinate role to both Rublyov and Kyrill. Daniil is a loyal teacher and disciple of Rublyov, cast in the figure of a father confessor who is nevertheless capable of momentary resent­ment when Rublyov is invited to join Theophanes. 'I have no one apart from you', Rublyov tells him before departing, both men near to tears. He kisses Daniil' s hand and assures him that he will return. (Kyrill is an unobserved witness to this scene.)

Later Daniil accompanies Rublyov on his travels to Vladimir, where they were to paint the frescos in the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Virgin (Uspenski Cathedral).38 Daniil is here one of the team of painters waiting to commence work, but held up for two months by Rublyov' s crisis of conscience. In a vast field of flowers stretching to

60 Andrei Tarkovsky

the horizon, one sees Daniil urging Rublyov to begin the work Their scheme for the 'Last Judgement' has been approved, the weather has been warm and dry - ideal conditions for fresco painting. Daniil describes in words what he visualises - the angels and the demons of a vast 'Last Judgement', down to the smoke emerging from the devil' s nose. Theophanes had depicted the tragedy and torment of the human condition. But Rublyov is unwilling to instil fear in the people with such horrific visions. In Rublyov' s reluctance to paint these scenes one may see a refusal of the artist to create the in­struments of fear of the ruling classes, as well as evidence of the humanism that was to differentiate Rublyov's work from that of his Greek mentor.39 Thereafter Daniil disappears from the story as well. During the famine of 1412, in 'The Silence' chapter, one hears that he is somewhere in the north - 'perhaps dead' .40

The three monks who set out together at the beginning do not form a trinity for very long. To a lesser extent some of the other characters of the film also provide a degree of continuity between the individual episodes. The clown who is beaten and carried off by the Grand Prince's men at the beginning and apparently thrown into prison for ten years (although 23 years have passed between the first and final chapters) reappears at the end in the bell-casting episode. The deaf-mute girl, Foma, the Grand Prince, the abbot and Theo­phanes are also linking figures who appear in more than one episode of the film. But many of the chapters could stand on their own as self-contained stories, the best example of which is probably the imposing final section, 'The Bell'.

Jhe fact that the Grand Prince and his younger brother are played by the same actor might be seen as an early example of Tarkovsky's fondness for merging identities. But for much of the time they ap­pear in each other's absence and there is no real transposition of character or even confusion as to their identities.

Underlying the story and serving to integrate the material in other directions are the historic parallels the director draws and the ques­tions of artistic responsibility and belief that he examines. Here, as in other films by Tarkovsky, female figures are conspicuous by the limitation of their roles. Again, the idea of sacrifice was to have appeared in an episode dealing with 'The Field of Virgins' - where, historically, the Russian women cut off their hair as a ransom to the Tartars. It was an event of symbolic significance that Tarkovsky had originally planned to depict in the film. Although it was ultimately left out, it provides another glimpse of the role in which he saw

Andrei Rublyov 61

women in his work Three vestigial references to the idea do remain: in R:ublyov' s direct reference to it in his discussion with Theophanes; agam, after the Tartar slaughter in the cathedral, when the deaf­mute girl plaits the hair of a dead woman; and, after the blinding of the workmen, when Sergei, who has escaped from the wood with his sight, is told to read from the Bible. He opens it at random and reads the passage from Corinthians describing man as the image and glory of God and woman as the glory of man. Women who pray should have their heads covered - or be shorn.41

Women play a subordinate role in the film altogether. The blond, heathen seductress Marfa, whom Rublyov encounters on St John's Eve (Midsummer Night), appears only in this chapter and her char­acter is scarcely defined. A counterpart to her in some respects is the blond, simple-minded innocent who stumbles into the cathedral with a bundle of straw, taking refuge from the rain, her lip stained with blood like that of the young girl in The Mirror. It is she whom Rublyov rescues during the sack of Vladimir, killing a marauder in the process; and she reappears (four years later) in the penultimate chapter, 'The Silence' at the Troiza monastery. Here Rublyov finally loses her to the Tartars, who offer her meat in times of famine (feeding the dogs in the yard with horse meat, while the people are starving) and who deck her out in oriental attire. In terms of its female roles, the only alternative the film offers is between a heathen seductress and a silent inilocent.

CONCLUSION

The expectations of the Soviet authorities, who wanted a positive treatment of the historical aspects of the subject, and the intentions of the director stood in opposition from the outset. As it transpired, the authorities did not get the heroic, national epic they expected. Quite apart from the fact that relatively little is known of Rublyov's biography, Tarkovsky was not really interested in creating a purely historical panorama. He sought to relate this period of history to his own experience and used it as a quasi-documentary background to his discussion of the artist in search of a meaningful existence.42 It is not surprising therefore that Andrei Rublyov encountered opposition in official circles on account of its depictions of cruelty, its lack of optimism and its problematic form and length.

62 Andrei Tarkovsky

The film was first shown in Moscow in 1966, where it met with considerable acclaim from the public. Placed on the programme of the Cannes festival j..n 1967, it was then withdrawn. At the festival in Venice in 1968 no Soviet films were shown, following the refusal of the festival director Luigi Chiarini to present any Soviet films if he could not show Andrei RublyovY Its premiere in the West (after Tarkovsky had made certain cuts) was in May 1969 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown outside competition and in the face of protests from the Soviet authorities. Only in 1973 was Andrei Rublyov officially released for showing in the West.

l 4

Solaris

'Do you believe in an eternal life in a world to come?' 'No, but I do believe in an eternal life in the here and now.

There are moments when time suddenly stands still and gives way to eternity.'

Feodor Dostoevsky

For most of the 1960s Tarkovsky was occupied With the seemingly interminable Andrei Rublyov project. It was not until the end of the decade that he made a serious start on a new work. In 1968 he approached the studios with an idea for a film based on Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris, published in 1961. By 1970 Tarkovsky had pro­visionally settled most of the questions relating to casting (with the exception of the role of Harey1), and in the same year he reached an agreement that the film would have a length of 2 hours and 20 minutes (4000 metres). By August 1970 he records that work on the screenplay was stagnating, and in September he refers to the first problems with the cast and the crew. The shooting schedule in­cluded locations in Zvenigorod and in Japan, where Tarkovsky had originally hoped to film the World Fair, 'Expo 70'. An application for 1,600,000 roubles was made for the Solaris project (200,000 roubles more than for Andrei Rublyov).

By the middle of 1971 Tarkovsky was complaining of disputes with his director of photography Vadim Yusov. Initially, these were over the choice of lenses for the film. Tarkovsky wished to reduce the depth of field in order to eliminate some of the obtrusive details of the science fiction decor. Too much of the film, he feared, had been shot with a 35mm lens. In the course of time the differences with Yusov became more fundamental and finally led to a complete break between Tarkovsky and the man who was the director of photogra­phy of all his films from The Steamroller and the Violin to Solaris.

Tarkovsky also recorded his fears of excessive colour in the film and his reservations about too many corridors, too much apparatus

63

64 Andrei Tarkovsky

and technology. In a diary entry dated 11 August 1971 he noted that he had had enough of Solaris and would be happy to be able to start a new project. The film was, nevertheless, completed by the end of the year. After further difficulties in gaining the acceptance of the authorities/ Solaris was finally approved in February 1972 without any further objections, after a sudden volte-face by Alexei Romanov, the chairman of Goskino. It received its premiere in Cannes in May of the same year. Although it did not make as great an impact as Tarkovsky's previous films, it was received in Cannes as an import­ant work of modem cinema and was voted best film of the year at the London Film Festival. Its Soviet premiere was in Moscow in February 1973.

AN IMAGE OF THE CONSCIENCE

Adrift in the cosmos, man is confronted involuntarily with new knowledge and his own conscience, Tarkovsky wrote about Solaris.3 Research into the planet of that name has been going on for nearly 100 years but has yielded so little concrete information and cost so many lives that the authorities are now considering abandoning further investigation. The most remarkable aspect of Solaris is the plasma-like, seething, gelatinous ocean, which covers almost the entire surface of the planet and to which certain organic, thinking properties have been attributed. Some observers have compared this ocean to a primitive, blind cell; other claim that it resembles a vast brain more complex than terrestrial organisms in its structure.4 Tests have never produced the same reaction twice to a given stimulus, rendering scientific pronouncement a hazardous affair. Indeed, it is no longer certain whether the remaining scientists in the space la­boratory are still conducting research into the planet or have them­selves become the subjects of its own experiments. At all events, after part of the ocean is illegally subjected to intense bombardment with X-rays, certain disturbing phenomena are observed, although on Earth these are dismissed as hallucinations.

The psychologist Chris Kelvin is sent to report on this "situation and to make recommendations on future research and whether or not it is worth continuing it. The space station can accommodate 85 persons, but when Kelvin sets out there are only three left, and by the time of his arrival one of them, Gibarian, has committed suicide.

Solaris 65

The station itself is in a state of dilapidation. Wires hang loose from the equipment; pieces of apparatus litter the corridors, and the general state of decay seems to have left its mark on the two re­maining scientists as well: Snaut, a cyberneticist, and Sartorius, a physicist.

Soon after his arrival at the station, Kelvin comes to experience the alarming phenomena himself, when the figure of his deceased wife Harey - who had committed suicide ten years before - re­appears to him. Harey is no hallucination, as Kelvin soon ascertains both from conversations with Snaut and Sartorius, and from the fact that his fellow scientists have their own 'guests' who exist physically and are visible not merely to those who involuntarily summon them but to the others as well. Snaut explains that these visitors are neither persons nor copies of particular persons, but materialisations that the ocean seems capable of creating from neutrino particles to match the images the scientists carry in their minds.

Tarkovsky uses a similar situation to this in many of his films, removing his protagonists from their familiar, everyday surround­ings to an alien ground - battlefield, forbidden zone, exile or, in this case, a space station - where he proceeds to hold up a mirror to them and confront them with an unknown image of themselves.

The metaphor of the mirror appears repeatedly in Solaris. Snaut remarks that it is man they seek in space, not other worlds; man needs a mirror, his own image - a sentiment echoed by the child's drawing Kelvin finds on Gibarian's door. Snaut's words are fol­lowed by Harey's accusation that the scientists have become mere reflections of themselves. In Solaris it is the planetary ocean that provides this looking glass, and on the other side one is confronted with the other face of man - the inward image of the conscience. ·

HAREY AND THE METAPHOR OF MORTALITY

Unnerved at first by the reappearance of his wife, for whose suicide he feels in part responsible, Kelvin determines to rid himself of her in no uncertain manner. He sets her in a rocket and launches her into space. But Snaut informs Kelvin that his wife may return again, that these doppelganger can occur in unlimited numbers; and before long a new materialisation of Harey duly appears.

Initially at least, her existence seems to depend on Kelvin's con-

66 Andrei Tarkovsky

stant presence, and she suffers agonies to be with him, bursting her way through a metal door and tearing her flesh in the process. But these materialised forms have remarkable abilities of recovery and regeneration. By the time Kelvin returns with water to treat Harey's wounds he finds that they can simply be wiped away. Later, Harey attempts to kill herself by drinking liquid oxygen, only to return to life in a series of painful convulsions. These sufferings, to which Snaut confesses his aversion, represent stages in Harey's assumption of human attributes. On this occasion her attempted suicide fails, but ultimately she will demonstrate her human spirit in her comprehen­sion of Kelvin's dilemma and her sacrifice on his behalf.

Snaut warns Kelvin that it will become increasingly difficult to break with this incarnation of his wife. As time passes Chris Kelvin's initial horror of the materialisation turns into a yearning to remain with Harey, · and the moment comes when he realises he loves her and does not wish to return to Earth; for Harey can exist only here in the station, within the planet's field of energy. Sartorius refuses ·to recognise these materialised figures as real beings, although he is haunted by them himself. Seeking to preserve his sense of equilib­rium as a scientist, he challenges Kelvin to test Harey's blood, and he frankly states to her that she is not a person, merely an imitation. Snaut asks sceptically who it is that Kelvin loves: the present Harey, or the one in the rocket? For just as there are now two identical shawls in the space station, so there may be two or more identical Hareys, he claims.

The doppelgiinger increasingly assumes individual qualities, how­ever. Harey' s growing awareness that she is not Kelvin's original wife goes hand in hand with his own awareness that, although the past may not be recovered in this way, his love is for a new person who will take the place of his former wife. Harey, in tum, acquires her own memories of the past that coincide and are united with those of Kelvin in an expression of mutual experience. In a feverish vision he sees his home once more, and the figure of Harey gives way to that of his mother, who had died before he met his wife. The passage is prefaced by the image of weeds swaying under water that one has seen at the opening of the film on Earth. Kelvin is depicted as a grown man embracing his mother as a young woman. The generations are dissolved. Half-sobbing, like a little boy, he apolo­gises to her for being late. She asks him how his journey was. A clock chimes; his mother leafs through a book. Here are all the familiar details of home he had taken with him or re-encountered in the

Solaris 67 space

_ station, now

_ frozer: to a series of still-life compositions that

question the matenal reality of Kelvin's own situation. In a �rther sequence of great allusive power, one sees his young

�other m a crocheted dress eating an apple. She tells her son he is dirty a�d unkempt. She fetches a bowl and a jug of water;' and just as Kelvm had washed away the wounds from Harey's body, so his mother now washes the marks from his arm - as if he were a materialisation of his own feverish imagination. 'Mama!' he sobs. One

_hears the sound of running water again, and Kelvin awakes in

bed � the space station. He calls for Harey, but Snaut places a letter on �� chest and tells him �h�t there is no Harey any more. Harey has sacrificed h�r�elf

_for �elvm s sake and submitted to Sartorius's pro­

cess of �nnihilation, m which an end has been put to the whole n:aumati� phenomenon of materialisation - a flash, a mere breath of arr, nothing more.

In an early version of the screenplay Kelvin was to leave his wife (Maria! behind on Earth and encounter Harey in the space station.6 �artly � respo

_nse to Lem's objections, Tarkovsky combined the two

figures m the film, making one a reincarnation of the other. In this he �r�:wides a_nother striking example of his fondness for merging iden­tities - which he takes a step further in Solaris, in an almost Freudian situation in which the figures of Harey and Kelvin's own mother (materialisation and memory) seem to dissolve into each other.

In this film, too, Tarkovsky imposes his own distinctive charac­�er_isati�n on the female roles. In Kelvin's feverish vision his mother IS Idealised as a young woman; and Harey, as the embodiment of

K�l�' s guilt-ridden memory of his wife, will never grow old, re­tammg th

_e age at which he had known her. Through her, this other­

worldly figure of a woman, he finds redemption. Th� implications of this story, in the nature of a fairy tale, are far­

r�aching. One of the quali�es of Tarkovsky's films is their ability to di�cuss fundamental questions of human existence, not in the form o_f rmpenetrable metaphysical tracts, but by means of striking, often su�ple parables that tread a narrow path between fairy tale and philosophy.

. On the one hand, in the indestructible figure of Harey is embod­

Ied the legend of the water spirit Undine who sacrifices her immor­tality to gain a soul through the love of a human being/ taking on herself all �he pa�n of mortal existence. On the other hand, Tarkovsky saw an evident lmk between the idea of rematerialisation discussed in the film and the Christian concept of resurrection and redemption

68 Andrei Tarkovsky

through love.8 Resurrection here, however, is seen not just as a beatific state but as a traumatic process. In his filmed confession, made shortly before Kelvin's arrival, Gibarian remarks that it is not madness when the word becomes flesh. Kelvin, in the light of his own feelings of remorse for the death of Harey, realises that Gibarian had not taken his life out of fear but because of a redeeming sense of shame.

The human materialisations are, therefore, also confrontations with the unresolved conflicts of the conscience. As such, the phe­nomenon is related to the idea of 'inmost wishes' described in Stalker. Kelvin expresses his remorse not just for the death of his wife, but �or the loss of the other members of his family: in his encounters With his mother, and with his father at the end. As such, it is also a token of his nostalgia for the past and for his life on Earth. Through these confrontations, through suffering, Kelvin, lik� the stalker, finds salvation.

The meaning of Snaut's discussion of human normality becomes apparent in the light of this as well. 'What is a normal person?' he asks. Simply someone who has never done any evil? But if a person has thought evil and these thoughts were to take on material form (as they can in the sphere of Solaris), he may suddenly be confronted with a frightening reflection of himself.9 Kelvin's inmost wishes reveal themselves to be the resurrection and finally the creation of a new Harey, the chance to atone for lost opportunities.

The ocean draws its mental models for materialisations from man's sleeping state. The significance of this state is taken up again by Tarkovsky towards the end of the film when he quotes the passage from Don Quixote in which Sancho Panza describes the similarity between sleep and death. In linking the idea of immortality and resurrection, resurrection and new creation, Tarkovsky was, of course, returning to a question that concerned him both as a matter of belief and in the realm of artistic creation.

That the story cannot exist on a purely philosophical level with­out the element of fairy tale seems substantiated by the circumstance that Harey cannot exist outside the sphere of influence of Solaris. For Kelvin a return to Earth with her is therefore out of the question. But Sartorius ultimately destroys the materialisation of Harey and all possibility of recurrences. The phenomenon is ended, as it came about, through the intervention of man. Kelvin, in choosing to re­main on the station, might be seen as the prisoner of his own inmost wishes, were it not for the principle of hope to which he refers. For

Solaris 69

to leave would mean to lose the only chance for the future, he says, adding equivocally that the only thing left is expectation - the expec­tation of new fulfilment.

AN EDIFICE OF MEMORIES

For Kelvin, the materialisation of a new Harey represents an oppor­tunity to start again, to return to that point in time where he had lost his wife, an opportunity to make good a mistake. Harey is a painful re-embodiment of the past, for she had committed suicide after a period of alienation, for which Kelvin assumes at least part of the blame.10

Time, Tarkovsky wrote, is the essence of film; through film it first became possible to record immediate time and to reproduce it at will. He drew parallels between the art of film and that of sculpture. Just as the sculptor releases a potential form from a shapeless mass, so the director extracts and models the essential elements of time from an unarticulated cluster of factsY Tarkovsky's interest in film­ing Proust is hardly surprising, therefore; for Proust, who spoke of raising 'a vast edifice of memories', was in this respect a kindred spirit. Although past time may be irrecoverable, it cannot be de­stroyed or vanish without trace. Time and memory merge, are two aspects of a single phenomenon.

Nowhere is Tarkovsky' s concept of sculpting in time better evinced than in Solaris and The Mirror with their complex telescoping of past, present.and future. On three separate occasions in Solaris immediate (past) time is captured and reproduced in the classical form of film­within-film: when Berton shows the old documentary of the Solaris enquiry to Chris Kelvin and his family shortly before the latter's journey to the space station; when Kelvin watches Gibarian's confes­sions on film; and when Kelvin shows Harey the filmed record of Earth that he has taken with him to the Solaris station. In each case the recollection of time past in the present is vividly illustrated.

Berton in the film with¢ the film is a young man making his report to a committee of enquiry; whilst the Berton who sits watch­ing it in the Kelvin's house is a man of middle age for whom the memories evoked by the documentary are evidently painful. 'You used to be good looking', Berton is told by the unidentified dark­haired woman who sits watching the film with him, reminding one,

70 Andrei Tarkovsky

like Berton's thinning hair, of the passage of time. Gibarian's film is in the nature of a farewell. By the time Kelvin arrives and views it on the giant monitor, his former mentor has taken his life. Gibarian's resurrection on the screen is denied by his lifeless body lying under a plastic sheet in the refrigeration room. Kelvin's filmed record of home is like the little tin of earth with the living flower by the window in the space station. Souvenir and recollection of another time, it returns him for a moment to his childhood, when his mother was young.

The technique of reproducing time within time through film-in­film was not Tarkovsky's invention. He used it, however, to demon­strate his own theory of cinema, exploring complex relationships between memory and time - as in Kelvin's re-encounter with his youthful mother - and here creating new images for such ideas as resurrection and eternity.

'All will pass' were the words allegedly inscribed on King Solo­mon's ring.12 Tarkovsky's preoccupation with the passage of time is further documented by the biblical and other quotations to which he repeatedly turned and by the vanitas themes that recur throughout his work. But if he drew strength from belief, in his awareness of the transience of human existence he was also obsessed with the Promethean idea of reversing this order of things and finding a path to eternal life. Nearly all his films are scenarios of paradise and humanist Utopias in one.

A PICTURE OF EARTH

Solaris begins with a long, ardent portrait of Earth, as if Chris Kelvin were trying to capture in his mind the essence of the planet and his life there before his voyage. One sees weeds swaying beneath clear, flowing water, light reflected on the surface, a leaf floating past in the current. Kelvin fixes the co-ordinates of his life in his mind - the memories of childhood, the lakeside landscape of his home. They are images to which he will return in his thoughts and dreams. He washes his hands in the water of the lake. It is a conscious leave­taking; for his voyage to Solaris is also a journey into exile from which he may not return.

This aspect of breaking off from life is underlined by Tarkovsky's use of still-life motifs from painting - to such an extent that they can

1 and 2 Andrei Tarkovsky during the shooting of Tile l\1 i rro r (left) and of S:alker (below)

3 (above) Ivan 's Childhood: Ivan and the dead, charred tree by the river

4 (below) Andrei Rublyov : prologue- the launching of tlw balloon

5 (above) ilndrei Rublyov : Kyrill (Ivan Lapikov). the literate man whose intellect stands ii the way of his vision

6 (below) Soiaris : Chris Kelvin watching the film of the dead Gibarian

7 (lejt) The J',firmr: t'1e father (Oleg Yankovsky) returns home during the war

8 (below) The Mirror : .Maria Ivanovna. Tarkovsky's mother

9 (above) The ;Hirror: the boy with the bird

l 0 (below) Turko vsky (at cumera) during the shooting o!S:alker

1 1 (above) Stalker: the stalker and the writer

! 2 (below) Stalker: the stalker (Al eksaudcr Kaidanovsky) (right) and the writer (Anatoiy Solonit�yn)

1 � . .) (above) Sralker: in the Zone

14 (beiow) Stalker: the stalker' s daughter

Solaris 71

scarcely be fortuitous. Inside the house one encounters the busts, books and photos that reappear in the space station and later in Kelvin's feverish vision of home: quintessential tokens of European history and culture. Here are personal attributes, too, that one asso­ciates with the director and his films: the pictures of hot-air balloons, or the unsaddled horse roaming free outside. But perhaps the most striking statement of Kelvin's leave-taking - and of human depar­ture from this world - is the breakfast still life Tarkovsky creates on the garden table in the thunderstorm. The classical motifs of vanitas painting that the director explored again and again in his films are present here: the half-emptied cup, the jug, the cherries, the half-eaten apple, and the bread - tokens of an abandoned repast, as if a circle of people had been called away, suddenly, in the midst of life.

The references to painting in the film are not limited to still-life compositions such as these, however. There are allusions to and direct quotations from old master painting that reflect both the inter­nal action of the film and Tarkovsky's personal experience, such as the image of the prodigal son at the end and the extracts from 'The Hunters in the Snow' by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This picture of winter is not merely a reflection of the frozen landscape of Kelvin's home in the film. It is re-created on another plane from Tarkovsky's own childhood memories in scenes he juxtaposes with the close-up details of Bruegel's painting: the birds in flight; the snow-covered church steeples; the crow in the bare branches of a tree; the skaters on the lake below; the cart moving along an avenue of slender trees; and, in the foreground, the three hunters returning home with their dogs. The soundtrack echoes this with the songs of birds and the sounds of dogs barking. The theme of the painting parallels the exiled astronauts' nostalgia for home.

After the memory of youth, in which one sees a little boy standing on a hill in the snow - an image that recurs in the autobiographical work The Mirror - the film cuts to Harey. She wakes as if from a reverie and apologises for having been wrapped in thought. This interweaving of Chris Kelvin's and Harey's memories leads into what may be seen as the consummation of their new relationship. Heralding the 30 seconds of weightlessness that Snaut had previ­ously announced, due to a manoeuvre of the space station, the glass chandelier begins to tremble; a book floats past in the air, and one sees Kelvin and Harey embracing, hovering above the ground in one of the most expressive sequences of the film, a sequence that antici-

72 Andrei Tarkovsky

pates the moments of levitation in The Mirror and The Sacrifice. The Bruegel landscape appears once more. The brief period of weight­lessness ends and the scene changes again. The little boy with the red woollen cap on Earth is seen standing in the snow beside the fire. Finally, Tarkovsky cuts to the ocean of Solaris, on which the camera slowly closes in.

The film revolves for much of the time around the recollection and re-creation of terrestrial phenomena in an alien environment. The strange formations in the ocean of Solaris that Berton reported seeing during a reconnaissance flight had resembled an artificial garden, as if made of plaster, with trees and bushes that then began to burst and collapse. Berton's description anticipates the recon­structed landscape in Domenico's barn that gives on to the real Tuscan hills outside; or the model house in The Sacrifice; or Tarkovsky's own reconstructions of ideal scenes, such as the tollage of home in Nostalgia. Similarly, Berton's vision of the huge child (which, as he later ascertains, bears a close resemblance to the child of his former colleague Fechner who had lost his life in the ocean) has the same traumatic quality as Beryozovsky's dream of the stone figures in Nostalgia.

The collection of memories - impressions and artefacts - that Kelvin fixes in his mind at the beginning of the film when he wan­ders round the lake and the house and that one re-encounters in the space station in the books and paintings, the photos and busts in the library, are a microcosm of the world left behind. Here, Don Quixote and the Greek philosophers, the Venus de Milo, Bruegel, and Rublyov's Old Testament Trinity are assembled side by side with photos of home: personal reminiscence and human history; as if, in rescuing the ideas and objects of his cultural identity, man rescues himself from oblivion. This collection of material and memories illuminates Tarkovsky's own use of personal motifs, with which he seeks to rescue the past and his own identity in spiritual exile, fixing his position with allusion and self-reference: the showers of rain, the horse running free in the garden, the dog, the balloons, the mirrors and photographs.

The film abounds in expressions of the astronauts' nostalgia for Earth, from the collection of butterflies on the wall in Snaut's room to Kelvin's remark that night in the station is easier to bear than day, since it is like the night they have left behind. In a simple, moving image of their yearning for home, Snaut shows Kelvin Gibarian's invention - a fringe of paper that, attached to a ventilator, produces

Solaris 73

a so_und like leaves �stling in the wind on Earth. Here, in space, the

station becomes a nucrocosm of human existence, just as man is a microcosm of the universe. In the end, Kelvin's life and memories are seen as an island in the stream, in the larger context of the ocean of Solaris.

FORM AND TECHNIQUE

What at first appears to be a linear, frame-like construction to the film, similar to that of Stalker (with the introductory scenes on Earth, the central section in the space station and the closing sequence apparently back on Earth), proves to be more elliptical in form, with quotations of film within the film and the ambivalence of the various planes of reality between which it moves.

