Andrei Tarkovsky

?Tarkovsky? redirects here. For the Russian poet, see Arseny Tarkovsky.

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (??????? ??????????? ???????????) (April 4, 1932 - December 29, 1986) was a Russian Soviet film director, opera director, writer, and actor. He is generally regarded as the foremost important and influential filmmaker of the post-war Soviet era in Russia and one of the greatest in the history of cinema.

Contents

Biography

Tarkovsky, son of the prominent poet Arseny Tarkovsky, was a product of the golden era of Soviet arts education. He was born and spent his childhood at the village of Zavrazhye in Kostroma Province. Although the house where he was born is under the waters of the Gorky Reservoir, there is a museum dedicated to him in his native village.

Tarkovsky received a classical education in Moscow, studying Music and Arabic, before training for over five years at the VGIK film school, studying directly under Mikhail Romm among others. For a time he worked as a geologist in Siberia.

Although the Orthodox Christian symbolism of his films led to interference and occasional suppression of the finished product by the Soviet authorities, the Soviet Mosfilm studio system enabled him to make films that would not have been commercially viable in the West. However, Tarkovsky's principal complaint about his treatment by the authorities was that he had many more ideas in him than he was allowed to bring to the screen, and in 1984, after shooting Nostalghia in Italy, he decided not to return to Russia. He made only one more film, The Sacrifice, a European co-production filmed in Sweden, before dying of cancer in a suburb of Paris at the age of 54.

Andrei Tarkovsky was buried in a graveyard for Russian émigrés in the town of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, Île-de-France, France. The inscription on Tarkovsky's grave reads “To the man who saw the Angel”.

Tarkovsky is remembered as an individual who fought to maintain creative control. This is most evident during his fight to have Mirror released despite the severe criticism he knew would accompany such a film's release. This film tells the story of his life as a child, juxtaposes Soviet history, and the life of his mother. Furthermore, it stated his obvious growing discontent with the restricting creative policies while working in the Soviet Union. These restrictions placed upon him during his creative life raise the question of just how great an artist he was allowed to be.

Work

Andrei Tarkovsky at work

Andrei Tarkovsky at work

Tarkovsky's films are characterised by Christian and metaphysical themes, extremely long takes, and memorable images of exceptional beauty. Recurring motifs in his films are dreams, memory, childhood, running water accompanied by fire, rain indoors, reflections, levitation, and characters re-appearing in the foreground of long panning movements of the camera.

Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called “sculpting in time”. By this he meant that the unique characteristic of cinema as a medium was to take our experience of time and alter it. Unedited movie footage transcribes time in real time. By using long takes and few cuts in his films, he aimed to give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another.

Up to and including his film Mirror, Tarkovsky focused his cinematic works on exploring this theory. After Mirror, he announced that he would focus his work on exploring the dramatic unities proposed by Aristotle: a concentrated action, happening in one place, within the span of a single day. Stalker is, by his own account, the only film that truly reflects this ambition; it is also considered by many to be a near-perfect reflection of the sculpting in time theory.

Life

“…it seems to me that the individual today stands at a crossroad, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, turn to God.” - Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986

Diary

Tarkovsky kept a fairly regular diary for much of his life. This published posthumously originally in 1989. The last entry was on December 15, 1986. His last words are “But now I have no strength left–that is the problem”. This notion that he has no strength parallels the creative fight he had for much of his life in the film industry. After his death, his films, banned from the screens in the USSR, were given back to the Russian Public and his life's work is now celebrated and examined.

Filmography

Screenplays

  • The Steamroller and the Violin (1960), co-scripted with Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky
  • My Name is Ivan / Ivan's Childhood (1961), Vladimir Bogomolov, Mikhail Papava (Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky both uncredited)
  • Solaris (1972), co-scripted with Fridrikh Gorenshtein
  • Light Wind (Ariel) (1972), co-scripted with Fridrikh Gorenshtein
  • A White, White Day (1968, 1984), co-scripted with Aleksandr Misharin
  • Hoffmanniana (1975, 1984)
  • Stalker (1978), Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky (Andrei Tarkovsky uncredited)
  • Sardor (1978), co-scripted with Aleksandr Misharin
  • Nostalghia (1978-1982), co-scripted with Tonino Guerra
  • The Sacrifice (1984)

Subjects Tarkovsky proposed for future films

(as noted in his diary Martyrlog)

Stage productions

References

“Martyrlog”, 1984

Cultural references

  • Canadian band has a song entitled “In Tarkovsky's Words” on its debut album, The Only Non-Classical Album You'll Ever Need (2007).

Bibliography

  • Sculpting In Time, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair (1987)
  • , translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair (1993)
  • Collected Screenplays, translated by William Powell and Natasha Synessios (1999)
  • Johnson, Vidat and Petrie, Graham, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1994

Works about Tarkovsky

Books

  • Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series), edited by John Gianvito, University Press of Mississippi, 2006,
  • “The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky”, by Mark Le Fanu, British Film Institute, 1987,
  • The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, by Vida T. Johnston and Graham Petrie, 1994,
  • Andrei Tarkovsky, by Sean Martin, Pocket Essentials, 2006,
  • Andrei Rublev, by Robert Bird, British Film Institute, 2005,
  • Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006,

Films