In a film concerned with the materialisation of mental processes,

�lmost everything could be seen to represent something else, creat­mg an impenetrable semiological labyrinth. In nearly all his films Tarkovsky used ambiguity as a creative tool. Often in the form of parables, his stories allow audiences to take up the debate in their own terms and draw personally meaningful conclusions. Ultimate truth, Tarkovsky argued, is not accessibleY

Tarkovsky's colour code often provides useful information in this respect. But in Solaris, his first full-length colour film, it is still in its inceptive stage and provides only a tentative guide. Where used to distinguish between the general narrative and the film-within-film passages (in black and white) its use is clear. On the other hand, the sequence of Berton's return to the crowded, teeming city of Lem' s book (in itself an eloquent document of modem urban values) is also shot in black and white. It modulates later to full colour in the closing phase of this sequence at night.14 Similarly, the scenes of Kelvin's leave-taking on Earth, as he wanders round the garden of his home before his journey to the Solaris station, are also in black a��

_white. The chronology of the film seems to preclude the pos­

Sibility that these scenes are set in a different time or state - as memory, dream or vision.

Apart from the film inserts and two dream-like sequences, the rest of the film is shot entirely in colour - the introduction on Earth, the space station scenes, and the closing scenes set, outwardly at least, on Earth again. The first of the dream-like sequences, when

74 Andrei Tarkovsky

Kelvin wakes and discovers that Harey has returned a second time, is shot in a reddish monochrome. The other sequence of this kind is Kelvin's feverish vision, which begins in the same red monochrome and then, after a momentary reversion to colour, turns to a blue-grey monochrome for the dream of his reunion with his mother.15 There is, therefore, a certain lack of consistency in the use of colour in the film. In a letter to Tarkovsky, Sergei Paradzhanov echoed his fellow director's reservation about the use of colour.16 But after the turbu­lent history of Andrei Rublyov it is unlikely that the Mosfilm studios would have accepted Tarkovsky's preferences in this respect.

�s a result of the state of ambiguity thus created, many interpre­tations are left open. Kelvin, it would seem, remains on Solaris at the end (or the Earth and all its memories are but a dream, a microcosm within the ocean's own scenario) . The possibility that Snaut and Sartorius and all Kelvin's other seemingly real experiences in the space station might be materialisations of mental or subconscious states cannot be excluded either. Lem, in his book, considered the consequences of a materialisation of the astronauts' own selves. Kel�, on his arrival, questions his own sanity and subjects himself to vanous tests to verify that he is not the victim of hallucinations. But the book may serve only as a secondary point of reference; for Tarkovsky's version stands in its own right. As in all his films, he sought to create an independent work for the cinema.

In . Solaris he . nevertheless adheres to the book far more closely than rn any of his other films based on literary works. Lem' s novel is n� ordina

_ry science fiction fantasy. It is a serious and imaginative

piece of literature that examines the conflict between human and t�hnological values; but it does have a strong scientific and tech­ru�al content: refl�cted not least in its terminology. For Tarkovsky this was of little rnterest. He was more concerned with the meta­physical implications of the story.

The landscapes of Earth, Kelvin's home and his family do not exist in Lem's novel. One is tempted to say that, whereas Lem sees man as part of the endless universe, Tarkovsky saw the universe in man. But, in fact, the director looks through both ends of the tele­scol?e. Although he took many details and passages of dialogue straight from the book, there are inevitably shifts of emphasis in transferring Lem' s world to the screen. The various written reports that Kelvin reads in the course of the novel, for example, are set as f�s (within the film) in Tarkovsky's version. The Berton enquiry, which Lem has Kelvin discover in a book called the 'Little Apocry-

' 'T'' , "' ' Solaris 75

pha' after he has arrived at the Solaris station, takes the form of a film report, which Tarkovsky places at the beginning of his work before Kelvin sets out on his journey. One aspect of the novel that Tarkovsky did, of course, adopt was the central idea of materialisa­tion, for which Lem provides a pseudo-scientific interpretation. One can understand it on a metaphorical and metaphysical plane, but in realitr it defies the laws of the natural world as we know it. Through­out his work Tarkovsky was careful, when suggesting supernatural phenomena, to supply a rational explanation as well. It was an underlying discipline to which he subjected his films but that is missing in Solaris.

In Andrei Rublyov Tarkovsky tried to avoid stilted historicism. In Stalker he aimed at a comparable expression of timelessness, and was ultimately able to create his own bare sets of real decay. A similar state of decay exists in Solaris; but the set design attempted to be all . too m�ernistic, if not futuristic, instead of providing an essential reflection of trauma. Furthermore, innovation in the field of special effects is not only extremely competitive, it is ultimately short-lived.

Although many of Tarkovsky's works are concerned with meta­physical questions and are set in inward landscapes of the mind, his films are essentially outdoor ones. They breathe the open air, nature and the elements, even if sometimes in a devastated state. His inter­iors - many of his own design - are bare, sparsely furnished rooms or ruined cellars and churches. Solaris, in contrast, is cluttered with th� p�raphernalia of science fiction and space travel. Recognising this himself, Tarkovsky expressed his dissatisfaction with the film.17

In Solaris, as in Stalker, Tarkovsky assembles a trio of men to explore the secrets of another world. In Solaris all three are scientist;. The physicist among them, Sartorius, like the physicist in Stalker, is determined to eliminate all non-scientific, metaphysical considera­tions. His resolve to maintain his scientific bearings, in a situation in which everything - as in the 'Zone' - is in a constant state of flux, where no experiment is repeatable, leads him into isolation and secrecy. Like the scientist in Stalker, ultimately unable to cope with the phenomena he encounters, Sartorius devises a means to destroy what he cannot comprehend.

In Stalker the trio of men remain together for most of their journey, reacting closely to each other. As a result, their characters are more sharply defined than those of the protagonists of Solaris. But Tarkovsky was probably less interested in the individual figures

76 Andrei Tarkovsky

here than in the ideas they embody. For much of the time the characterisation in Safaris remains

sketchy. Tarkovsky, whose handling of actors are always one of the most problematic areas of his direction, described the difficulties he had faced in making the film. The working technique of Donatas Banionis was completely at odds to his own, and yet the director generously acknowledged Banionis's performance in the role

_of

Kelvin and the contribution he made to the film.18 Snaut, played With a nervous energy by the Estonian actor Yuri Yarvet, is perhaps a better-articulated character, despite the fact that Yarvet had to speak Russian, a language he scarcely understood, and therefore played the part largely intuitively.19 Sartorius, performed by Anatoly Solonitsyn, an actor Tarkovsky greatly admired, is a relatively mod­est role and hardly allowed Solonitsyn scope to develop his full range of powers. There is little evidence here of a negative Doctor Faustus, as Snaut describes his colleague at one point. Finally, the central role of Harey is a largely passive one. Tarkovsky recognised the range of emotion with which Natalia Bondarchuk was neverthe­less able to invest it, allowing the character to develop from a mere reflection of another being to a full personality.

Artemiev's score, a mixture of astral sonorities and an arrange­ment for synthesizer of J. S. Bach's Prelude in F minor, provides a discreet musical complement to the background of natural sounds to which Tarkovsky was to turn increasingly in his films and that here also acts as a counterpart to the visual iconography used to evoke memories of Earth.

Safaris has often been compared with Stanley Kubrick's 2001 : A Spt!ce Odyssey, made in 1968. If the latter seems to be concerned with a related theme - the omnipotence of a gigantic computer brain over human endeavour - it really represents the antithesis of Tarkovsky' s work. Kubrick's film can be seen as an outstanding example of the science fiction genre that Tarkovsky sought to avoid, but from which, in the end, he felt he had not entirely escaped.

CONCLUSION

In the course of nearly a century of research, the Solaris ocean has been recognised as a living, responsive organism. Since its subjection to radiation it has acquired the God-like ability to create creatures

r Solaris 77

with the attributes of human beings. Lem describes the whole field of �esearch into t�e p!anet as the religious ersatz of the space age, belief masquera�mg m �he guise of science, a late blossoming of myths and mystical desues, or man's attempt to establish contact �� God. At the end of the book Kelvin articulates an image of an ailing Go�, not almighty, but crippled and limited in His powers, the only God m wh?m he might believe, a God incapable of redemption, who merely eXIsted. Then Kelvin flies out over the surface of the planet and lands on a fragment of land in the midst of the ocean. Tarkovsky's film ends in a similar manner. Kelvin, seemingly re�ed to Earth, surveys the familiar landscape of home. It is wmter now and everything is petrified with cold. One sees the house, the smouldering fire, the boxer running towards him, as if it were all real, here and now; as if it were but yesterday that he had gone a':ay_. :et the whole scene is removed from reality by silen!=e and an InVISible layer of time. Inside the house he sees his father. A shower of water bursts through the ceiling on to the old man's back. 20 His father comes out of the house and Kelvin drops to his knees, like the prodigal son, embracing the old man. The camera recedes upwards, revealing the house, veiled in mist, and the land­sc�pe about it; and, with increasing distance, one sees that every­thing, father and son, house, garden, landscape, is but an island in the midst of the seething ocean of Solaris - vision perhaps or ma­terialisation of desires. Here, at the end, the perspective of the film is reversed. What �t the beginning seemed to be viewed from the standpoint of Earth, is

n?� set � another context. Kelvin finds fulfilment as part of his own v�sion. Li�e the legen� of the Chinese painter who disappeared into his own picture when It was completed, Chris Kelvin's human iden­tity is merged with the universe - an image of death and resurrec­tion, in which time ceases to exist.

5 The Mirror

[Zerkalo]

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

Ecclesiastes 1 : 4

Tarkovsky's exploration of the themes of time, memory and immor­tality is continued in his next film, The Mirror. If Solaris had pursued the idea of eternal life through the spirit-like figure of Harey, in The Mirror it was the director's own mother, Maria Ivanovna, who was the centre of his preoccupations. His deep attachment to her finds expression in his writings, where he describes the impossibility of reconciling himself to the fact that she was mortal, that she would not live for ever.1 Through film, with its ability to capture and reproduce time, Tarkovsky saw a means of creating that 'edifice of memories'2 in which his mother might be �ortalised in another way. In part it was personal preoccupations such as these that led to the accusations of subjectivity against the director and his film. But as well as being Tarkovsky's most personal work, The Mirror repres­ents the quintessence of his cinema.

In 1 968 - in the same year as he submitted his Solaris project - he approached the studios with an idea for another film, which was to be called 'The Confession'. The two projects continued to develop parallel to each other, and it was probably Tarkovsky's preoccupa­tion with the new material as much as his antipathy to the source genre and production problems of Solaris that made him wish to end his venture into science fiction and begin another film.3 The different titles Tarkovsky considered for the work that was finally to be called The Mirror throw some light on the way he saw this new film. For a long time the project bore the name 'Bright, Bright Day'; but he also considered and rejected 'Atonement' or 'Redemption', 'Why Are You Standing So Far Away?', and 'Martyrology'.4

The different titles are a record of Tarkovsky's changing concept

78

I I

l

The Mirror 79

of the project. In its early form it was to have been literally a confes­sion made in confidence by his mother: a candid interview based on a prepared list of questions on a comprehensive range of subjects. This interview, to be filmed by a hidden camera without his moth­er's knowledge, was to have been conducted by a person unknown to her, ostensibly with the purpose of collecting material for the screenplay. These scenes were to have been complemented by re­enactments of episodes from Tarkovsky's childhood and by the insertion of documentary newsreel material.

The mixing of techniques became a characteristic of his work; but the concept for The Mirror also reflects the influence of contemporary ideas of cinema verite in the 1960s, and of the specific characteristics of television as a medium: topicality, live information and the spo­ken word.5 Tarkovsky's original idea of interweaving documentary historical material and re-enacted memories of family life was largely retained. The interview with his mother, in which she was to have revealed her inmost thoughts on her family and the world at large, was abandoned. Based on a deception, the idea posed a moral threat to the film and would probably have exposed it to accusations of speculative exploitation.

By the middle of 1971 Tarkovsky had accepted the necessity of using both colour and black and white as a means of differentiation, and was considering the question of the length of the film. The producers wanted a work in one part, approximately 2700 metres in length. At this stage Tarkovsky was thinking in terms of a film in two parts (4000 metres; approximately 145 minutes) to accommod­ate the extensive interview, which alone accounted for a quarter of his 72-page screenplay.6 But he was well aware of the difficulties he would face in gaining acceptance for a two-part version. In the end, the film proved to be one of his shortest - only 106 minutes. Ulti­mately, not only the questionnaire was dropped: a number of other episodes that Tarkovsky had hoped to film were abandoned as well, including the field of Kulikovo sequence, which he had failed to realise in Andrei Rublyov.7

Shooting, originally planned for the late summer of 1972, did not begin until a year later, by which time Tarkovsky's dispute with his director of photography Vadim Yusov had come to a head. Yusov, who was apparently not in agreement with the subjective, auto­biographical aspects of the new film, decided to terminate his collaboration. Tarkovsky was forced at short notice to replace a long­standing member of his team with the cameraman Georgi Rerberg.

80 Andrei Tarkovsky

Here, too, the director's enthusiasm over the initial work with Rerberg

was to give way to a description of the difficulties caused by the new

director of photography.8 • Shooting was completed by the spring of 1974. Agau� !arkovs�y

was to experience the protracted refusal of the authonties, and m

particular of Feodor Yermash, the head of Goskino, to accept the

work in its finished form. In April 1974 Cannes made a request to

show the new film. This was refused by the Soviet authorities on the

grounds that it was not complete. By August o_f t�e �arne year

Tarkovsky was planning to mobilise suppo� for his. film m the face

of Yermash's continued refusal to accept It and, if necessary, to

appeal to Leonid Brezhnev. Failing all else, the directo� inten�ed to

seek permission to go abroad to work for two years. Despi�e the

complex nature of The Mirror and the problem.s of comprehension to

which this gave rise, by December 1974 the film was clearly recog­

nised by many people as a work of genius. Yermash ne_verthe�ess

again refused to send it to Cannes in 1975. It was released m April ?f

that year in two suburban Moscow cinemas and subsequ�ntly m

Leningrad. It was not until nearly three J:'ear.s late� t�at the film was

shown in the West, having its first screenmg m Pans m January 1978.

REFLECTIONS ON TIME

The mirror of the final title also returns to a theme referred to in Solaris: the metaphorical looking-glass that provides man �t

.h a

reflection of himself. In its surface, time is refracted; and It IS a transitional device through which one may pass to other worlds, other states of consciousness. Time and space meet in Tarkovsky's mirrors. That is why they play such an important role in his

.f�s.

The mirror functions, rather like the lens of a camera, as a pnsm m his work, capturing his universe in microcosm.

The significance of the mirror motif is made clear on two occa­sions near the beginning of the film. The young mother walks back to the house and sees her two little children as if in her mind's eye. Her shaven-headed son watches a black cat lapping up milk spilt on a table. In the background one hears the voice of Tarkovsky's father Arseniy reading his own love poem 'First Meetin

.gs', in which he

refers to entering 'your domain on the other s1de, beyond .the

mirror' . 10 A little later, in one of the spellbinding dreams of the film,

The Mirror 81

the mother is seen washing her hair. A shower of water bursts �hrough the ceiling;11 pieces of plaster fall in slow motion; water runs m streams down the walls. Then the young mother (Margarita Terekhova) looks into a clouded mirror and one sees not her own reflection, but that of Tarkovsky's real mother, Maria

,Ivanovna.tz

!ark�':'sky uses this device in other films to suggest the merging of Identities;13 but nowhere in his work is the imagery as dense as in Th_e Mirror .

. Margari�a Terekhova, �ho plays both Alexei's young

wife Natalia and his mother Mana as a young woman, is here �rought fa�e to fa�e with the very person she portrays, at the same trme catching a glimpse of herself in the future as a woman in her sixties. Here, in a single image, the characters of wife and mother are fused; time past and future, memory and prescience are captured in present time.

The events of the film span three generations, beginning in the 1930s when Tarkovsky was born and continuing to an undefined

�resent - the sta�ing point and end within a continuing spiral of time. The generations are confusingly telescoped into each other, not least becaus� el�ments of their histories repeat. Just as Tarkovsky's father left his wife and two children and married a second time, so Tarkovsky's first marriage ended in separation from his wife and their son. Tarkovsky also married a second time and had another son, Andrei. These events are recorded in the film, not in the form of a linear narration but as an associative chain of dreams and recollec­tions, a�usions and cross-references that leap from generation to generation. The complexity of the form is compounded, as one has seen, by the use of two persons to portray a single figure at different ages, and by casting one actor to portray two persons in successive genera�ons. One sees photos of Tarkovsky's real mother with her s�r�en

.Impersonator (Terekhova). The husband points out the

s1milanty of the two women, which, of course, is in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy when the same actress impersonates both characters.14 Ignat Daniltsev plays Tarkovsky's son !gnat and Alexei the n�rr�tor (Tarkovsky himself) as a child. Tarkovsky's father Arsemy IS portrayed by Oleg Yankovsky/5 but his poems, which punctuate the film, are read off-screen by the poet himself. The film is therefore not only a journey backwards and forwards in time· it shift

.s between biographical and screen reality, creating a curi�us

tension between the two - an example perhaps of the idea of ex­trapolating life with other means.

Having assembled the members of his family to appear or speak

82 Andrei Tarkovsky

in his film, Tarkovsky himself is conspicuous by his absence. His part as a young boy is performed by his son, and his commentary is spoken by a narrator. In a telephone conversation with his mother, in which no one is seen, the camera slowly proceeds from room to room, passing a striking self-quotation - a poster for Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublyov with a depiction of the Old Testament Trinity icon. After the dream of his mother washing her hair, this disorient­ating reference to Rublyov tears the viewer forward again to the present time. In real time the poster can probably be �ated �o the early 1 970s when the film first began to be shown Widely m the West. This would mean that the man whose voice is heard answer­ing the phone is the impersonator of Tarkovsky himself, and the mother is Maria Ivanovna as an older woman. The telephone con­versation confirms this. Without seeing either speaker, one hears the mother referring to events that took place nearly 40 years before, and that are also depicted in the film. When did father leave us?' the man's voice asks. In 1935, his mother replies, in the same year as the bam burnt down. Then she goes on to tell him that Elizabeth, her friend and colleague from the printing house before the war, has just died.

Despite these concrete references, there is an underlying ambi­valence of time in the film. Beyond real time the poster conveys a feeling of childhood precognition of the future, as well as echoes of early history and Rublyov's Russia. Time and events

_repeat t��m­

selves. At the beginning of the film the young mother 1s seen s1tting on a fence smoking a cigarette and looking into the distance. This scene is echoed at the end, when one sees Tarkovsky' s real mother as an older woman in almost exactly the same situation. In the episode in which !gnat and his mother are visiting the father, Natalia in her haste drops her handbag. As !gnat helps her to gather up the spilt contents from the floor he suddenly feels something akin to a static electric shook and remarks that it is as if he had experienced it all before in another time - a kind of Platonic anamnesis. This phenom­enon, the recognition of things already known, experiences stored perhaps in the subconscious, is of significance in the context of Tarkovsky's exploration of immortality, here in the form of a collec-tive memory. .

Immortality was one of his central preoccupations, not merely in The Mirror; and childhood was yet another image for it - in the handing on of personal attributes; in the idea of reincarnation implicit to the identity of succeeding generations; or in the notion of

The Mirror 83

infinity in the child's innocence of time. Set against this, of course, is the fleeting nature of youth; in other words, the vanitas motif and its converse. Artistic creation was another affirmative step towards immortality, containing as it did a seed and symbol of life; for Tarkovsky regarded the act of creation itself as a denial of death.16

The film documents the discovery of one childhood in another. The repetition of biographical details from generation to generation is as much an example of this as the merging of identities and times. They are tokens of the timelessness that Tarkovsky himself found so fittingly expressed in the image of 'a single table for ancestors and heirs' in his father's poem 'Life, Life'P a poem that is also an explo­ration of the theme of immortality.

A VIEW OF CHILDHOOD

'In the midway of this our mortal life I found me in a gloomy wood . . . . ' The opening lines of Dante's Divine Comedy, which Tarkovsky has Elizabeth recite as she skips away along the corridor of the printing works in the 1930s, might stand as a motto for Tarkovsky and his film in the 1 970s. Turned 40, he looks back along the path he has taken so far. With only four full-length films to his name and a continuing struggle for recognition at home, he might well have been excused for labouring the image of the gloomy wood. After his experience in realising The Mirror he considered giving up his career as a film make altogether.18 The film nevertheless radiates a serenity that, despite the hardships and the dark history of the period it covers, scarcely betrays a sense of the crisis in which Tarkovsky found himself. .

In this taking stock of life he laid great stress on authenticity. He claimed that the film contained not a single fictitious episode;19 and he went to great lengths to reconstruct his childhood environment, from the timber house where the family had lived, to the clothes and hairstyles of the characters.20 The casting of members of his own family and the use of documentary material may also be seen as expressions of this search for authenticity and of the cinema verite ideas that were so strong at that time.

Although he claimed that the entire film revolved about his mother, it is in many ways the confession of Tarkovsky himself. His original concept had been more in the nature of an interrogation than a

84 Andrei Tarkovsky

confession. But the confessional idea was not entirely lost. It is per­haps reinforced by the fact that the director himself does not appear. One merely hears the voice of Alexei on the telephone or in an off­screen commentary spoken by the narrator, Innokenti Smoktunovsky.

The mirror of the title is also a looking-glass held up to childhood. The factual, authentic quality that Maria lvanovna's interview was meant to lend the film is replaced by the subjective view of the child. Contrasted with this are documentary inserts and linking passages that, outwardly at least, would appear to belong to a different world. The reality of the newsreel material and that of the child would seem to be mutually exclusive. Here they come to represent two comple­mentary views of the same period of history. Seen through the eyes of a child, the real world acquires a wonderful, unreal quality.

At the beginning of the film, after the prologue, a man is seen approaching along a path, up a gentle slope, through fields of deep grass. The path from the station led past the house, the narrator explains. It was only possible to identify people after they · had reached the bush in the middle distance where the path forked. The voice-off goes on to describe the emotions of the child waiting for his father to come home again. One hears the sound of a train in the distance. If the approaching figure were to tum and come up to­wards the house, it would be the long-awaited return of the father; but if the man were to continue along the path without branching off, father would not have come - would never come. These are the kind of arbitrary rules invented in childhood, a game of hazard, played to force the hand of fate one way or another; an expression of youthful emotions somewhere between hope and despair, confronted with the incomprehensible world of adults. In the film the man does take the path up to the house; it is nevertheless not the father.

The child's view is tinged with a sense of awe. Like most of Tarkovsky' s films, The Mirror also describes a quest for paradise lost, for a realm to which we are closest in childhood, when man is still one with the earth. In the narration of a dream in the film, Tarkovsky tells of his desire to go back to the world of the child, when happi­ness still lay before him, when everything was still possible. But in the dream he is unable to get into the house of his childhood.

In this search for his roots lie the origins of his later film Nostalgia. There Tarkovsky shows that the sickness of that name can be so severe as to lead to death. But he also demonstrated that it could take the form of a creative relationship with the past in the form of memory, without which man cannot exist. The view in Nostalgia is a

T

i l

The Mirror 85

glance backwards from exile to a lost home. In The Mirror the view Tarkovsky seeks is that of the child, with which we glimpse Utopia or paradise. The point in man's history where he takes the wrong path is where the child loses its innocence and begins to comprehend the world in documentary form. To go forward along the wrong path may be worse than going back. Ivan's Childhood was a story of lost innocence, of a boy grown old too soon, matured by war and suffering and feelings of revenge. The Mirror also describes a process of growing up amidst war; but it marks an attempt to recover the vision of childhood as well, not just the memories, but the unex­plained mysteries, with all their discontinuities and distortions of time; a child's-eye view of the world and history, which accounts in part for the elusive fascination and haunting quality of the film.

There are two striking examples of this attempt to capture the sense of mystery of the child's world. The first occurs in a long traumatic sequence from the past, from the Stalinist era. Alexei's mother is seen dashing in panic through torrential rain to the pub­lishing house where she works.21 She is suddenly seized with fear that she has overlooked an error in correcting an important manu­script, possibly by Stalin himself. But the manuscript has already gone to the printing shop, and her anxious flight continues. The sequence has an unreal Kafkaesque quality, which is heightened by the subdued colours and the slight retardation of the movements. The mother seems to glide along · the endless corridors of one of Tarkovsky's desolate industrial plants. Frantically she searches for the word in the manuscript. Although her anxieties ultimately prove to be unfounded the episode is a portrait of fear at that time. Stalin's picture nangs benevolently menacingly in the window next to her. Later she confides to her friend Elizabeth what the word in question was. But the audience, like a child looking on, is excluded from the secret. It remains an undisclosed mystery.

The second example occurs towards the end of the film when Alyosha (Alexei) and his mother visit the doctor's wife Solovyova.22 It is wartime. Alyosha and his mother have been evacuated. They have had to walk for two hours to reach their destination. The mother confides to the doctor's wife that she has something to dis­cuss with her, 'a little secret between women'. She is taken into an adjoining room and the audience is left waiting with Alyosha in the first room. The fire burns. Spilt milk drips on to a cupboard. The petroleum lamp flickers and finally goes out, leaving the room in darkness. The mirrored door of a cupboard turns and Alyosha sees

86 Andrei Tarkovsky

not his own reflection but that of the red-haired girl with the blood­stained lips. The two women reappear, the doctor's wife trying on a pair of earrings. She shows Alexei and his mother her own baby sleeping in another room, a magical picture of a cherubic child bedded on cushions, surrounded by hangings. She requests Alyosha's mother to wait until her husband comes home to pay for the ear­rings. She asks the mother to kill a chicken for her, since she herself is pregnant again and has no stomach to do it.

Cut in at this point is a vision from the past, a dream-like memory in sepia, in which one sees the young mother hovering above a metal bed in a state of levitation. 'I have raised myself into the air', she says, and a white dove flies through the picture. As in Solaris and The Sacrifice, the phenomenon of levitation is associated with ideas of consummated love and with flight, akin perhaps to the dream-like motifs of Kokoshka's 'The Tempest' (Die Windsbraut) or Chagall's paintings of lovers floating in the air. Tarkovsky himself related this motif to lines from his father's poem: 'And mother came, and beck­oned me, and flew away . . . '.23 The sequence comes to an end when Alyosha and his mother have to leave, to get back to town before dark

In these haunting scenes, in which symbols of birth and death, the elements, and many other Tarkovskian motifs are mingled with the fantasies of childhood, the observer, like the young boy, is again provided with no explanation for the visit of the mother and her son. It may be no more than a straightforward sale of jewellery; or per­haps a piece of wartime barter; or some kind of gynaecological consultation. The purpose is not divulged and is probably not sig­nificant. What is important is the fragmentary, impressionistic na­ture of childhood memory, in which magical images are evoked but the secrets remain intact.

If The Mirror is a remarkable attempt to recapture the vision of childhood, it is also Tarkovsky's most intimate study of the world of women. The male adults play only subordinate roles, and Tarkovsky himself, in whose mind the film takes place, does not appear at all, except as a child. 'The film is about my mother',24 he stated. In his writings he describes how he was troubled by complexes in his relationship with his parents, and his sense of immaturity towards them. 25 The film reflects these emotions and the problems of being brought up surrounded by women in the absence of the father. There are at least two direct references to these circumstances in the film. In the printing house episode Elizabeth reproves Masha for the

The Mirror 87

lif� she leads: 'Nothing but "fetch me this" and "fetch me that" .' Elizabeth complains about Masha's pseudo-emancipated behaviour and . warns he� that she will make her children unhappy. It is a sentiment that IS taken up again a generation later in two conversa­tions betwee� Alexei and his wife Natalia, when they discuss the futur: of the� son !gnat. Alexei remarks the similarity between Nata�a and his m<:>ther. Natalia, in turn, describes Alexei's feelings of guilt towards his mother, because he believes she has sacrificed her life

_for him an� his sist�r. �ex�i advises Natalia to marry again;

otherwise Ignat will be spoilt like him, brought up exclusively in the company of women.

. Here lies

_the key t? the male-female relationships of Tarkovsky's

film�. Even m The Mzrror, although it is arguably the most 'feminist' of his works, the roles of the women still conform largely to the familiar alternatives of mother and Madonna. The scenes of the young mother in the fenced paddock at the beginning and end of the film are indeed reminiscent of a hortus conclusus. In this film, too Tarkov�ky giv�s expli�it expr�ssio� �o a theme he had already sug� gested m Solarzs, mergmg the Identities of wife and mother.

THE HISTORIC DIMENSION

The opening_ �equen�es of the film describe an autobiographical process of gammg articulacy. A boy turns on a television set, and one sees a young man receiving treatment to cure a stutter. With some difficulty he tells us his name is Yuri Alexandropovich, a student at a technical college. He is placed under hypnosis and told that his hands are growing heavy, immovable. The therapist links this sug­?ested

_handicap of physical movement to the young man's speech

rmpediment. When the hypnosis is removed, both are gone. Clearly and fluently the boy announces: 'I can speak!' In the nature of a prologue, t�es� s�enes contain yet another example of Tarkovsky's use o� the mhibited speech motif. Here it is a token of gaining matunty: the personal maturity of the child (and the director him­self) and the political articulacy of a nation.

The years of fear under Stalin and during the war are documented in the film. The liberation from self-imposed restraints, which was to assume concrete form later - too late for Tarkovsky - in perestroika and the disintegration of the Soviet empire, is one manifestation of

88 Andrei Tarkovsky

the struggle for articulacy in the second half of the twentieth cen­tury. The process Tarkovsky describe� is in�erna?onal as

. well as

domestic. The short history of the Sov1et Umon, like the history of Russia, is one of threats from outside and oppression within. Gain­ing articulacy can be seen as a metapho: for the coming �f age of a young nation in a hostile world. The rmage thus functions on a personal, national and international level.

. . The political content of this introductory statem�nt IS confirmed

on a number of occasions in the film - and not only m the documen­tary passages. But Tarkovsky's

. stance is not �hat o� an uncritical

patriot. In a winter scene in which boys are bemg drilled for �a�le on the icy boards in a rifle-range, Tarkovsky presents a striking tragi-comic cameo of the absurdity of war. A young �oy who has

.lost

his parents in the blockade insists on turning full crrcle when giVen the order 'about turn'.

An about-tum is a full revolution of 360 degrees, he insists, and ends up facing the same way as before, much to the dismay of

. his

instructor. Another boy shoots up in the air over the end of the rifle­range and enters into a bizarre discussion of the possibility o! hitting anyone who might happen to climb into the tree� there. Fmally, a hand grenade is tossed on to the boards. The mstructor

. throws

himself upon it, ready to risk his life to save his young pupils. �e hears his heartbeats, sees the blood throbbing m his head as he wa1ts, but the grenade does not explode. It is a d�y. The whole seen� is a bitter joke on the part of a little boy who, like Ivan, has nothing more to lose.

An even clearer statement of the historical and political dimen-sion of the film is the letter written by Pushkin to Pyotr Chaadayev in 1 836, from which young !gnat quotes. The poet describes how Russia had been separated from the rest of Europe and had taken little part in the events of that continent; but how it had been the expanse of Russia that had kept back the Tartar hordes from Western Europe and thus saved Christian civilisation. Russia's preoccupation with its eastern flank was in part responsible for the schism between the Western and Eastern Churches. At the same time, the expulsion of the Tartars marked the birth of modern Russia and the emergence of a national identity.26 In citing this letter Tarkovsky returns to the underlying themes of Andrei Rublyov and sheds some light on his unfulfilled ambition to realise the Field of Kulikovo episode from that film in The Mirror.

History, he shows us, is indivisible. In the microcosm of a child-

l I

l 1 t

The Mirror 89 hood he reveals a common human identity, a common universe. The story

. of this childho�d is inextricably bound up with a segment of Russian and world history - with the Spanish Civil War, the battle for Stalingrad, the explosion of the atom bomb, and the border incidents with China. One sees documentary film material of Soviet troops wrestling with bulky military equipment through Lake Sivash, the 'Putrid Sea', wading ankle-deep through endless stretches of water and mud flats; scenes of the hostilities in Spain and the refu­gees from the Civil War exiled in Russia; scenes of Mao, and of the Chinese waving their little red books.

In one remarkable sequence that recalls the prologue to Andrei Rublyov, Tarkovsky inserts old documentary shots of an enormous stratosphere balloon ready to rise, with men suspended from smaller balloons floating about it like satellites about a planet. Tarkovsky had used newsreel material previously in Ivan's Childhood. Curiously enough, in The Mirror, where he was concerned from the outset with authenticity, the black and white documentary scenes, often shown at a slower speed and with a patina of age, possess a hypnotic, unreal intensity, as if removed in time and place to a distant world of childhood or dream.

THE GRAMMAR OF FILM

The film possesses an extraordinary visual sensibility. It is a reflec­tion on memory and on time within time; and the complexity of its structure is compounded by the fertile imaginations of the two boys, Ignat and Alyosha. In the anamnesis scene, in which Ignat helps his mother to recover the contents of her handbag, she warns him not to indulge in daydreams. When she has gone he turns his head and, in one of those magical transformations of time and place that are characteristic of Tarkovsky's cinema - a simple, short pan of the camera - he (and the audience) see through the doorway another woman in an adjoining room. She is served a warm drink and then calls to Ignat to take a book from the shelf and read to her. He begins by quoting a passage on Rousseau, but is corrected by the woman and goes on to read the Pushkin letter. When he has finished there is a knock at the door. Ignat opens it and is confronted by an older lady who, on seeing him, glances up at the number of the house and tells him she has come to the wrong address. She goes off, although one

90 Andrei Tarkovsk:y

recognises her as !gnat's grandmother (and Tarkovsky' s own mother).

The boy returns to the place where the dark-haired woman has been

sitting, but the r.oom is deserted. There is no �ace ?f h�r or her cup.

It is as though she had been a figment of his rmagmation; and yet a

circle of condensation left by the warm cup is still visible on the

polished table-top. Slowly it vanishes before our eyes, and t�e only

piece of evidence that might distinguish reality from fantasy .15 gone.

In The Mirror one also finds the objects and sounds of childhood

that form Tarkovsky's catalogue of personal allusions and that we�e

to become familiar points of reference in his films: the dog, the spilt

milk, the balloons and other tokens of flight, and the four elements

- in particular, the numerous manifestations o� tu:e and :water: The

sound of the train, which recurs in many of his films, signalling a

link across space and time, is here associated with the desired return

of the father. Here, too, many of his images draw on traditions of European

painting. The set-piece compositions of the decked table � the gar­den in the rain, the objects upon it overturned by the wmd, �a�e allusion to people and time departed, recalling the breakfast still life of Solaris. The well in the garden, where the mother refreshes herself during the fire in the bam in the 1930s/7 becomes, in present time, an abandoned pit into which discarded crockery has been thrown. Here, at the end of the film, is a celebration of the transience of life and of the ongoing force of nature in the moss and beetles, the wild flowers and the crumbling, overgrown timber surround to the well.

In The Mirror, too, Tarkovsky employs direct quotations from painting. One sees the little boy from the rifle-rang� at the top of a snow-covered hill. Below him in the distance a wmter panorama with a river is spread out, populated by diminutive figures, a remi­niscence of a similar scene in Solaris, which is, in tum, based on a Bruegel winter landscape. A little bird, a familiar Christian symbol in old master painting, flies on to the boy's head. Carefully he

_tak�s

it in his hand. Near the end of the film one sees a sick man lymg m bed. He too reaches out and grasps a living bird on the quilt, then throws it into the air, as if relinquishing his life.28

The influence of the visual arts is not fortuitous. Among other things Tarkovsky enjoyed a training �n both m�sic and painting before entering the film school. The Mzrror contams a homage to a number of painters: Bruegel, the German Romantics, Rublyov and Leonardo. Ignat leafs through a book with pictures by Leonardo -engravings, portraits, motifs of praying hands and his depiction of

I

The Mirror 91

the Magi that later plays a central role in The Sacrifice. Leonardo was a universal genius of the Renaissance whose work was a source of inspiration for Tarkovsky throughout his life, in much the same way as the music of Bach or the writings of Dostoevsky.

The use of pictorial references is, of course, more than just an act of homage. In the scene in which the father returns home during the war, Tarkovsky quotes the portrait of Ginevra de' Bend, attributed to Leonardo and painted c.1474. One sees the young woman before a juniper bush with a misty landscape and still pools of water in the background. Tarkovsky himself refers to the ambiguous expression of the portrait, both attractive and repellent. Painted probably on the occasion of the woman's wedding, it has that unreal, Madonna-like character with which Tarkovsky invested many of his female fig­ures. The painting possesses something of the inscrutable quality of the Madonna del Parto depiction in Nostalgia. A tentative relation­ship does indeed exist between the Benci portrait and Leonardo's paintings of the Madonna.29 Whether the thorny juniper, associated with the name of the sitter, is linked to the biblical burning (thorn) bush quoted shortly afterwards in the film is not clear. Tarkovsky justified the appearance of the portrait in The Mirror in terms of the sense of timelessness or eternity it introduces and as a counterpoint to the dual role of the heroine of the film, Margarita Terekhova, who plays the two mothers.30

In this film, for the first time, Tarkovsky fuses a number of classi­cal devices from painting into a convincing synthesis - the vanitas motifs, the four elements as symbols of the four temperaments and the four ages of man, and the iconography of familiar objects. For the first time, too, he begins to explore systematically the contrasted use of sepia and colour to divide time and worlds: then and now, inward and outward states.

His personal 'montage of attractions', both visual and aural, takes a clear step forward, despite his reservations about Eisenstein's con­cept of cinema. Few of Tarkovsky' s films can rival The Mirror for the visual fascination it exercises, or its sense of magic and surprise. His techniques may not be as clearly formulated here as in the later works - the sound track, for example still relies on music to paint a background31 - but The Mirror witnesses the crystallisation of his personal grammar.

The mirror, as object and image of the film, is rich in semantic content. It also serves as a cinematographic device, facilitating seam­less transitions between different places, times or states of conscious-

--

92 Andrei Tarkovsky

ness. Tarkovsky develops other simple yet strikingly effective tech­niques for such transitions. !gnat, for example, has merely to turn his head, as we have seen, to pass from one apparent reality to another. Natalia simply looks over her shoulder and glimpses the past. These are, of course, only metaphors for the technical process of changing scene - by a cut or a pan of the camera; but they mark a significant development in Tarkovsky's grammar of film. The scene of the burning bam is captured in one of the most remarkable camera sequences of his whole reuvre. One hears someone shouting that the bam is on fire. The children go to look, leaving the black cat on the chair. An object falls from the table. It is in a mirror that one first sees the fire and the children watching it. A voice calls 'Alyosha' . A boy appears and walks across the room, the camera turns about its axis and follows him; and through the doorway of the house one sees the log hut in flames.

The film is labyrinthine, full of disjunctions and breaks, yet at the same time Tarkovsky's most fluid, filmic work Fragmentary in structure, an impressionistic mosaic of biographical and historical details from four decades, it shares the quality of his beloved element water, flowing in and out of dreams and recollections, per­meating time and space in a way that can only be achieved in film.

Tarkovsky's cinema is a constant reminder that film is a visual and aural medium, not an extension of literature. The communica­tion of information occurs not only through words but via images and sounds. He takes us through doors of the mind. His flashbacks are akin to the patterns of thought or memory. The films presuppose a degree and form of perception for which our mainly literary edu­cation has not prepared us. The fact that Tarkovsky himself had difficulty in imposing a convincing, cohesive form on the material of The Mirror at editing stage/2 however, is a reminder of the chequered history of the scenario and lends support to the accusations of sub­jectivity for which the film was criticised in certain quarters. Tarkovsky nevertheless succeeded in communicating those elements of his personal experience that were of universal validity. In its attempt to convey a child's vision of the world the film can be seen as a search for what Bloch described as 'something we glimpse in childhood, but where no one has ever been' - not merely a place where one belongs, but language and memory, time present and past, and perhaps even time future: for 'the true genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end'.33

1 i

l t

6 Stalker

There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the ear�h, even as a fi_g tree casteth her untimely

figs, when she zs shaken of a mighty wind.

Revelation 6: 12-13

�talker re�umes the quest for belief that Tarkovsky had first taken up m A�drez Rublyov. !he director described his later film as a philo­sop�cal parabl�- It I� a metaphysical, inward journey in which again a trio of men - �-this case, a scientist, a writer and the stalker - set

�ut on an expedition to a lost spiritual domain. At the same time the � marks a new phase in the director's creative life, forming a hin�e �etween th� mid�le and late works. The last film he was to re�lis� m the S<:'VIet Uruo�, Stalker prefigures his own journey into exile, mto an alien world m which he sought a new home.

�arko_vs�y first read the Strugatski brothers' Roadside Picnic,l on

�hich hi� film was to_

be based, U: 1 973, a year after the story was first published. He qwckly recogrused the film potential of the book and considered writing a screenplay, although initially not for him­sel£.2 By the end of 1975 an expose had been drafted and Tarkovsk hoped to shoot the film in the summer of 1976. A further year was t� pas�, however, before the screenplay had been worked out and vanous �ember� of the crew appointed. In January 1977 a start was ma�e with a �enes of trial :akes. Shooting proper began in May in Tallinn, Est�rua. But the proJect soon ran into difficulties. By August, when shooting was completed, the film material was found to be flawed and, in part, useless.3

Tarkovsky decided to reshoot the film, and work recommenced

�o�e or_

less immediately. But the project was beset with further difficulties for the whole of the following year. This second attempt a: th� m�teria� nevertheless enabled Tarkovsky to take the art duectlon mto his own hands and to rid himself of a cameraman with

93

94 Andrei Tarkovsky

whom he was dissatisfied.4 The reshooting was not completed until December 1978, and further negotiations with the authorities de­layed final acceptance of Stalker until April 1979. The film received its world premiere in the same year in Moscow.

THE REPOSITORY OF DREAMS

The 'Zone' into which the men set out is a devastated region where a meteorite or a flying saucer or 'something of the kind' has fallen and destroyed everything. Nobody is left in the area and those who had gone in to investigate had never been seen again. The Zone was then cordoned off and access forbidden. In the course of time it acquired an aura of mystery. Magical powers were attributed to it, which attracted illegal tourists who, led by stalkers with an intimate knowledge of the terrain, came in search of knowledge, souvenirs or the fulfilment of dreams; for at the heart of the Zone is a house with a room where one's inmost wishes are allegedly granted.

What then is the Zone - a place of terror, or the repository of dreams; a lost domain, another place or time for which one feels nostalgia; uninhabitable earth, or ideal realm; a memory of child­hood, or death? In the complexity of his vision Tarkovsky allows us all these meanings. In one of his contradictory statements he insisted that the Zone is simply a zone, nothing more; that it does not sym­bolise anything - only to describe it in his very next words as an image of life itself, through which man has to pass.5 The Zone is a forbidden territory and the stalker risks his life to enter it. That it is a place of death is borne out by the record of those who have disappeared or lost their lives there. It is a place of deadly hazards, in a state of permanent change - rather like the ocean in Solaris -where hitherto unproblematic paths become fraught with danger.

For the stalker the Zone is also home, a place he knows and loves. 'All I have is here, in the Zone', he says. 'Here is my happiness, freedom, dignity.' On arriving there he immediately goes off alone to take possession of his realm again, lying face down in the under­growth, his arms outstretched, embracing the earth. Fer him the quest is for belief and paradise, to a place where one's inmost wishes are granted, where his crippled daughter may be healed - where wishes ultimately become superfluous. Is the stalker then a Charon ferrying tourists across the Styx, through the various circles of hell to

.. ,1'" · . , '• f . ' "

j ' '

I i

Stalker 95

the realm of the dead; or an apostle, a Christ-like figure, a guide to paradise?

In the film there are parallels both to Dante's Divine Comedy and to the search for the Holy Grail. Tarkovsky' s vision of heaven and hell is complex; the two are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the Zone means different things to different men - to the stalker on the one hand, and, on the other, to the scientist and the writer who are unable to place their trust in belief. The stalker remarks that the further one penetrates into the Zone, the closer one comes to heaven. 6 In the context of the book the statement is ambiguous, with the central meaning placed on the dangers to life involved in entering this area.

The film reveals a number of significant shifts of emphasis from the Strugatskis' story. Whereas the illegal expeditions in the book have as their aim the salvaging of material objects left behind from the possible visit from space, Tarkovsky removes almost all concrete manifestations of such a visit. There are no physical artefacts from another world. Were it not for the atmosphere of menace that is conjured up, the Zone would be little more than a wasteland aban­doned by civilisation, overgrown with grass and bushes; a world of crumbling walls and rusting objects, half-submerged beneath water. In the undergrowth lurk the rotting carcasses of cars and tanks, in which the bodies of surprised victims may still lie decomposing; but they seem more like the victims of a nuclear war or some other man-made environmental catastrophe than of an extraterrestrial presence.

Tarkovsky filtered out most of the original tokens of the Stru­gatskis' science fiction. Whereas the stalker of the book finally en­counters the mystical object at the heart of the Zone, a golden sphere capable of granting any wish, Tarkovsky, with the experience of Solaris behind him, wisely avoided any physical expression of such an object. In the film the sphere becomes an empty space, a room, on the threshold of which the three men finally turn back without testing its powers. The real world of the Zone that Tarkovsky evokes, with its endlessly deep wells, its state of constant flux, the unseen threats and sinister telephone calls, outwardly obeying the rules of the natural world despite the stalker's belief in supernatural forces, is far more frightening than any science fiction scenario. The con­taminated, abandoned wasteland of the Zone, cordoned off and closely guarded by security forces, is not a prison where men are confined, not part of some Soviet Gulag Archipelago, but a danger-

96 Andrei Tarkovsky

ous territory from which man has to be excluded. As such, it is a chilling foretaste of Chernobyl, where the atomic reactor exploded seven years after the film was made, giving rise to an inaccessible radioactive zone.

· THE QUEST FOR BELIEF

In his commentary to the Strugatski brothers' book Stanislav Lem describes the golden sphere and its property of fulfilling desires as a na'ive device.7 In the physical world of the picnic that is true. It represents a breach of natural law. But Tarkovsky turns his world into an inward, metaphysical one, removing it, at one level at least, from the plane of verifiable experience to that of belief.

An increasingly important feature of Tarkovsky's later work was the way he alluded to phenomena beyond everyday human compre­hension, whilst still adhering to natural law. The dream structure of The Sacrifice is probably the outstanding example of this. But even in Stalker, with its references to psychokinesis or the fairy-tale motif of wish fulfilment, Tarkovsky is careful to observe these laws.

Tired of taking a circuitous but allegedly safer route and angered by the stalker's strictures, the author throws all caution to the winds, ignores the stalker's warnings and directly approaches the house that is their goal. A short distance from the apparently deserted building a wind rises and one hears a voice forbidding him to come closer. The writer thereupon turns and retreats to his companions, asking them why they have called him back. What at first seems an exception to the rule - like the voice of God in the ruined cathedral in Nostalgia - concrete evidence of a presence in the Zone, is imme­diately accounted for by the stalker. Otherwise so awed by the unseen forces of the Zone and only too willing to indulge his sense of mystery, he here provides a natural explanation, suggesting that the writer, afraid in his own heart to go on, yet ashamed to turn back and lose face, had spoken to himself, pretending that it was the voice of another. The viewer is left to make up his own mind.

The story pursues a path that often skirts hazardously close to hocus-pocus or schoolboy adventure. (The stalker is even allusively referred to as Chingachgook at one point.) The film is full of unex­plained mysteries, rituals and superstitions: the sudden appearance of the black dog, as if from nowhere; the throwing of the metal nuts,

� r

I I !

I ' �

Stalker 97

to which white ribbons are attached, as a means of determining the path ahead; the repeated insistence by the stalker on the impossibil­ity of turning back; or the rudimentary wishing well, here a shaft that is so frighteningly deep, it might lead straight to hell. All are outwardly unexplained phenomena that have their roots in mytho­logy or fairy tale.

At the beginning of their journey, when the three men set out from the bar, the writer turns to fetch some cigarettes, but is per­suaded not to go back with the words: 'It brings bad luck.' On arriving in the Zone the stalker sends the empty rail trolley back in the direction they have come. If they ever get out of the Zone it will not be by the same route, he says. Or when the scientist forgets his rucksack, the stalker does not allow him to retrace his steps to fetch it but tells him instead that one does not need a rucksack: the room at the end of their path will give him everything he could wish for. Curiously enough, the scientist does part company from his com­panions some time later. When they rejoin him, the stalker insists that the professor must have overtaken them by another route. The latter claims that he has not moved from the spot where his rucksack was lying, that the others have, in fact, come full circle and returned to him; whereupon the stalker immediately suspects a trap. With his extreme caution, his sense of awe for the Zone and his fear of its alleged traps, the stalker creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and mystery, · insisting that his companions should not deviate from the appointed path and exerting an iron discipline over them.

Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz, in her perceptive essay on the influence of German Romanticism on Tarkovsky's films,8 draws detailed par­allels between the works of Novalis and E. T. A Hoffmann, and the scenario of Stalker. The chthonic powers of Novalis's Erdgeist, the symbolism of death and rebirth are all present in Tarkovsky's film, as indeed are motifs from the myth of Orpheus, the Garden of the Hesperides with its golden apples, or the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Ultimately the film transcends the dangers of mysti­cism to attain a metaphysical plane. Tarkovsky sheds the props of science fiction to create a work relevant to our own spiritual situa­tion, a statement of the condition humaine.

The film draws on one of his most profound biblical preoccupa­tions: the Apocalypse. The fairy-tale well of near-infinite depth has its parallels in the bottomless pit; and the quotation spoken by the stalker's daughter to the dream-like sequence in the flooded Zone ­with the hypodermic needle and the relics of our ruined civilisation

98 Andrei Tarkovsky

- is the vision from Revelation of the day of wrath on the opening of the sixth seaP

THE WRITER, THE SCIENTIST AND THE STALKER

In Roadside Picnic there are three distinct expeditions into the Zone, the third of which Lem compares with a 'black fairy tale' in which various obstacles have to be overcome.10 It is this aspect of the book that is closest to Tarkovsky's Stalker. As in The Magic Flute, the protagonists have to endure a series of ordeals, including trial by fire and in particular (as one would expect of Tarkovsky) by water. The expedition is in the nature of a pilgrimage, the film a parable of a quest for belief.

When the stalker slips away from home on his assignment, his wife implores him not to go. 'They'll put you in prison', she pleads; to which he replies: 'Everywhere is prison.' \Nhat is it that makes this zone of the dead the stalker's desired realm? \Nhat do the writer and the scientist hope to find there?

The three men set out on a journey that for each of them might hold a different promise. Tarkovsky made two of his trio of pilgrims protagonists of distinct realms in our society: the world of science with its belief in verifiable fact and technical progress; and the philo­sophical domain of the artist, with its emphasis on the imagination and intuition. Both the scientist ('more a physicist than a chemist') and the writer ('he writes about crises') prove to be cynical repre­sentatives of a materialist world that has lost belief in God and itself. The professor, one might think, would be drawn to the Zone by the promise of scientific insight; the writer by its potential wealth of new ideas. In fact, the journey becomes a trial of belief to which neither is ultimately prepared to submit.

When the writer first appears outside the bar where the trio of men has agreed to meet, he is holding forth on how the world has become explicable, rational and therefore boring. Even inexplicable phenomena obey laws that are simply not yet known to us. In his disillusionment he declares the very elements of his profession -imagination and the mystery of Creation - to be redundant. For the stalker, the writer's attitude towards the expedition is not serious enough. Dressed in a black overcoat, he might have come straight to the rendezvous from an all-night party. His female companion specu-

Stalker 99

lates on a super-civilisation that might be created in the Zone and is even interested in joining them - dressed as she is in evening dress and fur cape. The stalker dismisses the possibility, whereupon the woman drives off with the writer's hat still on the roof of her car ­one of those rare visual jokes in which Tarkovsky indulges. Out­wardly at least, the writer treats the whole enterprise with a lack of earnestness that can ultimately only antagonise the stalker. Even after coming under fire on entering the Zone, the writer is impatient with the stalker's caution, with his circuitous route and the obedience he expects to his instructions. The writer presents himself as a cynic, a pose he keeps up with the aid of alcohol, which the stalker finally pours away during their first dispute inside the Zone.

Lying on a tiny patch of dry ground in the midst of a flooded area, the writer asks the stalker what it is that people seek in the Zone. The stalker replies that they are all searching for happiness, to which the writer responds that he has never seen a happy person in his life. \Nhat would be the use of having the certainty of being a genius, he goes on in the same vein; one would not need to write any more. He questions the use of technology, when all people want is to eat more and work less. Continuing in this manner, he finally provokes the anger of both the scientist and the stalker.

Slowly the trials to which they are subject wear away the protec­tive mask of cynicism. The writer finally betrays his unease when he draws the lot to be the first to go through the long, curving tunnel with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and the floor littered with refuse. At the end of this tunnel, which the stalker refers to as a meat grinder'Or mincer, the writer is confronted by a door. He draws a pistol. In horror, the stalker orders him to throw it away. One daren't have a weapon here, and what would one want to shoot at anyway? The writer evidently acknowledges the logic of this, submits and goes down into a chamber up to his armpits in foul water. Later he accuses the stalker of having rigged the draw for the order of enter­ing the tunnel; and finally he complains, quite at variance to his remarks outside the Zone, that there are 'no facts here'. Shortly before their goal he comes out with what amounts to a confession of his spiritual poverty. Rhetorically he questions the sense of his writ­ing, when he hates it. 'I thought I could change mankind. But they have changed me - to their own image.' Burnt out, devoid of in­spiration, he dons the crown of thorns he has been holding in his hand in an expression of (self-)mockery and abjection. Perhaps he

100 Andrei Tarkovsky

had secretly hoped to find inspiration in the magical room at the end of their joumey; but now, confronted with his own emptiness, on the threshold of the room, he is overcome with fear and refuses to enter that space.

In his own way, the scientist is also representative and victim of the same cynical society. For him the Zone should provide unique material for research. But he is not interested in ultimate insights. He is more concerned with the realpolitik of the Zone. Like the writer, he has not come unarmed - and he has an ampoule with him for all eventualities, as he confesses at the end of the tunnel. The real purpose of the scientist's joumey, however, is one of destruction. The significance of the rucksack he carries with him, for which he defies all the stalker's injunctions not to return on his tracks, is revealed when he takes out the bomb. With this he intends to de­stroy the room and its mystery. Shortly before the end of their joumey, in the depths of the labyrinth, a telephone rings in that abandoned, ruined world. The writer lifts the receiver and answers that this is not a clinic. Only then do they perceive the surreality of this contact with the outside world. The scientist immediately reaches for the phone and calls the ninth laboratory, announcing trium­phantly that he is only two steps from his goal, that he has found the mine in the fourth bunker and that he refuses to be intimidated by the security people any more.

He urges the stalker to imagine what would happen if mankind were to find out about this room with its promise of happiness: people would make their way here in their thousands, for there are other stalkers to show them the path; the rulers would come and want to change the world. On the threshold of the room the stalker announces that they have arrived at the place where one's inmost wishes may be fulfilled. It is not necessary to speak, merely to concentrate and .,.�call one's life; 'the main thing is to believe' . Now the scientist takes the bomb from his rucksack and begins to assemble it. 'Why?' the stalker asks, near to distraction. The profes­sor sets the timing device, determined that this place shall not get into the wrong hands, whether it be a place of miracles or not. The stalker struggles with him, trying to wrest the bomb from his grasp, until the writer intervenes, finally striking the stalker and hurling him into the water. Still the stalker cannot comprehend the actions of his two companions. It is the only place for people to go who have no hope, he pleads. 'Why do you want to destroy belief?'

. ··r·· . . ;

! ! l l Stalker 1 01

For him the joumey has been a quest for human happiness and fulfilment denied him outside the Zone. He begs his companions to believe. What is the central room and its promise without belief? And yet, on its threshold, confronted with their own selves, they hesitate and tum back, incapable of putting their belief to the test. Instead, they indulge in the procrastination that Alexander finally comes to abhor in The Sacrifice. Without belief there can be no para­dise. The camera recedes across the entire depth of the room, the tiled floor submerged beneath a shallow layer of water. A magical, purifying shower of rain bursts through the ceiling and stops again. Together with the black dog, the three men sit on the threshold to the room. After all their recriminations and discussions, after the pleas of the stalker to spare his world, the scientist dismantles his bomb and scatters the parts, tossing the fuse section into the room, where

. it lies beneath the water. Two fish swim up to inspect it. Slowly the water is clouded by a dark fluid. Confronted in tum with the mean­inglessness of his own actions, the scientist asks: 'What was the point of coming here?'

The stalker himself is a broken, beaten creature in the mould of the holy fool that Tarkovsky was to explore more closely in the characters of Domenico and Alexander in his subsequent films. All of them believe they must sacrifice themselves for the good of man­kind; all are possessed of the childlike innocence of Dostoevsky's · 'Idiot', a figure with which Tarkovsky was preoccupied for much of his life. Tarkovsky himself described the stalker as a man plagued by a sense of despair, who nevertheless feels a calling to serve those who have lost their hopes and dreams.11 As such, he is one of the director's archetypal anti-heroes - not cynical, as the writer proves to be, but a person who has suffered humiliation. This, as Tarkovsky stated, is one of the central themes of the film: the surrender of human dignity and how a person suffers who has lost self-respectY The stalker's wife describes her husband as a jailbird, a candidate for death, a man with no future, as her mother had once said, a figure of ridicule. In his own eyes he is a servant, a guide and scout to those who seek illegal entry to the Zone, of which he has an intimate knowledge.

The stalker refers to weakness as the only true value in life. He alone, he believes, is not allowed to cross the threshold to the room that is their goal, although his profoundest wish is the recovery of his daughter's health. His own mentor, Diko-6braz - also known as Porcupine - had entered the room and made his wish, however.

1 02 Andrei Tarkovsky

Here, perhaps, lies the reason for the reluctance to penetrate that space. Porcupine, the stalker's teacher, had borne the blame for the death of his gifted brother and had gone into the Zone to wish for his restoration to life. When Porcupine returned home, however, it was not his brother he found waiting for him, but immeasurable wealth. The insight that this was his profoundest wish - not the return of his brother - proved so unbearable that Porcupine hanged himself.

The heart of the Zone is therefore a place of confrontation with one's own soul; and the promised fulfilment of wishes is not the mere satisfaction of outward desires, but a materialisation of the subconscious, the trauma of resurrection that Tarkovsky had al­ready explored in Solaris. The Zone, like life, is also a place of eternal wandering. The journey, as it transpires, is more important than the goal; the goal, like paradise, an idea too immense to comprehend.

THE AESTHETIC OF DECAY

In its ascetic unity the film reveals many typically Tarkovskian fea­tures, not least the numerous vanitas motifs with their connotation of the transience of life. The whole film is shot amidst scenes of dilap­idation and ruin and might indeed be regarded as the epitome of Tarkovsky's aesthetic of decay.

The four elements - the preponderance of water in particular - are again evident: the sudden showers of rain that burst through the roof of the tunnel or into the room at the heart of the Zone, the canals through which the men must wade are not simply striking. cine­matographic images. They contain the idea of purification that finds its echoes in the John the Baptist fragment and the Christian symbol­ism encountered throughout the film: in the crown of thorns, the fish in the central room at the end of the journey, and the references to the Apocalypse.

Even the recurring theme of flight, to be found in nearly all Tarkovsky's films, might be identified here in the long, gliding jour­ney on the trolley with the hypnotic, rhythmic clacking of the wheels on the rails and the travelling camera passing in close-up along the line of men and back again. There is a comparable sequence at the beginning, when the stalker and his family are lying asleep in bed and the camera moves from the still life of the metal tray with the glass and scrap of paper, over the heads of the stalker's wife, his

· ·•·. ·.· �l 1

Stalker 103

daughter and the stalker himself, then back again. Other distin­guishing features of the photography in this film are the slow trav­elling shots and zooms and the camera's identification with the viewpoint of the protagonists by assuming a position behind their shoulders.

The dog that accompanies the party in the Zone returns in Nostal­gia in a similarly enigmatic role. Cerberus or Anubis,B it first appears in the Zone when the trio of men have settled down to rest in the shallow canal. Like a materialisation of the stalker's dream,14 it ac­companies and observes the men intermittently in the course of their journey. Absent during the passage through the long tunnel, for example, it reappears in the hall of dunes shortly before they reach their goal, and it leaves the Zone with them at the end. The dog, too, laps up the milk that the stalker's wife spills on their return - another familiar Tarkovsky motif. ·

Despite the nature morte associations of the Zone, one hears the barking of a dog or the sounds of birdsong and the repeated call of a cuckoo - a leitmotif Tarkovsky used, from the early tranquil scenes of Ivan's Childhood, in nearly all his films. This background of natural sounds - the splashing of water, the crunching of glass underfoot, the haunting sirens of the locomotives, the squeal of metal wheels on curving rails, or the roar of trains passing the stalker's house -takes the place of music for much of the film. Although Artemiev' s score contains brief passages reminiscent of a somewhat jaded 'mu­sic of the spheres', for most of the time he limits himself to extending the natural range of sounds with mechanical clangs, creaks and chirrups; and the quotation of other music - Ravel's Bolero and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - is all but drowned by the noise of passing trains. Tarkovsky himself described music in film as an undesirable illustrative relic of the silent screen and referred admir­ingly to Otar Ioseliani's exclusive use of natural sounds.15 It was a development Tarkovsky was to pursue himself in his final works.

THE COLOUR CODE

Tarkovsky regarded the film on completion as his finest work,16 in which the three classical unities of time, place and action were ob­served for the first time. 17 There are virtually no breaks in the flow of the story and that is probably the reason why the colour code is more

104 Andrei Tarkovsky

clearly legible in Stalker than in the films immediately preceding or following it. Framed between sepia images of the stalker sleeping (or the sequences of the moving glasses), at the beginning and end of the film, the central colour section might, of course, be seen as a single long dream of the stalker (or of his daughter). But the clear linear structure of the work makes this interpretation unlikely. The preparations for entry into the Zone, for example, which would be part of this dream, remain in black and white.

In Stalker Tarkovsky divides the worlds within and without the Zone into coloured and sepia images. The long opening section of the film, describing the stalker's home and the entry into the forbid­den territory, is shot in black and white, as is the return to the outside world at the end. It is only after the three men have over­come the hazards of entry and put the long journey on the rail trolley behind them that the film suddenly changes to colour - when the stalker has reached his desired world and taken possession of it. Only the three brief sequences of the central dream-like vision in black and white interrupt this long colour section. The black dog appears in the canal. The stalker lies sleeping on a mound of earth surrounded by water. Here, Tarkovsky evokes one of his nature morte visions of waste and ruin, with the objects of our modern civilisation lying beneath the shallow water - a hypodermic, a bat­tery, a gun, coins, a broken mirror, a leaf from a calendar, but also a goldfish swimming in a bowl and a detail from van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece - discarded, abandoned to decay, a modern vanitas in black and white. It is at this point that one hears the quotation of the apocalyptic vision of the earthquake and the stars falling from heaven. Finally, the black dog lies down next to the stalker.

Tarkovsky's colours were rarely bold, and here he restricts them to the subdued natural tones of a northern landscape - as he was to do in The Sacrifice. Although the expedition through the Zone is, in many ways, an even more traumatic experience than the stalker's dream, the appearance of colour upon entry into the Zone suggests that, for the stalker at least, the journey and the room that is their goal are images of paradise.

At the end, when the three men return to the bar, the stalker's wife comes to take her husband home. He is exhausted. As he goes down the road with her, one sees the head of his crippled daughter Martha in close-up. For a moment it seems as if the stalker's inmost wish had been fulfilled, as if Martha were walking; and the film reverts to the colour of those sequences associated with the stalker's

r I Stalker 105

greatest happiness, in the Zone. But, as the camera withdraws, one sees that Martha is, in fact, bobbing up and down on her father's shoulders. They go down the road, accompanied now by the black dog who has returned with the men from the Zone.

In the stalker's home the film again reverts to the sepia tones of everyday life. No one needs the room at the heart of the Zone, he co�plains. All his efforts have been in vain. He vows not to go there agam. In an attempt to console him, his wife offers to return there with him. S�e he!ps � to bed and, in a remarkable monologue, tells of her life With him, of the periods of imprisonment to which he has been sentenced for illegally entering the Zone; how it had nevertheless remained his realm, his true home, the place of his desires, his belief, although it is a place of death.

The final sequences of the film provide a closing, frame-like con­struction, now in colour. The glasses on the table tremble and move across its surface. Martha rests her face on the tabletop, absently or focusing her thoughts on the glasses. One of them falls from the table, as if she had caused it to move by some unseen power. Over the roar of the passing train one can barely distinguish the strains of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', which have subsided by the time the train has passed.

If the colour-sepia code is used consistently, these brief colour scenes at the end of the film suggest that the stalker's crippled daughter herself finds the state of inner peace or transcendence that the Zone promises. Martha's disability and her possible powers of psychokinesis18 are echoes of other themes in Tarkovsky's films. One recalls the levitation scene in The Mirror or Otto's mysterious powers in The Sacrifice. Similarly, Martha's lameness has its parallels in the broken speech or the renouncement of words that play an important role in nearly all the films from Andrei Rublyov onward. (Martha herself does not speak in the film either, if one excludes the voice-off quotations from the Apocalypse or from the poems of Tyuchev .) The children of stalkers, we learn, are often born with some deformity, which is another startling presentiment of Chernobyl. But they are endowed with a touch of holiness as well, a circumstance that recalls the stalker's own reference to weakness as the only true value in life.

Both Martha and her mother play roles that, in their significance, far exceed their actual presence in the film. Again, they are roles entirely in the mould of the other female figures in Tarkovsky's films.19 The wife and mother who seems to live only to serve her husband, who begs him not to enter this zone of death, describes, in

106 Andrei Tarkovsky

her long final monologue, how she has remaine� with him �n� never regretted it, despite the warnings of her family and th� ndi­cule to which she and her husband have been exposed; desp1te the suffering and fear they have known. That is th�ir life and fate. Without suffering, she adds, there can be no happmess, no hope.

Martha, whose physical disability may seem strangely compen­sated by her extrasensory powers, belies her name. She is an other­worldly Marian figure, a holy child. It is through Martha and her mother, not the intellectuals who have gone into the Zone, that the film's final message of human love becomes apparent. For human love, as Tarkovsky says, is miraculous proof against the sense of hopelessness of the world.20 Here, as in The Mirror, lies the hidden paradise - in the principle of hope.

T l

7 Nostalgia

[Nostalghia]

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 1 : 18

In 1 765 Maxim Beryozovsky,l a Ukrainian serf who had shown certain abilities as a composer, was sent to Italy by his master to develop his talents. He enjoyed considerable success there, later becoming an honorary member of the Academy in Bologna, where he had studied under Tartini. But Beryozovsky was stricken with nostalgia for his native land and when he was summoned home in 1 774 he chose to go back to serfdom rather than live in exile. Having returned home, he fell in love with an actress-serf in the service of Count Rasumovsky. The count, on finding out about this love affair, proceeded to rape the girl and send her to one of his estates in Siberia. Beryozovsky turned to alcohol and, in 1 777, finally hanged himself.

From this footnote to musical history Tarkovsky's Nostalgia un­folds. The film resumes the thread of the story in the twentieth century. Andrei Gorchakov, a Russian poet, travels to Italy to re­search the life of Beryozovsky, on which he plans to base an opera libretto himself. He too is overtaken by homesickness and dies far from home in the empty sulphur pool of Bagno Vignoni, fulfilling a pledge to a Utopian recluse he has encountered there.

Tarkovsky claimed that he wished to make a film about Russian nostalgia, a state of mind he regarded as peculiar to his compatriots when removed from their native land.2 He was first allowed to visit Italy to discuss the Nostalgia3 project and write the initial screenplay with Tonino Guerra in 1 979, after a protracted period of negotiations with the Soviet authorities. Preparations for the film took Tarkovsky back to Italy a number of times in the course of the following years. After shooting was completed in 1983 he never returned to Russia

1 07

108 Andrei Tarkovsky

again, finally declaring his intention _to remain in the �est in July 1984.4 Tom between a yearning for his country and family and the impressions of Italy, where he remained an alien but found a new home, Tarkovsky himself died in exile.

Parallels of this kind between fact and fiction, autobiography and history were a distinguishing feature of hi� works. Altho�gh �he nostalgia of the title reflects much of the drrecto

_r' s ?wn s_ttua_tion

after leaving Russia, elements of it are to be found m his earlier films too. The fates of Beryozovsky and Gorchakov resemble those of a whole line of Soviet artists in the twentieth century. But the sickness Tarkovsky describes in Nostalgia is not simply a longing for home in a strange land. It is also an expression of man's alienation from himself, from his roots and the earth. The film is a document of the search for a new universal harmony,5 a theme to which Tarkovsky addressed himself increasingly in his later years.

The evidently autobiographical elements that he wove into Nos­talgia are reinforced by definitive references: the quotations from the poems of his father; the dedication of the film to his mother; and perhaps even the circumstance that he and Gorchakov shared the same Christian name. At the same time, Tarkovsky's search for 'home' in an alien environment (like the stalker's in the Zone) has a broader significance. To limit the identity of these yearnings specifi­cally to Russia would be to reduce the dimensions of th� film. For: on the one hand, loss of habitat has now become a worldwtde ecologtcal problem, with man fast destroying his own natural environment; and on the other, home is also a place within the heart, a scrap of language, lines of verse that cannot be translated, memory, time past or visions future.

Tarkovsky had waged a running battle with the Soviet authorities to be allowed to take his family with him to Italy to make this film. Not until shooting was under way in 1982 was his wife Larissa able to join him as an assistant director. His son Andrei was not allow�d to leave the Soviet Union until shortly before Tarkovsky's death m 1986 - to receive on his father's behalf the special award in Cannes for The Sacrifice.

During his visit to Italy in 1979 when the first version of �h� screenplay was written,6 Tarkovsky also shot a film called �empz dz Viaggio (A Time to Travel) with co-author Guerra. It provides an interesting record of the director's impressions of Italy. Togeth�r with Tarkovsky's diaries from this period, it illuminates hts spiritual state and the situation of conflict in which he found himself

Nostalgia 109

at this time.7 Both this initial film and Tarkovsky's personal notes record his ambivalent feelings towards Italy. Quoting a sentiment he was later to put in Gorchakov's mouth, he described his inability to comprehend �he wealth ?f beauty of that country;8 and yet, in spite of his nostalgta for Russia, he was later able to declare his love for Ita�y and the sense of lightness he felt there.9 In a despairing entry wntten tw� ye�rs l�ter, Tarkovsky described a feeling of being lost, unable to live m either Russia or Italy.10 At the same time he was ne�otiating to buy a piece of land and a tower in San Gregorio, which he planned to make his new home.

The conflicts to which Tarkovsky was exposed during these years -:- his d�s�_pted famil!' life; his yearning for home coupled with the m:posst�ility of working satisfactorily in Russia; the recognition and friendship he encountered in the West, and at the same time the different cultural and social conditions prevailing there - all found intimate expression in Nostalgia.

RUSSIA AND ITALY: GORCHAKOV AND EUGENIA

The ?uality that Russia and Italy came to represent for Tarkovsky provides a key to an understanding of his film . It was realised as a S?viet-Italian co-production, based on a screenplay by Tarkovsky himself and the well-known Italian writer Tonino GuerraY One can only conjecture about the individual contributions of these two au­thors, and it will certainly be a case of the whole being more than the sum of the parts; but there are new elements in Nostalgia that are not present in Tarkovsky's other films and that may arguably be attrib­uted to the influence of Guerra.

Gorchakov and Eugenia, Gorchakov and Domenico are pendant­like manifestations of this duality, which, in the end, is resolved into a state of complementarity. Having located the spiritual terrain of the film at the very beginning with a pictorial quotation of Russian home that might have been taken from a family photo album, Tarkovsky cuts to Italy and real time, introducing Gorchakov and his guide and interpreter Eugenia. Having come all this way, Gorchakov does not want to get out of the car and see the fresco in the nearby church. He even requests Eugenia not to speak to him in Russian. She remarks that the light, the landscape, the whole atmosphere remind her of Russia. But Gorchakov is evidently pained

1 1 0 Andrei Tarkovsky

by these reminders of home. At the same time he rejects the seduc-

tions of Italy and refuses to enter the church. . Eugenia is one of the few examples of a female character achiev­

ing a certain self-volition in the predomina�tly �ale ':orld_

of

Tarkovskys films. Despite Gorchakov's broodmg, his resignation

and passivity for much of the time, Eugenia's brief encounter with

him is one of the most fascinating and ambivalent male-female

relationships in the director's reuvre. Eugenia represents a constant

threat to Gorchakov - the threat that he might forget his own roots

- and he attempts to hold her at arm's length. She embodies the

seduction of Italy, and is photographed at times as if she had

stepped out of a painting by Titian. . . On their arrival at the hotel they are greeted by the receptiorust as

a couple; but Gorchakov hastily denies this and they are given

separate rooms - he do�tairs, Eugenia upstairs. She accompanies

Gorchakov to Domenico's house, but there she abruptly abandons

him and returns to the hotel. Later the Russian finds her, scantily

dressed, on his bed drying her hair. In explanation she says that

there is no warm water in her own room. But she goes on to ask him

why he is so afraid, so full of complexes. She accuses him of talking

of freedom, but not knowing how to use it. Holding her bare breast

in her hand, she asks him what it is he really wants. No, not this,

she determines. It is not her body he wants, for he's an intellectual;

and she goes on to describe the loss of vigour of Russians far from

home. Eugenia is the critical commentator of Gorchakov' s situatio�, with

her constant allusions to nostalgia. She tells the story of a maid who

came from southern Italy to Milan, where her sense of homesickness

was so great that she set fire to the house of her employers. Before

she leaves for Rome, Eugenia gives expression to Gorchakov's yearn­

ing in a striking metaphor that links it to his own situation in Italy.

She reads a letter written two centuries before by Beryozovsky, the

composer, in which he had described a nigh�are. A s�ene of �n

opera he was producing was to take place m a park filled with

statues. These were to be played by human beings, including

Beryozovsky himself. Fearing punishment from his master if he

should move, the composer felt himself slowly petrified with cold.

On waking, he found that it was not a dream at all but reality.

Beryozovsky compared this sensation with the thought of never

being able to return home. . . Finally, it is Eugenia who reminds Gorchakov of his promise to

"1 �

Nostalgia 1 1 1

Domenico and informs him of the latter's demonstration in Rome. Andrei, heart-sick - or sick at heart - dies of his illness far from home: nostalgia as a sickness for another place, another time, an­other state, so severe as to amount to a disease - a sickness unto death.

If this is the Italian side of Eugenia, there is also a distinctly Tarkovskian view of her. For example, Gorchakov was originally meant to have been a translator, 12 but a significant change was made and the hero of the film became a poet (like Tarkovsky's father). The less creative role of translator was allotted to Eugenia, Gorchakov now insisting on the impossibility of translation outside the realm of music. Eugenia nevertheless functions as a mediator between two cultures and, like her compatriot Domenico, speaks of the need to tear down boundaries.

When Eugenia calls Gorchakov a hypocrite in the hotel foyer he slaps her, more as a father would slap a naughty child than a man the women he loves. Only in Gorchakov' s dreams is Eugenia al­lowed to penetrate his armour of indifference. One sees her lying on top of him, in the safety of his fantasy, on the bed of the hotel. This vision is framed by others of his Russian home - the first of which shows Eugenia united in an embrace with Gorchakov's wife Maria. In the second, one sees Maria lying on the same bed - one of those photogenic iron beds that appear in many of Tarkovsky' s films - now viewed from the side, her belly swollen in pregnancy. The faint sound of bells can be heard. Maria calls out. Andrei awakes and hears, not his wife, but Eugenia calling to him in present time.

The Tarkovskian view of women is perhaps most explicitly stated when Eugenia enters the church at the beginning of the film to view the fresco of the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca. Here is a well-known place of pilgrimage to which women come to pray about matters of childbirth and fertility. The sexton talks to Eugenia about belief and asks her whether she has come to beg the interces­sion of the Madonna for a child, or whether she wished not to have a child. Eugenia says that she is merely an observer, to which the man replies that one has to be more than that. She should kneel and open herself to God. Eugenia awkwardly tries to kneel, but then abandons the attempt.

Why do women have more faith than men, she asks. In the sex­ton's view, a woman's role in life is to have children - which is a great sacrifice. 'Only that?' Eugenia asks. One sees the fresco of the Madonna in close-up. A heavy figure of the miraculous Virgin is

1 12 Andrei Tarkovsky

borne in by a group of women. The front of the robe is opened and from the womb of the figure flies a swarm of little birds - in a beautiful image of both fruitfulness and Christianity. Their feathers fall like snow. A feather also falls into Andrei's dream, which is cut in at this point. He picks the feather from the mud. Like the stalker, he has an aberrant patch of white hair on his head. One sees Andrei standing in the landscape of memory from the beginning of the film.

Later, also in a dream, after his final dispute with Eugenia in the hotel, Andrei calls out to his wife. One sees her rising from the bed. She draws a curtain in the room and a white bird flutters on the window sill. Here, Tarkovsky ties together the motifs of Maria and her pregnancy with the birds and the Madonna in the chapel of pilgrimage at the beginning.

In nearly all his films women are either relegated to a domestic, serving role or are elevated to motherhood and saintliness. The wife of whom Gorchakov dreams is called Maria (like Tarkovsky' s mother and the enigmatic servant in The Sacrifice). Speaking to Domenico, Andrei even compares his wife to the Madonna by della Francesca. It is the Virgin Mary who intercedes on his behalf with God in the ruined cathedral; and Gorchakov' s dialogue in the flooded church is conducted with a little angel in wellington boots called AngelaY The name of St Catherine is also invoked in a similar way at various points in the film. She is said to have come to the spa herself; and it is to her honour that Domenico wishes to bear his candle across the pool, which bears her name, Gorchakov taking up the flame on his behalf at the end. 14

Tarkovsky suppresses the painful seductions of Eugenia and Italy, overcoming the temptations of the flesh by banishing them to the realm of Gorchakov' s dreams, as he banishes Eugenia herself to Rome and a dubious lover called Vittorio.

GORCHAKOV AND DOMENICO

On her removal to Rome Eugenia disappears from the film until the end. But her relationship with Gorchakov is not the only manifesta­tion of a Russian-Italian duality. Having come to Italy in search of Beryozovsky, Gorchakov finds Domenico, who immediately cap­tures his interest and proves, in many respects, to be the Russian's alter ego. One is familiar in Tarkovsky's films with the phenomenon

" "",1·· . . .. · · ·. :f. >'

l I

Nostalgia 1 1 3

o f merged identities. In Nostalgia i t can be seen a s part of the process through which the director seeks to resolve the conflicts of exile.

If the film blurs the characters of Maria and Eugenia, it also provides a number of clues to a common identity between the two men. In his dilapidated house, Domenico, a former mathematician pours two drops of oil into the palm of his hand, indicating how the� merge and become one. Painted on the wall is the equation '1 + 1 = 1 '. Domenico dies by burning in Rome. At the same time Andrei returns to Bagno Vignoni and dies carrying Domenico's flame across the pool.15 The Alsatian dog that suddenly emerges from Andrei's bathroom in the hotel and settles down beside his bed, as if they had been lifelong companions (like the dog from the scenes from home) belongs equally to Domenico. It is seen accompanying him when h� first appears at the open-air pool. It is present in his derelict house when Andrei visits him; and when Domenico goes up in flames at the end one sees the dog tied to a column, straining at the leash, the only creature to show genuine emotion at his master's death. But the dog also inhabits Andrei's dreams and his memories of home; and it is with him at the close, after death, within the ruined church, amidst the reconstructed landscape and the falling snow of Russia. Here too are shades of the black dog of Stalker, as well as Tarkovsky's own Alsatian Dakus.16

Perhaps the most startling expression of this merging of identities occurs in t�e deserted � .town where Domenico lives. In a sepia sequence - m dream or VISion .- Gorc�akov sees himself wandering through the empty streets, which are littered with newspapers, rub­bish, old furniture, as if the town had been abandoned in panic or were indeed an image of the end of the world that Domenico has prophesied. Gorchakov passes a wardrobe, pauses and goes back to it. As the mirrored door swings open, it is not his own reflection that Andrei sees there, but that of Domenico.

The constrasted personalities of Domenico and Andrei are echoed in the musical themes associated with them. For Domenico it is Beethoven's tri�mphant, affirmative setting of Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' (Freedom), which one hears when Andrei first visits Domenico and again when the Italian commits his act of self-immolation in Rome. Andrei's music is a Russian folk song and muted strains from Verdi's Requiem - a music for the dead.

Domenico's aim is to overcome man's alienation. His Utopian vision is not just an escape into a personal realm, but an attempt to change the values of the world. Stationed on the scaffolding about

114 Andrei Tarkovsky

the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, he proclaims the need to return to that point in history where we took the wrong path, to begin again, without polluting the springs. If Gorchakov' s nostalgia is a deadly sickness, Domenico's is a yearning for life, for a better world that transcends death. But Domenico is regarded as mad and is restrained from entering the pool of Bagno Vignoni to make his sacrifice to St Catherine.

Andrei is drawn to Domenico's vision. He feels a sense of identity and allegiance with this childlike, older man, who seeks to take the sins of the world upon himself and to redeem mankind in his act of self-sacrifice. Tarkovsky described his interest in unheroic figures who are unable to cope pragmatically with life, but who have a nai:ve sense of responsibility for others.17

This contrast of character - Andrei, the passive, reflective poet, Domenico, the man of deeds - anticipates an important aspect of The Sacrifice, where Alexander finally rejects indecision and words in favour of action. Even in the nature of their deaths, Domenico and Andrei are contrasted, the former taking his own life with a can of petrol and a lighter in a public demonstration, whilst Andrei dies of an insufficient heart in the empty pool, observed only by a startled girl.18 Andrei and Domenico are two aspects of man and two faces of the same figure, Andrei passing on the flame ignited by Domenico at the moment of the latter's death.

Through Domenico Andrei finds peace in exile. The initially alien worlds of Italy and Russia are reconciled. The barriers are tom down - as Eugenia had advocated. Two moments in the film illustrate this movingly and powerfully. When Andrei first enters Domenico's ho1t1se one sees (in sepia) an artificial landscape spread out over the floor - mounds of mud enclosing pools of water. As the camera travels across the floor, distinct rows of plants and trees become visible. This artificial landscape (recalling perhaps that of the ocean of Solaris and anticipating that in which the model house of The Sacrifice is set) rises up and seems to flow out of the window, merg­ing with the real Italian countryside beyond. This idea of a land­scape of the mind is articulated more fully at the end of the film. To the sound of a Russian song, one sees Andrei with the Alsatian lying before a pool of water in front of the timber house of his memory, having arrived at the place of his desires - the place where one's inmost wishes are fulfilled.

'· ···�.,- . ·.··• '

Nostalgia

DOMENICO AND MADNESS

1 15

The idea of sacrifice and madness present in Nostalgia reappears in Tarkovsky' s last film too. Domenico's act of self-immolation is ech­oed in The Sacrifice by Alexander's burnt offering. To the outside, real world the latter can only be the deed of a madman; and, in its own way, Domenico's absurd, defiant gesture is hardly designed to change the reputation for madness that has clung to him for so many years.

The theme of madness is discussed at various points in Nostalgia - for the first time in a scene worthy of Fellini, set in the sulphur pool where the society of the crumbling spa, up to its neck in steam­ing water, describes how Domenico had kept his family locked up for seven years to await the end of the world, and how his house had finally been broken open by the police and the family released. For a time Domenico had been kept in an asylum, but when these insti­tutions had been opened by the authorities Domenico had left. No­body had wanted to take him in and he had gone to live in his present deserted house alone.

Eugenia tells of Domenico's attempts to wade across the pool bearing a lighted candle for St Catherine; but, believing him to be mad, no one will let him carry out his mission. Every time he tries to enter the pool he is dragged out. It is for this reason that he hands the candle to Gorchakov and asks him to undertake the task on his behalf. Later one sees the moving scenes of the release of Domenico's family many years before, shot in sepia, in slow motion, without sound or music, the children and their mother fleeing along the steps of the church. Tarkovsky evokes a traumatic vision of the family, as if it were attempting to overcome some insuperable obstacle. One sees milk running from an overturned bottle. Domenico pursues his son along the steps. The priest attempts to intercede. The little boy, who has known no other life than his confinement, cries out in bewilderment: 'Papa, is this the end of the world?' In these scenes Tarkovsky confronts us with the frightening perspective of Plato's cave dwellers.19 Domenico confesses that he had been an egoist who wanted to save his family, the whole world. The sacrifice he is prepared to make is like Alexander's in Tarkovsky's last film: part of a personal contract between himself and God that also plunges those closest to him into misfortune. But Domenico goes further. He sacri-

1 1 6 Andrei Tarlrovsky

fices not just worldly goods - like Rublyov, he has none - nor speech and creative activity, but his own self.

Domenico's view is of a world out of balance, where materialism has swamped intrinsic spiritual values, where man lives in a kind of ecological exile. Domenico's argument is entirely plausible, if not new. Questionable is his line of action to restore the world to health, to set a signal or appease God. To modern man, in his alienation from God and the earth, it is incomprehensible, Tarkovsky argued. The verdict passed on Domenico, as an Alexander, could only be one of madness. But it is the madness of the perfect fools and holy martyrs. One recalls the Christian symbolism of the oil and the wine and bread, the Eucharist that Domenico administers when Andrei first enters the house, and later the candle he gives to the Russian.

From the very beginning Andrei doubts that Domenico is mad; or, he argues, the mad are closer to the truth than we. In that respect Domenico stands in the tradition of Dostoevsky's Idiot, one of Tarkovsky's central concerns in these later years.20 Tarkovsky de­scribed Dostoevsky as a man who was unable to believe, but who wanted to; a man in whom the organ of belief had withered.21 The journey on which Gorchakov initially sets out also becomes a quest for belief, similar to that undertaken by the stalker in the decaying world of the Zone, or by Andrei Rublyov in fifteenth-century Russia. Exile is as much a spiritual state as a geographical, political or social condition; and only through belief can one come to terms with it, Tarkovsky suggested.

Gorchakov' s quest leads him to a series of spaces of Christian belief - often in a ruined state, as in many of Tarkovsky' s other films. The church with the fresco of the Madonna at the beginning, w:hich Gorchakov refuses to enter, is followed by the church under water, and the roofless cathedral that is to become his final resting place.

In a diary entry of 1 7 July 197922 Tarkovsky outlined an early concept in which the hero was to have imagined a conversation between God and the Virgin Mary. The sequence was finally set in the ruined cathedral and not on the edge of the pool, as originally foreseen. Shot in black and white, it obviously takes place on a plane removed from immediate reality - in Gorchakov's mind or in his dreams - thus only narrowly avoiding a break with Tarkovsky's principle of accountability to natural law. In this conversation the Virgin Mary asks God why He does not reveal Himself to Gor­chakov in words. God replies that, although He cannot reveal Him-

1 i

Nostalgia 1 1 7

self openly, Andrei will be able to feel His presence, if he wishes it strongly enough.

THE PAINTERLY EYE

Tarkovsky continued to refine his technique in Nostalgia, construct­ing the film on a number of visual and aural levels. The pictures are often like carefully composed paintings: the still-life compositions in Domenico's house; framed images seen in mirrors, through open­ings; the hill town rising up like an ideal city in the sunlit Italian landscape; or the simple walls that serve as backgrounds, catching light and shade and colour with their uneven textures. Tarkovsky's eye for visual qualities is combined increasingly with the use of iconographic codes related to those used in old master painting, with its systems of attributes and symbols. In the scenes in Domen­ico's house, for example, the discussion of belief is counterpointed by the use of vanitas elements in the best tradition of still-life paint­ing, where objects in various stages of decay are carefully arranged in a representation of the transience of life. This entire sequence develops primarily on a visual and aural plane and only secondarily through the dialogue.

Domenico's house is a stone carcass, a ruin (like the submerged church and the roofless cathedral) within which he has withdrawn to an improvised habitable corner, protected from the rain by a sheet spanned beneath the ceiling. His home possesses only vestiges of a true habitation - a token door that stands in the middle of the room without adjoining walls; and a roof through which the rain pours. Within this crumbling structure the camera slowly turns, capturing strange still lifes - windows filled with green leaves, dried flowers and seed pods; empty bottles that catch colour and light, rain and sound; mirrors; the photo of a doll or child.

Tarkovsky's Christian iconology - the four elements, or the occur­rence of wine, bread and oil within the same scene in Domenico's house, for example - is a familiar and recurring feature of his films. Water and fire have a particular place in Nostalgia, fire representing both light and enlightenment, water denoting not only the tradi­tional concept of purity or purification, but associated by Tarkovsky with the idea of home and homesickness. There are at least ten

1 1 8 Andrei Tarkovsky

distinct manifestations of water in the film,23 and almost as many of fire. Standing on the equestrian status in Rome before setting light to himself, Domenico says: 'In me is water, fire, ashes . . . '; and parallel to this Andrei crosses the pool in Bagno Vignoni with the lighted candle.

In addition to the use of the iconographic traditions of painting, Tarkovsky developed his own specifically filmic code in the use of colour and black and white to distinguish between times and states of consciousness. Time past and the object of Gorchakov' s immedi­ate nostalgia, his Russian home, are depicted in sepia. The film begins with a sepia picture of a landscape with mist rising, a view down a hill towards a river or lake in the distance fringed by trees; a telegraph pole and a white horse. One sees the figures of children and women and an Alsatian dog, all slowly descending the hill at first and then frozen in movement to a static ensemble. With these few semiotic tokens, together with the wooden house that appears later, Tarkovsky creates a set piece that is quoted at various points in the film - often to the quiet, plaintive melody of a Russian folk song. Even the obligatory white horse would seem to be no more than a stage property, unmoving throughout the film. Andrei's memory is here reduced to a schematic signal. His other recollec­tions, visions and dreams are also drained of colour: the scenes in which he recalls his wife Maria or sees her together with Eugenia; the model landscape of the inind, first seen on entering Domenico's house; and the historic release of Domenico's family from captivity (anticipating in some ways the black and white scenes of panic in the streets in The Sacrifice). Andrei's encounter with the reflection of Domenico in the cupboard mirror in the deserted hill town is in the same colourless tone, viewed with the inward eye, as are the scenes in the ruined cathedral where Gorchakov comes at the end and where vision and memory are united.

What makes Tarkovsky's films so enigmatic at first sight are these shifts between different planes. He eschewed the familiar conven­tions by which the viewer is prepared for flashback and dream. He cuts or dissolves without an explanatory transition. In so doing he demanded a new cinematographic awareness of his audience. An additional complication was that his transitions were made not just backwards in time within a present context. Time past and future, dream or vision are juxtaposed on a more or less equal footing with present reality. All states, all times form a continuum. The unex­pected confrontation with Domenico's reflection in the mirror is a

·�-, �

Nostalgia 1 1 9

case � po�t. But o�e of the most elegant and startling of these tz:ansttions _m Nosta�gza is in fact achieved by an astonishingly simple VIsual deVIce preVIously used in The Mirror. In the hotel hall the sound of water (the sound of home) is heard; Andrei turns from present reality and looks back over his shoulder into past memory to the sepia world of the tableau of home.24

'

. The �ypnoti� effect of much of the film is achieved through the

drmens10n of time, which Tarkovsky came to explore more and mo:e consciously in his later works. Change and development were achieved not only by cutting, but by almost imperceptible move­ments o� the ca�era - slow parallel tracking and zooms - and by modulations of light within individual scenes.

In N?sta_lgia Tark

_ovsky also continued his exploration of the use of

sound m film. In his last works, he created an aural dimension that approaches the quality of his visual world in its cohesion and inten­sity. He continued to pare down the use of traditional film music as atmospheric background or commentary and to replace it with nat­ural sounds arising from the context of the scene. The use of music is now reserved for pointing specific situations, certain themes being associated with certain characters. The rest of the soundtrack is a rich aural co�position of sounds near and far, past and present - of gla�s crunching underfoot, of a motor saw whining, and again and �ga� of _water running, dripping, gurgling - associative sounds linking different times, places and planes of reality.

Nostalgia represents a continuation of themes already examined in S!alker; but it is also a response to Tarkovsky's own immediate crrcumstances, which were changing as he made the film - his re­moval from Russia, later to harden into exile, and his nostalgia for home and family. The film documents his own personal struggle to res�lve t�ese conflicts through belief and memory; for there can be no life Without memory, and in memory is a segment of home. At the close of the film, as the camera slowly retreats, one sees the tableau of home, now set within the ruined nave of the Italian cathedral.25 Again, the strains of Verdi's Requiem and the plaintive Russian folk song are heard. Here, beyond death, identities are dissolved, bound­aries finally overcome. The real and the remembered, the ideal land­scape of the soul and the landscape of exile - Russia and Italy - are united.

8 The Sacrifice

[Offret]

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Within a few weeks of each other in the spring of 1986 Gunter

Grass's fable The Rat1 was published in Germany and And.rei

Tarkovsky's last film, The Sacrifice, received its first sho�ing at

Cannes. In his novel Grass describes the time after an atorruc holo­

caust, after the end of time, the Earth ravaged by fire, sto�s and

ashes, its landscapes pitted and filled with water and debns, en­

crusted with mud, cleft and tom asunder. The catastrophe at the

centre of Tarkovsky's film is the outbreak of a third world war, a

final terrible cataclysm in which 'there will be neither victors n�r

vanquished, neither cities nor villages, neither grass nor trees, nei­

ther water in the springs nor birds in the sky'. In the spring of 1986

the disaster of Chemobyl cast its shadow on the world. In the final

days of the same year Tarkovsky died. . . . . . The convulsion that sets the machinery of sacrifice m mot10n m

Tarkovsky's film is the product of man's spiritual plight, of the

triumph of materialism over spiritual values. 'I wanted to show t�at

man can renew his ties to life by renewing his convenant With

himself and with the source of his soul', Tarkovsky said.Z The cause

of the catastrophe that lies at the heart of the film is to be found in the

state of disharmony in which man lives with himself and with na­

ture. The disaster that threatens the world is more a symptom of its

malaise than the root of the problem. 'Sin', Alexander philosophises,

'is that which is superfluous', the corollary of which is that 'our

whole civilisation consists from beginning to end of sin'.

Alexander's sacrifice is the liberating act of a man seeking a way

120

The Sacrifice 121

�mt of this situation, a man who sees the opportunity of being an mstrument of human redemption. Although he himself has retired from the stage to contemplate, write and teach, he has grown weary of w�rds. He sees the world ruled by procrastination and idle talk. The time has come for deeds. Alexander had gone to live with his wife and daughter in a house they had found by the sea. About him he has a small but intimate circle of friends and servants. It is there that his son, 'Little Man', was born, a latecomer and the apple of his father's eye. Although his wife's life is evidently marred by regrets and frustrated love, to Alexander himself the idyll still seems intact, above all through the presence of his little son, his hope for the future.

This entire �orld is suddenly threatened with obliteration by a nuclear convulsion, the outbreak of a third world war, from which there can be no escape. In a bid to avert inevitable destruction, �exander �akes a gesture of faith on behalf of mankind and prom­Ises to sacrifice all he possesses. Alone in the darkness, he makes a fe�rful vo�: 'Lor�, deliver us in this terrible hour. Do not let my child�en die, my friends, my wife . . . I will give you all I possess: He pro�Ises to leave the family he loves, to destroy his home and give up �s �on. He s

_wears a vow of silence, never to speak with anyone

agam. I shall �ve up ev�rything that binds me to life, if you will only let everything be as zt was before, as it was this morning, as it was yesterday: so that I may be spared this deadly, suffocating, bestial state of fear.'

. II:t the same night Otto, the postman, comes secretly to Alexander

m his ro.om a�d sug?ests a

.possible way out. Alexander must go to

the servmg grrl Mana, a Witch with benign powers, and sleep with her. Alexander complies with these instructions, and when he awakes the following morning the threat of war has vanished. He thereupon prepares to carry out his act of sacrifice. Sending everyone away on a fool's errand, he proceeds to burn the house down. He himself is finally taken away in an ambulance - to silence and confinement ­by two white-jacketed men.

The Sacrifice reveals the continued exploration of themes that were for a long time central to Tarkovsky's thinking. At the same time the film is inevitably regarded as the summation of his life's w'ork. Domenico's act of self-immolation in Nostalgia, Andrei's sacrifice to St Catherine in an Italian spa find an immediate echo in the idea of sacrifice by fire in Tarkovsky's final film. Domenico had called for a change in values, a new beginning, and had taken his life in the

122 Andrei Tarkovsky

cause of a better world. Like Gorchakov before him, Alexander takes up the flame Domenico has lit.

Domenico had locked his family away for seven years, had held

them captive in a deserted Italian hill town un� the ,poli�e had set

them free. On being liberated, his son had exclanned: Is this �e e�d

of the world?' The sepia scenes of this liberation in Nostalgta, With

the family fleeing along the steps of the church � th� �ban�oned

town, anticipate in some ways the two apocalypti� �s10ns U: t�e

street in The Sacrifice? In The Sacrifice, too, the family 1s held m �ts

own congenial confinement, in the remoteness of the northern exile

Alexander has chosen as his home - where his wife, in the moment

of crisis, levels the accusation that she has sacrificed her own career

on the stage to go and live with him there. . If the idea of continuity across the generations, encountered m �e

Mirror, is present here in the hope for the future Alexander places m

his little son, the dream of immortality is soon shattere? by a cat�s­

trophe that threatens all human existence. In Nost�lgta_

Domeruco

had exhorted man to tum back while there was still time. In The Sacrifice it is already too late. The end is not merely nigh; the final countdown has begun. . ld There is a new sense of urgency, somethmg fundamental, 0 Testament-like about the single-mindedness with whi�h Al:xand�r

(also performed by Erland Josephson) sets about making his sacn­

fice. It is an act of release in itself. In his traumatic state after the

outbreak of hostilities he whispers under his breath that �e.has been

waiting for this moment all his life, as if, in his fear, de:'vmg some

perverse pleasure from the occasion that now presents 1t�e�. The destruction of his home by fire is not the only sacrifice Alex­

ander brings, however. Like Rublyov, he reno�ces speech in a bi� to move God. Rublyov' s vow of silence and his abandonment o

painting were made in protest against the senseless c�elty of the

world and in anguish at the fact that he himself had killed a ��n.

Alexander, on the other hand, wishes to save the world. The �amiliar

Tarkovskian motif of speech and its renunciation rea�pears m other

contexts in the film. Victor refers to the silence Gandh1 observed �ne

day a week; and Little Man is unable to speak, due to an _operation

on his throat. In The Mirror the liberation from a stutter signalled a

process of growing articulacy. In The Sacrifice the motif of silence

marks a protest against the inflation of words. The imbalance between material and spiritual values in the mod­

ern world has not been reduced, and the threat of destruction we

T

The Sacrifice 123

have hung over ourselves has scarcely receded. Tarkovsky's warn­ing may not be new; but the glimpse of the apocalypse he affords us, as well as signalling a remarkable achievement in cinema, is a powerful and urgent statement of the human condition. His com­pelling vision does not founder in horror, however; it leaves a spark of hope for the future.

THE TREE OF LIFE

The film opens with a coloured still of a detail from Leonardo's magical, unfinished painting 'The Adoration of the Magi' (1481-2), now in the Uffizi, Florence. It forms the background to the opening credits and in a sense to the whole film. One sees the head of one of the kings, who is proffering a cup, and the hand of the Infant Jesus reaching out to touch it. After the credits, the camera slowly moves up the painting, revealing Christ and the Virgin, and the foot of a tree held by the hands of angels. The camera continues to rise ver­tically up the trunk of this tree, past the wild, rearing forms of horses in the distance.

Leonardo's painting provides an important key to the film. At its simplest level it is a depiction of a present-giving in celebration of a birthday. It is for this reason, of course, that"Alexander's guests are gathered about him on this day. In the figure of Christ surrounded by the Magi the picture also conveys an image of naked innocence in the midst of worldly wealth. It is through the sacrifice of Christ that the wor!d is redeemed, which is precisely Alexander's ambition in the film.

It would be taking the parallel too far and underestimating Tarkovsky's vision as a film maker to see a direct translation of the contents of the Adoration painting into another medium. Tarkovsky paid homage to Renaissance painting in general and to Leonardo in particular on a number of occasions in his films. But The Sacrifice is especially imbued with the ideas of this painting. The two works are of a kindred spirit; and many of the motifs that one thinks of as specifically Tarkovskian are also to be found in Leonardo's work. The sketched form of the white horse to the left of the tree is one of the director's most familiar fingerprints; and the portrayal of ruined architecture (which in Renaissance religious painting was often used to convey the idea of the decay of the old order, the Old Temple;

124 Andrei Tarkovsky

Christ, in contrast, representing the rise of the new Jerusalem) finds

its counterpart in the waste landscapes and crumbling buildings of

many of Tarkovsky's films. In The Sacrifice the motif of decay can be

seen as a token both of the decline of civilisation and the destruction

the war is about to bring. Otto finds this picture terrifying. He has a great fear of Leonardo,

he says. The painting does have its fearful aspects - in the awe-filled

countenances of the shepherds in the foreground, in the animated

scenes in the background and the wild, primeval character of the

horses. The picture reappears on a number of occasions in the film.

A print of it hangs in the house, the glass reflecting Alexander's

features in a double image, as if he were entering the picture or

emerging from it at times. The tree in the painting also finds its

counterpart in �he film. In the opening scene after the credits we see

Alexander planting a tall, dry stem. He tells his young son the

legend of the old Orthodox monk Pamve who had planted a dead

tree on a mountain and who had instructed a novice, Yoann Kolov,

to water it every day till it wakened to life. Every morning Yoann

would fill a bucket, ascend the mountain and water the tree, return­

ing in the evening after dark. For three years he did this, until one

day he climbed the mountain and found the tree covered with

blossom. The recounting of this parable sounds a whole series of resonances

in the film. Father and son performs the same act of faith as Pamve

and his disciple, Alexander suggesting that the patient repetitio� of

the same deed at the same time every day may ultimately bnng

about a miracle. The tree they plant is, of course, a reflection of the

tree of life, beneath which the Virgin and Child are seated in the

Leonardo painting. It is also a reference to the wooden Cross. of

Christ, which ultimately burgeoned with new life, in an expressiOn

of resurrection. Tarkovsky described the watering of the dried up

tree as a symbol of faith.4 At the close of the film Little Man is seen

heaving two buckets along the track to water the withered stem his

father has planted. Having completed his task, he lies down beneath

the tree to wait. Recovering his voice, he speaks for the first time in

the film, repeating the words he had heard from his father at the

outset: 'In the beginning was the Word'; and he adds: 'Why, papa?'

Again the camera rises to the crown of the tree, where there is still

neither blossom nor leaf. But, as if in answer to this question, the

dedication of the film to Tarkovsky's own son is faded on.

' !

The Sacrifice 125

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENT

Like z:nost of :rarkovsky's films, The Sacrifice contains a number of autobiographical references. The Mirror is in many ways a ho

hi . . ' , mage

�o s �other, and Nostalgza IS directly dedicated to her. The Sacrifice IS �e�Icat�d to his son. The parallels extend to the content as well. In this final film the faith Ale�ander pla�es in Little Man is a reflection of th� hopes .Tarkovsky himself set m the next generation. If the autob10?rap�cal aspects of his work led to criticism, particularly in the ��vie� Uruon, Tarkovsky's use of personal reference has a long tradition.m the hi_story- of art. It could be compared, for example, to th: p�actice of artists mcorporating depictions of themselves in their

pamtings, often discreetly hidden amongst the secondary figures or m background �cenes. In the 'Adoration of the Magi' painting, which plays such an rmportant role in this film, critics have long conjec­tured that the armoured figure in the bottom right-hand corner is a self-portrayal of Leonardo himself as a young man.

Tarkovsk:(s descriptions of the development of the screenplay for T�e Sacrifi.ce throw an interesting light on the degree to which auto�10graphical elements are present in his films and the way the �re eit�er allowed to impinge directly on the contents or are ass� ila�ed mto the narrative

_treatment. Th� initial screenplay concept,

�tte�5 before the shooting of Nostalgza and bearing the title 'The

Witch , revolved about the remarkable cure of a man suffering from

�ancer. In �s desperation, confronted with the knowledge of an mcurable disease, he encounters a strange figure (the forerunner of Otto: the pos�an), who tells Alexander that his only hope of recov­ery IS to go to a woman, allegedly a witch possessed of magical powers, and to sleep with her. This he does and experiences a re­markable cure, much to the amazement of his doctor. But the witch tu�s u:f> one day and stands outside the man's house in the rain to clarm hrm. Alexander's sacrifice at this stage in the development of the scr�enplay :onsi�ted in re�quishing family and possessions and gomg off With this woman m the attire of a poor man.6

During the shooting of Nostalgia Tarkovsky was struck by a number

�f p�rallels betwee': his own �fe and the matters preoccupying him

� his work at that time. Andrei Gorchakov, the main character in the f�lm, �ad come to Italy with the intention of remaining only a short time m that country. He wa� consumed with yearning for his home; but, unable to return, he ulhmately died in Italy. Tarkovsky himself

126 Andrei Tarkovsky

had originally intended to return to Russia after completing the film. He had also been overtaken by illness in Italy, and finally saw no choice but to stay in the West. He was deeply affected further by the death of Anatoly Solonitsyn, the leading actor in most of his earlier films, who was to have played the role of Gorchakov in Nostalgia and who was long foreseen for the part of Alexander in 'The Witch'. Solonitsyn died of the same disease that had brought the turning­point in Alexander's life in the first version of the story, and 'today, years later, I too am suffering from it' .7

Tarkovsky subsequently revised his treatment of the story, re­moving it from a realm that had become alarmingly personal, to give it a more universal validity. The autobiographical strand remains, however, inextricably woven into the film, and the lines spoken by Alexander to his little son beneath the trees have a poignant signifi­cance: 'There is no such thing as death, only the fear of death.'

TECHNIQUE AND MEANING

In the course of his career Tarkovsky refined and extended his stylistic vocabulary to a point where certain personal fingerprints and structural devices acquired a semiotic content of their own. The relationship between the iconography of his films and that of clas­sical painting, the use of identifying attributes, the citation of the four elements are now familiar features of his work. The generation of sounds, the quality of the camerawork, lighting and choreogra­phy, and the dramaturgical use of certain characters all serve to illuminate areas that are not otherwise expressed in the narrative pictures or dialogue.

Tarkovsky developed the use of his differentiating colour code to a fine degree. Its use in The Sacrifice will be discussed in greater detail in conjunction with the ultimate significance of Alexander's sacri­fice. At this point it is sufficient to remark that Tarkovsky here employs three categories of colour to distinguish between present reality, other time, dream and vision. Even so, the range of colour is extremely limited. The film is shot in the pale light of a Swedish summer - in the early morning at the 'magic hour'. Even the day­light scenes are of low contrast. The indoor waking scenes are also subdued in colour, with the result that the transition between the different planes are often almost imperceptible - creating ambigui-

�c� • .. · , !·· F The Sacrifice 127

ties that refle�t.the work's many layers and possible interpretations.

In The Sacrifice the four elements again play an important role, in particular water and fire. Tarkovsky himself referred to the myster­ious cin�genic qualities of water, the sense of movement, depth and chan�e It

. co�veys; but that a��ounts for only one aspect of its pres­

ence m his films. In The Sacrifice he uses it not merely to establish a context or to paint an atmospheric background (for example, the sea or the waterlogged earth). It forms a specific iconographic element in the film, signifying life and growth and purification. Fire is of a s�ar visu

_al q�ality, ?ut is associated with ideas of light and pur­

gation, and m this case IS the central vehicle for Alexander's sacrifice. Other personal Tarkovskian motifs are present too. The mirrors, the doors that swing open on their own, the trembling glasses, the image o� spilt milk, t�e condensation of breath on the window pane, the pictures of the little boy asleep, his bloody nose, the phenomenon of levitation are all familiar from Tarkovsky's other works.

The extraordinary visual quality of this last film is in large part due to the camerawork of Sven Nykvist. If Nostalgia was distin­guished by slow zooms in and out, the striking feature of The Sacri­fice is the use of parallel tracking and the pan. Here too camera movements are almost imperceptibly slow, and many of the uncut scenes remarkably long. (The opening sequences and the fire scene at the end are now well-known examples of this.8) The camerawork together with the choreography of the figures helps to create an exceptional sense of space, as is illustrated by the scene in the garden after the nightmare has passed. Victor and Adelaide are seated at a table in front of the house. The camera moves slowly to the right, the focus imperceptibly shifting from the foreground to explore succes­sive planes of depth and activity, finally allowing a view through the doorway, through the entire house, to the garden beyond. There, as if by chance, Alexander is observed slipping unseen out of the rear of the house. The viewer is in two worlds at the same time: listening to the conversation at the table in the garden and party to Alexan­der's secret design.

The sense of space is also heightened by the spare furnishing of the interiors and the careful control of lighting. Changes of light within a single scene (as in Little Man's bedroom), or classical chiaroscuro effects, in which one sees merely the expressively half-lit face of Maria, for example, are amongst the most striking aspects of the use of lighting. The tone is nevertheless subdued throughout. The night scenes are often barely lit; the camera scarcely seems to

128 Andrei Tarkovsky

move. This still austerity creates a tension, a sense of space and movement that is one of the most remarkable achievements of the film and one of Tarkovsky's outstanding contributions to the tech­nique of cinema.

The collage of visual references is echoed on the plane of aural composition. Music is used sparingly throughout. Only at the begin­ning - to the Leonardo picture and the credits - and at the very end is it used as a background, extraneous to the film. In both cases one hears a passage from Bach's St Matthew Passion. The other brief incidences of music in the film are integral to the action; that is, both the Japanese flute music, which Alexander plays on ris stereo set, and the organ prelude that he plays in Maria's house are 'live', in the sense that they are motivated by and occur within the action of the film. They are not effects added from outside.

The soundtrack accompanying the dialogue and pictures is of quite another nature. Here Tarkovsky refines the technique of Nostalgia even further. The composition of sounds near and far, present, past or even future, in reality or dream, counterpoints the visual stream, forming a further layer of meaning that claims almost as much attention as the pictures. The sounds of the sea and gulls and the fog hom in the night establish the basic context against which the action is set and are heard for much of the film. The rumble of thunder and the sounds of trembling glasses herald the approaching cataclysm and the blast of the planes roaring overhead, shaking the whole earth. One hears the window shutters outside Little Man's bedroom swinging in the wind, opening and closing, and modulating the light in the room as they do so; and in the night, when Alexander cycles to Maria, the familiar bark of a dog can be heard. Throughout the scene in Maria's house the passage of time is documented by the loud ticking of a clock; and at the close of the film the great fire is accompanied not merely by the crackle of the flames but by the splintering and crashing of beams, the shattering of falling glass, explosions within the house, the telephone gro­tesquely ringing amidst the conflagration, and the strings of the piano finally snapping with awful resonance.

Perhaps the most significant sound in this score is, however, the voice of the shepherd, as one might describe it. The strange voice the writer hears from the house in Stalker, warning him not to proceed, or the voice of God that Andrei hears in Nostalgia here reappear in the form of a shamanistic call, half cry, half song, recurring at turn­ing points in the action. It is first heard near the beginning of the

The Sacrifice 129

film, when Alexander and his son are sitting beneath the trees, Alexander philosophising about the world. Little Man slips off out of sight. Alexander notices the boy's disappearance in alarm. The call recurs, and when his son steals up on him, Alexander's reaction is one of shock or fright. He lunges out, accidentally striking the boy in the face, causing his nose to bleed. The scene is followed by Alexander's blackout, and the first appearance of the vision of the devastated street, with the steps and the dark tunnel entrance. The cry recurs later, in the house, after Otto has told his strange tale and is also inexplicably struck down. One hears the haunting call once more after Alexander's terrible vow alone in the darkness of his room; and again when Otto visits him in the night to advise him to go to Maria and seek redemption. On this occasion they are aware of the cry, but do not know what it is. It is a cry of warning or exhorta­tion, perhaps the voice of God or the silent call of Little Man, so faint and fleeting, however, that one can never be entirely sure it is any more than a shepherd calling to his flock in the night. Yet, when Alexander turns back on his way to Maria, having fallen from his bicycle and hurt his knee, it sounds again, as if in admonition; and whether or not Alexander hears it consciously on this occasion, he turns once more and continues along the path to Maria's house.

Tarkovsky himself remarked the greater congruence between struc­ture and statement in The Sacrifice than in his earlier films, which were often episodic in nature with only a loose structural form. In Nostalgia, for example, there was virtually no dramatic develop­ment. In his final film there is a far greater articulation of the charac­ters. Their interaction with each other leads to situations of conflict that seek a resolution.9

Tarkovsky uses certain figures here as pivots for the drama. Two characters in particular have a catalytic function in the film: Otto, the postman, who forms a foil to Alexander; and Maria, who has a relatively small role, but who impinges on the action at important turning points. Otto can be seen as providing the comic element in the film. He is a Puck-like, mercurial, ambivalent figure, constantly springing surprises with his unexpected aphorisms and na'ive wis­dom, rather like a clown in a play by Shakespeare. It is he who philosophises with Alexander in the opening scene on fundamental existential questions, referring, much to Alexander's surprise, to the dwarf who had overcome Zarathustra - only to become the victim of Little Man's practical joke in the same scene and to be laid low a few scenes later by his own 'evil angel' .

130 Andrei Tarkovsky

It is Otto who brings the grandest of the birthday presents, an enormous framed map of Europe. Alexander assumes that it is a reproduction of an old print. An ori�al would be far too valua?le for the postman to give him. But, as if It were the most natural thing in the world, Otto confirms that it is indeed a seventeenth-century original, and adds that any present ha� to be s?mething of a s�crifice, otherwise what sort of present would It be? It IS he who perceives the frightening aspect of Leonardo's picture. Asked

_by Victor abo:Ut his

background, Otto replies that he has given up his work as a history teacher to come here and concentrate on other things, and that he only works as a postman 'in his spare time'. Otto colle�ts strange phenomena and describes the remarkable parapsychological case of a mother and her son who had been photographed together; shortly afterwards the boy was killed in the war but had inexplicably re­appeared in a photograph the mother had had taken of her�elf

_many

years later. Otto is the key to the supernatural worl� of this film: It is he who comes to Alexander in his night of desparr and tells him that Maria, the house-help, is a witch from Iceland possessing be­nign powers; and that Alexander's only hope of rescue is to go to her and lie with her.

It is through Maria that Alexander finds deliverance. She is a figure of many parts: mother, eternal womanhood: sorceress and Virgin Mary all in one. The parallels to the Madonna m the Leonardo painting are reinforced by the attributes with which T�kovsky en­dows her. On Alexander's arrival at her house, the bleating of lambs can be heard and a flock of sheep runs backwards and forwards along the front of the building in the darkness. Inside the house o�e sees a group of objects forming a still-life picture in black and white - a cross, a mirror, old family photographs. Finally Alexander, w�o has fallen into a puddle on his way there, washes his han

_d�. M�a

pours water from a jug into a bowl and over his hands, giVmg hrm a white towel with which to dry them. The ewer, the water and the towel denote purity and, like the lamb and the Cross, are comm�n Marian attributes used in Renaissance painting. Similarly, the mrr­ror, the ticking clock and the photographs are familiar vanitas sr_m­bols of transience. Here again the memento mori is set side by side with tokens of eternal life.

Alexander proceeds to tell the story of his mother's overg:�wn garden on which he had attempted to impose order but the spmt

_of

which he had in fact destroyed. This whole scene is filled w1th maternal references. When finally he asks, 'Could you love me,

The Sacrifice 131

Maria? Save me! Save us all!' she tells him to leave. But Alexander threatens to take his life with the pistol he has removed from Victors bag. The glasses rattle again and the war-bringing jets thunder past overhead. The shepherd-like call is heard. In their union, in the moment of deliverance, one sees Maria and Alexander swathed in sheets, turning, hovering above the bed in an act of levitation, bride and groom of the winds, mother and child, recalling the scenes of levitation and the pregnant mother in The Mirror, as well as the Child in the arms of the Madonna.

The apocalyptic black and white scene of the devastated street returns, now filled with people fleeing in fear. The camera retires over their heads to the glass balustrade, in which one sees reflections of tall buildings. On this occasion the camera retreats even further, revealing the head of a child face down on a white pillow - Little Man asleep, surrounded by charred rags. The shepherd's song-like call is heard again; a series of brief scenes ensues. Alexander is asleep in the grass. Beside him, her back to the camera, sits the figure of Adelaide; but when she turns, one sees that it is really Maria, wearing the same dress and hairstyle as Adelaide. Tarkovsky merges the characters of wife and lover, witch and Madonna, suggesting facets of a single person. The 'Adoration of the Magi' picture returns. Finally, there is a short sequence in which Alexander's daughter is seen naked, chasing chickens through the hall of the house:10 the last flickerings of the dream. ·

The dream is over and Maria disappears from the film until the very end, when Alexander suddenly becomes aware of her presence, standing there watching the burning house. He falls to his knees at her feet, kissing her hands, before being taken away. As the ambu­lance describes a broad curve past the house and turns on to the track, Maria grabs the bicycle lying in the grass and cycles off, taking a short cut towards the withered tree. There one sees her for the last time, united momentarily in a single picture with Little Man and Alexander, before their ways finally part.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE SACRIFICE

The dream is over. One sees Alexander sleeping on the couch, the electric light burning next to him. He wakes, and almost impercep­tibly the picture fills with soft colour and light. The nightmare is

1 32 Andrei Tarkovsky

banished, as he slowly ascertains. The electricity and telephone are working again, and a call to his publisher confirms his hopes. It is as though nothing had happened. What then is the sense of Alexan­der's sacrifice? In the aftermath of the dream certain parallels with the events of the night manifest themselves. As if in the nature of a cautioning sign, Alexander stumbles into the piano, hurting his knee, just as he had when falling from his bicycle on the way to Maria.

To the modem world Alexander's readiness to sacrifice must seem something of an anachronism. The age of sacrifice came to an end long ago; and yet, faced with destruction, he is prepared to abandon everything to accomplish the mission of his heart and save his little son and mankind. Tarkovsky described his leading figure as a weak person, not a hero in the conventional sense of the word, but an upright, thinking man capable of making a personal sacrifice for a higher ideal.11 His actions are performed wi�h conviction; but they also reveal a destructive despair, for Alexander is prepared to risk incurring the misunderstanding of those nearest and dearest to him, and being condemned as a madman. Alexander is not the master but the servant of his fate.

This distinction is significant, yet it is sometimes difficult to differ­entiate between the two in reality. Alexander's fate is at the same time his mission; his opportunity to save the world, to take the stage again in the service of mankind. History has shown, however, just how disastrous the urge to fulfil one's apparent destiny can be. Alexander's calling verges on what society regards as madness; and although he may claim to have saved the world, his sacrifice is not confined to himself alone. Although he takes steps to exclude Victor from material loss and to keep everyone out of harm's way, he inevitably drags those closest to him into personal tragedy. Alexan­der's deed is not merely an act of self-sacrifice; it has something of a sacrificial offering about it.

A small price to pay, one might say, for saving the world; but at first sight Alexander's sacrifice seems superfluous and too program­matic. He has woken from a nightmare and the world is in order again. Only a fool would bum his house down now, surely. In fact, this tum of events provides an illustration of Tarkovsky's world of thought. In many of his films he goes to the borders sepa.rating the rational from the irrational, usually finding explanations for unac­countable phenomena that allow them to remain within the bounds of natural law. This became a personal feature of his work, often containing a formulation of his own faith. In the same way, the

The Sacrifice 133

miraculous delivery from certain destruction in The Sacrifice is a fundamental statement of belief.

Confronted with global war, Alexander is forced to his knees in an act of humility and repentance. He reaches out for God, promis­ing to sacrifice everything and to take a vow of silence, if He will avert the catastrophe. But how can a process of universal destruc­tion, once set in motion, be reversed by the prayers of a recluse? How can Alexander's strength of belief be demonstrated in a plaus­ible manner that still observes the natural laws of the world in which the film takes place? Alexander's plea is granted. The inevitable holocaust is averted by the simple device of turning the seemingly real catastrophe into a dream, from which Alexander now awakes. This is not a banal, sentimental trick, but a stroke of genius; and when Alexander, at first scarcely trusting his fortune, slowly reas­sures himself of the fact, he does not back out of his vow, but acknowledges this wonderful transformation of his horror into a dream from which he may awake as an act of God, as God's active but unseen answer to his prayers. It is no mere happy coincidence, not just a false alarm but the only way God could intervene without overtly revealing himself. More than ever Alexander must honour his vows now, he feels, even if it means incurring the misunder­standing and despair of others. To keep faith and to preserve his own peace of mind he is prepared to risk a verdict of insanity in the eyes of the world.

In view of the 'last chance' of escape Otto presents him with, one might of course ask whether Alexander's sacrifice was really neces­sary. Having sworn to forsake all worldly possessions and relation­ships, he is suddenly confronted with the promise of redemption through Maria. Is this an immediate answer to his prayers, the response to his vow, or is it an alternative to sacrifice? One might equally ask, in view of Alexander's readiness to honour his pledge, whether God might not have intervened at the last moment to pre­vent him carrying out his terrible deed, just as He had stopped Abraham taking the life of Isaac. Both questions are, however, irrel­evant. There can be no room for doubt in Alexander's mind; a failure to act would be to back down on his promise and return to the prevarication he abhors; and a direct intervention by God would invalidate the very rules Tarkovsky seeks to observe.

The supposition that this whole central episode is but a dream is supported by a number of circumstances: by the many references to sleep; by the seemingly irrational, dream-like actions that occur; and

134 Andrei Tarkovsky

by Tarkovsky's use of a differentiating colo�r code. The entire cen­tral, nocturnal section of the film - from the time Alexander goes out into the garden to seek Little Man and finds �aria and t�e mo

_del of

the house, to the time he wakes on the couch m the mornmg - IS cast in the form of a dream and is photographed in darkly lit sequences virtually devoid of colour. The everyday waking reality of beginning and end is painted in the pale, natural colours o� a northe� summer, framing the interior world of the dream. There IS also a thrrd l��el of photography: the black and white or sepia se9-uenc

_es of the VISions,

or the scenes from other times, past or future, mset mto the coloured reality and into the sombre central section.

Maria stands at the beginning and end of this dark fantasy, the entrance to which is via the model of the house set on the blasted earth and built as a birthday present for Alexander by Little Man and Otto. In embarking upon this apocalyptic midsummer night: s dream Alexander enters a labyrinth akin perhaps to the Zone m Stalke/ The fact that he may awake from this dream and find the world as it was before does nothing to lessen the horror of the vision. If anything, it illustrates a nightmarish perspective of Shakespeare's own play.

. . What then is the ultimate significance of Alexander's sacrifice?

Can one compare it to the sacrifice Tarkovsky made in giv�� up his home to continue creating films? However great that sacrifice may have been, it does not stand comparison with the threatened holo­caust; and, as one has seen, Tarkovsky was careful to filter out any too overtly personal references in this work. He described

_ his film as

having the form of a parable that allows a number of mterpreta­tions.12 It is a sacrifice we may all be called upon to make one day: the relinquishment of a materialist, expansionist world �rder, �ain­tained by exploitation and nuclear power, a world of mternatio�al rivalries that verge on and sometimes spill over into armed conflict. It is a sacrifice in favour of love and the belief in a different future. Is it possible, however, for man to turn back �hoX: o� the holocaust Grass describes in his book and Tarkovsky m his film? The threat alone would seem to be insufficient.

That this glimpse into the abyss 'no more yield�d but a dream' seems certain. But one may also ask whose dream 1t was - Alexan­der's or Little Man's? As in The Steamroller and the Violin and The Mirror, much of the film is seen as if through the eyes of a child. The sleeping child motif recurs throughout the film. Little Man sleeps through the entire night-war section - he dare not be woken; the

The Sacrifice 135 dream has to be dreamt. In the second of the apocalyptic street s_cenes one catches a glimpse of the little boy asleep again; and finally, at the end of the film, he lies down beneath the tree, his work done, perhaps to sleep and dream and bring the story full circle, back to its starting point. Is the film Alexander's dream of his son, or Little Man's dream of his father; vision of the past or of the future? Past and future are fused together or are ambivalent, a situation encountered in other films by Tarkovsky. The sacrifice is that which one generation brings for another, Alexander for Little Man, Christ for God, and for mankind.

In true Tarkovskian manner identities merge. Little Man, whose recovery of speech coincides with Alexander's vow of silence, is his father's continuation or his alter ego. Maria and Adelaide become one in Alexander's mind, a modern interpretation perhaps of the en­chantments and confusions of a play by Shakespeare. Otto's collec­tion of strange phenomena echoes in the mind. The unity of time and place comes full circle. But this is only one of the cycles in which the film abounds and to which Otto refers in his debate with Alexander by the sea at the beginning. Perhaps Alexander's black vision is but the unhappy dream of a child. Tarkovsky allows us to view the world from both ends of the telescope. In both cases what remains is the future; and perhaps one day 'the tree of life, which is in the midst of . . . paradise'13 will bloom, and Alexander's sacrifice, whether it took place in reality or in the imagination of his little son, will not have been in vain.

Epilogue

Andrei Tarkovsky' s reputation rests on a slender reuvre of eight films - including his 46-minute diploma submission The Steamroller and the Violin - made over a period of little more than 25 years.1 Boris Pasternak apparently prophesied (in a seance) that Tarkovsky would realise only eight films in his life, the truth of which the director, with his fascination for precognition and extrasensory phenomena, came to acknowledge a year before he died.2 Tarkovsky's contribu­tion to cinema cannot be measured simply by the number of films he made, however. Any one of his works might have secured him a place in cinema history. He was arguably the outstanding film maker of his generation, a generation that included many great names. An original thinker who gave new impulses to cinema, he was one of those rare creative spirits who exert a lasting influence on the world of art and ideas beyond their own immediate discipline.

It was his ambition to raise the art of film to the level of the great works of poetry, painting or music, to that of Dostoevsky, Leonardo or Bach - and it was with this humanist-Christian tradition that he identified. Despite his essentially Russian upbringing and tempera­ment, it was the universal aspects of European culture that inter­ested him and that ultimately make his work so widely accessible.

That his films will give birth to a new school of cinema seems unlikely at the moment. The younger generation of directors in the former Soviet Union associated with Tarkovsky' s name -Lopushansky, Ovcharov, Kaidanovsky or Sokurov, for example - do not represent a school in the traditional sense of that term. What links them is a common spirit, the inspiration of Tarkovsky's vision, and a resolute and often wilful individuality, also to be found in the work of other directors such as loseliani or the late Sergei Paradzhanov. On the other hand, Tarkovsky's continued influence on international film making can be seen in the popularity of certain techniques or stylistic devices derived from his films. The use of black and white sequences alongside colour as a means of differen­tiation, the insertion of documentary scenes, the quotation of visual metaphors and the exploration of dream and memory have now become familiar elements of modem cinema.3

Tarkovsky himself acknowledged the genius of directors as dif­ferent in style as Bergman, Bresson and Buii.uel, Dovzhenko,

136

l Epilogue 137

Kurosawa and Mizoguchi - without admitting their mentorship. His own world of cinema remains highly individual. A child of the Stalinist era and the Second World War, he was born too late to participate in the aesthetic experiments of the Revolution and died too early to benefit from the thaw under Gorbachev.

The year of Tarkovsky's death marked a turning point in Soviet cinema. In May 1986 the executive committee of the Soviet film federation was voted out of office and replaced by new representa­tives under the leadership of Elim Klimov. Feodor Yermash, the chairman of Goskino who had repeatedly obstructed Tarkovsky's career, was removed from his post shortly before the director's death. The new political climate in the Soviet Union resulted in the release of large numbers of films that had been kept on the shelves for years. In addition, there was a burgeoning of new film production, and in particular of works dealing with controversial themes. The critical examination of the past that took place in public life found a remark­able forum in the cinema. In 1 988 the first festival of independent films was held in Riga.

The increase in Soviet film production was all the more remark­able in view of the grim economic conditions prevailing in the former member states. The opening of the Soviet Union and its final disin­tegration accelerated the division of film activities into a number of national currents. At the same time there has also been an influx of Western influences, and in particular a growing market for US com­mercial film products. In the future one may expect an increase in co­productions with Western organisations.

. Tarkovsky witnessed none of this and remained sceptical towards the initial signs of change under Gorbachev.4 The path Tarkovsky followed was a personal one. The films he managed to realise were wrested in a sense from the circumstances in which he found him­self; and in the end, it seemed as though he was overtaken by the events and images he had conjured on the screen - by emigration, nostalgia and sacrifice, by his horses, and the Apocalypse and the vision of St John: 'And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.'5

Notes

Notes to the Introduction

1 . 2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 1 1 .

12.

13. 14.

Filmed interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Donatella Baglio, 1983. See Tarkovsky' s early autobiographical submission to the State School for Film (VGIK) in Moscow. Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Po� (L?ndon, 1989) pp. 1 _7f. 1n the course of 22 years' work in the SoVIet Uruon I have made five films; in other words, one film every four and a half years. If one calculates the time needed to make a film as, on average, one year plus a certain amount of time for the screenplay, I have been unemployed for 16 of the 22 years. Goskino sells my films successfully abroad, whilst I often do not know how I am to support my family. Since you have been in office, you have not once used your official authority to give me the go-ahead for a production. It was o�y possible to co�­mence shooting the film The Mirror after I had wntten to the executive committee of the 24th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the film Stalker after I had written a letter to the 26th Party Congr�ss. I cannot continually pester our

_ highest party bodies

or wait every time for the next party congress, m order to be able to work in a manner befitting my qualifications' (German press brochure to The Sacrifice; translated by P.G.). 'Help me! Enable me to escape from this unprecedented ha�g. Permit me to stage Hamlet and Pushkin's Boris Godunov here m the West, with the thought that I shall return in three years' �e and make a film about the life and significance of Dostoevsky' (1b1d.). . On 10 July 1984 a press conference was h�ld in

_the Palazz� Z:ebb�oru,

Milan, at which Tarkovsky declared his mtention of remammg m the West. According to a bulletin issued by the German P�ess Agency (DPA), the film maker had applied to the US embassy m Rome for • political asylum in the USA. This was report�d b� the Roman Cath?"" lie lay organisation Movimento Popolare m Milan (see report m Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, 1 0 July 1984). Michal Leszczylowski, 'A Year with Andrei', Sight and Sound, Autumn 1987, p. 283. . . .. . . . . Andrej Tarkovskij, Hoffmannzana, Szenano fUr eznen nzcht realzszerten Film (Munich, 1 987). Leszczylowski, 'A Year with Andrei', p. 284. AP /Reuter report, January 1987. William Fisher, 'Gorbachev's Cinema', Sight and Sound, Autumn 1987, p. 242. . . . . . Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculptzng zn Tzme: Reflectzons on the Cmema (Lon-don, 1986) chapter heading, pp. 36f. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 43.

138

Notes 139

15. The Blake Society, St James's Church, Piccadilly, London. A video recording of this talk exists, an excerpt from which is also included in a filmed portrait of Tarkovsky's last years made by Ebbo Demant for the German Siidwestfunk broadcasting network in 1 987.

16. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 62. 17. Ibid., p. 57. 18. Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 82. 19. Tarkovsky' s Sapechatlyonnoye Vremya appeared in Germany under the

title Die versiegelte Zeit (1984) and in the UK under the title Sculpting in Time (1986).

20. In The Sacrifice, for example, a white horse led by Little Man originally appeared towards the end of Alexander's dream. The scene was omit­ted in the final version of the film. See Leszczylowski, 'A Year with Andrei', p. 283.

21. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 66 and 72. 22. Ibid., p. 68. 23. Andrej Tarkowskij, Die versiegelte Zeit (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1984)

p. 120. The passage is not contained in the English translation. 24. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 200. 25. Ibid., p. 192. 26. Ibid., pp. 212f. 27. 'There is always water in my films. I like water, especially brooks. The

sea is too vast. I don't fear it; it is just monotonous. In nature I like smaller things. Microcosm, not macrocosm; limited surfaces. I love the Japanese attitude to nature. They concentrate on a confined space reflecting the infinite. Water is a mysterious element due to its . . . structure. And it is very cinegenic; it transmits movement, depth, changes. Nothing is more beautiful than water'. (Andrei Tarkovsky, from English press brochure to The Sacrifice, 1986).

28. Maja Turowskaja and Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij: Film als Poesie, Poesie als Film (Bonn, 1981) p. 97.

29. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 168. 30. T. Rothschild, 'Glaube, Demut, Hoffnung (Hoffnung?)',Medium (Frank­

furt-am-Main), Jan.-Mar. 1987, pp. 59ff. 31. For example, in Stalker the movement of the glasses across the table

might be a case of telekinesis, or caused simply by the vibration of a passing train.

32. Tarkowskij, Die versiegelte Zeit (3rd edn, 1 988) p. 270. 33. Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, pp. 101f. See also

Charles E. Passage, The Russian Hoffmannists, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, vol. 35 (The Hague, 1963).

34. 'Ein Feind der Symbolik', interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Irena Brezna, Tip (Berlin), no. 3, 1984.

35. Cf. Yon Barna, Eisenstein (London, 1973) pp. 62f., and Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 1 68.

36. Ibid., pp. 119 and 183. 37. The 'montage of attractions' theory was published in 1923 in

Mayakovsky's LEF magazine.

140 Notes

38. The average length of the sequences in The Mirror is approximately 23 seconds; in Stalker it is 1 minute 6 seconds.

39. Leszczylowski, 'A Year with Andrei', p. 284. (Leszczylowski was edi­tor of The Sacrifice.)

40. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 159 and 162. 41 . Andrei Tarkovsky, English prP$S brochure to The Sacrifice (Swedish

Film Institute, Stockholm, 1986): 'To me, black and white is more expressive and realistic, because it does not distrac:t the sp�tator but enables him to concentrate on the essence of the film. I think colour made the cinematographic art more false and less true.' See also Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 1 38f.

Notes to Chapter 1: The Steamroller and the Violin

1 . Andrei (Mikhalkov-) Konchalovsky, today a well-known director in his own right, also collaborated with Tarkovsky on the screenplay of Andrei Rublyov. In The Steamroller and the Violin Tarkovsky established other long-term working relationships as well. The cameraman, Vadim Yusov, and the composer, Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, were to collabo­rate on all Tarkovsky's early films.

2. According to Tarkovsky there are only 35 spoken sentences in this film. See Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1989) p. 28.

3. Ibid., p. 23. . . . . . 4. Tarkovsky pointedly underlines the Situation by �g the Object �f

their desires the cinema, where the prewar Russian film Chapayev IS being shown. Made in 1 934 by Georgi and Sergei Vasiliev, the film is one of the most successful works in the history of Soviet cinema. It is based on the novel of the same name by Dmitri Funnanov, published in 1923. The film, an example of Soviet Realism, describes the fate of the Red Army commander Chapayev in the years after the Revolu­tion.

5. Studio discussion minutes. See Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 28. 6. Ibid., p. 17. 7. The Steamroller and the Violin was produced in the department for

children's and youth films of the Mosffim studios. 8. In quite a different respect, the film does provide a clue to the recep­

tion of many of Tarkovsky' s later works. Although the Soviet press received The Steamroller and the Violin favourably, it was criticised within the department for children's and youth films of Mosfilm for inadequacies in the characterisation of some of the roles. Tarkovsky changed to a new collective wit�n the s�dios shox:tly afterwards: �e incident reveals two aspects of his working style: his uncompromismg stance towards outside influence on his ideas; and the problem of communication with his actors.

9. See notes from the English press brochure to The Sacrifice (1986); and Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) pp. 138f.

Notes 141 10. � peripheral theme, pe�hap�, but one that significantly recurs in other ffims by Tarkovsky. It IS bnefly mentioned here in the conversation between Sergei and Sasha over lunch. 11 Here, for example, Tarkovsky's experiences at the local music school he att�nded f?r seven years; or the absence of any trace of Sasha' s father m the film.

Notes to Chapter 2: Ivan's Childhood

1 . 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 1 1 . 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

Vladi� Bo!?omolov, Ivan, first published 1958. Instructions Issued by the director-general of Mosfilm on 10 Decem­ber 1960; see Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London 1 9_89)_ p. 29. Turovskaya gives a detailed account of the production of this ffim. A�drey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1 986) p. 33. Ibid., p. 18. Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 31 . Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 16. Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 32. Maja Turowskaja and Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz Andrej Tarkowskij" Film als !'oesi� - Poesie als Film (Bonn, 1981) p. 1 3. ci'he English transiation onuts this reference.) Fil�ed inte�ew with Andrei Tarkovsky by Donatella Baglivo, 1985. Unlike Ivan _s father, Tar�ovsky' s father, Arseniy, did return from the war. After his home-commg, however, he lived in separation from his wife and children. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 38. Hans Stempel� in Filmkri�ik (Fran��-am-Main) Nov. 1963, pp. 529ff. A!. the same _time there IS a certam rrony to the situation, since the J?iirer 9-uotations are also a reference to Tarkovsky's own preoccupa­tion With the Apocalypse and the humanism of the Renaissance. Tarkovsky himself was not happy with certain of the locations and sets; and he attributes the failure of some of the scenes to capture the imagination of the ?bserve� to the lack of pregnancy of these settings for actors and audience alike. See Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time pp. 31 f, and Stempel, in Filmkritik. '

Stempel, in Filmkritik. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 29. Tark�v�ky himself was not satisfied with this sequence of the film, descnbmg how the poorer of two alternative versions was inserted at editing stage and how this mistake proved irreversible (see ibid., pp. 31f). At an earlier date the ruined church, in which the Russians have their head9uarters, had evidently been occupied by German troops: The Russians whom they held prisoner in the cellar had scrawled the following words upon the wall: 'There are 8 of us, none of us older than 19. In an hour they will shoot us. Avenge us!'

142 Notes

18. The bell-casting episode in Andrei Rublyov is in itself an act of faith on the part of Boriska, the young boy who pretends to know the secret of the process and who, to his own surprise, succeeds in his undertaking. The role of Boriska was performed by Kolya Burlyaev, who also played the part of Ivan.

19. The bucket of water reoccurs like a leitmotif in the dreams. Cf. the scene at the well (dream 2), and the final dream, when Ivan quenches his thirst from this bucket. The image of the well returns in The Mirror.

20. More perhaps than any of his later films, Ivan's Childhood is indebted to Dovzhenko. Like Tarkovsky, he too had undergone a training in painting, a fact that is reflected in the rich visual quality of their films, in the lyrical images and the fusion of all kinds of elements into a single universal vision.

21. This or a similar withered tree has previously been mentioned in the context of the war. In a telephone conversation in '51 ' headquarters, Colonel Gryaznov refers to the fact that there are too many Germans in the vicinity of this tree to enable a particular operation to be carried out. Cf. the dead, broken trees in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings; e.g. 'Winter', 1807-8.

22. Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, p. 19 (the English version of the book omits this reference).

23. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 21. 24. Stempel, in Filmkritik, and Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 30. 25. L'Unita, 9 October 1962. Cf. Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej

Tarkowskij, pp. 143f.

Notes to Chapter 3: Andrei Rublyov

1 . Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Harmondsworth, Middx, 1 969) p. 66.

2. Ibid., p. 80. 3. Tarkovsky had originally hoped to be able to include the decisive

victory of the Russians over the Tartars on the Field of Kulikovo in Andrei Rublyov. Financial considerations ruled this out, however. For a description of this aspect of the film see Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1 989) p. 47.

4. Ivan IV (the Terrible) (1533-84) was the first ruler to adopt the title of Czar in 1 547.

5. Ivan III married Sofia Palaeologa, niece of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor.

6. Andronik Spasa Nerukotvomogo Monastery, founded c.1 360 by Met­ropolitan Aleksei in Moscow on the bank of the Iauza River. 'An outpost on the south-east approaches to Moscow, the monastery pro­tected the city from the Mongolian Tartars.' It was named after its first abbot, Andronik. From the end of the fourteenth century the monas­tery was responsible for the copying of books. In the Spasski Cathe­dral, built between 1420 and 1427 are the remains of frescos painted under the supervision of Daniil Chomiy and Andrei Rublyov. Rublyov

Notes 143

spent the last years of his life in this monastery and was buried there. In 1947 it was opened as a museum of old Russian art and named after Andrei Rublyov (Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, vol. n, p. 95).

7. It was not usual for Russian masters to sign their works at this time. Attributions to Rublyov can therefore only be made on the basis of documentary or stylistic evidence. He probably executed works in Vladimir, Moscow and Zvenigorod. Many of these now hang in Mos­cow. Rublyov possibly visited Constantinople and even Venice in the course of his life, although this in not recorded.

8. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) p. 34. 9. Ibid., p. 78.

10. The concept of the synchronism of time. See also p. 50 and F. Allardt­Nostitz, 'Spuren der Deutschen Romantik in den Filmen Andrej Tarkowskijs', in Maja Turowskaja and Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij: Film als Poesie, Poesie als Film (Bonn, 1981) p. 109.

1 1 . Ibid., p. 40. 12. In the epilogue, details of the following works by or attributed to

Rublyov can be seen: 'The Redeemer Lives', 'The Nativity', ' The Raising of Lazarus' 'The Entry into Jerusalem', ' The Apostle', ' The Death of Mary' and 'The Old Testament Trinity' (see ibid., p. 1 1 0).

13. 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity . . . ', words from r Corinthians 13: 1, spoken during this scene.

14. Painted for the Troiza (Holy Trinity) Monastery of St Sergius in 1 425, two years after the events of the final chapter of the film, the work now hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

15. Whitsun, the Church festival associated with the Trinity and the de­scent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, is of Old Testament origin. The Jews celebrated it to mark the handing down of the laws to Moses on Mount Sinai and the Covenant with God. In the Orthodox calendar this festival occurs seven weeks after Easter (in the Jewish calendar on the 50th day after the feast of the Passover). On the day of the lawgiving on Sinai, on the 50th day after the Resurrection of Christ, the promise of redemption was fulfilled, in that the Holy Ghost descended on the disciples.

The idea of the Trinity in the Old Testament is to be found in Genesis 18, where three angels in the guise of men appear to Abraham in the plains of Marnre. The plains (or grove) of Marnre were vener­ated as a place of holy manifestations by both heathens and Jews. Heathen sacrifices are also known to have taken place there.

16. For a fuller discussion of the nature and role of icons, see Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, Der Sinn der Ikonen (Bern and Olten, 1952).

17. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, illus., p. 78. 18. The Uspenski Cathedral in Vladimir, where Rublyov worked in 1408. 19. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 37 and 224. 20. See Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit; Andrej Tarkowskijs Exil und

Tod, film by Ebbo Demant, Siidwestfunk, 1987. See also Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 227.

21 . Ibid., p. 168.

144 Notes

22. By a stroke of fate Kolya Burlyaev, the young actor who had por­trayed Ivan, was also called upon to play the role of Boriska in Andrei Rublyov. For a description of the events leading up to this choice, see Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1989) p. 45.

23. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 78. 24. The Bruegel-like panoramas in the snow recur later in Solaris and The

Mirror, for example. 25. The story of Jonah and the whale as a prefiguration of the Entomb­

ment and Resurrection of Christ, for example. 26. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever' (Ecclesiastes 1 : 2-4). Tarkovsky's preoc­cupation with this and other passages from Ecclesiastes is described in the article 'A Year with Andrei' by Michal Leszczylowski, covering the last year of the director's life (Sight and Sound, Autumn 1987, pp. 282ff.).

27. The figure of Christ actually eats the snow. 28. The veronica? 29. Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, p. 111 ; in his stage

direction of Hamlet in Moscow in 1977, Tarkovsky did not differenti­ate the ghost of Hamlet's father from the living characters.

30. Cf. the scene in The Steamroller and the Violin when Sergei reproves Sasha for throwing the loaf of bread to the ground.

31 . Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov also wrote the music to Ivan's Childhood. 32. The silence motif is also echoed in The Sacrifice by Victor's reference to

Gandhi's abstinence from speech one day a week and, of course, by Alexander's own vow of silence.

33. The circumstances of Rublyov's vow of silence have been handed down in history (see Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, p. 45).

34. A metaphor for the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, perhaps, the depiction of which follows the moral discussion between Theophanes and Rublyov.

35. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 204. 36. Kyrill's accusation is perhaps not entirely without foundation. The

monasteries were among the greatest landowners in Russia at that time, a circumstance that may be contrasted with a powerful strain of asceticism and 'apostolic poverty' among the monks. See V. H. H. Green, Renaissance and Reformation (London, 1965) p. 373.

37. The bird held in the hand is a symbol of the divine child; cf. The Mirror. 38. The contemporary Moscow chronicle Troitskaya Letopis describes the

work of the icon painters Andrei Rublyov and Daniil Chorniy as begun in May 1408 (see Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, p. 153, note 31). Among the works in Vladimir attributed to Rublyov were panels of St John the Baptist, St Paul, St Peter and the Ascension (Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 10, p. 228).

39. In the history of depictions of 'The Last Judgement' the subject was not always treated as a horrific vision. This depended on the aspect

'

Notes 145

that the artist chose to emphasise - the joyful rising of the blessed into heaven, or the fall of the damned. Cf. Rubens's treatment of the theme.

40. For evidence of Daniil's continued existence in the 1420s see note 6. 41. 1 Corinthians 11 : 5-6: 'Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with

her head uncovered dishonoureth her head; . . . if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn.' Tarkovsky also saw a reference across time here to the heaps of women's hair in Auschwitz; (see Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 47).

42. 'I wish to make an historical film that is also a topical film. I wish to bring together the mentality of the people of the fifteenth century and that of the people of today', quoted from an interview with Tarkovsky in 1965 published in Sputnik (Moscow Film Festival publication, 1965). See also Cinema 65 (Paris), no. 99, Sept./Oct. 1965, p. 61; U. Gregor, Geschichte des Films ab 1960 (Munich, 1978) p. 273.

43. Gregor, Geschichte des Films ab 1960, p. 273.

Notes to Chapter 4: Solaris

1 . At one point the Swedish actress Bibi Andersson was considered for the role of Harey. But Tarkovsky felt that a younger person was needed for the part (see Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986 (Calcutta, 1991) p. 5 (For general notes on the mak­ing of the film, see ibid., pp. 3--79.)

2. Ibid., pp. 49ff. Tarkovsky quotes a list of over 35 objections, criticisms and recommended changes with which he was presented from vari­ous official sources.

3. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) pp. 198f, 208. 4. Stalislaw Lem, Solaris (German translation, Munich, 1983) pp. 22f. 5. Cf. the apple motifs in The Steamroller and the Violin and Ivan's Child­

hood; or the Marian metaphors of purification in the jug and water of The Sacrifice.

6. Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1989) p. 53. 7. See Paracelsus and the story of Undine by Friedrich de la Motte

Fouque (1811). For the significance of this legend for the German Romantics and for Tarkovsky, see Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz in Maja Turowskaja and Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, Film als Poesie - Poesie als Film (Bonn, 1981) p. 115.

8. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 86f. In his book Tarkovsky sets pictures of 'Harey' s death and resurrection' opposite two quotations from Corinthians discussing the Resurrection of Christ.

9. Lem, Solaris, p. 83. 10. There are parallels here to the story of Diko-6braz and his brother in

Stalker. 11 . Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 62ff. 12. Ibid., p. 58. 13. Ibid., p. 199. 14. To what extent the colour changes here are due to technical con­

straints or even faulty material is not clear.

146 Notes

15. Red and blue were the colours of the two suns about which the planet Solaris turned.

16. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 100. 17. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 199. 18. Ibid., p. 145. 19. Ibid., p. 148. 20. Turowskaja and Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, p. 1 1 7. Allardt­

Nostitz describes the frozen lake and the rain inside the house as symbols of death commonly used by the Romantics.

Notes to Chapter 5: The Mirror

1 . 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

1 1 .

12.

13.

14.

Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1989) p. 61. Cf. p. 69. Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986 (Calcutta, 1991 ) p. 13. Ibid., pp. 69, 1 and 87. 'Martyrology' (Martyrolog) was the heading Tarkovsky originally wrote over his diary in 1970. The title was sub­sequently used for the extracts from these diaries (1970--86) first pub­lished in 1989. See also Andrej Tarkowskij, Martyrolog, Tagebiicher 1970-1986 (Berlin, 1989) p. 6. The film opens with a prologue in which a television set is switched on. For a discussion of the characteristics of television as a medium, see David Russell, 'A World in Inaction', Sight and Sound, Summer 1990, pp. 1 74-9. See also Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) p. 129. Tarkovsky, Time within Ti17Je, p. 41. See Andrei Rublyov, note 3, p. 1 42. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 61f., 73 and 78. Tarkovsky's embit­tered remarks on Yusov's departure may be compared with Yusov's subsequent positive reaction to the film (see Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 135). Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 97f. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 1 01 (translation by Kitty Hunter­Blair). This dream episode finds a parallel in the dilapidated state of Tarkovsky's own flat (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 81). Cf. the moment towards the end of the film when the young girl with the red hair and cracked, bleeding lips, whom the father (Alexei) had once admired and whom he describes to his son in a telephone con­versation, appears to Alexei as a reflection in a mirror. Cf. the scene in the street of the abandoned hill town in Nostalgia, where Gorchakov encounters the reflection of Domenico in the mir­rored cupboard door. At one point Tarkovsky was considering casting Bibi Andersson in the role of the wife and mother. In the end he was unable to obtain permission to do so (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 6 and 41 ).

J

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32. 33.

Notes 147

Oleg Yankovsky was later to play the role of Gorchakov in Nostalgia. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 91. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 143. Ibid., p. 174. See Tarkovsky's interview with Irena Brezna, published in Tip (Berlin), no. 3, 1984. Compare the dress worn by Margarita Terekhova in the part of Masha as a young woman with that of Tarkovsky's own mother, Maria Ivanovna (see Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 100, and Tarkovsky, Time within Time, plate 3). Maria Ivanovna Tarkovskaya, Tarkovsky's mother, worked for most of her life as a proofreader in a printing firm. Played by Tarkovsky's second wife Larissa. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 91f and 156. See Tarkovsky's interview with Brezna. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 19. A translation of this letter is contained in Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 195. Cf. the well and the mother in Ivan's Childhood. The sickbed scene and the encounter with death are perhaps echoes of the heart attack Tarkovsky suffered in the early months of 1 973 (see Tarkowskij, Martyrolog, p. 1 1 6). Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci (Harmondsworth, Middx, 1959) pp. 28f. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 1 08f. Eduard Artemiev, whom Tarkovsky wished to compose the music for The Mirror, as he had done for Solaris and was subsequently to do for Stalker, had too little time to produce a full score. In addition to Artemiev' s electronic music, Tarkovsky turned to arrangements of works by J. S. Bach, Pergolesi and Purcell that had autobiographical associations (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 92, and Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 158). Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 1 16. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt, 1973) p. 1 628. Bloch speaks of 'Heimat', which corresponds roughly to the English word 'home' in its wide range of meanings.

Notes to Chapter 6: Stalker

1 . Arkadi and Boris Strugatski, Roadside Picnic (Harmondsworth, Middx, 1979). See also the German edition with an epilogue by Stanislaw Lem - note 6.

2. For the history of the inception and making of Stalker see Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986 (Calcutta, 1991) pp. 66-182.

3. It was even rumoured that Tarkovsky had destroyed the material in dissatisfaction, or in anger at the cuts demanded of him. See Peter Buchka, 'Die Kunst als Opfer', Siiddeutsche Zeitung (Munich),

148 Notes

30 December 1986. 4. Alexander Knyazhinsky replaced Gosha Rerberg as director of pho­

tography. See Tarkovsky's remarks about the latter in Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 146£. .

5. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) p. 200. 6. Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki, Picknick am Wegesrand, with a postscript

by Stanislaw Lem (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1981) p. 23. 7. Ibid., p. 212. 8. Maja Turowskaja and Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz, Andrej Tarkowskij, Film

als Poesie - Poesie als Film (Bonn, 1981) pp. 131-42. 9. The stalker responds to this with a counter-quotation from the Gospel

according to St Luke. 10. Strugatzki, Picknick am Wegesrand, p. 212. 11 . Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 193. 12. Ibid., p. 198. 13. Cf. Nostalgia, note 16, p. 149. 14. Cf. the phenomenon of materialisation in Solaris. 15. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 155 and 158; Andrey Tarkowskij, Die

versiegelte Zeit (Berlin, 1984) p. 185 (the English edition of the work omits the reference to Ioseliani).

16. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 174 and 181. 17. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 193. 18. At the beginning of the film the glass on the tray would clearly seem

to be moved by the vibrations of the passing train. At the end of the film, however, Martha fixes the glasses and a jar with her gaze. They begin to move across the table long before the train approaches. The dog whimpers uneasily. Finally, the glass containing the milk falls from the table.

19. At one point Tarkovsky actually considered making one of his pro­tagonists a woman. See Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 105.

20. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, p. 199.

Notes to Chapter 7: Nostalgia

1 . Maximilian Sasontovich Beryozovsky (1745-77), also known as Pavel Sosnovsky. Among the works for which he is best known is the opera Demofont, composed in 1773 to a text by Metastasio for the opera in Livorno.

2. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1986) p. 202. 3. The title of the film is confirmed in a diary entry dated 17 July 1979;

see Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986 (Cal­cutta, 1991) p. 188.

4. See Introduction, note 6, p. 138. 5. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 204-6. 6. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 195 and 249. The screenplay was

finally completed in May 1980. 7. Ibid., p. 203.

Notes 1 49

8. Ibid., p. 198f. 9. Ibid., p. 279.

10. Ibid., p. 328. 11 . Cf. Guerra's collaboration with directors such a s Angelopoulos,

Antonioni, Fellini. 12. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 188. 13. As Gorchakov enters the church one sees the stone figure of an angel

submerged beneath the water. 14. The saint who plays such an important unseen role in the film is

presumably St Catherine of Siena, the patron saint of Italy, a four­teenth-century mystic who was a mediator between the temporal and ecclesiastical princes of that country. She helped to achieve the return of the papal seat to Rome from its exile in A vignon and played a leading role in the reform of the Dominican Order, whose patron saint she also became.

15. At an earlier stage of the project Gorchakov was to have been killed accidentally in the street by a stray bullet fired by a terrorist (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 192 and 242f.).

16. One also recalls the dog in Castaneda's Don Juan. Eva Maria Schmidt identified the dog with Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death (see Jahrbuch Film 83/84, Munich).

17. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, pp. 207ff. 18. The girl is combing the bottom of the pool for objects that have been

thrown in. A wheel, a doll, bottles, a lamp lie encrusted at the edge forming yet another still life.

19. Plato, The Republic, Book 7. An early screenplay idea noted on 10 April 1979 (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 180) bore the title 'The End of the World'. A similar idea is echoed later in the film in the anecdote that Andrei tells Angela in the flooded church about a man 'saved' from a pool of water who explains to his rescuer that he actually lives in the pool.

20. Cf. Tarkovsky's Dostoevsky !Idiot projects. 21. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 174. See also Guardian Lecture (Lon­

don, 1981). 22. Tarkovsky, Time within Time, p. 188. 23. Peter Green, 'The Nostalgia of the Stalker', Sight and Sound, Winter

1984, footnote p. 53. 24. There are similar moments in The Mirror, when the young mother

looks over her shoulder into the past, or when the camera pans be­tween two different planes of time.

25. Tarkovsky described a visit to Loreto, a well-known place of pilgrim­age in Italy, where, in the middle of the cathedra a house stands, brought there from Nazareth. It is allegedly the house in which Christ was born. Tarkovsky goes on to describe his inability, or reluctance, to pray in a Roman Catholic church. Later, he drove to a ruined church in the midst of which he found a tree growing (see Tarkovsky, Time within Time, pp. 245f.). Cf. Casper David Friedrich's picture of the Eldena Ruins (1836) depicting a house in the ruins of a church.

150 Notes

Notes to Chapter 8: The Sacrifice

1 .

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

Giinter Grass, Die Riittin (Darmstadt and Neuwied, 1986); English translation: The Rat (San Diego, 1987). Andrei Tarkovsky in an interview with Annie Epelboin in Paris, 15 March 1986. See English press brochure, The Sacrifice, Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, 1986. These scenes provide a further example of Tarkovsky' s uncanny sense of anticipation of future tragedy. He was firmly convinced that certain locations were potentially predestined to catastrophe. On the very spot where these sequences were ffimed, Olaf Palme was assassinated six months later. Andrej Tarkovskij, Opfer (Munich, 1987) p. 182. Tarkovsky explained that in Russian the word for 'witch' is derived from the verb 'to know'. The fact that a ffim with a similar title had already been made and that the dual associations of 'witch' and 'knowl­edge' or 'wisdom' were lost in the translation into Swedish and Eng­lish were reasons why Tarkovsky changed the original title (see Lay !a Alexander, 'Der ratselhafte und geheimnisvolle Andrej Tarkowskij', SF (Soviet Film), 7 /1989). The Sacrifice was 'a settling of accounts with materialism in the West today . . . with man's godlessness and lack of spirituality . . : and wit� Tarkovsky's wife' (see Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zezt - Andre; Tarkowskijs Exil und Tad, a ffim by Ebbo Demant, Siidwestfunk TV, Germany, 1987). Demant describes how the tensions in Tarkovsky's relationship with his wife during the final months of his life found expression in the character of Adelaide. At the time of shooting The Sacrifice he was convinced that his wife was a witch, and he went to great lengths to portray her in detail in the ffim - down to her hair­style. See also 'Tarkovsky's Other Woman', an interview with Susan Fleetwood, Guardian, 6 January 1987. Tarkovsk.ij, Opfer, p. 179. See also Andrej Tarkowsk.ij, Die versiegelte Zeit, rev. edn (Berlin, 1988) p. 259. During the shooting of the final scene, when the fire was laid to the house, the camera jammed. It was impossible to halt the flames, with the result that four months' work was lost. The producers suggested cutting the scene in a new way to salvage some of the material, but :he scene was so vital to Tarkovsky that he refused to complete the ffim without this sequence in the envisaged form. Finally he managed to persuade the producers to re-erect the house and the scene was reshot - this time with two cameras - as Tarkovsky wanted it. All that was left of the house was the chimney stack (as in Ivan's Childhood), which is visible in the scene where Adelaide/Maria sits beside Alexander at the end of his dream. See Regi Andrej Tarkovskij, a film of the making of The Sacrifice by Michal Leszczylowski, 1988. See also Tarkovskij, Opfer, p. 183. Tarkovskij, Opfer, p. 181. This last scene in the sequence was based on a dream Tarkovsky had,

Notes 151

in which he saw himself lying dead on the couch. People knelt around him, and among them he saw his mother dressed in white like an angel. Finally, he saw a girl chasing chickens through the house and a woman sitting at his feet whom he thought to be his wife; but when she turned her head it was quite a different face he saw. Tarkovsky managed to persuade the producers to allow him to shoot this unfore­seen additional sequence. Only part of it was used in the film, however. See Layla Alexandra, 'Der ratselhafte und geheimnisvolle Andrej Tarkowsk.ij', SF, 7/1989.

1 1 . Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (London, 1 986) p . 209. 12. Tarkovsk.ij, Opfer, p. 1 78. 13. Revelation 2: 7.

Notes to the Epilogue

1 . One might compare his ceuvre with those o f some of his contemporar­ies: Franc;ois Truffaut (1932--84) realised 25 ffims in his lifetime and Jean-Luc Godard, born in 1930, had made approximately 50 in the same period.

2. Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986 (Calcutta, 1991) p. 66, and Andrej Tarkowsk.ij, Martyrolog: Tagebucher 1970-1986 (Berlin, 1989) pp. 1 03 and 109. See also Ebbo Demant's ffim Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit - Andrej Tarkowskijs Exil und Tad, Siidwestfunk TV, Germany, 1987.

3. Wenders's Wings of Desire (1987) with its colour/black and white code, the use of documentary material, etc.; Meszaros's Diary for My Loves (1987) with its inserts of documentary material and time remem­bered; Klimov' s Farewell (1983� with its evocation of the four elements, its images of trees and fruitfulness as symbols of the earth and life, its documentary sequences, and indeed near-quotations from scenes in Tarkovsky's ffims; or Greenaway's Prospera's Books (1991) with its use of the conventions of painting and architecture, its still lifes, tableaux and models and the juxtaposition of different planes of consciousness.

4. Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit; Andrej Tarkowskijs Exil und Tad, film by Ebbo Demant, Siidwestfunk, 1987.

5. Revelation 6: 8.

� · . i I·· 1.. 1.; I i

Filmography

The Steamroller and the Violin [Katok i skripka]

USSR, 1960. 35mm; Sovcolour; 46 mins; 1268m.

Production: Mosfihn Direction: Andrei Tarkovsky Screenplay: Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky Director of Photography: Vadim Yusov Editing: L. Butuzova Music: Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov Musical Direction: E. Khachaturyan Art Direction: S. Agoyan Costumes: A. Martinson Sound: V. Kiachkovsky Special Effects: B. Pluynikov, V. Sevostyanov, A. Rudashenko Assistant Director: 0. Gerts Production Manager: A. Karetin

Cast: Igor Fomchenko (Sasha); V. Samansky (Sergei); Nina Arkh�gelskaya (the girl); Marina Adzhubey (mother); Yura Brusev; Slava Bonsov; Sasha Vitoslavsky; Sasha Ilin; Kolya Kozarev; Gena Klyashkovsk�; Igor Kolovikov; Shenya Fedchenko; Tanya Prokhorova; A. Maks1mova; L. Semyonova; G. Shdanova; M. Figner.

Ivan's Childhood [Ivanovo detstvo; also known as 'My Name Is Ivan']

USSR, 1962. 35mm; b/w; 97 mins; 2638.7m.

Production: Mosfilm Direction: Andrei Tarkovsky Screenplay: Vladimir Osipovich Bogomolov, Mikhail Papava (based on the story Ivan by Vladimir Bogomolov) Story Editor: E. Smimov Director of Photography: Vadim Yusov Editing: Ludmila Feyganova Music: Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov Musical Direction: E. Khachaturyan Art Direction: Yevgeniy Chemyaev Make-up: L. Baskakova Sound: E. Zelentsova Special Effects: V. Sevostyanov, S. Mukhin Assistant Director: G. Natanson Military Consultant: G. Goncharov Production Manager: G. Kuznetsov

152

Filmography 153

Cast: Nikolai (Kolya) Burlyaev (Ivan); Valentin Zubkov (Capt. Kholin)· Yevgeniy Zharikov (Lt Galtsev); S. Krylov (Cpl Katasonych); Nikolai Grink� (Col. Gryaznov); D. Milyutenko (old man); Valya Malyavina (Milsha); Irma T�rkovskaya (Ivan's mother); Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky (soldier wzth glasses); V. Marenkov; Vera Miturich; Ivan Savkin.

Andrei Rublyov

uss�, 1964-6. 35mm; b/w (final sequences: Sovcolour); original length: 185 mms; 5180m.

First shown: 1966; Cannes Festival: 1969; Soviet release: 1971; London Film Festival: 1972; UK release: 1973.

Production: Mosfilm Direction: Andrei Tarkovsky Screenplay: Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky Director of Photography: Vadim Yusov Editing: Ludmila Feyganova (T. Egorychevoy, 0. Shevkunenko) Music: Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov Art Direction: Yevgeniy Chemyaev (I. Novodereshkin, S. Voronkov) Costumes: L. Novi, M. Abar-Baranovskoy Sound: E. Zelentsova Special Effects: V. Sevostyanov 2nd Director: I. Petrov Assistant Directors: B. Oganesyan, A. Macharet, M. Volovich Production Manager: T. Ogorodnikhova

Cast: Anatoly Solonitsyn (Andrei Rublyov); Ivan Lapikov (Kyrill); Nikolai Grinko (Daniil); Nikolai Sergeyev (Theophanes the Greek); Irma Raush Tarkovskaya (deaf-mute girl); Nikolai (Kolya) Burlyaev (Boriska); Rolan Bykov (buffoon); Mikhail Kononov (Fomka); Yuri Nazarov (Grand Duke/ his brother); Yuri Nikulin (Patrikey); S. Krylov (bell-founder); Bolot Ishalenev (Tartar Khan); N. Grabbe; B. Matisik; A. Obukhov; Tamara Ogorodnikhova; Sos Sarkissyan; Volodya Titov.

Solaris

USSR, 1969-72. 35mm, Scope; Sovcolour; 165 mins; 4556m. (some released versions 144 mins)

Production: Mosfilm Direction: Andrei Tarkovsky Screenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky, Friedrich Gorenstein (based on the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem) Director of Photography: Vadim Yusov Editing: Ludmila Feyganova

154 Filmography

Music: Eduard Artemiev, J. S. Bach (Choral Prelude in F minor)

Art Direction: Mikhail Romadin

Costumes: N. Fomina

Sound: Semyon Litvinov

2nd Director: Y. Kushnerov

Assistant Directors: A Ides, Larissa Tarkovskaya, M. Chugunova

2nd Cameraman: E. Shvedov

Production Manager: Vyacheslav Tarasov

Cast: Natalia Bondarchuk (Harey); Donatas Banionis (Chris Kelvin); Yuri

Yarvet (Snaut); �atoly Soloni�yn (Sartorius); Vladi�lav Dvor:z:he�sky

(Berton); Nikolai Grinko (Kelvin's father); Sos Sarkissyan (Gz?arza'!);

0. Barnet; W. Kerdimun; Tamara Ogorodnikhova; T. Malykh; A Misharm;

W. Oganesyan; Y. Semyonov; V. Stanitsky; S. Sumyonova; G. Teykh;

0. Uisilova.

The Mirror [Zerkalo]

USSR, 1 974. 3Smm; Sovcolour (bjw newsreel sequences); 106 mins; 2954m.

Production: Mosfilm, Unit 4

Direction: �drei Tarkovsky

Screenplay: �drei Tarkovsky, Aleksander Misharin

Poems: Arseniy Tarkovsky, read by the poet

Director of Photography: Georgi Rerberg

Editing: Ludmila Feyganova . . . .

Music: Eduard Artemiev,J. S. Bach, Gxovanru Batista Pergolesi, Henry Purcell

Art Direction: Nikolai Dvigubsky

Sets: A Merkunov

Costumes: N. Fomina Make-up: V. Rudina Sound: Semyon Litvinov Lighting: V. Gusev Special Effects: Y. Potapov

2nd Director: Y. Kushnerov

Assistant Directors: Larissa Tarkovskaya, V. Karchenko, M. Chugunova

Camera Operators: A Nikolaev, I. Shtanko

Producer: E. Vaisberg

Production Manager: Y. Kushnerov

Cast: Margarita Terekhova (Aleksei's mother �nd Natalia); Filipp Yankovsky

(Ignat, aged five); Ignat Danil�ev (Aleksez a�d _Ignat, aged twelve); . Oleg

Yankovsky (father); Nikolai Grinko (man at prmtmg works); Al�a Demidova

(Elizabeth); Yuri Nazarov (military instructor); Anat?lY Solomts)'!\ (man �t

fence); Innokenti Smoktunovsky (narrator - vou;e of Aleksez);_

Mana

Tarkovskaya (Aleksei' s mother as an older woman); Tamara Ogorodm�ova;

T. Reshetnikhova; Y. Sventikov; E. del Bosque; L. Correcher; A. Gutierres;

D. Garcia; T. Parnes; Teresa del Bosque; Tamara del Bosque.

Filmography

Stalker [original title of scenario: The Wish Machine']

USSR, 1979. 35mm; colour; 163 mins; 4466m.

Production: Mosfilm, Unit 2 [nrection: �drei Tarkovsky Screenplay: �kadi and Boris Strugatsky (based on therr novel Roadside Picnic) Poems: Arseniy Tarkovsky and Fedor Tyuchev OU:e_ctor of Ph�tography: Aleksander Knyazhinsky Edxting: Ludmila Feyganova Music: Eduard Artemiev Mus�cal [nrection: E. Khachaturyan Musical Supervision: R. Lukina Art Direction (Production Designer): �drei Tarkovsky Sets: A Merkulov Artis�: R. SafiuUlin, V. Fabrikov Costumes: N. Fomina Make-up: V. Lvova Sound: V. Shcharun Lighting Supervision: L. Kazmin Assistant rnrectors: M. Chugunova, Yevgeniy Tsimbal Camera Operators: N. Fudim, S. Naugolnikh Assistant Camera Operators: G. Verkhovsky S. Zaitsev Assistant Editors: T. Alekseyeva, V. Lobkov� Assistant Lighting: T. Maslennikhova Produ�on Group: T. Aleksandrovskaya, V. Vdovina, M. Mosenkov Produ�on Manager: Larissa Tarkovskaya Production Supervision: Aleksandra Demidova

155

Cast: �eksander Kaida�ov�ky (stalker); �atoly Soloni�yn (writer); Nikolai Gnnko (professor/saentzst); Alisa Freindlikh (stalker's wife)· Natasha Abramova (stalker's daughter); F. Yuma; E. Kostin; R. Rendi.

'

Nostalgia [Nostalghia]

Italy, 1983. 35mm; Eastmancolor; 126 mins; 3545m.

Produ��n: Opera Film (Rome) for RAl TV Rete 2 in association with Sovmfilm, USSR

Direction: �drei Tarkovsky �reenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky , Tonino Guerra Director of Photography: Giuseppe Lanci Editing: Erminia Marani, Amadeo Salta Mus�c: Giuseppe Verdi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Russian song Musical Consultant: Gino Peguri Art Direction: Andrea Crisanti Set Dresser: Mauro Passi

156 Filmography

Costumes: Lina Nerli Taviani, Annamode 68 Make-up Supervision: Giuglio Mastrantonio Sound: Remo Ugolinelli Sound Effects: Massimo Anzellotti, Luciano Anzellotti . Special Effects: Paolo Ricci Assistant Directors: Norman Mozzato, Larissa Tarkovskaya Camera Operator: Giuseppe de Biasi Assistant Editor: Roberto Puglisi Sound Mixing: Danilo Moroni Sound Re-recording: Filippo Ottoni, Ivana Fidele Producer: Francesco Casati Executive Producers: Renzo Rossellini, Manolo Bolognini Production Executive: Lorenzo Ostuni (RAI) Production Supervision: Filippo Campus, Valentino Signoretti Production Administration: Nestore Baratella

Cast: Oleg Yankovsky (Andrei Gorchakov); Erland Josephson (Domenico); Domiziana Giordano (Eugenia); Patrizia Terreno . (Gorchakov's wife); Delia Boccardo (Domenico's wife); Alberto Canepa; Laura de Marchi; Raffaele di Mario; Rate Furlan; Livio Galassi; Elena Magoia; Piero Vida; Milena Vukotic.

The Sacrifice [Offret]

Sweden, France, 1986. 35mm; Eastmancolor; 145 mins; 4085m.

Production: Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, Argos Film SA, Paris Direction: Andrei Tarkovsky

· Screenplay: Andrei Tarkovsky Director of Photography: Sven Nykvist Editing: Andrei Tarkovsky, Michal Leszczylowski Editing Consultant: Henri Colpi Music: J. S. Bach (St Matthew Passion), Japanese instrumental music and

Swedish shepherds' calls Art Direction: Anna Asp Costumes: Inger Pehrsson Make-up and Wigs: Kjell Gustavsson, Florence Fouquier Sound and Mixing: Owe Svensson, Bosse Persson Special Effects: Svenska Stuntgruppen; Lars Hoglund, Lars Palmqvist Continuity: Anne von Sydow Assistant Director: Kerstin Eriksdotter Assistant Director and Post-Production: Michal Leszczylowski Camera Assistants: Lasse Karlsson, Dan Myhrman Casting: Priscilla John, Franc;oise Menidrey, Claire Denis Technical Manager: Kaj Larsen , Executive Producer: Anna-Lena Wibom (Swedish Film Institute) Production Manager: Katinka Farago, Farago Film AB

Filmography 1 57

Cast: Erland Josephson (Alexander); Susan Fleetwood (Adelaide); Valerie Mairesse (Julia); Allan Edwall (Otto); Gudrun Gislad6ttir (Maria); Sven Wollter (Victor); Filippa Franzen (Marta); Tommy Kjellqvist (Little Man); Per Kallman and Tommy Nordahl (ambulancemen).

r

Index

Abalov, E., 2, 24 Abbado, Claudio, 4 Abraham, 133, 143 Alexander, Layla, 150-1 Allardt-Nostitz, Felicitas, 12, 97 anamnesis, 82, 89 Andersson, Bibi, 145-6 Andrei Rublyov, 2, 5-6, 10, 12, 14-15,

21, 26, 32, 39-62, 63, 74-5, 79, 82, 88-9, 93, 105, 140, 1 42, 144

Andronikov Monastery, 42, 45, 142

Andropov, Yuri, 3 Angelopoulos, Theo, 149 Anubis, 103, 149 Apocalypse, 5-6, 28, 97-8, 102,

105, 137, 141 Artemiev, Eduard, 14, 76, 103, 147 artist's role, 5, 18-20, 36, 41, 45-9,

61 Auschwitz, 145 auteur film, 6, 24, 26

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 14, 76, 91, 128, 136, 147

Baglivo, Donatella, 138, 141 Bagno Vignoni, 107, 1 13-14, 1 1 8 Banionis, Donatas, 76 Batu Khan, 39 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 103, 105,

113 Belorussia, 40 Bergman, Ingmar, 136 Berlin, 4 Beryozovsky, Maximilian

Sasontovich, 72, 1 07-8, 110, 1 12, 148

black and white in film, 15, 21, 30, 52-3, 73-4, 79, 89, 104, 1 1 6, 1 18, 130-1, 134, 136, 140

Blake Society, 5, 139 Bloch, Ernst, 92 Bogomolov, Vladimir, 24-6, 29 Bondarchuk, Natalia, 76

Boris Godunov, "4, 138 Bresson, Robert, 136 Brezhnev, Leonid, 80 Brezna, Irena, 139, 147 Bruegel, Pieter, 50, 71-2, 90, 144

'The Hunters in the Snow', 71 Bu.ftuel, Luis, 136 Burlyaev, Nikolai (Kolya), 30, 57,

142, 1 44 Byzantine Empire, 40-2

Cannes Film Festival, 4, 62, 64, 80, 108, 120

Castaneda, Carlos, 149 Cerberus, 103 Chaadayev, Pyotr, 88 Chaliapin, Feodor, 37 Chagall, Marc, 86 Chapayev, 140 Charon, 94 Chernobyl, 8, 96, 105, 120 Chernyaev, Yevgeniy, 24 Chiarini, Luigi, 62 child's perspective, 19, 25, 36, 84,

86, 92, 134 childhood, 1, 7-8, 10, 23, 26, 27-9,

30, 33, 35-6, 56, 70-1, 79, 82-3, 85-6, 88-90, 92, 94

Chorniy, Daniil, 41, 59-60, 142, 144-5

Christ, 48, 51-2, 58, 123-4, 135, 144

cinema vente, 79' 83 colour in film, 15, 21, 41, 53, 55,

63, 73-4, 79, 91, 1 04-5, 118, 136, 140, 145

colour code, 15, 21, 73, 91, 103-5, 118, 126, 134, 136, 151

Constantine XI, 142 Constantinople, 143 Covent Garden Opera, 4 Cronaca Familiare, 26

Dakus, 113

158

Index 159

Daniil, see Chorniy, Daniil Daniltsev, !gnat, 3, 81 Dante, Alighieri, 43, 83, 95 Demant, Ebbo

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit; Andrej Tarkowskijs Exil und Tod, 139, 143, 150-1

Demofont, 148 Diary for My Loves, 151 Divine Comedy, 83, 95 Dnieper, 27, 38 Don Quixote, 68, 72 Donskoi, Demetrius, 40 Dostoevsky, Feodor, 4, 12, 91,

101, 1 16, 136, 138, 149 Dovzhenko, Alexander, 14, 34, 36,

136, 142 dreams, 6-7, 1 1 , 1 5, 22, 25, 27,

29-36, 52-1, 55, 58, 70, 73, 80-1, 86, 89, 92, 94, 1 04, 1 1 0, 1 1 2-13, 118, 126, 131, 133-6, 142, 150

Diirer, Albrecht, 6, 28, 141

Earth, 34 Eisenstein, Sergei, 13-14, 91 environmental destruction, 8, 95,

108 Epelboin, Annie, 150 'Expo 70', 63 extrasensory phenomena, 106, 136 Eyck, Jan van, 104

Farewell, 151 Fellini, Federico, 1 15, 149 Field of Snipes, see Kulikovo Polye Field of Virgins, 60 Fleetwood, Susan, 150 Florence, 3 Francesca, Piero della, 1 1 1-12

'Madonna del Parto', 91, 1 1 1-12 Friedrich, Caspar David, 142, 149 Furmanov, Dmitri, 140

Gandhi (Mahatma), 122, 144 Genghis Khan, 39 German Romanticism, 12, 90, 97,

146 Godard, Jean-Luc, 151

Golden Fleece, Jason and the, 97 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 137 Goskino, 3, 64, 80, 137-8 Grail, 95 Grass, Gunter, 120, 134 Greenaway, Peter, 151 Guardian Lecture, 149 Guerra, Tonino, 107-9, 149

Hitler, Adolf, 28 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 4, 12, 97 humanism, 5, 12, 42, 47-8, 70, 141

identity, merging of, 7, 12, 35, 60, 67, 81, 83, 113-14, 131, 1 35

Idiot, The, 12, 101, 116, 149 immortality, 67, 78, 82-3, 122 Ioseliani, Otar, 103, 136, 148 Isaac, 133 Italy, 3-4, 1 07-10, 112, 114, 1 1 7,

1 1 9, 125-6 Ivan I, 40 Ivan III, 40, 142 Ivan IV (the Terrible), 142 Ivan's Childhood, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12,

14-16, 22, 24-38, 41, 43, 46, 49, 56-7, 85, 89, 103, 141-2, 144-5, 1 47, 150

Ivanov, Vyacheslav, 9

Japan, 63 Jason and the Golden Fleece, 97 Josephson, Erland, 122

Kaidanovsky, Aleksander, 136 Khanate of the Golden Horde, 39 Kiev, 39-40 Klimov, Elim, 137, 151 Kluge, Alexander, 4 Knyazhinsky, Alexander, 148 Kokoshka, Oskar, 86 Konchalovsky, Andrei, see

Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky Kubrick, Stanley, 76 Kuleshov, Lev, 14 Kulikovo Polye (Field of Snipes),

40, 79, 88, 142 Kurosawa, Akira, 137

160 Index

last Judgement, 42, 44, 50-1, 55, 60, 144

Lem, Stanislaw, 63, 67, 73-5, 77, 96, 98

Solaris, 63 Leningrad, 80 Leonardo da Vinci, 37, 90-1,

123-5, 1 28, 130, 136 'Adoration of the Magi', 37, 91,

123, 1 25, 131 'Ginevra de' Bend, 91

Leszczylowski, Michal, 144, 150 Regi Andrej Tarkovskij, 150

levitation, 8, 46, 72, 86, 1 05, 127, 131

Lithuania, 40 London, 4-5 London Film Festival, 64 Lopushansky, Konstantin, 136 Loreto, 149

Madonna, see Virgin Mary Mtlgic Flute, The, 98 Mann, Thomas, 4 Mao Zedong, 89 Mary Magdalene, 52 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 139 memento mori, 50, 130 memory, 7-8, 52, 69-70, 73, 78, 82,

86, 89, 92, 1 08, 1 19, 136 Meszaros, Marta, 151 Metastasio, 148 Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Andrei,

16, 42, 140 Mirror, The, 1, 3-4, 7-8, 10, 13-14,

16, 36-8, 43, 46, 57, 61, 69, 71-2, 78-92, 105, 1 19, 1 22, 1 25, 131, 134, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146-7, 149

Mizoguchi, Kenji, 137 montage of attractions, 13, 91, 139 Moscow, 1, 4, 40, 62, 64, 80, 94,

143 Moscow Film Festival, 5 Mosfilm, 2, 16, 24, 74, 140-1 motifs, see Tarkovsky, Andrei

Arsenievich

Motte Fouque, Friedrich de la, 145

music and sounds, 14-15, 29, 34-5, 37, 55, 57, 76, 91, 103, 113, 1 19, 128-9

nature morte, see still life nostalgia, 1, 10, 68, 71-2, 94,

107-1 1, 1 14, 1 1 7-19, 137 Nostalgia, 3, 6-8, 10, 12, 14, 32,

36-7, 72, 84, 91, 96, 103, 107-19, 1 21-2, 1 25-9, 146, 148

Novalis, 12, 97 Novgorod, 40 Nykvist, Sven, 127

bschelbronn (anthroposophical clinic), 3

old master painting, 9, 50, 71, 90, 1 1 7, 126

Old Testament Trinity, 44, 72, 82, 143

Orpheus, 97 Ovcharov, Sergei, 136 Ovchinnikov, Vyacheslav, 14, 55,

57, 140, 1 44

Palaeologa, Sofia, 142 Palme, Olaf, 150 Papava, Mikhail, 25 Paracelsus, 145 paradise, 6, 10, 36, 70, 84-5, 94-5,

102, 104, 1 06, 135 Paradzhanov, Sergei, 74, 136 parapsychology, 8, 1 1 , 130 Paris, 3-4, 80 Pasternak, Boris, 136 perestroika, 87 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 147 Plato, 82, 1 1 5, 149 Poland-Lithuania, 39-40 prefiguration, 50, 144 Prospera's Books, 151 Proust, Marcel, 7, 69 Pskov, 40 psychokinesis, see telekinesis Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 14

11 !

Index 161

Purcell, Henry, 147 Pushkin, Alexander, 43, 88-9, 138

RAI, 3 Rasumovsky, Count, 107 Raush, Irma (Tarkovsky's 1st wife),

3, 81 Ravel, Maurice, 103 Renaissance, 6, 8-9, 39, 47-9, 91,

123, 141 Rerberg, Georgi (Gosha), 79-80, 148 resurrection, 44, 50, 67-8, 70, 77, 102 Revelation of StJohn, see Apocalypse Riga, 137 Romanov, Alexei, 64 Rome, 118 Romm, Mikhail, 2, 16 Rothschild, Thomas, 1 1-12 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 89 Rubens, Sir Peter Paul, 145 Rublyov, Andrei, 1, 36, 41-4,

46-61, 72, 9� 116, 1 22, 142-4 ruins, 3, 31-3, 49, 102, 112-13,

1 1 6-17, 1 19, 123, 141 Russia, 39, 43-5, 107, 109, 1 13,

1 1 9, 125 Russian Orthodox Church, 9, 40 Ryazan, 40

sacrifice, 5-6, 57, 60, 1 1 1, 1 14-16, 120-3, 125-0 130, 132-5, 137

Sacrifice, The, 3-9, 1 1-12, 14-16, 32, 36-8, 48, 56-7, 72, 86, 91, 96, 101, 104-5, 108, 1 12, 1 14-15, 118, 120-35, 138-40, 144-5, 150

St Catherine (of Siena), 1 12, 114-15, 121, 149

St Genevieve des Bois, 5 St James's Church, London, see

Blake Society St John the Divine, 137 Sancho Panza, 68 San Gregorio, 109

Shakespeare, William, 129, 1 34-5 Hamlet, 4, 138, 144

. A Midsummer Night's Dream, 134

silence and speech, 6, 47-8, 57-8, 87, 105, 121-2, 133, 135

Sivash, lake, 38, 89 Smoktunovsky, lnnokenti, 84 Sokurov, Alexander, 136 Solaris, 3, 6-7, 11-12, 45--6, 63-77,

78, 80, 86-7, 90, 94-5, 102, 1 1 4, 144, 147-8

Solonitsyn, Anatoly, 76, 126 Sosnovsky, Pavel, see Beryozovsky Soviet authorities, 2-3, 5, 26, 36,

41, 61-2, 80, 107-8, 137 Soviet cinema, 2, 4, 14, 137, 140

_ Soviet Union, 1-2, 4, 20, 87-8, 93, 125, 137

Spanish Civil War, 89 Spasski Cathedral, 142 Stalingrad, 89 Stalin, Joseph, 85, 87 Stalinism, 13, 20, 44, 137 Stalker, 3, 6, 8-1 1, 13, 36, 45, 68,

73, 75, 93-106, 1 13, 1 16, 1 1 9, 128, 134, 138-40, 145, 147

State School for Film (VGIK), Moscow, 2, 16, 138

Steamroller and the Violin, The, 2, 14, 16-23, 63, 134, 136, 140, 144-5

Steiner, Rudolf, 4 still life, 9, 67, 70-1, 90, 103-4,

1 1 7, 130 Strugatski, Arkadi and Boris, 93,

95--6, 112 Roadside Picnic, 93, 98

Styx, 94 Suzdal, Prince of, 39 Sweden, 3, 126 Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm,

150 symbolism, 9, 94, 1 1 7, 124 synchronism of time, 50, 143

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 36 Schiller, Friedrich von, 113 Schmidt, Eva Maria, 149 Second World War, 1, 26, 28-9, 137

Tarkovskaya, Larissa Pavlovna (Tarkovsky's 2nd wife), 3, 108, 147, 150

162 Index

Tarkovskaya, Maria Ivanovna (Tarkovsky's mother), 1-2, 78-9, 81-4, 86, 90, 1 08, 1 12, 1 25, 147

Tarkovskaya, Marina ( Tarkovsky's sister), 1-2

Tarkovsky, Andrei (Andryusha) ( Tarkovsky's son), 3, 81, 108, 124-5

Tarkovsky, Arseniy Alexandrovich (Tarkovsky's father), 1, 12, 16, 80-2, 86, 1 08, 1 1 1, 141

Tarkovsky, Andrei Arsenievich, films, see titles of individual films motifs, apples, 15, 17, 21-2, 34, 36--7,

50, 71, 97 balloons, 45--{), 72, 89-90 bells, 8, 31-2, 42-4, 46, 49, 56--7,

59, 1 1 1, 142 birds, 59, 71, 90, 1 1 2 bread, 18, 22, 34, 71, 1 17 dogs, 8, 15, 71-2, 96, 101, 1 03-5,

1 1 3-14, 1 1 8, 128, 149 elements, 49-50, 1 02, 1 1 7,

1 26--7, 151 fire, 56, 90, 1 18, 121, 127 flight, 8, 33, 37, 45--{), 56, 86, 102 horses, 8, 34, 37, 46, 54, 56--7,

71, 1 1 8, 123, 137, 1 39 milk, 8, 18, 22, 56, 80, 85, 90,

103, 1 15, 127, 148 mirrors, 8-9, 21-2, 65, 72, 84,

92, 117-18, 127, 130, 146 rain, 8-9, 72, 101-2, 1 1 7, 146 trees, 35--8, 123-4, 142 water, 9-10, 14, 21-2, 34, 37, 56,

67, 77, 81, 90, 92, 98, 101-4, 1 1 6, 1 18-20, 127, 130, 139, 142, 145, 149

wells, 34, 95, 97, 142

projects, 4 women, 12-13, 60-1, 67, 86--7,

91, 105, 1 1 0-12, 130 Tartars, 39-40, 42-4, 51, 54, 60-1,

88, 142 Tartini, Giuseppe, 107

telekinesis, 96, 1 05, 139, 148 Tempi di Viaggio, see A Time to Travel Terekhova, Margarita, 81, 91 Theophanes the Greek, 41-3,

47-51, 54, 57-61, 144 time, 6--7, 9, 15, 69-70, 78, 80, 82,

89, 92, 1 03, 108, 1 1 8-19 Time to Travel, A (Tempi di Viaggio),

108 Tretyakov Gallery, 143 Troiza Monastery of St

Sergius, 42, 48, 61, 143 Truffaut, Franc;ois, 151 Turovskaya, Maya, 10, 1 8, 26, 141 Tuscany, 3 Tver, 40 2001: A Space Odyssey, 76 Tyuchev, Feodor, 105

Ukraine, 40 Undine, 67, 145 universality, 28, 38, 1 26, 136 unities, 58, 1 03 USA, 3 Uspensky Cathedral, 59, 143 Utopia, 85, 1 13

vanitas motifs, 6, 9, 49-51 , 70-1, 83, 91, 1 02, 1 04, 1 1 7, 1 30, 144

Vasiliev, Georgi and Sergei, 140 Vassili I, 40 Vassili III, 40 Venice, 143 Venice Film Festival, 2, 26, 36, 62 Verdi, Giuseppe, 113, 1 19 Vertov, Dziga, 14 VGIK, see State School for Film,

Moscow Vinci, Leonardo da, see Leonardo

da Vinci Virgin Mary, 9, 12-13, 87, 91, 106,

1 12, 1 1 6, 123-4, 130-1, 145 Vladimir, 39-40, 42-3, 46, 48, 50,

53-5, 59, 143-4

Wenders, Wim, 151 Wings of Desire, 151 witches, 12, 1 21, 130-1, 150

Index 163

women in Tarkovsky's films and relations with, see Tarkovsky, Andrei Arsenievich

Yankovsky, Oleg, 81, 146 Yarvet, Yuri, 76 Yermash, Feodor, 3, 80, 137

Yuryevetz, 1 Yusov, Vadim, 24, 63, 79, 140, 146

Zagorsk, 42 Zavrazhie, 1 Zurlini, Valerio, 26 Zvenigorod, 54, 63, 143